The Water Clock

9

Newmarket has the most northerly siesta in Europe. Stable boys, grooms, and jockeys snooze after lunch having risen at dawn to get the thoroughbreds out on the gallops. Without the crowds who flock in on race days the town slumbers deeply in the late afternoon. Dryden and Humph rolled in just after 1 p.m. Snow covered the gallops on the heath near the town and a string of glistening thoroughbreds, steaming under winter blankets, clip-clopped across the dreary High Street doing a passable impression of coconuts being knocked together.

Humph stayed in the car park of the Winning Post, a pub with a very low bar, while Dryden ferried him a pint of orange juice and a salad sandwich. Dryden administered two pints of best bitter and nearly managed to finish a grisly meat pie, remembering, too late, the aroma of Joe Smith’s stable.

He found the National Horse Racing Museum just off the High Street, by the headquarters of the Jockey Club. Galleries on the history of the ‘Sport of Kings’ and the lineage of its great horses had been lovingly filled with priceless memorabilia and were completely deserted. Dryden was instantly depressed, recalling dull Saturday childhood afternoons in front of the TV and the unmistakable voice of Peter O’Sullevan. He repeated to himself the observation that if betting was illegal horse racing wouldn’t exist. A squealing group of schoolchildren crowded into one room where an oversized ex-jockey had coaxed them into trying a mechanical riding machine.

He found the archives in a small basement room which unaccountably smelt of horse manure. He eyed the curator with suspicion. Johnnie Reardon was Irish, compact, and skittish. He informed Dryden within thirty seconds that he had won the Oaks in 1980 on Pilot’s Error. A black and white newspaper picture of horse and jockey in the winner’s enclosure hung on the wall. The print was unprotected by glass and Reardon’s countless attempts to point himself out had worn his image into a white ghost-like form. Dryden gave him the benefit of the doubt.

He told Reardon exactly what he wanted and why he was there.

‘That’ll explain it then.’

‘Explain what?’

‘The police. They called. They’re sending round a bobby this afternoon. I’m to be on hand. Bloody cheek. I might get plastered in the Bay Horse and miss ‘em, eh?’ Reardon belched slightly indicating with little doubt that it would not be his first visit to the Bay Horse that day.

Dryden could recall precisely the details on the betting slip. The question was, when was the race run and did Tommy Shepherd win? The police clearly didn’t think the details vitally important – a ‘bobby’ sounded pretty routine. But Dryden wanted to know whether the nineteen-year-old thief died a winner or a loser.

They took a gamble, appropriately, on Tommy’s death being soon after his disappearance in the summer of 1966. They also took a gamble on his last bets being waged on a race at Newmarket. Reardon fished out some leather-bound record books. The cartridge paper creaked with age. Dryden checked his watch – it took Reardon six minutes to find the first entry. Bridie’s Heart had run in October 1966. It was unplaced despite being the clear favourite.

‘Now that’s odd, isn’t it?’ said Reardon.

Dryden nodded, not knowing why.

The ex-jockey checked a reference book. ‘Now here she is. That’s why. She’d won that year already. July 30 – Daily Mail Stakes. Fifty to one outsider – that’s more like it, eh?’

July 30 – the day of the Crossways robbery. Had Shepherd set up the bet as part of an alibi – an alibi that wouldn’t stand up in the face of a set of fingerprints found at the scene of the crime? Did he ever get to spend his winnings?

Reardon tracked down the card for that day’s racing. Ayers Rock – also at 50–1 – had won the three o’clock. At the precise moment Amy Ward had crumpled to the floor, Ayers Rock had ambled over the finishing line, a clear winner by two lengths.

‘How much did yer man put on ‘em?’

‘A fiver each to win.’

Reardon whistled. ‘Five hundred and ten pounds – including the stake back. Not bad. Not bad at all.’

‘A fortune,’ said Dryden, noting the speed of the jockey’s mental arithmetic. The picture of Tommy as a luckless suicide looked less substantial by the minute.

‘That’s a win,’ he said, winking.

It is, thought Dryden. But you’re still not getting a tip. Then he thought again. Perhaps an afternoon in the Bay Horse might give him a half-day lead on the police investigation. He gave him a fiver and told him not to drink too much.

Dryden walked briskly back to the car counting en route the number of remarkably small men he passed on the street. It was like a day out in Lilliput.

Humph was juggling with a pair of large fluffy dice – the kind usually reserved for the front window of the Ford Capri. Luck was a subject of fascination to the cab driver – or in his case, the lack of it. The cab was fitted out with an array of rabbit’s feet, and a horseshoe had been fastened above the rear-view mirror. It obscured just enough of the rear view to invite an accident.

Dryden banged the dashboard. ‘Lidgate. Chop chop.’

They set out through the plush villages in the hills above the town, villages in marked contrast to the damp-soaked drabness of the Fen towns. Clear of the peat of the Fens medieval buildings had survived the centuries. Whitewashed stones bordered trim village greens.

They were at Stubbs Senior’s country house at 3.50 p.m. Humph, exercising discretion, parked the decrepit Capri round the corner. Dryden walked in, round the camomile lawn and the magnolia tree, and up a sweeping gravel drive. The house was an old manor farm. To one side were stables topped off with a clock tower.

Who says crime doesn’t pay, he thought.

A small fish pond was frozen solid. A large off-colour goldfish was lying belly-up just below the surface.

An elderly man appeared from the side of the house, two red setters at his heels, a third appearing from the lilac bushes.

Stubbs Senior stood his ground and waited for Dryden. Distinguished was the word. And tweed was the material. He had a head like a cannonball and no neck. His eyes were as dead cold as any in an identikit. He looked nothing like his son – except for the antiseptic cleanliness. Dryden guessed he was seventy – perhaps older.

‘Mr Dryden?’

Stubbs carried two sticks but Dryden noticed he took both off the ground to point out the distant gallops on Newmarket Heath. Most surprising, in an ex-deputy chief constable, were the extravagant laughter lines around the eyes. His handshake was enthusiastic too, even warm. If this was an act, thought Dryden, it was the result of a lifetime’s practice.

They sat in the conservatory amongst orchids, a vine, and a spreading fig tree. A grandfather clock ticked in one corner and the interior wall of the house supported thirty timepieces, mostly antique.

‘Hobby?’ said Dryden.

The former deputy chief constable looked through him. ‘Was.’

On a marble table an intricate glass mechanism gurgled with flowing water. An elegant glass bowl fed water down a pipe to power a tiny gold mechanism which, through a series of flywheels and gears, turned the hands on a filigree clock face. Dryden examined the carved teak base. An engraved silver plaque said: ‘To Deputy Chief Constable Bryan Stubbs on the occasion of his retirement. From his colleagues in the Cambridgeshire force.’

‘Clepsydra,’ said Stubbs. ‘A water clock. The Egyptians had them.’

The heating was generous and all the ice and snow had melted from the roof and windows. The furniture was wicker with comfy cushions, striking unfortunate echoes of an old people’s home. A woman, who remained nameless and unintroduced, brought tea and biscuits for Dryden, a small glass bucket of whisky for Stubbs.

‘How can I help, Mr Dryden?’

Dryden eyed the whisky furtively. The curiosity he had heard in Stubbs’s voice on the phone had evaporated. Some of the bonhomie of the introductions had evaporated too. He felt like an intruder on borrowed time. And the trickling water clock reminded him of the two pints of bitter he’d bolted down at Newmarket. He shifted uneasily in his chair.

As always in times of supreme insecurity he decided to attack, but Stubbs got there first. ‘Where did they find the gypsy boy?’

Dryden sipped his tea, he was damned if he was going to be intimidated by an ex-copper. The clocks chimed four and he glanced at the water clock. The elegant face read four o’clock precisely. He saw now that the fretted metalwork picked out a picture. Dogs running with hounds.

‘His body was found yesterday afternoon on the roof of the cathedral. It had probably been there since the summer of 1966. There wasn’t much left but it appears he jumped from the West Tower. The detective leading the case…’

‘My son.’ Stubbs blinked slowly, blankly. Dryden read disappointment in the look, almost antipathy. He decided to fill the silence rather than let it be.

‘What did you think had happened to Tommy Shepherd?’

‘At that time we felt certain he was being protected by someone, someone able to send him away, or someone able to keep him hidden. Looks like we were wrong…’

‘Yes. If it was suicide. Or it could be murder. Another member of the gang?’

Stubbs swallowed an inch of his neat malt whisky. ‘Possible, but unlikely. In my experience the gang members would have separated after the robbery and kept well away from each other. They would have been in a state of panic anyway – they’d seen the injuries to that poor woman…’

Panic. Dryden looked at the old man’s hands. One lay dead on the arm of the chair, the other gripped the whisky with easy practice. Stubbs gazed out into his garden. ‘They, the robbers, must have presumed she would die of those injuries. At first, of course, they wouldn’t have known that Tommy Shepherd had left his prints inside the Crossways. The plan would have been to split the money right after the robbery, possibly as they drove away. One of them would have had to keep the cups of course – but that could wait in the circumstances.’

For a crime that had happened more than thirty years ago his recall of the details was remarkably clear.

Then they would have dumped the car and gone back to whatever alibis they had concocted – if they’d bothered at all. When we let the press know we wanted to interview Tommy Shepherd he might have tried to contact the rest of the gang, but they’d hardly be likely to welcome such an approach. They must have had some arrangement for keeping in touch, possibly a meeting place, and a prearranged time. My guess is that would have been several weeks later. In the meantime we felt he was holed up somewhere, and fed and clothed by someone.’

‘You don’t think he could have lived rough on the Fen?’

‘A bit John Buchan, don’t you think? We looked hard for Shepherd for nearly six months, right into the winter. There’s no way he could have survived out there, let alone coped with the boredom. He wasn’t the type to curl up with a good book, you know. He would have tried his luck at some point and made a break for it.’

‘What about the rest of the camp at Belsar’s Hill? Surely they could have hidden him. Got him out?’

Stubbs paused and inspected the contents of his glass. ‘What exactly is the status of this interview, Mr Dryden?’

‘Your ball game. Off the record – all for background.’

‘You can have the information by all means – this is a case I would particularly like to see tied up. The reasons are my own but entirely professional. But nothing traceable, please. That’s clear?’

‘Yes. It is.’

Stubbs pressed a buzzer beside his chair. The unknown woman returned to refill the whisky bucket. This took a few minutes during which no word was spoken. Stubbs seemed to be in a world of his own, one apparently run on alcohol. As the woman filled the glass a sneer lingered on the former deputy chief constable’s puffy face.

When he took up the story again his voice was heavier and oiled: ‘We knew Tommy Shepherd was still in the area in the weeks after the AIo robbery. He sent us a letter. Or, to be exact, he dropped us a letter. By hand – but almost certainly not his hand.’

Dryden had lost the plot. A letter? Handwritten?’

‘Yes. If you could call it that. Someone’s education had been sorely neglected.’ The disfiguring sneer again. ‘It said that he would give himself up and provide us with the names of the rest of the gang if he could be assured of preferential treatment.’

Stubbs drifted off again into self-absorbed silence. So Tommy offered to shop the rest of the gang – that presented two decent motives for murder.

‘And your reply?’ prompted Dryden.

Stubbs’s eyes swam back into focus. ‘None. We planned a brief one at first. He asked us to make a statement to the press indicating publicly what the position would be. I was happy to do that. After all, according to the caravanette driver the man fitting Tommy’s description was not in the Crossways when the raid began. We would certainly have cut him out of the GBH or murder charges. Plus his role in bringing the rest to book, due no doubt to his sense of remorse at the injuries inflicted on Mrs Ward, would have helped soften the judge.’ The sneer reached theatrical proportions. ‘We would have been happy to plead for leniency.’

‘But?’

‘Command of the operation had passed to the Yard. They wanted to review the case – it took them a few days. By the time they agreed with our original decision Tommy had gone. We never got a reply. Now we know why, do we not?’

He hoovered up some more malt.

‘Where was the letter delivered?’

‘To one of the village stations – house at Shippea Hill. Middle of nowhere. It was found in the postbox early one morning.’

‘How do we know it was genuine?’

‘He put a fingerprint on it, in coal dust. Very neat. My guess is that he had gone to ground locally. As I say we were sure someone was sheltering him. Sherlock Holmes might conclude a coal cellar was likely. Whatever. He was in the Fens.’

The heat in the conservatory had begun to steam the windows. Trickles of water ran down the green-tinted panes. Stubbs was lost in a haze of dreamy mellowness. Dryden guessed he had already said much more than he’d planned.

‘So. How far had your inquiry got before the Yard arrived?’

Stubbs stood abruptly. Dryden stood too, expecting to be thrown out. But the former deputy chief constable was already out of the conservatory door and heading for a pine cabin at the foot of the open paddock behind the house. His gait was long and surprisingly steady. The dogs appeared from nowhere to circle their master.

By the time Dryden got to the cabin the door was wide open and Stubbs was sitting at a desk pulling open the drawers. The cabin was clearly a den. Books lined one wall and filing cabinets the other. A single word processor stood on the desktop with a printer attached. A paraffin heater was pumping out heat.

‘Memoirs,’ said Stubbs, by way of explanation. ‘Here.’ He handed Dryden a brown file marked with a reference number and the single word: ‘Crossways’.

Dryden looked inside.

‘They’re copies of course, they all are. An entire career. I’d like this one back. Don’t show it to anyone else please. Especially my son. Anyway – he should be able to get the originals. Not that he’d know what to do with it. Good luck, Mr Dryden.’

‘What do you want me to prove?’

‘The truth. It would tie up a loose end.’

He patted what looked like a manuscript. His finger found a buzzer on the desktop while he tidied sheets of paper into neat piles. The silent woman appeared again with the inevitable refill. Dryden was ushered out wordlessly.

Humph asked no questions when he got back to the cab but flipped on the tape, bathing the cab in Catalan conversation. They sped back to Ely thinking of entirely different things: an intimacy they often shared and certainly enjoyed.