‘Any chance of talking to him as well?’
Shepherd stood in answer and walked away towards one of the caravans with the Alsatian at his heels. Both disappeared inside. Dryden followed after a decent interval.
The trailer’s interior was immaculate: a museum of trinkets and mementos of dubious taste. The Alsatian had metamorphosed into a family pet and was curled under the table. China figurines crowded the shelves and the walls were all but obscured by heavy gilt-edged frames around prints and photographs. Lace fringed the net curtains, cushions and tablecloth. The smell of furniture polish was so strong it hurt Dryden’s throat. It seemed colder inside the caravan than out, the cosiness of the heavy snow being replaced by an almost antiseptic, over-polished cleanliness. Billy Shepherd lit a gas heater with a pop, its warmth creeping out to reawaken the damp.
Dryden sat at a glass-topped table and Shepherd offered him a cigarette–Lucky Strike. Dryden took one and examined it carefully. Billy answered the unspoken question. ‘US air base at Mildenhall. Old habits.’
Under the glass table top was a large black and white print of Houdini’s successful attempt to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
‘America?’ asked Dryden. It was as good a place to start as any.
Shepherd drew deeply on the Lucky Strike. ‘Nineteen sixty-eight. After Tommy went missing.’
Dryden wondered, if Tommy had lived would he look like this? Smith’s face was hard and unforgiving, the facets meeting in sharp cheekbones below the bottle-green eyes.
‘We’d dreamed about it as kids. Grandad had been.’ He tapped the glass top over the print. ‘Full of stories. Kids’ dreams. So I went.’
Dryden’s silence enticed him on.
‘There was an uncle in Jersey City – Mum’s brother. I worked in a car breakers in Washington Heights. Married a local girl. Family. Then this…’
He nodded at the empty sleeve pinned to his overalls.
‘Accident?’
‘Car crusher.’ They winced together. ‘Came back last Christmas. Left the wife – we’re separated. Brought the daughter. That’s my life, anything else while you’re here?’
‘I’m trying to find out who killed your brother. I need some help.’
Shepherd fixed his extraordinary green eyes on Dryden. The Alsatian growled in his sleep.
Dryden pressed on. ‘The police thought Tommy had killed himself when they found his body. Now they’re not so sure. The body pulled out of the Lark last week was Reg Camm, who left his prints at the Crossways. Something he had in common with Tommy. The only difference being that they already had Tommy’s on file. Did you see your brother after the robbery?’
Shepherd put a finger into his eye and appeared to remove his pupil. He examined the contact lens while Dryden’s stomach did a somersault.
‘I don’t want to be involved with the police.’
Dryden decided, bizarrely, on honesty. ‘This is more than a story for me. I need to know because I have to help the police, and I have to help them because I want something in return. I need it very badly.’
A masterstroke. The inference was plain, they were both on the same side.
‘And I need it very quickly.’
Shepherd mumbled a command to the dog, which slunk out from under the table and slid under a bunk bed. He took a long time to take a single drag from the Lucky Strike.
‘Tommy and I did meet after the Crossways. We were brothers, like all brothers we had a secret place.’
‘Stretham Engine?’
Shepherd began to tear the packet of Lucky Strike into thin shreds of cardboard. ‘I met Tommy the day after the robbery. He’d been away at the coast. The boardwalk. He’d been with – a friend.’
‘Liz Barnett.’
‘Do you need me to tell this story?’
There was plenty Dryden didn’t know. And he wanted to cross-check the mayoress’s version of events that day. ‘Tommy was on the run; how did he know the police had found his prints at the Crossways?’
‘Radio. Idiots put out a description. If they’d sat it out for twenty-four hours he would have walked straight into their arms. But then that would have made it damn clear he’d never been there in the first place. They wanted him to run. And they knew he would. They’d raided the camp here that night – straight after the robbery. They hadn’t found the prints then of course, they popped up overnight. They picked them up here, his caravan’s gone now. Smashed the place up a bit in fact, got us all out in the dark around the fire. Like a prisoner of war camp…’
He expelled a square yard of acrid smoke: ‘Like yesterday… the memory’ Shepherd blinked and the cat-green eyes were filled with water. ‘They had the local copper with ‘em so they could spot Tommy. We looked like twins then; they knew we’d try to pull something. We all looked the same, that’s the problem with gyppos of course… Ask anyone.’
Dryden laughed with his eyes. ‘Was Stubbs there that night? The detective inspector in charge of the case, head like a cannonball?’
‘Yup. Mean man. He was gonna solve it all right. One way or another. History’s written by the victors, right? He won. Tommy did it.’
‘Did he?’
No answer. Billy traced with his finger the image of Niagara Falls under the glass table top. ‘We were allies.’
‘Against?’
‘Everyone. Old man mainly.’
‘Was he alive then?’
‘Just. He died the following year… liver… or what was left of it. It was a long slow death. It’s a pity Tommy missed it.’
The bitterness took a couple more degrees off what warmth there was in the air.
‘This was his caravan. Grandad’s before. No one’s lived in it since.’
‘He was… violent?’ Dryden was fishing.
‘He was what the shrinks call an abuser… and that’s answer enough. If he’d lived we’d have killed him one day.’ He looked out of the trailer’s window at a sudden squall of snow. ‘We planned it enough times.’
‘So when you met, what did Tommy say?’
‘He wanted to know what the police had on him, other than the fingerprints. I said they might have a description from a passing driver of a caravanette. It sounded like him, an ID parade would have got Stubbs the final nail in the coffin.’
‘Because the man on the forecourt, the man with the US-style cap, was Tommy’s image?’
Billy just looked through him.
‘So Stubbs planted the prints. Why did he pick Tommy? If his prints weren’t at the scene, why did he go for him?’
Billy shrugged. ‘The woman was gonna die. There was loads of pressure. The witness description fitted Tommy. Tommy had a record. Tommy was in the frame, simple. But I know Tommy wasn’t there.’
They looked at each other for slightly longer than is normal in any kind of society.
‘They didn’t have your prints on record?’
Billy shook his head. ‘I was smarter. Tommy was a fall guy. They always went for him.’
‘How did you keep him alive?’
Billy laughed, the cat-green eyes brightening up a few volts. ‘They put surveillance on this place. Two cars. Plain as daylight. I’d go out on the river to fish. They didn’t bother to keep me in sight. The food was in the tackle box, plus what I caught. He even put on weight.’
The sky outside was darkening and the trailer was unlit. They sat in an inky gloom which made Dryden feel suddenly exhausted. His pursuit of the Lark killer seemed to be sucking the life out of him. He pressed his fingertips into his eye sockets to expel the weariness.
‘I think Tommy was killed for money. He wrote a note to the police offering to give himself up and name the Crossways robbers.’
‘Grandad wrote it.’
‘The aim?’
‘Tommy wanted the money, all the money. Reg was attached to it, or at least his share. He planned…’