The Water Clock(41)

Dryden couldn’t resist a final blow below the belt. ‘Your kids at West Fen?’

Thomas zipped up his leather jacket. ‘Nope. Anyway – better be off.’

No, thought Dryden, letting him go. They’re at Ely’s grammar school. Hypocritical bastard.

The visiting school bus had left and the kids were now snowballing the school windows in the dusk. He met Mitch, the mad photographer, coming in: ‘Fill your boots – it’s like the set for Titanic in there.’ The photographer was hardly visible behind a high-tech pyramid of photographic equipment.

‘Great job,’ said the Scot, as he swept past the welcome desk.





11



Laura’s room was no longer a mausoleum. A new box of electronic medical tricks had been installed by the bedside and linked to her arm and ankle by electrodes. The screens danced in vivid greens and blues, emitting comforting beeps. Laura looked whiter than ever. A print-out chugged out a line of figures: a glacial waterfall of white paper, which had already reached the floor and begun to fold itself into a neat concertina of vital data.

Dryden poured two glasses of wine and settled down by the window. The snow had thickened during the day and was punctured by birds’ feet. The monkey-puzzle tree sagged with the load. The day was ending, but as the gloom deepened, he let the darkness engulf the room. The white light streamed in softly from the snowfield.

‘Humph sends his love, Laura.’ He looked to the bed. ‘I told him to come in but getting him out of that cab is like pulling a cork from a bottle of port. A rather morose, plump cork.’

Out under the monkey-puzzle tree Dryden again saw the tiny pinpoint fire of a cigarette burning in the dark. It was the slightest of lights and danced and disappeared on the very edge of vision. He waited for the security guard with the Alsatian to appear from the shadows.

He sat and smoked the obligatory Greek cigarette. ‘So, Laura, what’s the story so far? I’ve been on The Crow two years and the biggest crime until the day before yesterday was a sub-post office robbery – unarmed – at Littleport. That turned out to be two juveniles. In the last forty-eight hours, by contrast, two bodies have turned up in grotesque, some would say bizarre, circumstances.

‘The first has been shot in the back of the head and dumped in the River Lark inside the boot of a stolen car. After death he was hanged by rope causing traumatic injuries to the neck. He was drunk at the time of death but otherwise appears to have enjoyed a healthy lifestyle. Fifties, corn-blond. Odd age to be a murder victim. Passions are normally spent. His prints were on the police computer. They’d been found at the scene of a robbery in 1966 at a roadhouse on the A10 – the Crossways. We don’t know who he was then, and as yet we don’t know now.

‘The day after the body in the Lark is found another one turns up. He is found on the roof of the cathedral. He’s probably been up there since shortly after the robbery. The body is that of Tommy Shepherd, a gypsy and petty thief, wanted at the time of his disappearance for his part in the Crossways robbery. Besides a half-eaten driving licence he has in his back pocket two winning betting slips for a meeting at Newmarket on the day of the robbery. More than £500. A small fortune then.’

He paused as a shadowy figure being led by an Alsatian on a lead crossed the lawns, then turned back to Laura: ‘Theories? The link is clearly crucial but difficult to unravel. Did the Lark victim die because Tommy Shepherd’s body was about to be found? Who knew it was about to turn up? Someone who knew Tommy was up there – probably the person who pushed him off more than three decades before. But why would the discovery of the body necessarily mean the Lark victim had to die?’

‘The police think Tommy Shepherd jumped – suicide. But then, how did anyone know he was on the roof? Witness? Suicide looks increasingly unlikely anyway. He’d have to get up there in daylight and if he’d jumped in daylight he would have hit the roof with a hell of a crash a hundred feet above the heads of hordes of tourists. My guess is that he was up there at night and was helped over the side. When he fetched up in the gutter he tried to stand. Why? Hardly the act of a man bent on suicide. And somewhere in the world he had £500 waiting for him – or perhaps he had it on him. He’d offered to tell the police the names of the rest of the gang. He could also count on at least his share of the haul from the Crossways robbery. Enough in 1966 to start a new life. My guess is he died a pauper and someone else got the money.’

There was a muffled knock at the door. ‘Mr Dryden? There’s a Mr Holt at the front counter.’