He walked to the cab and got the OS map for the eastern fens, tracking a route across country to Sedge Fen and Paul Cobley’s cottage. Fortified by a double hot dog, Humph agreed to the diversion, leaving the main road at Mildenhall and skirting the floodlit runways of the US base before the cab emerged into open country beyond, the distant lights of cottages and farmhouses studding the night, lightless now that the moon had risen to be obscured by rain clouds.
Sedge Fen was a hamlet flung across both banks of the Little Ouse. At its heart was a now abandoned industrial site, a miniature Manhattan of silos and storage warehouses which had once provided grain, potatoes and salad crops for the London market. A grubbed-up railway line ran across the open fields. A signpost directed Humph to Sedge Fen Methodist Church, a wooden ark next to a modern bungalow from which light flooded out onto a large American car. Dryden knocked and a woman with perfect teeth and big hair knew the way. ‘End of the lane, turn right – ’bout a mile. There’s just two cottages. They’re in the one with the new windows. They’ve got a flashy BMW, and a van, but we’ve seen neither for a week. They go on holiday a lot – for the tan. You a friend?’ she asked, and Dryden, who didn’t bother to answer, could see that she was trying to stop the smile turning into a sneer.
The drove ended at the cottages: the deadest of dead ends. The houses stood in darkness but as Dryden got out of the cab the downstairs lights in one came on. He walked up the short drive, stamping on the gravel, trying to flush out any dogs, but nothing moved. The lights were on in the modernized house so he went to the door and knocked loudly, listening to the echo bounce back off a brick barn half a mile away. A dog barked then, but to the north, where a security light lit the foot of a pylon.
He stepped to the side and looked in at the front room. The overhead light was on and so was the TV, although the sound was down. He worked his way down the side of the house through a gate to the kitchen door. Inside he could hear a radio playing and the light over the hob was on.
There was a custom-built wooden studio in the garden, beside the double garage, and through the window Dryden could see two computer work stations with flat screens big enough for design and make-up. The lights, which had been on, flicked off. On the door was a company logo and sign: DesignSolutions.
The studio lights flicked back on. ‘Time switches,’ said Dryden, and went back to the car. ‘Looks like they’re away, like the woman said,’ he told Humph as the cab trundled a three-point turn. Dryden watched the lights in the rear-view mirror, so that he almost missed the post box a hundred yards down the lane where there was a lay-by for the van to park up.
‘Hold on,’ he jumped out and flipped up the unlocked cover to reveal a bundle of letters which he took back to the cab and examined by the vanity light.
‘That’s nice,’ said Humph. ‘And you reckon estate agents have no moral compass?’
There were some utility bills marked for Mr P. R. Cobley and Mr M. James, and what felt like some brochures and freesheets for the ‘occupiers’. But there was one package, in a jiffy bag, marked for Cobley & James and stamped PHOTO POST.
‘Look the other way,’ he said to Humph, and ripped it open. It was a set of holiday snaps, Dryden guessed Greece. Paul Cobley was in most, pictured in cafés, bars and neck deep in a blue pool. But there was one of them both, slightly off-kilter so Dryden guessed it had been taken with a timer, kneeling in the sand. Dryden recognized Cobley’s partner immediately and there were several things he didn’t know about him: he didn’t know what he’d been doing with his life for the seventeen years since he’d left Jude’s Ferry, he didn’t know how he’d earned his living, he didn’t know how many times he’d been in love. But he knew one thing. He had a twin brother.
31
They saw the fairy lights on the pub as soon as they turned off the main road half an hour later – shuffling white and red bulbs neatly outlining the building. But the car park was nearly empty now that darkness had driven the evening trade home, or back to the boats. When Humph killed the engine they could hear a party somewhere out on the water amongst the floating gin palaces, the clash of glasses punctuated by overloud voices.
Dryden left Humph enjoying a nightcap from the glove compartment and found Woodruffe in the bar reading the Licensed Victualler. A barmaid moved to serve Dryden but Woodruffe waved her back, pulling the reporter a pint and then helping himself to a large whisky delivered direct into the pottery mug.
Dryden looked around. There were half a dozen customers at one table and two teenagers at the bar talking about Top Gear. Woodruffe’s hands, trained by a lifetime behind the bar, effortlessly rearranged the bar towels and respaced a row of glass ashtrays.
‘I’ve just been out to Lowestoft for the day,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice to conspiratorial. ‘Had a chat with one of your mother’s old friends; a close friend actually. That’s the thing about old age, it loosens the tongue, sweeps away inhibitions.’
Woodruffe walked to the barmaid, slipping a hand around her narrow waist, whispering in her ear. It was an intimate gesture and Dryden looked away. The publican flipped up the bar top and led the way to the patio doors which opened onto the riverside. There was a short jetty here for cruisers to use during the day. They walked to the end and Woodruffe stood at the rail, sipping his drink, his back to the water. The night was silent but for the ducks in the reeds and the rumble of generators from the cruisers moored on the bank.
‘You dug the grave for her, didn’t you?’ said Dryden, looking downriver towards the cathedral. ‘In the cellar.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ A denial without enthusiasm, Dryden sensed that Woodruffe was already aware how weak it sounded.
‘Right. Spain always a favourite holiday spot, was it? That’s when you started smoking Ducados? When’d you give up? The day you read about the forensic evidence they’d found in the cellar?’
Woodruffe shook his head. ‘This is crap.’ He turned round, looking out into the night. On the far side of the river a flock of birds rose off the distant fen and crossed the moon.
‘But they’ve asked for a DNA check, haven’t they – so they’ll know soon. They’ll match you with the stub. That puts you in the cellar digging the grave. What was it going to be: pills? A pillow over the face?’
Woodruffe looked away but in the darkness Dryden could see the moonlight reflecting off the tears.
‘You’d promised her, promised that if it came to it you’d end her life there, in Jude’s Ferry, to save her the pain, and to give her the peace she wanted. So you got it all ready – the grave in the cellar, the concealed trapdoor, the booking at the Esplanade in case anyone asked where Ellen was going. You’d always planned to cancel it. But then you lost your nerve. What was Spain – a holiday to buy her off?’
He tried to gulp the whisky but fumbled with the mug so that it fell into the river without a splash.
‘I bought a bar, back in the eighties. Sitges, down the coast. I’d always planned a long break and I said she should come too. I’d arranged nursing care, everything. If we liked it we could stay, flog the licence on this place.’
He bowed his head. ‘But she wanted me to end it for her, then, at the Ferry. Her whole life had been in that village, she was born down along The Dring, moved to the pub when she married Dad, I was born there. It’s like the place was part of her, like a limb. She used to say she could close her eyes and see it all, every door, every tree, and all the people who’d been there, even the ones who were dead.