According to the cuttings, the Crossways was a very different place from the one she had left in an ambulance on 30 July. Her husband had sold out to Shell and the cafe had closed. An interview with the couple in February 1968 said they had decided to keep the bungalow and run the garage on a franchise. The mechanic, the other witness in the robbery, left to work in King’s Lynn.
Dryden read and reread the reports. The evidence against Thomas Shepherd was conclusive: his fingerprints at the scene and the description given by the motorist who stopped for petrol were good enough. But his decision to flee the police hunt was just as eloquent of guilt.
Had Shepherd been on the run for years before his death on the cathedral roof? Or did he jump within hours of seeing the injuries to Amy Ward at the Crossways and hearing the radio news that the police were on his track?
One thing made Dryden uneasy – it was a fact rather than a question. The identity of the police officer who had first led the hunt for the A10 robbers before Scotland Yard had been called in to take over the investigation in early 1967: Detective Inspector Bryan Stubbs, then at the start of a career that would take him to the giddy heights of Deputy Chief Constable. A fine career in detection that he must have then hoped would be carried on by his son, Andrew.
Dryden got back to the office via the High Street butchers where he bought a hot steak and kidney pie and three sausage rolls. No point in dying of hunger.
He looked Stubbs Senior up in the directory. It was a Newmarket number. Dryden was surprised it wasn’t ex- directory – most ex-coppers were. A rare display of public accountability? Or arrogance?
Stubbs Senior answered on the tenth ring. After a brief introduction Dryden said what he wanted. He reckoned he had less than a one in fifty chance of getting anything out of him – and even that was certain to be background only.
‘It’s about a case you investigated in 1966. The papers called it the World Cup Robbery…’
Dryden left silence as a question.
‘Yes. Yes, of course, I remember it well.’
‘There’s been a development.’
If the former deputy chief constable made a reply it was lost in the chimes of what sounded like a shopful of clocks. Dryden checked his wristwatch: 11 a.m. precisely.
Stubbs Senior didn’t bother to explain. ‘Don’t tell me that gypsy kid has finally turned up?’
Dryden wondered how close the Stubbs family was. Had they talked that morning?
‘You could say that. Could we meet, briefly? It would only take a few moments.’
There followed a pause worthy of a deputy chief constable. ‘Dryden, you said? Philip Dryden?’
Dryden decided this needed no answer.
‘I live at Manor Farm – on the Newmarket to Lidgate road. Any time after four would be fine.’ He repeated the address and put the phone down.
Dryden tackled the weekend calls. There was a rota for the chore but he picked up the job most Saturdays. In return Henry looked kindly on his expense claims. One incident worthy of the name: the fire brigade reported an overnight blaze at the circus wintergrounds on Grunty Fen, a stretch of bleak bogland beyond the reclamation skills of even modern drainage engineering. It was an area known locally as The Pools. The police said they were investigating arson. By the newsroom clock he just had time to visit the scene and make his appointment with Stubbs Senior.
Mitch, the gibbering Scotsman, minded his High Street photographic shop on a Saturday and didn’t take pictures for
Humph was first in line. The cabbie had dealt with the impact of divorce on his private life by simply expanding work to fit the empty hours now available. An hour off meant sixty minutes’ kip in a lay-by.
‘Newmarket by way of The Pools. Top speed,’ said Dryden not bothering with hello.
Humph thrummed his delicate fingers against the steering wheel in anticipation of the drive.
They clanked through town past the occasional dedicated shopper flecked with snow. On the market square a few traders had put up stalls for the Saturday craft market but most were watching proceedings from inside the Coffee Pot cafe. The Salvation Army band played stoically at the foot of the war memorial to a crowd that consisted of two dogs and an unaccompanied, and empty, pushchair.
They swept down Forehill and out on to the fen. It took them ten minutes to get out to The Pools. At this time of year the fields of snow were punctured with ponds of ice. Three months a year, out of season, it was the wintergrounds for a travelling circus. It was Kathy’s beat and she got a steady stream of stories, mostly about the animals. Chipperfields it wasn’t; nothing more exotic than a llama amongst the livestock, and the usual old- fashioned rides like dodgems and a small rusting Ferris wheel. The scene was bleak to the point of beauty, like a TV ad for the Irish Tourist Board.
They pulled in beside a circle of caravans, each smoking gently from a stove pipe on the roof. A fire crackled orange-red in the freezing air inside a large open brazier fed by a gaggle of children. The Ferris wheel stood out against the fading light of the sky, dripping a fresh winter crop of lurid orange rust.
Dryden took in the scene: Dogs, he thought.
A Dobermann pinscher strained at one leash and an Alsatian at another. He sat for a few seconds to check the radius of their movement and then got out of the car, pausing to check no unleashed dogs were lurking. Humph made an entirely unnecessary settling-in movement which indicated he was going nowhere.
The flimsy metal door of one of the caravans jerked open and a large man, wrapped in several sweaters, jumped down and came over with a well-measured combination of hostility and nonchalance. He put the open fire between them and said nothing while holding at his side the largest wrench Dryden had ever seen.
A decade of experience had taught Dryden that in such situations ploys are unlikely to work. ‘Hi,
