Matthews pushed open two double wooden doors into a tiled lobby – the entrance to the school’s swimming pool. The pool itself was under a thin ‘bubble’ roof and surrounded by glass doors which could be opened in summer, the architects having imagined well-behaved children lounging on the grass and taking an occasional dip between bouts of revision.
Every door was open and the pool’s surface was frozen a milky sky-blue. The pool wasn’t empty. Looking down through the thin ice into the unfrozen water below Dryden could see computer terminals. The vandals must have chucked them in and then opened the doors. Other oddities had been added to the soup.
‘Isn’t that a blow-up doll?’ said Dryden eagerly.
Matthews slipped glasses on and studied the flotsam. ‘’Fraid not, Dryden. Nice try. It’s an anatomical figure, taken from the biology lab.’
Other items included a desk, a basketball post, some wastepaper bins and a chemistry lab fume cupboard.
Dryden produced a banana from his coat pocket for tea and began to circle the pool. On the mobile he called Mitch, The Crow’s photographer, and told him the details. He’d just shut his shop up for the weekend and agreed to do the job.
At the far end of the building a retractable seating area had been rolled forward and a banner on the far wall proclaimed: ‘West Fen High. The Best in Sport’. Scattered over the seats were some disappointed-looking parents and some of the local ‘great and good’ looking suitably outraged.
A hand touched Dryden’s sleeve. Ben Thomas – Labour leader of the local council – was eager to see if his comments on the emergency work on the cathedral would make it into The Express. Dryden found it hard to believe it was only yesterday that they had discussed the story.
Thomas was also keen to get a quote in on school vandalism, but first he had a point to make. A party political point. ‘I blame the Tories of course.’
‘They broke in, did they?’
Thomas ploughed on, congenitally unable to spot irony. He was spindly tall and clever, disguising an Oxford education behind estuary English. Mid-thirties and serious, he taught in the city’s special needs school – a fact that cropped up in every speech he made. He wore his heart on both sleeves.
‘They’ve cut the school security bills. West Fen can only afford one caretaker – and he’s got to have some time off.’
What’s wrong with the school holidays? thought Dryden, but let the subject drop.
Thomas was a county councillor, and shadow education spokesman, as well as leader of the district council. His education brief had got him an invitation to the swimming gala. The Tories held a hefty majority on the county council – and therefore had control of the education authority budget as well. Thomas’s personal ambitions had been cruelly thwarted by democracy.
Normally Dryden dealt with rent-a-quotes like Thomas by putting his notebook away. This time he spotted an opportunity to find out some useful inside knowledge on former Deputy Chief Constable Bryan Stubbs. Thomas was Labour’s representative on the authority’s police committee.
‘So what do you reckon the damage is?’
Thomas looked around and failed to suppress a smile as Dryden flipped open the notebook.
‘Got to be fifty thousand – biggest problem is unthawing the pipes. They can’t do it quickly, they’ll burst. We might have to close the school for a few days.’
‘And you blame the tight budget? Surely the school got a million off the government – the Labour government – to set up the sports college?’
‘Oh yeah. But what about running the thing? That’s down to the council allocation of the government grant…’
Thomas set off, verbally losing himself in the maze which is local government finance. When he finally emerged Dryden closed his notebook.
‘By the way… does the name Bryan Stubbs ring any bells? Police bells?’
‘Retired two years ago? We voted through the terms – he went early, at sixty-one I think.’
‘You didn’t try to keep him?’
Thomas cast a theatrical glance around the pool and took a step closer to Dryden.
‘Hardly. Bloke was bent.’
‘Bent?’
‘We reviewed the file. Over the years at least half a dozen complaints of fabricating evidence. He’d got to the top because he knew where the bodies were buried – it was that generation. The sixties – they all went up together. Most of them grew out of it, but Stubbs was an “old-fashioned” copper. Heroes and villains.’
‘I’m looking at a case back then – in the sixties. Halfway through they called in Scotland Yard. Is that rare?’
‘No. Before they set up regional crime squads the Yard had all the expertise. But I’d be careful – sometimes they called them in to clean up dirty tricks, especially if the case is high profile. They often ended up investigating the investigation – not the crime.’
‘So you were happy to see him go?’
‘He wanted out – doctor’s report said cancer. Smelt more like cirrhosis to me. He had a reputation for boozing. We agreed terms – got him out. Best for everyone.’
‘His son is up on a disciplinary charge now – know anything about that?’
‘Not much. I read it in your paper in fact. Nothing to do with us really – down to the local tribunal unless someone appeals.’
‘What’s your guess?’
‘With the papers watching – and plenty of his dad’s enemies still around – he could get busted down a rank.’
Dryden couldn’t resist a final blow below the belt. ‘Your kids at West Fen?’
Thomas zipped up his leather jacket. ‘Nope. Anyway – better be off.’
No, thought Dryden, letting him go. They’re at Ely’s grammar school. Hypocritical bastard.
The visiting school bus had left and the kids were now snowballing the school windows in the dusk. He met Mitch, the mad photographer, coming in: ‘Fill your boots – it’s like the set for Titanic in there.’ The photographer was hardly visible behind a high-tech pyramid of photographic equipment.
‘Great job,’ said the Scot, as he swept past the welcome desk.
11
Laura’s room was no longer a mausoleum. A new box of electronic medical tricks had been installed by the bedside and linked to her arm and ankle by electrodes. The screens danced in vivid greens and blues, emitting comforting beeps. Laura looked whiter than ever. A print-out chugged out a line of figures: a glacial waterfall of white paper, which had already reached the floor and begun to fold itself into a neat concertina of vital data.
Dryden poured two glasses of wine and settled down by the window. The snow had thickened during the day and was punctured by birds’ feet. The monkey-puzzle tree sagged with the load. The day was ending, but as the gloom deepened, he let the darkness engulf the room. The white light streamed in softly from the snowfield.
‘Humph sends his love, Laura.’ He looked to the bed. ‘I told him to come in but getting him out of that cab is like pulling a cork from a bottle of port. A rather morose, plump cork.’
Out under the monkey-puzzle tree Dryden again saw the tiny pinpoint fire of a cigarette burning in the dark. It was the slightest of lights and danced and disappeared on the very edge of vision. He waited for the security guard with the Alsatian to appear from the shadows.
He sat and smoked the obligatory Greek cigarette. ‘So, Laura, what’s the story so far? I’ve been on The Crow two years and the biggest crime until the day before yesterday was a sub-post office robbery – unarmed – at Littleport. That turned out to be two juveniles. In the last forty-eight hours, by contrast, two bodies have turned up in grotesque, some would say bizarre, circumstances.
‘The first has been shot in the back of the head and dumped in the River Lark inside the boot of a stolen car. After death he was hanged by rope causing traumatic injuries to the neck. He was drunk at the time of death but otherwise appears to have enjoyed a healthy lifestyle. Fifties, corn-blond. Odd age to be a murder victim. Passions are normally spent. His prints were on the police computer. They’d been found at the scene of a robbery in 1966 at a roadhouse on the A10 – the Crossways. We don’t know who he was then, and as yet we don’t know now.