They all nodded.
‘Ever,’ said Peter.
Billy stood across the door. ‘Just so we all understand. Once Tommy’s got the money he’s gone for good. But there’s a signal. Once he’s free – with the money. So no mistakes, Peter. No sudden changes of plan. If he doesn’t get the money I’ll know. And I’ll come looking for it.’
Tuesday, 6th November
18
Dryden loathed the doorsteps of the recently bereaved. He knew that as he knocked on the door of Camm House it would, this time, not be empty. The night’s search parties along the river had found no trace of Reg Camm. The pathologist had meanwhile matched his dental records to the corpse retrieved from the Lark. In the morgue at eight o’clock the previous night Paul Camm had formally identified the body of his father. And here, twelve hours later, was Dryden. His professional objectives were clear: a brief interview with the widow and – the main priority – a picture of the deceased. He knocked again and saw the net curtains twitch.
Peggy Camm answered the door. The cameo brooch this time held a silk scarf in place. Otherwise she was in black; a deep velvet black which sucked in what little light the house enjoyed. The dismal hallway reeked of white lilies. Dryden was mystified by the use of such a flower to witness death, it radiated a sickly sweet medicinal aroma. From a back room came the gentle tinkling of the teacups of condolence. Upstairs a child cried in that confused way reserved for the first encounter with death.
They sat in the front room, an old-fashioned parlour in perfect keeping with the house’s post-war gloom.
She looked at him kindly. ‘I remember now. Your father. I’m sorry about your mother. Last year, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. Thanks. You’ve got a good memory. I was eleven when Dad died. You haven’t changed.’
She smiled. ‘She was a good friend. I’m afraid I wasn’t. I faded away after your father died. I’m sorry.’
Dryden shook his head. It didn’t matter now.
‘And I’m sorry about having to sit in this antiques shop,’ she said, brushing down her black velvet skirt. ‘Reg loved this room – he remembered it from childhood of course. I think he saw it as a representation of continuity. The children hate it, too stuffy and you can’t run round can you, not with all this stuff just waiting to topple to the floor.’ She adjusted a small porcelain figurine by her elbow.
The accent was more finishing school than Fens.
‘Frankly, that’s why we’re in here. The children – the boys – don’t think I should be speaking to you. I think they are angry about Reg’s death, confused perhaps. But Reg rather liked The Crow, I think he’d want me to talk to you.’
Thanks a million, thought Dryden, feeling unclean. Did he have some horribly apparent disease? He wanted to ask a few questions and put Reg Camm’s picture in the paper; the family would be ringing up later that week to pay for an obituary notice. He was doing them a bloody favour.
Her hand twitched again at the brooch. ‘We imagined you’d like a picture as well.’ She touched a brown envelope stiffened with cardboard on the table between them. Inside was a large black and white print of a man at the wheel of a pleasure cruiser. He had a shock of corn-blond hair and the slightly ruddy skin of someone who has spent a lifetime out of doors. Dryden suppressed the image of the body of the Lark victim, and the blood-dripped corn-blond head which had looked out with a fish-dead eye.
‘Thank you. I am really very sorry to be butting in just now, it must have been a shock.’
She fiddled absentmindedly with the brooch. ‘No. No. I wouldn’t have said a shock. Murder we didn’t expect of course… I’d rather you didn’t put this in the paper…’
Dryden hoped the tabloids didn’t get to her, they’d eat her alive.
‘Reg had been unhappy for several years and had, well, tried to take his own life as a result. It’s not nice but there it is. I think failing to succeed, even in that, made it even worse. The last attempt was quite serious and we were all rather fearful of the future. He was a determined man.’
Dryden looked suitably confused.
‘Debts,’ she said.
Money, thought Dryden, but said: ‘I thought he inherited the boatyard from his father? It’s a well-established business…’
‘It could be a thriving one. But Reg mortgaged it in 1980. My husband could run a boatyard, Mr Dryden, but he couldn’t run a business. I’m afraid he panicked. We needed money rather quickly you see. Our first son, Paul, had leukaemia as a baby and the doctors said he’d have a much better chance going to a specialist at a London clinic – the Princess Grace. Rather expensive even then. A fortune in fact, and no credit accepted, at least not the kind we could offer.