‘The day after the body in the Lark is found another one turns up. He is found on the roof of the cathedral. He’s probably been up there since shortly after the robbery. The body is that of Tommy Shepherd, a gypsy and petty thief, wanted at the time of his disappearance for his part in the Crossways robbery. Besides a half-eaten driving licence he has in his back pocket two winning betting slips for a meeting at Newmarket on the day of the robbery. More than £500. A small fortune then.’
He paused as a shadowy figure being led by an Alsatian on a lead crossed the lawns, then turned back to Laura: ‘Theories? The link is clearly crucial but difficult to unravel. Did the Lark victim die because Tommy Shepherd’s body was about to be found? Who knew it was about to turn up? Someone who knew Tommy was up there – probably the person who pushed him off more than three decades before. But why would the discovery of the body necessarily mean the Lark victim had to die?’
‘The police think Tommy Shepherd jumped – suicide. But then, how did anyone know he was on the roof? Witness? Suicide looks increasingly unlikely anyway. He’d have to get up there in daylight and if he’d jumped in daylight he would have hit the roof with a hell of a crash a hundred feet above the heads of hordes of tourists. My guess is that he was up there at night and was helped over the side. When he fetched up in the gutter he tried to stand. Why? Hardly the act of a man bent on suicide. And somewhere in the world he had £500 waiting for him – or perhaps he had it on him. He’d offered to tell the police the names of the rest of the gang. He could also count on at least his share of the haul from the Crossways robbery. Enough in 1966 to start a new life. My guess is he died a pauper and someone else got the money.’
There was a muffled knock at the door. ‘Mr Dryden? There’s a Mr Holt at the front counter.’
It was a stunning concept. Humph, standing up.
By the time Dryden got to reception the cabbie had beaten a retreat to the car, which was parked, engine running, in the floodlit forecourt. It was moving before Dryden closed the door.
‘You got outta the car?’ asked Dryden.
‘It happens. Your mobile’s turned off by the way. A bloke jumped the wall, over there, going in.’
‘When?’
‘Fifteen minutes ago. I walked round to the gates and saw him making his way to a ground-floor room. He stood with his back to the wall by a lit window. I think he saw me coming – so he bolted back over the wall. Then I heard a car set off. It passed the gates going east. The nurse at reception said it was Laura’s room.’
They didn’t need to discuss it. The Capri’s bald tyres squealed as Humph swung out on the drove road. Ahead of them, about a mile across the fen, they could see retreating red tail-lights. Overhead a large full moon radiated white light over a frozen night landscape.
Dryden savoured the rush of adrenalin: ‘Kill the lights. Let’s see if we can catch him by moonlight.’
Humph flicked off the headlights and for the first few hundred yards Dryden navigated by leaning out of the passenger window. After that their eyes became accustomed to the night. They kept half a mile behind their quarry.
‘Slow up. Let’s keep him in sight but don’t get any closer.’ They were travelling east across the Great West Fen towards the River Ouse, running into a dead end, a network of droves, all of which ended at the river’s high flood banks.
‘We’ve got ‘im,’ said Humph, and the moonlight showed, for a second, the excitement in his eyes.
And then they lost him. The tail-lights winked out.
Humph let the cab idle to a halt. Silence descended on them like a giant duvet.
‘Reckon he heard us following?’ asked Dryden.
Humph nodded. ‘He’s gone to earth.’
The sky was an astonishing planetarium of starlight with a single satellite traversing from eastern to western horizon. The earth was black and featureless but for the dim tracery of dykes and ditches with their wisps of mist. The only sound was that of water percolating through the peat. Across a vast field the ghost-like form of a badger trotted on a secret assignment.
Dryden stood by the cab. Humph got out as well. Twice in one day.
‘What’s that?’ Humph pointed east towards the river. A single black chimney stood against the stars. ‘Let’s go.’ It was the first time Humph had ever provided a destination.
It took them ten minutes of threading across country to arrive at Stretham Engine. The main building was in the shape of a tall brick cottage loaf with a slim chimney rising from one corner. It had been built in 1831 – one of ninety steam-driven pumping houses which replaced hundreds of windmills across the Fens. Stretham was one of the few to remain, largely because the engine was still in working order and had been designed and installed by James Watt himself, the father of steam. Dryden recalled writing a story that it was to open for the public in the spring after renovation with a grant from the Millennium Fund. But for the most part, since it had last pumped water from the Great West Fen up into the River Ouse in 1941, it was a forgotten landmark. A single needle of brick, which on low, cloudy days seemed to scratch the sky.
Humph was out of the cab before Dryden. On his feet he looked lighter, like a spinning top balanced precariously on two tiny feet so neat and close they looked, by comparison with his girth, like a single point. He bustled to the boot and produced two industrial-weight torches and an overcoat that could have covered a small horse.
Dryden, astonished by Humph’s burst of mobility, took the torch without a word.
They circled the engine house once. There were two doors both bolted and padlocked from the outside. None of the narrow windows were at floor level and the wooden doors to the coal chutes were held fast by iron bars padlocked to the brickwork.
‘It’s a lock-out,’ said Dryden.
They were standing by the main door when the otherwise still night was rustled by a faint breeze. The door before them swung open with a theatrical creak.
‘Spoo-ky,’ said Dryden.
They examined the door. The padlock was locked and the bolt in place but the latch had been carefully detached from the wood of the door jamb. To the eye it would look shut but a good shove would detach the door, allowing it to swing inwards – a good shove being considerably more force than that applied by a midnight breeze.
‘This is the bit in the film where I normally say something like: “No sane person would go in”,’ said Dryden.
‘There’s no car in sight,’ said Humph.
‘And if he’s in there he’s outnumbered.’
‘And this isn’t a late-night movie.’
They went in.
Inside they stood quietly in the dark and sensed the space around them. Their torch beams barely touched the joists fifty feet above – like Blitz-time searchlights rifling the clouds. James Watt’s great steam engine took up the lower two-thirds of the void. The giant machinery glimmered dully with the polish applied by a thousand steam enthusiasts. To one side sat a squat diesel engine, a metallic Swiss-roll of beaten panels, which had replaced Watt’s engine finally in the 1940s – only for it to be made redundant by the electricity pumping station further up river.
The machinery creaked as the various metals cooled at different rates with the chill of the night.
‘Let’s stick together.’
Dryden considered this redundant sentence. ‘Oh all right then.’ He indicated a flight of brick steps leading down to the cellars.
‘Can’t we stick together up here?’ Humph’s euphoria was dissipating. Besides, he knew Dryden well and there was nothing as foolhardy as a dedicated coward.