‘Too late, I’m afraid. We’d like to get something in The Express. Local employer. Boost for the town. As it’s for training, could I have a word with the apprentices?’
She brushed some hair back from her forehead and pinned it under the headscarf. ‘Go ahead. Look, I’ll get Josh on the mobile as well. Get a quote, that’s what you want?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’ She took him over to the yard where the apprentices, sensing either extra work or contact with the outside world, had melted away – except for one, left tending the open fire.
‘This is Darren. Darren Shaw. One of our star apprentices, he’s just finishing his modern apprenticeship – that’s the government’s new programme. Then he plans to do a foundation degree in stonecraft. Most of it will be taught here, but it will be awarded by Cambridge. We’re very proud of Darren. Perhaps you can help Mr Dryden, Darren. The firm has won an award.’
She left them. Darren was fluent, unabashed, and, out of earshot of his fellow apprentices, an enthusiastic trainee. Dryden wrapped up the story in ten minutes.
Darren offered him a Silk Cut, which he took. The apprentice was twenty-two and looked eighteen, but for his hands, which were weathered and several sizes too big. He wore a single silver earring and a crisp white shirt. Despite the subzero temperatures he was dressed in the regulation blue overalls, but his looked like they’d been to work.
‘Tea?’ Darren nodded to a timber store where a kettle, mugs, and biscuit tin were neatly laid out on a white ceramic tray.
‘Thanks – I’ll file first.’ Dryden rang Jean at The Crow offices and gave her the story. Mrs Nene had agreed a quote with her husband on behalf of the business – so he tacked that on the end. It was the best free advertising they’d get for years. He had to shout for Jean’s benefit so Darren got to hear himself praising his employers, and so did everyone else.
Finished, Dryden sat on a workbench with his tea and watched the softly falling snow: the light was now fading and Darren stood to switch on a single hundred-watt bulb. Dryden ostentatiously stowed his notebook away. ‘’Nother paper gone,’ he said, to drive the point home.
Darren nodded happily, enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. He’d get copies for his parents. Girlfriend.
‘What’s old Nene like to work for?’ Dryden looked around the yard. A group of workers were making their way home towards the gate chatting happily.
‘OK. He knows his stuff. She runs a lot of it a’ course.’
‘The wife?’
‘Yeah. Bit scary. Really wears the boots.’
Dryden nodded. ‘And the old man?’
‘Like I said – knows his stuff.’ He seemed reluctant to go on.
‘Tidy business.’
‘Yeah. He bought it in the seventies – least my old man said he did. They worked together, just apprentices. Pretty grim by all accounts; mind you, you know what old codgers are like.’
‘Grim?’
‘Sweatshop. They got a pittance too. The boss got the worst of it apparently. He wasn’t local, came in off the Fen somewhere. Must have been sweet, buying them out. Her money, but still, who cares?’
‘Her money?’
‘Her aunt. Wealthy family, the Elliotts. Out from the sticks. Left her a small fortune in her will, they’d been married ten years. Used it to buy the business in seventy-six.’
‘So he’s under the thumb a bit?’
‘A bit. She doesn’t let him forget where it all comes from.’
Back at the cab, Humph was asleep. His torso resembled a large Ipswich Town duvet. Dryden fished in the glove compartment and found a Campari miniature which he sipped.
Around them the water-laden breath of the fields was gathering. The mist had weight. It was rising now, lifting itself with an effort from the snowfields and the river banks. Within the mist lurked silhouettes, fence posts, cattle standing and dropping dung, a house on the dyke.
He nudged Humph. ‘Little Ouse. Pronto.’
They were there in twenty minutes. The mist here was thicker, so wet it slumped in the ditches with the effort of rising.
He knocked at the vicarage and the Reverend Tavanter answered the door. In the background Dryden heard laughter, the clatter of cutlery and plates. Despite the practice of a lifetime Tavanter failed to disguise the death of the smile which had been on his lips.
‘Sorry, you said we could have a picture for the paper. The gravestones.’
A head poked out into the corridor behind Tavanter. A middle-aged man with a crisp white shirt, tie and dull, badly cut hair. Behind him another head appeared, bleached blond and cut short. Dryden had spoiled a party.