‘The lord mayor is distraught as well, Dryden. He has personally paid for her treatment at the Tower,’ said Henry.
‘Bollocks. He thinks that’ll look good in court.’
Dryden pulled his desk open and retrieved a packet of cigarettes he kept for emergencies. He lit up despite Henry’s non-smoking rule, and glared at them. ‘I hope she takes them for a fortune.’
Dryden picked up a copy of The Express. Stubbs had got his story, but there was still no sign of the file. Now he really needed something else to bargain with, not just theories. He needed evidence. His mood lifted, pumped up by anger. One loose end was bothering Dryden – the identity of the man arrested on the Jubilee Estate in connection with the Lark killing.
Gary checked his notebook. ‘George Parker Warren. Apparently an old lag. His prints were all over the car they pulled out the river. But according to the police briefing he isn’t the killer. Just a petty thief.’
Dryden retrieved from his desk the photocopies he’d made of the cuttings from The Crow in 1966 on the Crossways robbery. It made the lead story that first week, with a blurred snapshot of Amy Ward across three columns. It had already been christened ‘The World Cup Robbery’. For The Crow the layout was sensational and it was clear the paper thought she’d die as a result of the gunshot wounds. The headline screamed:
A10 ROBBERY VICTIM FIGHTS FOR LIFE
There was also a picture of the Crossways. Dryden felt it was time to visit the scene of the crime. But first he had to indulge a favourite pastime, baiting bureaucrats. He rang Horace Catchpole, town clerk. The officious official said he couldn’t see Dryden for a fortnight. Ten minutes later Dryden was in his office.
Catchpole’s office was a time warp. No computer, just a single black telephone. A large green leather blotter with a sheet of paper, face down, set exactly in the middle. The walls were unmarked except by a framed certificate proclaiming Horace Catchpole a solicitor able to take oaths. There was a single family photograph of an attractive woman with a disappointed smile.
Dryden put a copy of the Local Government Access to Information Act on the desk. ‘It’s apparent you haven’t seen one,’ he explained.
Catchpole tried a smile – a horrible error. Dryden felt his lunch shift.
‘Do you want me to find the relevant clause for you?’
‘That’s not necessary, Mr Dryden. Please continue.’ Dryden hated it when officials turned nice on him.
‘How, exactly,’ he said, savouring the e-word, ‘is the council involved in funding the cathedral restoration works?’
Catchpole sniffed. ‘The council has been involved in helping to finance the restoration of the cathedral for almost twenty-five years. The programme is agreed by the Dean and Chapter every quarter based on reports from the Master of the Fabric, the surveyors and the building contractors.’
‘Last meeting?’
Catchpole checked a small council diary. ‘October 22nd. The minutes of that meeting were entered into the minutes of the council’s planning and resources committee when it voted the money on 29th October. Then…’
‘But the extra money requested at that meeting had already been paid out?’
Catchpole clearly loved being interrupted. Dryden made a note to do it again.
‘Yes. Yes, that is right. Under standing orders. The Lord Mayor signed the authorization which was later ratified by the planning and resources committee.’
‘Roy Barnett?’
‘Well done.’ It was the first sign Catchpole had given of the bitter, but limited, virtues required to become town clerk.
‘He’s the one who sets off fireworks which take out people’s eyes.’
Catchpole looked at his desktop and slipped the single piece of paper into an open drawer. He doubled up, like many town clerks, as district solicitor.
Dryden grinned hugely and fished a Brazil nut out of his pocket. ‘Fine. And the Ρ and R committee minutes contain the relevant minutes from the Dean and Chapter?’
‘Indeed.’ Catchpole glanced at the clock.
‘Nice clock,’ said Dryden. ‘I’d like to see those minutes for the last two years, where they refer to the cathedral works.’
Catchpole nodded and consulted his diary. ‘I’ll let the committee secretary know. Perhaps you could ring in about ten days?’
‘I could. Somewhat pointless. I need to know today. I think the Act…’ Dryden leant forward and touched the document before him. ‘… mentions a reasonable time period. I guess we could ask the local ombudsman to adjudicate. Or just run a story in The Crow?’
Dryden was led by a minion to a room in the basement with a Formica table and no heating. There was a payphone in the corridor. While he waited he rang the Office of Land Registry for the London Borough of Stepney and the Probate Registry for East Cambridgeshire.
An hour later there was a pile of papers on the table three feet high. It took him three hours to find what he was looking for – the reason why the gutters of the south-west transept had been left untouched for three decades. Then he rang Humph on the mobile, and met him opposite the Town Hall steps. Night had fallen and frost glittered on the cab’s roof.
They parked the Ford Capri just outside the gates of the Tower. The grounds, extensive and thickly wooded, were swaddled in a fresh fall of snow. In the centre of the only lawn stood the monkey-puzzle tree, loaded with so much snow it appeared to bend down and pray to the ground. Dryden crunched up the drive for about a hundred yards, following the tyre tracks left by visitors, and then cut off to the right towards Laura’s room. He traced his path without error to her window. He’d spent so many hours looking out that it was like spying on a looking-glass world. He examined the snow under the window. There were no signs of footprints now save for the inky splay of blackbirds’ feet. He looked at the window, no signs of chisel or knife. He pushed his ungloved fingers against the wooden frame and it rose smoothly without noise or effort.
‘Security,’ he said. He peered in and let his eyes become accustomed to the night light beside the bed. He dropped into the room with an inexpert thud and stood a while to let the silence settle. Laura’s heart monitor bleeped regularly and the paper print-out, from the electric sensors on her body to detect movement, shuffled to the floor in a whisper.
Then he saw the paper – in the same place, tucked under the pillow. He marched to the table, allowing his shoes to make too much noise. He checked his watch with the bedside alarm clock: 11.32. He was a punctual person. Most nights he visited between half-past and a quarter to ten. He retrieved the paper. It was from the same map. A square half-mile. This time the Tower was in the middle. He turned it over. Two words. STOP NOW.
He saw himself die in the mirror.
Could he have seen the blood? Was that possible? The sudden arterial gush flying towards the silvered glass. Or was it the first memory of bell?
And behind him, Peter. Peter pulling the trigger. Reg Camm saw him for the last time in the mirror, and admired the dull gunmetal sheen of the revolver which touched his exuberant shock of hair as softly as a butterfly.
In the second before it was too late to care he saw his sons, from the bank of his memory, that summer, on the river, in their boat. And then he was gone, carried away by the blast which burnt his hair, and bore effortlessly through his neck to shatter his teeth on its way to the mirror.
Suicide – at least the attempts he had made – had been far worse. The tentative strokes of the razor across his shaking wrist, the fumbled bottle of pills and the agonizing vacuum of the stomach pump.
Perhaps it was the drugs that Peter had slipped into the whisky. He hadn’t seen him do it of course. But he knew just too late what was happening. The world stood back and Peter’s voice came to him like the shouts of his sons across the water-meadows.