– That Roberts had set out to intimidate him and make him drop the case.
– That Liz Barnett had loved Tommy.
– That John Tavanter had loved him too.
– That Roy Barnett had probably hated him.
– That Deputy Chief Constable Bryan Stubbs planted his fingerprints at the Crossways.
And that Laura’s never coming out of the coma…
Kathy returned with two cups of coffee which they never drank.
The Reverend John Tavanter had conducted many paupers’funerals in his years at St Johns. Disappointment had undermined this, his first, ministry in small, but cumulative, instalments. Now the weight of failure was almost insupportable: each new sign of God’s uninterest an insurmountable barrier to the regeneration of his faith. The paupers’ funerals were the milestones in this long journey from scepticism into cynicism: biblical in their bleak denial of the joys of life, they offered none of the comforts which he preached would lay in death. John Tavanter was for the first time aware of the possibility that his life could be a failure. Worse. That it could end in the annihilation of death without salvation.
His faith, a wisp of smoke now compared to the fire which had burned when he left Oxford, was no longer a defence against the despair he felt. Paupers’ funerals marked the nadir of what faith was left. So low was his reservoir of belief that when the day of a funeral dawned he would open his eyes to the high Victorian ceiling and its cobwebbed corners and think only of that which the pagan gods could bring: the symbols of light and darkness, of burning shadeless sun or enveloping mist and rain, the overpowering presence of the Fen weather.
He would rise early, at 5.30, in the Victorian manse. He would shuffle, barefoot, to the shutters in the parlour and throwing them back to the new dawn he would close his eyes and pray for sympathy from the sky. Rain, clouds, grey skies, and sleet were his friends. These would save him from a sunny graveside and provide, instead, a fitting backdrop to a lonely burial. Buffeted and soaked, he felt at least that he had the sympathy of the elements.
But this morning, in that last summer of 1976, he had prayed hard and long because he could feel even at that early hour the warmth beyond the bay windows of the manse. He opened his eyes to see a clear sky, purple in the west, shading to a cobalt blue in the east. Venus, the morning star, was rising over St John’s. It was a perfect day: a day indifferent to the ceremony he was about to perform. He felt his heart crush a little more.
The body of Martha Jane Elliott, spinster, was delivered at 10 a.m. by a Co-operative Society hearse paid for by the parish. Her body had lain for three days in the mortuary at the Princess of Wales Hospital. During this time she had been visited by no one. Tavanter had known her for all the years of his ministry and saw in her the petty insecurity which seemed a blight on this tiny community. She’d lived her life in a world still coming to terms with the arrival of the motorcar and the independence and affluence of youth, ill at ease with both technical progress and social change. Her cottage so closely resembled the kind of house drawn by a child that Tavanter always expected to see a pencil-thin line of smoke snaking up from the chimney stack. Built on the peats of the southern fenland, it had been undermined by the shrinkage that had followed the systematic draining during the nineteenth century. As a result it stood crazily at variance to the horizon: a worthless hovel which creaked in the wind.
She died on a brass bedstead in a bedroom so damp he could push his fingers into the plaster. In that last bitter winter rats had nibbled at the rugs downstairs. She lasted until the summer when, on a day weighted down by the vast sky above the fen, she clutched her family Bible to her chest and asked her confessor finally what she had asked him constantly throughout her long, final illness. ‘Has no one come?’
No one came. The landlords of the cottage prepared to repossess: the bailiffs, mindful at least of the villagers’ acute sense of sacrilege, made discreet requests of the vicar on behalf of debtors afraid they were about to be cheated by death. Martha directed him to a wooden chest beneath the bed which on inspection yielded some costume jewellery, a badly corroded silver picture frame, and a brass candlestick. Wrapped in tissue paper there were four china cups, perfectly intact, but nearly worthless.
He’d been with her when she died. A moment marked by the chattering of her rotten teeth.
The bailiffs came in through the back door as her body left through the front. The villagers watched in silence as her chipboard coffin slid with a thin veneer of pine and decorum into the back of the Co-op hearse. Then they melted back into the fields.
Today they would stay in the fields, not because they had little respect for the dead, but because they had no respect for him.
He stood now alone at the edge of her grave. His white cassock soaked up the great blast of sunlight that had fallen on St John’s – mocking the burial. They would not come. They had rejected him for many reasons: but largely because he had brought no wife. He had come as a herald of the modern world but they had expected God’s representative of the past. He wanted to understand them; they wanted him to preach to them from the stunted pulpit in the damp chapel. He wanted to sympathize with them and their lives; they expected that he would remain aloof as his predecessors had done. They wanted the vicarage to be a symbol in brick of the set order; he wanted it to be home to a social revolution. They wanted their children to work there, cleaning and gardening and answering the door. He wanted it to be a modern world.
And he wanted it to be an honest one. There had been other men after Tommy. His life was fractured by the pretence he was forced to maintain. Public opinion in the wider world had changed. He felt it was best for his parish to tell them, from the pulpit one Sunday, that his sexuality was not conventional. A fatal error.
And this was their revenge. His cassock flapped in the sunshine and wind like the flag of surrender it was. The pall-bearers, hired from the Co-op along with the hearse, had seen the coffin lowered into a wet Fen grave – they were always wet whatever the summer – and had then retreated beyond the churchyard wall to smoke and chat. He was alone to say the rite. Standing there he knew it would be his last. A week earlier the letter had come by registered post. A new position in London, lost in the teeming millions. By the time the last clods of earth had been placed over the grave he’d packed his first case.
Monday, 5th November
15
Detective Sergeant Stubbs had left a message on Dryden’s mobile. He’d meet him at nine on the river bank outside Camm’s boatyard. He didn’t mention the file on Laura’s accident. Dryden had made up his mind: no file, no more information. Which would mean he was on his own.
He stood on the towpath and the icy damp enveloped him far more effectively than the black greatcoat. He stood for several minutes, a painfully thin figure cut by the north wind. He fingered the bandage at his ear, the injured lobe throbbed with a sharp pain only partly deadened by the sub-zero temperatures and a hangover.
He walked the towpath to Camm House. Why had Stubbs’s investigation led here?
He shivered at the sight of the damp which had spread in an ugly scar across the pebble-dashed exterior of the house. Tilting his head back he smelt the rotting wood, the stagnant water, and the keen aroma of failure. A long narrow-boat dock ran beside the Victorian villa, the stagnant bottle-green water held back from the river by a dripping wooden lock. A crow strutted along the apex of the roof holding a pebble in its beak. It dropped it and watched as it rattled down the corrugated iron roof and lodged in the ice-filled gutter. Then it shrieked once, the echo bouncing off the low ceiling of snowcloud.
He decided to pre-empt his appointment with Stubbs. He knocked on the front door and shivered again. He rubbed his eyes in an attempt to expunge the echo of the late-night drinking session. The vivid image of Kathy was more difficult to remove: he saw her breasts swaying above him, the nipples just within reach of his lips. As his body warmed beneath the greatcoat he could smell her too, a novel combina
tion of soap and a perfume he would soon be able to recognize. And the sounds: sounds which even now made him feel less alone.
He knocked again on the front door. Few skills were a reporter’s by second nature but knowing a house was empty from the sound of a hollow echo was one of them. He might as well have been tapping on a coffin lid. He peered in through the letterbox. Hatstand, Axminster (threadbare), hall table with a pile of unopened letters, and stairs leading up into gloom. He stood back and gave the frontage one more look. He thought a net curtain twitched, but then he always thought a net curtain twitched. They had a life of their own, net curtains.
The crow returned to the corrugated roof and after a brief scramble of birds’ feet on rusty iron it reconquered the apex. It looked at him with one eye. Much of a reporter’s life was pointless. Dryden rather enjoyed it. It was like having a licence for being idle. He dug his hands deeper into the greatcoat pockets and fished for some food. Then he heard the voices – recognizing with a dim sense of irritation the monotone of Andy Stubbs.
He walked round Camm House past a freshly repainted sign: OFFICE – HOLIDAY BOOKINGS, and crossed a yard strewn with discarded maritime flotsam to a grubby Porta-kabin. His knees, ever-sensitive to the damp, cracked with each step.
Not surprisingly they heard him coming. Stubbs was interviewing Paul Camm, the owner’s son, and Dryden’s eyewitness to the sinking of the pleasure boat Sally Anne on the night of the Maltings’ opening. The story would be in tomorrow’s Express, with picture.
Five days ago. Already it seemed like a long winter.
The Portakabin served as the boatyard’s office. Stubbs was making small neat notes in a small neat notebook. He clipped it shut and slipped an elastic band around it to hold it closed when he saw Dryden.
‘Keep in touch, Mr Camm. As soon as you hear anything. In the meantime we’ll start a search, along the banks by the boats, just a precaution. Anywhere else your father might have gone?’
Camm glanced briefly at Dryden but seemed to disregard him, or failed to recognize him. Dryden recalled now his distraction on the night of the sinking of the Sally Anne, the constant worried glances across to the flooded water meadows. If Camm’s father had been missing that night he had already been gone five days. Stubbs’s professional optimism couldn’t disguise the fact that there was little hope unless he’d run away. Suicide, murder or accident – the other options all led to death.
‘He liked his own company. Anywhere out on the Fen you can get by boat. Anywhere. What spare time he had he spent fowling.’
‘We’ll find him,’ said Stubbs, already looking at Dryden and seeing the bandaged ear for the first time: ‘Can I help?’
Dryden ignored the detective’s question and shook Camm by the hand. ‘Lost any more boats?’
Camm registered recognition. ‘Oh, hi. Nope. Just the one. We only lost that coz Dad, well, coz he’d gone missing. He did the narrow boats.’
Past tense, thought Dryden. Even he knows it’s beyond hope.
Camm looked at Stubbs and seemed to know then, finally, that his father had indeed gone. Five days. Freezing temperatures.
Dryden took his chance. ‘Did your father receive any messages before he disappeared, an unusual letter perhaps, a telephone call…?’
Dryden took Stubbs’s silence as an indication that the detective had not yet asked the same question.
‘Mum thinks he got a note – that night.’
‘That night?’
‘Yes, last Wednesday.’
The Portakabin had two offices – one beyond a thin partition through which came the sound of a single, stifled sob. They all pretended not to hear it. A dog barked and scratched at the door.
Stubbs reopened his notebook. ‘Could we?’
Camm slipped through the door. After a brief muffled conversation his mother appeared, dabbing at blurred mascara.
‘Detective Sergeant?’ She was in her early sixties. A patina of the respectable middle-class housewife she had been after her marriage to Reg Camm had survived decades of hard work and genteel poverty. She wore a cameo brooch pinned to a scarf held tight at the neck.
Dryden knew her then, despite the passage of twenty years. The day his own father had gone missing she had come to comfort his mother. She had been a teacher too, she’d been a friend, but not a good enough friend to make comfort a reality. He recalled sharply the confusion he’d felt as she had taken him, aged eleven, to play in the garden at Burnt Fen while his mother had talked to the police. It was an odd coincidence that they should meet again like this, the kind that convinced him that there was no great plan to life, just the aimless collision of scattered snooker balls.
Stubbs tried to regain control of the interview. ‘I’m sorry, your son mentioned that your husband may have received a note on the night he disappeared. Is that true?’
She clutched at the brooch. ‘Yes. Yes it is. I, I didn’t think…’ She looked helplessly to her son and clutched his arm.
‘It may be nothing. Did you see it?’
‘No. Well, yes, but only as a folded note on the mat. A white envelope, with his name on the front in capitals. REG, that was all. I took it to him down by the dock, he was working on one of the for-hire launches.’
‘Did he tell you what it said?’
She clutched again at the brooch: ‘He said it was a letter from an old friend.’
‘Did he seem upset at all?’
‘Surprised, Detective Sergeant. Surprised – and a bit relieved? Perhaps… it’s difficult.’
‘What did he do with the note?’
She closed her eyes and conjured up the scene. ‘He folded it, carefully, and put it in his overalls’ pocket. Then he got on with his work… He seemed angry, he’d been less patient recently anyway. So I left him to it. That was the last time… the last time I…’
‘Yes.’ Stubbs closed his notebook. They smiled at her stupidly. ‘We must get on with the search. We’re confident he’s out there.’
She smiled for the first time. A travesty of hope dispelling certainty. She looked at Dryden with glazed eyes and a whisper of recognition clouded them further.
Camm showed them out and turned the sign on the glass front door to CLOSED.
Dryden fell in beside Stubbs, catching a brief whiff of Old Spice on the breeze.
Out of earshot Dryden asked the obvious question. ‘When are you going to let them identify the body?’
‘This afternoon. They only called us last night. We’ll finish a search, and check the bank account to make sure he isn’t a runner. No point putting them through it if he’s done a bunk with a dolly bird to Benidorm. But it’s him, got to be. He’s the Lark victim. Hair’s right, age – if he’s her generation – lifestyle, clothes. The lot.’
Stubbs nodded at Dryden’s wound. ‘And the ear?’
‘Details later.’
Stubbs stopped but Dryden continued to walk. ‘Withholding evidence is a criminal offence, Dryden. We could continue this conversation at the nick.’
Dryden turned. ‘I don’t think so. No photofit story. And you won’t get anything out of me until Friday, when The Crow comes out with the full story. Make you look a bit stupid that.’
The day was stillborn, killed by the gloom of the snow-clouds.
Stubbs turned on him, the merest hint of a bead of sweat at his temple: ‘You’ve got no right shadowing a police investigation like this. Or for that matter withholding vital evidence.’
‘You’ve got no right expecting the press to print misleading statements about the progress of your inquiries.’
They walked in uncomfortable silence the mile along the quayside to the Cutter Inn. It was still only 9.30 and the riverside walk, a lively spot in summer, was deserted. PK 122 was moored just opposite the pub. Dryden stepped aboard and offered Stubbs his hand. He brewed coffee while the detective nosed around.
‘I thought this was out at Barham Dock.’
Dryden stopped pouring milk into coffee mugs. ‘How d�
��you know that…?’
Stubbs shrugged. They sat either side of the galley table. Dryden felt happier on home ground. ‘Where’s the file?’
The detective sergeant teased at the starched white collar of his shirt. ‘I want the story on the photofit in tomorrow’s paper, giving the clear impression that we have a decent ID of the driver of the car found in the Lark.’
Dryden nodded.
But Stubbs wanted more. ‘You can also mention that we are poised to make an arrest in the case. An arrest that will bring us close to finding the Lark killer.’
Dryden considered this unlikely development. ‘An arrest which will help impress the disciplinary tribunal even further?’
Stubbs studied a packet of extra-strong mints. ‘You don’t need to know any more.’
‘No details? Timing?’
‘You could speculate that it is a development linked to a painstaking forensic examination of the Nissan Spectre pulled out of the Lark. It could take place as early as this evening.’
Dryden didn’t believe for a moment that Stubbs was close to finding the killer. ‘I’ll print the story. And you can have everything I know about the Crossways – information which will get you very close to the real killer. But first I want the file. Have you got it?’
Dryden produced a paper bag from his pocket and sprinkled the remaining wine gums on the table top. Selecting one he sucked it noisily.
‘The file is classified. I’ve requested it. It takes time – twenty-four hours.’
Dryden would have to trust him. It meant he would have to print the story first, but he still had plenty to bargain with if Stubbs tried to welsh on the deal.
A river agency boat sped past, its wake rocking them. They listened in silence to the sound of its engines fading.
‘Talk to your father much?’
Stubbs stiffened and slipped a mint between dry lips. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning your father may have planted Tommy Shepherd’s prints. Which must have been a bit tricky when Tommy got in touch offering to shop the gang. Can’t have been a pleasant prospect, can it? Tommy Shepherd as star witness for the prosecution but claiming he was never at the scene of the crime.’
The Water Clock Page 16
