The Water Clock

19

Belsar’s Hill – the travellers’ site that had been the home of Tommy Shepherd at the time of the Crossways robbery – had been an encampment for more than a thousand years. A ten-foot-high earthwork in a perfect circle surrounded a hollow corral. Through the site ran an old drove road, cutting in half a landscape already a thousand years old when the Normans landed at Hastings. The earth couldn’t be farmed, and the site couldn’t be levelled, because of its status as an Ancient Monument. The rampart provided natural protection from the elements and for animals – with wide gates closing off both ends of the drove road after dark. In the sixties the county council had put in a waterpipe and a toilet block on the basis that a gypsy site at Belsar’s Hill was in very few people’s backyards. Protests from the few local farms had been vociferous, then bitter, then resigned and now folklore.

As Humph’s Capri clattered through the open gate the dull percussion of barking dogs rose to greet them. An unruly pack strained from a set of leashes tied to an iron stake in the centre of the clearing. Half a dozen shiny aluminium caravan trailers stood neatly in the lee of the western half of the ramparts. The snow was dotted with dogshit and paw prints.

Dryden put a leg outside the car. He dangled it as if fishing for a Dobermann pinscher. He caught an Alsatian instead, which came bounding out from beneath one of the caravans and left four feet of bubbling slobber along the nearside cab window.

A caravan door opened and Joe Smith appeared.

Why am I not surprised? thought Dryden. And he’s got that bloody wrench again.

Humph switched his latest language tape back on and closed his eyes. The sound of the sea filled the cab as Manuel described a day on the beach at Tarragona.

‘Thanks. A friend in need,’ said Dryden.

Smith ambled up to the car with the calm assurance of ownership. The dogs orbited the vehicle like satellites. He wore a heavy quilted jacket against the cold, the empty left arm pinned up across the chest. Dryden inched the window down and fed a brown envelope through the crack. It held large photographic prints of the circus winterground’s fire. Smith examined them slowly, nodding.

‘Coincidence, you here,’ offered Dryden, looking around the encampment as if for the first time. ‘I was looking for Billy Shepherd. Tommy’s brother.’

Smith crouched down on his haunches. ‘You’ve seen him, Mister.’

Dryden noted that the accent was stronger, more streetwise, less forgiving. He wasn’t surprised by the answer but he contrived to look it. Smith bore so little resemblance to the one picture Dryden had seen of Tommy that it was difficult to believe they shared a mother, let alone that they had been born less than a year apart. Only the cobalt blue-black hair provided a link across four decades.

‘Any chance of talking to him as well?’

Shepherd stood in answer and walked away towards one of the caravans with the Alsatian at his heels. Both disappeared inside. Dryden followed after a decent interval.

The trailer’s interior was immaculate: a museum of trinkets and mementos of dubious taste. The Alsatian had metamorphosed into a family pet and was curled under the table. China figurines crowded the shelves and the walls were all but obscured by heavy gilt-edged frames around prints and photographs. Lace fringed the net curtains, cushions and tablecloth. The smell of furniture polish was so strong it hurt Dryden’s throat. It seemed colder inside the caravan than out, the cosiness of the heavy snow being replaced by an almost antiseptic, over-polished cleanliness. Billy Shepherd lit a gas heater with a pop, its warmth creeping out to reawaken the damp.

Dryden sat at a glass-topped table and Shepherd offered him a cigarette–Lucky Strike. Dryden took one and examined it carefully. Billy answered the unspoken question. ‘US air base at Mildenhall. Old habits.’

Under the glass table top was a large black and white print of Houdini’s successful attempt to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

‘America?’ asked Dryden. It was as good a place to start as any.

Shepherd drew deeply on the Lucky Strike. ‘Nineteen sixty-eight. After Tommy went missing.’

Dryden wondered, if Tommy had lived would he look like this? Smith’s face was hard and unforgiving, the facets meeting in sharp cheekbones below the bottle-green eyes.

‘We’d dreamed about it as kids. Grandad had been.’ He tapped the glass top over the print. ‘Full of stories. Kids’ dreams. So I went.’

Dryden’s silence enticed him on.

‘There was an uncle in Jersey City – Mum’s brother. I worked in a car breakers in Washington Heights. Married a local girl. Family. Then this…’

He nodded at the empty sleeve pinned to his overalls.

‘Accident?’

‘Car crusher.’ They winced together. ‘Came back last Christmas. Left the wife – we’re separated. Brought the daughter. That’s my life, anything else while you’re here?’

‘I’m trying to find out who killed your brother. I need some help.’

Shepherd fixed his extraordinary green eyes on Dryden. The Alsatian growled in his sleep.

Dryden pressed on. ‘The police thought Tommy had killed himself when they found his body. Now they’re not so sure. The body pulled out of the Lark last week was Reg Camm, who left his prints at the Crossways. Something he had in common with Tommy. The only difference being that they already had Tommy’s on file. Did you see your brother after the robbery?’

Shepherd put a finger into his eye and appeared to remove his pupil. He examined the contact lens while Dryden’s stomach did a somersault.

‘I don’t want to be involved with the police.’

Dryden decided, bizarrely, on honesty. ‘This is more than a story for me. I need to know because I have to help the police, and I have to help them because I want something in return. I need it very badly.’

A masterstroke. The inference was plain, they were both on the same side.

‘And I need it very quickly.’

Shepherd mumbled a command to the dog, which slunk out from under the table and slid under a bunk bed. He took a long time to take a single drag from the Lucky Strike.

‘Tommy and I did meet after the Crossways. We were brothers, like all brothers we had a secret place.’

‘Stretham Engine?’

Shepherd began to tear the packet of Lucky Strike into thin shreds of cardboard. ‘I met Tommy the day after the robbery. He’d been away at the coast. The boardwalk. He’d been with – a friend.’

‘Liz Barnett.’

‘Do you need me to tell this story?’

There was plenty Dryden didn’t know. And he wanted to cross-check the mayoress’s version of events that day. ‘Tommy was on the run; how did he know the police had found his prints at the Crossways?’

‘Radio. Idiots put out a description. If they’d sat it out for twenty-four hours he would have walked straight into their arms. But then that would have made it damn clear he’d never been there in the first place. They wanted him to run. And they knew he would. They’d raided the camp here that night – straight after the robbery. They hadn’t found the prints then of course, they popped up overnight. They picked them up here, his caravan’s gone now. Smashed the place up a bit in fact, got us all out in the dark around the fire. Like a prisoner of war camp…’

He expelled a square yard of acrid smoke: ‘Like yesterday… the memory’ Shepherd blinked and the cat-green eyes were filled with water. ‘They had the local copper with ‘em so they could spot Tommy. We looked like twins then; they knew we’d try to pull something. We all looked the same, that’s the problem with gyppos of course… Ask anyone.’

Dryden laughed with his eyes. ‘Was Stubbs there that night? The detective inspector in charge of the case, head like a cannonball?’

‘Yup. Mean man. He was gonna solve it all right. One way or another. History’s written by the victors, right? He won. Tommy did it.’

‘Did he?’

No answer. Billy traced with his finger the image of Niagara Falls under the glass table top. ‘We were allies.’

‘Against?’

‘Everyone. Old man mainly.’

‘Was he alive then?’

‘Just. He died the following year… liver… or what was left of it. It was a long slow death. It’s a pity Tommy missed it.’

The bitterness took a couple more degrees off what warmth there was in the air.

‘This was his caravan. Grandad’s before. No one’s lived in it since.’

‘He was… violent?’ Dryden was fishing.

‘He was what the shrinks call an abuser… and that’s answer enough. If he’d lived we’d have killed him one day.’ He looked out of the trailer’s window at a sudden squall of snow. ‘We planned it enough times.’

‘So when you met, what did Tommy say?’

‘He wanted to know what the police had on him, other than the fingerprints. I said they might have a description from a passing driver of a caravanette. It sounded like him, an ID parade would have got Stubbs the final nail in the coffin.’

‘Because the man on the forecourt, the man with the US-style cap, was Tommy’s image?’

Billy just looked through him.

‘So Stubbs planted the prints. Why did he pick Tommy? If his prints weren’t at the scene, why did he go for him?’

Billy shrugged. ‘The woman was gonna die. There was loads of pressure. The witness description fitted Tommy. Tommy had a record. Tommy was in the frame, simple. But I know Tommy wasn’t there.’

They looked at each other for slightly longer than is normal in any kind of society.

‘They didn’t have your prints on record?’

Billy shook his head. ‘I was smarter. Tommy was a fall guy. They always went for him.’

‘How did you keep him alive?’

Billy laughed, the cat-green eyes brightening up a few volts. ‘They put surveillance on this place. Two cars. Plain as daylight. I’d go out on the river to fish. They didn’t bother to keep me in sight. The food was in the tackle box, plus what I caught. He even put on weight.’

The sky outside was darkening and the trailer was unlit. They sat in an inky gloom which made Dryden feel suddenly exhausted. His pursuit of the Lark killer seemed to be sucking the life out of him. He pressed his fingertips into his eye sockets to expel the weariness.

‘I think Tommy was killed for money. He wrote a note to the police offering to give himself up and name the Crossways robbers.’

‘Grandad wrote it.’

‘The aim?’

‘Tommy wanted the money, all the money. Reg was attached to it, or at least his share. He planned…’

‘And the third man? The man Mrs Ward said was the leader?’

‘Was the leader. Fired the shot. Yeah, he wanted the money too. But they both saw Tommy’s point of view.’

‘Dangerous tactics.’

Billy shrugged. ‘They had no idea where he was. Townies, both of ‘em. They wouldn’t go looking on the Fen. Tommy was safe, at least from them.’

‘Why did they think Tommy would shop his own brother?’

‘They knew Tommy could have done a deal, for both of us.’

Dryden let the implicit confession pass.

‘Until yesterday, when you told me they’d found the body on the roof, I thought he’d got the money. And lived to spend it.’

‘You presumed Tommy got all the money. Everyone’s share?’

‘I was sure he had. The last time I saw Tommy he was off to pick up the money. Then he was going Stateside.’

Billy stood and opened an ornate wooden chest which doubled up as a seat. He took out a box of old photographs. Selecting three he set them out neatly on the glass table top. They were postcards, identical, of Niagara Falls. They neatly matched the black and white print of Houdini beneath the table top. Each was graced with an elaborate stamp – a series marking great moments in American history.

‘This was the signal. That he’d got the money and was OK. I told him to send a card when he felt he was clear. I got these around Christmas the year he went missing. US postmarks – all Boston.’

Shepherd flicked them over. The address was printed in ink. There was no message but a small hand-printed ‘T’.

‘That was the best Tommy could do on the writing front – Τ was his mark.’

‘Why didn’t you meet up in the States? Wouldn’t he have gone to your aunt’s in Jersey City?’

‘We talked about that. But what’s the point of starting a new life when the police could turn up at any moment? They could have traced the family, especially after I went. There was too much at stake. We thought we’d meet one day. But there were no plans. I just thought he’d started again. He was trying to lose the past – and I was part of that too.’

By the time Tommy’s postcards arrived in Ely his body was already rotting on the cathedral roof. Why would Tommy have given away his secret signal? Dryden remembered the pathologist’s report on his body. The oddity of the neatly broken fingers on the otherwise unharmed right hand.

He shivered and buttoned up the black greatcoat. ‘The police think Tommy may have tried to blackmail someone. It’s possible, isn’t it? A new life doesn’t come cheap.’

‘He tried to call in a few favours. One of them came round here to get him off their backs.’

‘Gladstone Roberts?’ He took silence for assent.

Billy laughed. ‘Fifty quid. I told him Tommy would be disappointed.’

‘And was he?’

‘He wasn’t overjoyed. He owed him much more than that. A fence. A good one. But he kept more than his fair share. And not just Tommy’s fair share.’

‘Do you think he tried to get it?’

‘Tommy didn’t tell me everything.’

‘Did you know who the third man was? The leader?’

He shook his head. ‘Reg fixed the job. They were both desperate. Debts in Reg’s case. I’d never seen him before. Fens somewhere, but not our patch. I never knew his name – just Peter. Plain Peter.’

‘But Reg knew. Is that why Reg is dead?’

Billy put his hand flat on the glass table top. ‘Perhaps it’s why I’m alive. But I’ll find him,’ he said, rising.

‘Because he killed Tommy?’

The gypsy switched off the gas heater. ‘We’re both on the trail. I’ll get there first.’

Dryden saw again the right arm rising out of the mist of the River Lark. Did Billy know about Tommy’s friendship with John Tavanter at Little Ouse? Is that why he’d gone there?

The morning light was going and they stood, bathed in the thin reflection of the snow.

‘I’ll get there first,’ said Billy.

Humph’s cab slid across the lightless fen towards the warm marmalade orange glow of Ely’s shop windows. On the Jubilee Estate the lamps sparkled above the snow like glitter-balls in a downmarket nightclub.

Outside the Peking House a large stainless steel fish-and-chip fryer stood on the pavement. It was immaculately shiny and boasted a sunburst motif in red, green and blue chrome with fish, trawlers and following seagulls picked out in zinc. Four workmen were trying to negotiate it through the open double doors. Inside a couple who had planned a romantic lunch were sat in their overcoats cradling dishes of spicy wonton soup.

Sia was directing operations. A role enhanced by the ever-present bloodstained meat cleaver.

‘Unbelievable. They’re three hours late. I’m losing custom here.’

Dryden helped himself to beers from the fridge and redistributed them to Sia and Humph who, in a clear effort to atone for his previous immobility, had struggled out of the cab and was availing himself of the open double doors to get to a table. He brushed both sides on the way in.

The three sat drinking beers at minus 5 degrees centigrade.

‘This is nice,’ said Dryden, juggling the ice-cold can from one frozen hand to the other.

The last two customers ran out shivering, jumped into their car, and sat morosely waiting for the on-board heating to restore their circulation.

‘How’s Laura?’ asked Sia.

‘The doctors think she’s coming out of the coma.’

Sia nodded vigorously. ‘Good?’

Humph stopped reading the menu, put down his beer can, and looked at Dryden. ‘That’s great. Isn’t it?’

‘She’s moved. Twice now. But I think someone’s moving her. Well, I know they are. It’s a warning.’

Sia tipped what was left of the beer down his throat. ‘A warning about what?’ he asked.

‘The Shepherd case, the body on the cathedral roof. I’m helping the police, helping one detective to be precise. I’ve got close to finding the killer. Too close. Humph’ll tell you. They want me to stop. They can get to Laura. They’ve been on the PK 122. I think they’re running out of patience.’

Humph burped, achieving a volume that managed to startle the customers outside in their car.

‘Why not stop?’

‘I want something from the police. From this copper. He’s going to get me the file on the accident, our accident. I want to know what happened that night, and why they wouldn’t let me see the file two years ago.’

Sia and Humph exchanged glances. They took Dryden’s persistent paranoia about the Harrimere Drain accident as a symptom of guilt. Guilt about the fact that he’d been left to enjoy the warmth of life, even in a freezing Chinese restaurant, while Laura had been consigned to a state of cold, clinical marble.

‘I need to get the file before they get me. Call me paranoid if you like,’ said Dryden.

‘Paranoid,’ they said in unison, and drank.

Dryden’s dark mood failed to lift, despite the Chinese beer. In his deepening self-pity he even managed to think of someone else – Kathy. He hadn’t checked her condition since the accident at the firework display.

He left Humph and Sia starting their fourth can of beer and trudged back to the office. The mood at The Crow was icy – despite the throbbing radiators and the steamed-up windows. He asked Henry how Kathy was.

‘Well, it’s most unfortunate.’

Dryden looked at Gary for a straight answer.

‘They think her skull’s cracked. She’s still seeing double.’

‘Shit.’ Dryden felt a wave of emotion and recognized it immediately as guilt. More guilt.

Henry coughed. ‘And…’

‘She’s gonna sue the town council,’ finished Gary.

‘Good for her.’

Henry extended his neck obscenely from his collar. Dryden imagined his head turning through 360 degrees.

‘The lord mayor is distraught as well, Dryden. He has personally paid for her treatment at the Tower,’ said Henry.

‘Bollocks. He thinks that’ll look good in court.’

Dryden pulled his desk open and retrieved a packet of cigarettes he kept for emergencies. He lit up despite Henry’s non-smoking rule, and glared at them. ‘I hope she takes them for a fortune.’

Dryden picked up a copy of The Express. Stubbs had got his story, but there was still no sign of the file. Now he really needed something else to bargain with, not just theories. He needed evidence. His mood lifted, pumped up by anger. One loose end was bothering Dryden – the identity of the man arrested on the Jubilee Estate in connection with the Lark killing.

Gary checked his notebook. ‘George Parker Warren. Apparently an old lag. His prints were all over the car they pulled out the river. But according to the police briefing he isn’t the killer. Just a petty thief.’

Dryden retrieved from his desk the photocopies he’d made of the cuttings from The Crow in 1966 on the Crossways robbery. It made the lead story that first week, with a blurred snapshot of Amy Ward across three columns. It had already been christened ‘The World Cup Robbery’. For The Crow the layout was sensational and it was clear the paper thought she’d die as a result of the gunshot wounds. The headline screamed:

A10 ROBBERY VICTIM FIGHTS FOR LIFE

There was also a picture of the Crossways. Dryden felt it was time to visit the scene of the crime. But first he had to indulge a favourite pastime, baiting bureaucrats. He rang Horace Catchpole, town clerk. The officious official said he couldn’t see Dryden for a fortnight. Ten minutes later Dryden was in his office.

Catchpole’s office was a time warp. No computer, just a single black telephone. A large green leather blotter with a sheet of paper, face down, set exactly in the middle. The walls were unmarked except by a framed certificate proclaiming Horace Catchpole a solicitor able to take oaths. There was a single family photograph of an attractive woman with a disappointed smile.

Dryden put a copy of the Local Government Access to Information Act on the desk. ‘It’s apparent you haven’t seen one,’ he explained.

Catchpole tried a smile – a horrible error. Dryden felt his lunch shift.

‘Do you want me to find the relevant clause for you?’

‘That’s not necessary, Mr Dryden. Please continue.’ Dryden hated it when officials turned nice on him.

‘How, exactly,’ he said, savouring the e-word, ‘is the council involved in funding the cathedral restoration works?’

Catchpole sniffed. ‘The council has been involved in helping to finance the restoration of the cathedral for almost twenty-five years. The programme is agreed by the Dean and Chapter every quarter based on reports from the Master of the Fabric, the surveyors and the building contractors.’

‘Last meeting?’

Catchpole checked a small council diary. ‘October 22nd. The minutes of that meeting were entered into the minutes of the council’s planning and resources committee when it voted the money on 29th October. Then…’

‘But the extra money requested at that meeting had already been paid out?’

Catchpole clearly loved being interrupted. Dryden made a note to do it again.

‘Yes. Yes, that is right. Under standing orders. The Lord Mayor signed the authorization which was later ratified by the planning and resources committee.’

‘Roy Barnett?’

‘Well done.’ It was the first sign Catchpole had given of the bitter, but limited, virtues required to become town clerk.

‘He’s the one who sets off fireworks which take out people’s eyes.’

Catchpole looked at his desktop and slipped the single piece of paper into an open drawer. He doubled up, like many town clerks, as district solicitor.

Dryden grinned hugely and fished a Brazil nut out of his pocket. ‘Fine. And the Ρ and R committee minutes contain the relevant minutes from the Dean and Chapter?’

‘Indeed.’ Catchpole glanced at the clock.

‘Nice clock,’ said Dryden. ‘I’d like to see those minutes for the last two years, where they refer to the cathedral works.’

Catchpole nodded and consulted his diary. ‘I’ll let the committee secretary know. Perhaps you could ring in about ten days?’

‘I could. Somewhat pointless. I need to know today. I think the Act…’ Dryden leant forward and touched the document before him. ‘… mentions a reasonable time period. I guess we could ask the local ombudsman to adjudicate. Or just run a story in The Crow?’

Dryden was led by a minion to a room in the basement with a Formica table and no heating. There was a payphone in the corridor. While he waited he rang the Office of Land Registry for the London Borough of Stepney and the Probate Registry for East Cambridgeshire.

An hour later there was a pile of papers on the table three feet high. It took him three hours to find what he was looking for – the reason why the gutters of the south-west transept had been left untouched for three decades. Then he rang Humph on the mobile, and met him opposite the Town Hall steps. Night had fallen and frost glittered on the cab’s roof.

They parked the Ford Capri just outside the gates of the Tower. The grounds, extensive and thickly wooded, were swaddled in a fresh fall of snow. In the centre of the only lawn stood the monkey-puzzle tree, loaded with so much snow it appeared to bend down and pray to the ground. Dryden crunched up the drive for about a hundred yards, following the tyre tracks left by visitors, and then cut off to the right towards Laura’s room. He traced his path without error to her window. He’d spent so many hours looking out that it was like spying on a looking-glass world. He examined the snow under the window. There were no signs of footprints now save for the inky splay of blackbirds’ feet. He looked at the window, no signs of chisel or knife. He pushed his ungloved fingers against the wooden frame and it rose smoothly without noise or effort.

‘Security,’ he said. He peered in and let his eyes become accustomed to the night light beside the bed. He dropped into the room with an inexpert thud and stood a while to let the silence settle. Laura’s heart monitor bleeped regularly and the paper print-out, from the electric sensors on her body to detect movement, shuffled to the floor in a whisper.

Then he saw the paper – in the same place, tucked under the pillow. He marched to the table, allowing his shoes to make too much noise. He checked his watch with the bedside alarm clock: 11.32. He was a punctual person. Most nights he visited between half-past and a quarter to ten. He retrieved the paper. It was from the same map. A square half-mile. This time the Tower was in the middle. He turned it over. Two words. STOP NOW.