1966. They also took a gamble on his last bets being waged on a race at Newmarket. Reardon fished out some leather-bound record books. The cartridge paper creaked with age. Dryden checked his watch – it took Reardon six minutes to find the first entry. Bridie’s Heart had run in October 1966. It was unplaced despite being the clear favourite.
‘Now that’s odd, isn’t it?’ said Reardon.
Dryden nodded, not knowing why.
The ex-jockey checked a reference book. ‘Now here she is. That’s why. She’d won that year already. July 30 –
July 30 – the day of the Crossways robbery. Had Shepherd set up the bet as part of an alibi – an alibi that wouldn’t stand up in the face of a set of fingerprints found at the scene of the crime? Did he ever get to spend his winnings?
Reardon tracked down the card for that day’s racing. Ayers Rock – also at 50–1 – had won the three o’clock. At the precise moment Amy Ward had crumpled to the floor, Ayers Rock had ambled over the finishing line, a clear winner by two lengths.
‘How much did yer man put on ‘em?’
‘A fiver each to win.’
Reardon whistled. ‘Five hundred and ten pounds – including the stake back. Not bad. Not bad at all.’
‘A fortune,’ said Dryden, noting the speed of the jockey’s mental arithmetic. The picture of Tommy as a luckless suicide looked less substantial by the minute.
‘That’s a win,’ he said, winking.
It is, thought Dryden. But you’re still not getting a tip. Then he thought again. Perhaps an afternoon in the Bay Horse might give him a half-day lead on the police investigation. He gave him a fiver and told him not to drink too much.
Dryden walked briskly back to the car counting en route the number of remarkably small men he passed on the street. It was like a day out in Lilliput.
Humph was juggling with a pair of large fluffy dice – the kind usually reserved for the front window of the Ford Capri. Luck was a subject of fascination to the cab driver – or in his case, the lack of it. The cab was fitted out with an array of rabbit’s feet, and a horseshoe had been fastened above the rear-view mirror. It obscured just enough of the rear view to invite an accident.
Dryden banged the dashboard. ‘Lidgate. Chop chop.’
They set out through the plush villages in the hills above the town, villages in marked contrast to the damp- soaked drabness of the Fen towns. Clear of the peat of the Fens medieval buildings had survived the centuries. Whitewashed stones bordered trim village greens.
They were at Stubbs Senior’s country house at 3.50 p.m. Humph, exercising discretion, parked the decrepit Capri round the corner. Dryden walked in, round the camomile lawn and the magnolia tree, and up a sweeping gravel drive. The house was an old manor farm. To one side were stables topped off with a clock tower.
Who says crime doesn’t pay, he thought.
A small fish pond was frozen solid. A large off-colour goldfish was lying belly-up just below the surface.
An elderly man appeared from the side of the house, two red setters at his heels, a third appearing from the lilac bushes.
Stubbs Senior stood his ground and waited for Dryden. Distinguished was the word. And tweed was the material. He had a head like a cannonball and no neck. His eyes were as dead cold as any in an identikit. He looked nothing like his son – except for the antiseptic cleanliness. Dryden guessed he was seventy – perhaps older.
‘Mr Dryden?’
Stubbs carried two sticks but Dryden noticed he took both off the ground to point out the distant gallops on Newmarket Heath. Most surprising, in an ex-deputy chief constable, were the extravagant laughter lines around the eyes. His handshake was enthusiastic too, even warm. If this was an act, thought Dryden, it was the result of a lifetime’s practice.
They sat in the conservatory amongst orchids, a vine, and a spreading fig tree. A grandfather clock ticked in one corner and the interior wall of the house supported thirty timepieces, mostly antique.
‘Hobby?’ said Dryden.
The former deputy chief constable looked through him. ‘Was.’
On a marble table an intricate glass mechanism gurgled with flowing water. An elegant glass bowl fed water down a pipe to power a tiny gold mechanism which, through a series of flywheels and gears, turned the hands on a filigree clock face. Dryden examined the carved teak base. An engraved silver plaque said: ‘To Deputy Chief Constable Bryan Stubbs on the occasion of his retirement. From his colleagues in the Cambridgeshire force.’
‘Clepsydra,’ said Stubbs. ‘A water clock. The Egyptians had them.’
The heating was generous and all the ice and snow had melted from the roof and windows. The furniture was wicker with comfy cushions, striking unfortunate echoes of an old people’s home. A woman, who remained nameless and unintroduced, brought tea and biscuits for Dryden, a small glass bucket of whisky for Stubbs.
‘How can I help, Mr Dryden?’
Dryden eyed the whisky furtively. The curiosity he had heard in Stubbs’s voice on the phone had evaporated. Some of the bonhomie of the introductions had evaporated too. He felt like an intruder on borrowed time. And the trickling water clock reminded him of the two pints of bitter he’d bolted down at Newmarket. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
As always in times of supreme insecurity he decided to attack, but Stubbs got there first. ‘Where did they find the gypsy boy?’
