Looking around, Dryden felt subnormal might have been a bit wide of the mark as well.
The car showroom was full of waxed BMWs and two Bentleys polished to the point where they seemed to have gained an extra, translucent skin. The piped-in Muzak was classical, had a rock ‘n’ roll beat, and was at that annoying sound level known as discreet. He counted a long five minutes.
Roberts bustled in looking preoccupied. He was immaculate in white shirt, floral tie, gold Rotary Club tie-pin, dark blue suit, and polished slip-on black leather shoes. This was dress as performance art. It shouted respectability.
It was immediately obvious why the police file may have been slightly unkind to Gladstone Roberts – he was black. Ely was not famous for its melting-pot society. The town was insular and insulated. A multicultural event in the Fens was a phone call from London.
‘Mr Dryden?’ The natural deep tone of Roberts’s Trini-dadian skin had weathered badly over the last forty years. But the lilting joyful voice was just discernible below the flat East Anglian accent.
It was a question, and looking into the pained dark brown eyes he saw that it needed a bloody good answer.
‘Tommy Shepherd.’
Roberts shook his head slightly and screwed up his eyes – a performance designed to ask: ‘Do I know that name?’ But he said nothing.
‘His body was found on Friday. He’d…’
Roberts looked at the floor. He seemed weighed down by the effort of pretending he didn’t know what Dryden was talking about.
Then he nodded. ‘Of course. The suicide.’ He fished in his pockets for a packet of Hamlet cigars and lit up without offering one. Dryden wondered if the greyness in the dark wrinkles was ash.
‘I’m just doing a piece on Tommy Shepherd – you probably remember the robbery at Crossways in 1966?’
‘Why would I remember that, Mr Dryden?’
Dryden recognized he had arrived at the dividing line between being a reporter and a detective. He was reluctant to cross it due to a combination of innate cowardice and the lack of a blue uniform covered in comforting buttons and insignia. Also Roberts was the last person he wanted to insult. He imagined that years of racial discrimination had been insult enough.
He stepped in close and felt a surge of power as Roberts rocked back on his heels. ‘I’ve seen the police file, Mr Roberts. On Thomas Shepherd and those associated with him between 1964 and 1966. I wanted a brief word – in private.’
They found somewhere private. The office was above the showroom with an internal picture window looking down on the cars. With the snowfall the lights had come on to counter the gloom. The cars sparkled in that depressing way reserved for impossibly expensive merchandise.
Roberts didn’t offer Dryden a seat.
‘Are you aware of the penalties associated with breaching the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, Mr Dryden?’
Good line, thought Dryden.
Roberts sat perched on a ridiculously large walnut desk. Gilt-edged picture frames covered the leather surface: wife, children, car, house, holiday, golf club. Dryden felt less sorry for him. For a 1950s immigrant he had done well for himself. Dryden could only imagine how hard that had been in a community which saw the world in two halves. The Fens were ‘home’ and the rest of the world was simply ‘away’.
What was clear, however, was that he didn’t feel sorry for Dryden. There was a carefully constructed edge of menace in Roberts’s performance so far.
‘What offences?’
A masterstroke. He saw Roberts struggling to find an answer that wasn’t self-incriminating.
He sighed again. He looked uncomfortable despite being firmly on home ground. ‘Look. I wasn’t at the Crossways. Sure I knew Tommy Shepherd. So did half the petty crooks in the county. So what?’
‘So… the police at the time thought you might have been harbouring him. I’ve seen the file. Yes, they thought you might have been at the Crossways – but you had an alibi. A good one. There was a lot of money taken. It’s never been found. They think Tommy committed suicide. I think he was pushed. Any ideas?’
It was Roberts’s turn to take a step closer. Dryden felt the inevitable urge to back off. He resisted it with a commendable effort not unassociated with an inability to move his legs.
‘Mr Dryden. Slander is a serious business. How can I put this? I have a choice – recourse to the law or my own devices. I use the second reluctantly, but expertly. Do I make myself clear?’
Dryden went for another question. ‘Where’d you get the money for this place?’ He took the opportunity to step back and look out at the showroom below.
Roberts composed himself by smoothing down his suit with exaggerated care. He stubbed out his Hamlet and took an overcoat from a brass peg. ‘I can’t help you any further, Mr Dryden. I have to be in church. Can I give you a lift home?’