The Water Clock

Bright sunshine fell that day on Stow Bardolph Fen fifteen miles north of Ely. The single-carriageway A10 crosses it from south to north en route for the coast at Lynn and the popular windswept beaches at Hunstanton, Brancaster and Cromer. That summer the first hovercraft service had opened from Ramsgate to Calais but, despite the growing attractions of ‘abroad’, thousands still braved the North Sea for a traditional British holiday.

The Crossways filling station stood, and still stands, although much altered, at the junction with two byroads – one out to the farms at Cold Christmas, the other to the sluices at Denver. Then it was a state-of-the-art roadhouse: an outpost of sensational modernity. Teenagers came on scooters to view the automatic drinks dispenser and buy cigarettes and pop. Today it is a Happy Eater.

That afternoon Amy Ward was alone in the shop minding the till. It was no ordinary afternoon. In London, at Wembley Stadium, a crowd of 100,000 was about to watch the World Cup Final. Saturday, July 30, 1966. England would play West Germany in a game nobody who saw it would ever forget. Amy would never forget that day either, but for very different reasons.

She was slim, dark, and plain – but dressed to catch the eye. She wore a pink sweater pulled tight over her breasts while a miniskirt, clipped at the waist by a broad leather belt, clung to her thighs. Resourceful, unimaginative, and self-contained the twenty-four-year-old Amy was reading the Radio Times. The front had a colour picture of Bobby Moore, England’s tall, blond, and imperious captain. Amy lingered wistfully over the image.

George was at home in their newly built (George always said ‘jerrybuilt’) bungalow directly behind the shop. The two buildings were joined by a short corrugated-iron covered walkway. George was watching the build-up to the game on TV, along with millions of others around the world. He’d given Eric Dean, the Crossways’ resident mechanic, the afternoon off. It was a sore point with Amy. She wasn’t a football fan – and she wasn’t interested in listening to the game on the radio – but she’d have liked to have seen it. The Queen was there. George’s brother had phoned that morning from New Zealand. He was watching too. Everyone was watching except Amy. She’d strung bunting over the forecourt of the garage and a Union jack flew from the flagpole. But George hadn’t even asked if she’d like to watch. It wasn’t as though they’d be busy. She hadn’t seen a car go past since two o’clock that afternoon. The roads were deserted. Next day the papers would all say the same thing. It was the day the nation came to a standstill. The day England won the World Cup.

So it was just George and Eric who sat on the Wards’ new sofa and shared a packet of Embassy Filter Tips. Between them on the new purple and blue shag-pile carpet (‘This is luxury you can afford – buy Cyril Lord’) stood a crate of bottled Worthington White Shield. Just before the game began Amy smiled, despite herself, when she heard George, always patriotic, joining in the chorus of ‘Jerusalem’. It was her last smile.

Bored, she began to clean the counter top methodically, until it gleamed and perfectly reflected the sunlight. She heard the roar as the game began and felt the tension of the opening ten minutes. Even Eric, already the worse for half a dozen bottles of Worthington, was strangely subdued. Outside nothing moved. It was a perfect summer’s day but in most homes the curtains were drawn to enhance the flickering black and white pictures from London.

West Germany’s first goal was greeted with silence. George swore and she heard a bottle smash in the grate. She glanced at her watch. 3.13 p.m.

She would say later in her statement to police that she didn’t know what had caught her attention. She found three men standing with their backs to the plate-glass window of the shop. Interviewed at Lynn Royal Infirmary she would tell detectives that she was sure they must have walked to the Crossways. She had a fine ear for a car pulling up on the forecourt and she was certain none had. She was right. The scene of crime team found tyre marks on the grass verge 500 yards to the south.

There had been some traffic that morning. What George called ‘bucket-and-spade specials’. Over-excited children in the back seat, bleary-eyed parents in the front. But there were no children that afternoon. Just the three men with their backs to the plate-glass window.

Amy Ward was puzzled rather than alarmed. She had never seen random violence, at least not until the new TV had shown the Mods and Rockers fighting on the promenade the summer before at Clacton and Brighton. She lit a cigarette and put the Radio Times away under the counter.

She told the police the next few minutes were incoherent in her memory. Without word or apparent signal the three men moved at once: the man she would later describe as having blue-black hair, young and slim and dressed in the new-style US jeans, strode away to stand by the two petrol pumps. He carried a rag and a wrench but she never saw his face which was partly obscured by a US-style peaked cap.

The man she would later describe as the leader moved quickly to the shop door and, stepping through, pulled a knitted black balaclava over his head and a sawn-off shotgun from a large ironmonger’s holdall. The other followed less confidently, fumbling with a balaclava. Amy’s bloodstream flooded with adrenalin. She stood, knocking her stool to the ground, and took a breath to call George. But the first man moved with surprising speed to bring the shotgun up to her chest. His voice, muffled through the jagged slit of the wool, said: ‘No. Not a sound.’

The other man hesitated in the doorway.

The leader clicked his fingers and said:

‘Till.’

The week, with plenty of traffic running up to the coast, had been a good one and there was nearly £600 in notes – including two £20 bills which George had swapped for change with one of the delivery men.

There were also three wage packets: one for the mechanic, and two for the drivers who ran the Wards’ small road-haulage business. The wages in cash totalled a further £48. The second man counted the money while the leader watched Mrs Ward – so close his breath played on her skin. He traced a finger down her sweater, from neck to belt.

She remembered saying: ‘Please don’t.’ She told the police she was sure he meant to rape her.

He breathed into her mouth: ‘Silver?’

She fumbled at a key held by a clasp to her belt and nodded to a reinforced wooden door to her left: ‘Storeroom,’ she said, or possibly: ‘In there.’ Her statements differed on this small point. He brushed past her, produced two large burlap sacks, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside, switching on the light.

George Ward’s collection of silver football trophies, some his own, but many just in safe keeping, was kept in neat rows on green baize. George had been an outstanding local sportsman until a knee injury had shredded his cartilage four years earlier. He compensated now by helping run local leagues and had always offered his storeroom as a safe place for sporting silverware. The entire collection was uninsured but its value would later be assessed at around £800 – £1,000. The cups were put into the sack and passed to the second man who added the cash and wage packets from the till. The leader stood at the strongroom door and said, ‘Come and give me a hand clearing up, darling.’

They all heard the sound of talking at the same time. Out on the forecourt the one with the American-style cap was putting petrol into a caravanette and chatting with the driver. He was taking the customer’s money and searching in his pockets for change.

Amy flipped up the counter flap and took three steps towards the plate-glass window. She said later she hoped to make some sort of signal to catch the attention of the driver. She heard the shotgun being cocked and turned to find the leader standing behind her. He had the gun in the crook of his arm and she remembered that his eyes, which were very dark, reflected the sunshine pouring in through the window.

She heard the caravanette pulling off and said: ‘You can’t get away with this. I know you.’ She may have said something more, but her memory could never retrieve it.

The several statements she made to police never explained these words. She denied that she did know him, and was unable to say why she had said what she said, other than to guess that it was an attempt to buy time.

Then they heard the cheers. The tension of the first twenty minutes suddenly released. England had equalized. George was whooping. Another bottle smashed in the grate, then another. They sounded close, next door, not thirty yards away.

That was the moment that changed her life. The gang leader fired the gun at a range of between six and eight feet slightly to the left side of her skull. The blast tore away her right cheekbone and jaw and shattered into bonedust her left collarbone. She would taste the lead and cordite in her mouth for months. Metal shot and bone fragments were retrieved from the brick wall six feet behind her. She lost her right eye and the sight in both. Shreds of tobacco from the cigarette, which she had held in her mouth throughout the robbery, were embedded in her wounds and were a constant source of infection. At the time she recalled no pain but distinctly remembered a voice she had not yet heard saying: ‘Christ. Christ. You’ve killed her.’

Later she recalled, briefly, her husband whispering to her that the ambulance was coming. Then no more. She would not regain consciousness for nearly three weeks. The rest of her life was punctuated by severe bouts of depression and the recurring image of the jagged slit of a mouth in a black, woollen balaclava. The teeth she recalled were small, white, and perfect, like those of a child.