Past tense, thought Dryden. Even he knows it’s beyond hope.
Camm looked at Stubbs and seemed to know then, finally, that his father had indeed gone. Five days. Freezing temperatures.
Dryden took his chance. ‘Did your father receive any messages before he disappeared, an unusual letter perhaps, a telephone call…?’
Dryden took Stubbs’s silence as an indication that the detective had not yet asked the same question.
‘Mum thinks he got a note – that night.’
‘That night?’
‘Yes, last Wednesday.’
The Portakabin had two offices – one beyond a thin partition through which came the sound of a single, stifled sob. They all pretended not to hear it. A dog barked and scratched at the door.
Stubbs reopened his notebook. ‘Could we?’
Camm slipped through the door. After a brief muffled conversation his mother appeared, dabbing at blurred mascara.
‘Detective Sergeant?’ She was in her early sixties. A patina of the respectable middle-class housewife she had been after her marriage to Reg Camm had survived decades of hard work and genteel poverty. She wore a cameo brooch pinned to a scarf held tight at the neck.
Dryden knew her then, despite the passage of twenty years. The day his own father had gone missing she had come to comfort his mother. She had been a teacher too, she’d been a friend, but not a good enough friend to make comfort a reality. He recalled sharply the confusion he’d felt as she had taken him, aged eleven, to play in the garden at Burnt Fen while his mother had talked to the police. It was an odd coincidence that they should meet again like this, the kind that convinced him that there was no great plan to life, just the aimless collision of scattered snooker balls.
Stubbs tried to regain control of the interview. ‘I’m sorry, your son mentioned that your husband may have received a note on the night he disappeared. Is that true?’
She clutched at the brooch. ‘Yes. Yes it is. I, I didn’t think…’ She looked helplessly to her son and clutched his arm.
‘It may be nothing. Did you see it?’
‘No. Well, yes, but only as a folded note on the mat. A white envelope, with his name on the front in capitals. REG, that was all. I took it to him down by the dock, he was working on one of the for-hire launches.’
‘Did he tell you what it said?’
She clutched again at the brooch: ‘He said it was a letter from an old friend.’
‘Did he seem upset at all?’
‘Surprised, Detective Sergeant. Surprised – and a bit relieved? Perhaps… it’s difficult.’
‘What did he do with the note?’
She closed her eyes and conjured up the scene. ‘He folded it, carefully, and put it in his overalls’ pocket. Then he got on with his work… He seemed angry, he’d been less patient recently anyway. So I left him to it. That was the last time… the last time I…’
‘Yes.’ Stubbs closed his notebook. They smiled at her stupidly. ‘We must get on with the search. We’re confident he’s out there.’
She smiled for the first time. A travesty of hope dispelling certainty. She looked at Dryden with glazed eyes and a whisper of recognition clouded them further.
Camm showed them out and turned the sign on the glass front door to CLOSED.
Dryden fell in beside Stubbs, catching a brief whiff of Old Spice on the breeze.
Out of earshot Dryden asked the obvious question. ‘When are you going to let them identify the body?’
‘This afternoon. They only called us last night. We’ll finish a search, and check the bank account to make sure he isn’t a runner. No point putting them through it if he’s done a bunk with a dolly bird to Benidorm. But it’s him, got to be. He’s the Lark victim. Hair’s right, age – if he’s her generation – lifestyle, clothes. The lot.’
Stubbs nodded at Dryden’s wound. ‘And the ear?’
‘Details later.’
Stubbs stopped but Dryden continued to walk. ‘Withholding evidence is a criminal offence, Dryden. We could continue this conversation at the nick.’
Dryden turned. ‘I don’t think so. No photofit story. And you won’t get anything out of me until Friday, when The Crow comes out with the full story. Make you look a bit stupid that.’
The day was stillborn, killed by the gloom of the snow-clouds.
Stubbs turned on him, the merest hint of a bead of sweat at his temple: ‘You’ve got no right shadowing a police investigation like this. Or for that matter withholding vital evidence.’
‘You’ve got no right expecting the press to print misleading statements about the progress of your inquiries.’