‘Stock? You mean animals?’
‘About a hundred of the rats from one of the outside sheds.’
‘And nobody heard anything, saw anything?’
‘I was away on a sales trip. Security staff found a hole in the fence in the morning and the door on the animal shed forced.’
Dryden stood. ‘So what should I say, then – what’s the official line from Sealodes Farm Ltd?’
‘Why would you need a line from me?’ He put the pet carrier on his desk and looked balefully at the ball of fur within.
‘For the paper. It’ll make the front of The Crow. The nationals will pick it up. They may be a bunch of amateurs but they’ve raided a medieval tomb in the middle of a military firing range. They’re news.’
Peyton stood too. ‘Do you really think I’d be sat here talking to you like this if I thought all this was going in the paper?’ He fished in his pocket and found a card, tossing it down on the desktop. Dryden recognized the raised crest of the West Norfolk Constabulary above the name Detective Inspector Peter Shaw.
‘They told me no police,’ said Dryden.
‘Forgive me, I have a mind of my own. Take that with you. Ring him. I’m afraid your little scoop is going to have to wait, Mr Dryden. The inspector’s instructions were quite clear. A news blackout. I understand your editor has already agreed.’
Peyton’s voice had risen, fuelled by anger, and the guinea pigs responded, their squeals rising an octave, swept by fear and anxiety.
15
By the time Dryden had got DI Shaw on the phone he was angry too, angry enough to make a hash of the conversation.
‘Shaw,’ he said, not bothering with his rank or a welcome. ‘Give me one good reason why I should sit on the story,’ was Dryden’s opening gambit.
Humph had parked the Capri up on a low bank by the Hundred Foot River. The rain clouds were clearing and a watery sun was just visible, like a gold coin in the bottom of a dirty fountain.
Shaw was driving, presumably talking on a hands-free mobile. In the background Dryden could hear something country and western, Johnny Cash perhaps, the bass turned up to maximum.
The engine died and Dryden heard a handbrake being applied. In the background seagulls called and Dryden was sure he could hear the crash of waves on a beach.
Twenty seconds of silence passed before Shaw spoke. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Mr Dryden, but I need your help in this. A crime’s been committed and I’d very much like to catch the people responsible.’
Dryden cut in. ‘Yeah, I know that…’
‘No you don’t. Not that crime.’
Shaw had his attention, and Dryden bristled at the detective’s expert use of information as bait.
‘And not that story. I think you’ll find this is a much better one, and one I can share. But we do need an embargo to be respected. I’d have talked to you direct about that but there wasn’t time so I went straight to your editor. I’m sorry it happened like that.’
The voice intrigued Dryden, light and youthful, but modulated, with the confidence not to rush.
Dryden kicked open the glove compartment in front of him to reveal a tumbled store of miniature bottles. He took two at random, gave one to Humph and, twisting the cap off his own, swallowed half in one gulp. It was tequila and he choked asthmatically.
‘I think judging a good story is my line,’ he said, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘I know. And I understand that I need your cooperation,’ said Shaw. It was a statement of fact, and they both knew it was true. If Dryden rushed out a few paragraphs he could flog them to the local evening papers before Shaw could stop them – and local radio stations would snap it up too. News blackouts only really worked if the police were the ones with the information to start with. Dryden had the upper hand, his problem was dealing with the fallout once he’d scooped his own paper.
‘Look, I’m at home now,’ said Shaw, and Dryden heard it again, the hiss, like a whisper, of a wave breaking along a beach. ‘I’m on my way to Jude’s Ferry. We’ve got less than forty-eight hours to finish up with the forensics in the cellar because the army boys want back in. There’s a big offensive on in Iraq, and they’re sending more troops, and the least they deserve is, I guess, twenty-four hours training in house clearance before they say goodbye. Anyway, not my call. So my orders, from the top, are to get in, wrap up the scene of crime, and get out. We’ve set up an incident room at the site to make the most of the time we’ve got.’
Shaw ignited the engine and Dryden heard the crunch of sand under the wheels. ‘How about you come out too? We could talk there,’ said Shaw.
Dryden finished the tequila. They both knew it was an offer he couldn’t refuse, a guided tour of the crime scene by the detective in charge of the inquiry.
But self-respect made him push harder. ‘If I get anything extra on the Skeleton Man, can I use that?’
‘We can discuss that. But in principle, yes. All I want is a few days in which to operate freely. You need to know the background and who we’re dealing with on this. These are not nice people, in fact they are seriously not nice people. So – I’ll see you at the gatehouse at Whittlesea range at 11.30. OK?’
Dryden killed the mobile and chucked it over his shoulder, where it hit the dog. A decade of bitter experience told him that holding a story that was ready to print almost always ended in tears. His. He thought about ringing The Crow’s editor Septimus Henry Kew and arguing the point but his boss’s attachment to the Establishment was sealed in Masonic blood – he was a former Special Constable himself and a regular dinner guest at the Chief Constable’s monthly soirées for the media. If they gave him an honorary uniform he’d never take it off.
Dryden pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the passenger-side window. Getting back into Jude’s Ferry was a trade-off of sorts. DI Shaw had two cases under his belt: the Skeleton Man and Peyton’s farm. If Dryden could get enough leverage on the detective for agreeing to the embargo on the animal rights story there might be an upside to the situation, although he very much doubted it. When it came to it he knew he had little choice. Flogging the story would earn him a couple of hundred quid and result in endless aggravation, and Shaw was right, he didn’t know the full facts. And he’d made no promises. He could hear Shaw out and then go back to Plan A – flogging the story.
‘We’ve got two hours,’ he said to Humph, rummaging under Boudicca’s tartan blanket to find his notebook. He checked the eight names he’d dug out of the TA records Broderick had shown him; the eight men of the right age who might have ended up on the end of a hangman’s rope at Jude’s Ferry. ‘It’s got to be one of them,’ he said.
He knew DI Shaw had, like Dryden himself, interviewed Ken Woodruffe, whose mother had run the New Ferry Inn, and that there had been a fight that night between the twin brothers Mark and Matthew Smith; but he knew the police would have got to them quickly if there was anything like a clear trail.
Dryden needed to focus on the rest of the list. There was Paul Cobley, for example, whose parents might well still be running a cab firm, although Dryden guessed that healthy old age and sitting in a taxi office for twelve hours a day were not always compatible.
He leant forward and cut the power to the tape deck, bringing a Faroese lesson to an abrupt halt.
‘Sorry. Know of a taxi firm run by people called Cobley? It was mentioned on that tape we listened to on the riverbank, the one about Jude’s Ferry.’
Humph puckered his lips into a small bow. ‘Nope.’
‘If you get a chance, can you ask around?’ asked Dryden, flicking the tape back on.
After Cobley his best bet was James Neate, the son of the garage owner Walter, who had made a claim for compensation which included a forwarding address: the Stopover Garage, Duckett’s Cross.