The Water Clock

Over Stretham Mere, Telstar makes another hyperactive orbit of the earth across a clear night sky. Somewhere in mid-Atlantic Francis Chichester, on the first leg of his round-the-world solo voyage, looks up and sees it too. And from their prison cells Myra Hindley and Ian Brady watch the stars as the first summer of their life sentence for the Moors Murders drags slowly by.

One month after the Crossways robbery three men make their way to Stretham Engine but, their minds on other things, they fail to notice the speeding pin-point star.

Tommy Shepherd waited happily for them to arrive. On the run for four weeks he now had within his reach escape and a new life. He wanted to whistle but kept his silence. The engine shed was a childhood haunt and he was comfortably hidden in the lumber store. Illiteracy had saved him from the news that day. A campaign was mounting in the press for the reintroduction of the death penalty. The depravity of the Moors Murders had shocked the public. But for now, at least, the Homicide Act reserved the death penalty for five specific offences. Destroying an innocent woman’s face with a shotgun was not one of them.

That night Amy Ward lay sublimely unconscious in a hospital bed at King’s Lynn Royal Infirmary. She had undergone her eighth operation, tissue from her back and thigh being used to mask the deep gash which had partly destroyed her jaw and right cheekbone. The shock of the gunshot wound had severely undermined her health and she had only narrowly survived two bouts of pneumonia. Her heart was weak and had acquired an irregular tremor that would kill her – but not soon enough.

Her husband, George, was not at her side. That evening, as the Crossways gang headed for Stretham Engine, he could be found pawing a barmaid in the lounge bar of the King’s Arms at Southery. George loved life and Amy in that order. They would divorce within two years on the grounds of his adultery.

Billy Shepherd arrived early, by rowboat from Belsar’s Hill, and lit a fire in the cellar. It was vaulted and arched in the form of a crypt. The smoke looped through the coal chutes which led up into the engine room. The river damp, trapped in the walls, seeped out in moist waves as the fire warmed the room. At one end of the cellar was a lead-black pile of coal sacks – rustled occasionally by the movement of mice and rats. Billy placed the note he had got his grandfather to write on a stool in the light beside the fire. He put two bottles of whisky on the stone-flagged floor and three tin mugs beside it. He poured himself a measure.

He settled down to wait. His appetite, always voracious, nagged. He smoked to kill it. Like Tommy he had been a thin and delicate child– but their resemblance would not last long. Billy was thickening out in a layer of honed muscle which had already obscured the bones beneath his face. It was taking on the beaten look of newly rolled sheet steel – a chassis for life.

Billy timed ten minutes on the Timex he had stolen from Woolworth’s that Christmas. Then he began to whistle. It was their signal; and above, in the engine shed, Tommy edged closer to the coal chute to listen. A bat flitted in and out of the broken windows as dusk fell. The silence creaked and overhead Telstar completed another orbit.

He heard Reg Camm’s Ford Anglia park carefully on the drove road by the river. His tentative steps stopped just outside the cellar door.

‘It’s OK,’ said Billy, knowing it wasn’t.

Reg Camm stood in the shadows. ‘You can see the smoke,’ he said. Even in the half-light he radiated stress – the voice dancing on the edge of panic, his fingers flickering as he massaged his corn-blond hair. Billy pointed to the stool.

Camm read the note and looked around in disbelief, then he read it out loud.

‘I need money and I know who my friends are. I’ll go away with it and not come back. I can’t get away without the money. Give it to Billy. All of it. Tommy.’

He looked at Billy.

The door opened. The light of a torch died in the stairwell. It was Peter. It was always just Peter. Reg knew his real name, not Billy.

They never knew why Peter needed the money. Reg had met him at Newmarket, in Tattersalls, studying form the way the professionals do. Up close. Reg owed the bookies nearly £10,000 – that’s why he needed the money. Peter owed them nothing. Peter had a plan, a purpose, a secret future. That’s why he needed the money. And he couldn’t wait for it to arrive.

Reg knew why they had to wear the balaclavas – to cover Peter’s face. Amy Ward was right, she did know the leader of the Crossways gang.

Peter came forward to the edge of the firelight and it gave his normally pallid face a rich warmth, something it never enjoyed in life. He carried a holdall, a holdall they recognized now with a mixture of excitement and resignation.

He picked up the note and read it. He wasn’t surprised. ‘All of it?’ he asked.

The Crossways Gang considered each other. Billy was the only pro. For him crime was a way of making a living not an adjunct to it. He’d been involved in petty crime since the age of ten, adept at stealing cars in a school uniform, a primary school uniform. By the time he reached secondary school he was as used to crime as most children are to the Saturday morning cinema. He brought to it the blasé attitude of the professional, an attitude which made him the ideal lookout and driver. And he wanted the money for a purpose too, a one-way ticket to America and a new life.

Little brother Tommy had joined in on some of the jobs when they needed an extra pair of eyes. Big brown eyes. They’d asked him to come on the Crossways but he’d other plans: better plans, at the coast. So they made do with the single lookout.

Both the brothers had the gift of the gab; an amiable country-boy talkativeness which was just short of charming, but effective nonetheless. For them crime was just like the pranks they’d always pulled – victimless.

But now Tommy was a victim. They would have to buy Tommy’s freedom. And his silence.

They deserved the money – all of them. All of them except Peter. ‘Attempted murder,’ the papers said. ‘She can’t live,’ they’d said.

Peter had dismissed it: ‘Silly cow, why did she go for me?’

The gun had gone off in the struggle, that was the line, but Reg and Billy knew the unspoken truth. In the weeks since the robbery they’d rewritten many things about that day: imagined it all as it had not been, but that fact could not be dissolved: Peter had maimed Amy Ward with a shotgun cartridge to the face.

‘Bitch.’ He’d spat it out.

An hour after the robbery the gunshot was still ringing in their ears. They’d driven by the droves to Belsar’s Hill. They sat in the car, sweating. Screaming. Reg had circled the car, kicking the bodywork, hugging himself in a fit of desperate grief – grief for the life he knew he’d ruined. His own.

They didn’t want the money then, or the gun, or the car, or the silver. Peter, calmer, had taken them all. Later; they’d meet later. At the engine house – the old place.

Then they’d seen the papers. The police, impossibly, had Tommy’s prints. But Tommy would run.

Then they’d been elated. Each, alone, worked out the sums. The cash and the silver. A life-changing haul.

But Tommy wouldn’t run. Tommy wanted the money. They had to give it to Tommy. All of it.

Peter unzipped the holdall and turned it upside down. The money fell in rubber-banded wads to the straw-covered floor.

‘The silver’s safe.’ His voice, even then, was reedy and whistled slightly in the sinuses. ‘I reckon I’ll get eight hundred for it. I’ll have it tomorrow, perhaps the weekend. That’s twelve hundred.’

Peter stood in front of Billy, an inch too close. ‘You Mr Postman, are you? Thicker than water. Better that than let him turn you in, eh? He’d have done that, would he? After you’d skipped back to Ireland perhaps… back where you belong.’

Billy got off his haunches and stood. He was just over six foot tall. He lacked menace but he had courage. ‘We’re all in trouble. ‘Coz you pulled the trigger.’

Peter pushed one of the wads of money with his foot. He took an apple from his pocket and began to skin it expertly with a thin-bladed flick-knife.

Reg Camm had taken a mug and poured himself a couple of inches of whisky. ‘What’s he gonna do if we don’t give him the money?’

Billy shrugged. ‘Work it out.’

Tommy, listening above, smiled sweetly.

Peter pocketed the knife. ‘I’ve heard he’s made an offer already, Billy. Pal of mine at the nick, business associate. Shop the lot of us, ‘coz we were inside the café. Leniency for him ‘coz he was outside. If he was outside you weren’t there. Neat innit? Very.’

Billy stared into the fire. ‘How’s the Ward woman?’

They all looked at Peter, an elegant allocation of responsibility.

‘She’ll live.’

Camm sat with his back to the wall close to the fire. Now he sank his head into his lap. Trembling fingers ran through his hair.

‘Give him the money then,’ he said, self-pity welling up like water from a blocked drain.

Billy brushed the coal dust from his hands: ‘I’ll…’

‘Oh no, Billy. You won’t…’ Peter stood now with his back to the door. ‘We’ll draw lots. Reg and I.’

Peter put the money back in the holdall. Then he took a straw from the fire and cut it into two pieces, one short. ‘Short straw takes the stuff to Tommy.’

They drew. Peter took the short stick. ‘Where’s the next meeting place?’

Camm raised his head. His eyes were liquid and flashed in the firelight. ‘Newmarket…’ It came out as a sob. ‘This Saturday. The usual pitch.’

Peter nodded. ‘I’ll see you all there.’ He turned to Billy. ‘Tell Tommy I’ll meet him first. Palace Green, in front of the cathedral. Dusk, day after tomorrow. I’ll have everything in cash. Tell him it’s OK. The deal’s simple: I give him the money and we never see him again. Ever.’

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.’