The heat in the conservatory had begun to steam the windows. Trickles of water ran down the green-tinted panes. Stubbs was lost in a haze of dreamy mellowness. Dryden guessed he had already said much more than he’d planned.
‘So. How far had your inquiry got before the Yard arrived?’
Stubbs stood abruptly. Dryden stood too, expecting to be thrown out. But the former deputy chief constable was already out of the conservatory door and heading for a pine cabin at the foot of the open paddock behind the house. His gait was long and surprisingly steady. The dogs appeared from nowhere to circle their master.
By the time Dryden got to the cabin the door was wide open and Stubbs was sitting at a desk pulling open the drawers. The cabin was clearly a den. Books lined one wall and filing cabinets the other. A single word processor stood on the desktop with a printer attached. A paraffin heater was pumping out heat.
‘Memoirs,’ said Stubbs, by way of explanation. ‘Here.’ He handed Dryden a brown file marked with a reference number and the single word: ‘Crossways’.
Dryden looked inside.
‘They’re copies of course, they all are. An entire career. I’d like this one back. Don’t show it to anyone else please. Especially my son. Anyway – he should be able to get the originals. Not that he’d know what to do with it. Good luck, Mr Dryden.’
‘What do you want me to prove?’
‘The truth. It would tie up a loose end.’
He patted what looked like a manuscript. His finger found a buzzer on the desktop while he tidied sheets of paper into neat piles. The silent woman appeared again with the inevitable refill. Dryden was ushered out wordlessly.
Humph asked no questions when he got back to the cab but flipped on the tape, bathing the cab in Catalan conversation. They sped back to Ely thinking of entirely different things: an intimacy they often shared and certainly enjoyed.
10
Dryden used his mobile to do
The noticeboard outside West Fen High was flecked with snow and said: ‘This is a Community School’. The building itself had been an advert for trendy sixties architecture. But one winter had scarred the concrete with damp. A thousand aerosol cans had done the rest. Like all bad buildings it had won an award which was bronze, ugly, and set in the wall by reception. The architects still used a picture of West Fen High in their promotional material. An aerial photograph. It was its best side.
The main building was six storeys high and box-like – a sugar cube on the landscape visible from fifteen miles. Four wings spread out from this central pile, prompting unfavourable comparisons with a modern prison. Set on the far side of the city’s ring-road the school was surrounded by fields under snow with just the occasional wobbly goalpost coming up for air.
The uniform at West Fen High was navy blue but you’d never guess. A knot of kids was on the drive in front of reception carrying rolled-up swimming towels. Already the school lights were on – splashing lurid orange squares over the snow. Above the main doors hung a banner – ‘East Anglia Regional Gala’. Dryden left Humph with his language tapes and struggled up the school’s main drive in the dusk. The flapping black greatcoat made him look like a scarecrow on the march.
Inside the main doors two first-formers sat behind a ‘welcome desk’. A ritual – even on a Saturday when the school was open to host sports events. The scandal of West Fen High’s academic results had at least one benefit – designation as a ‘sports college’ and an extra
One of the first-formers behind the desk was asleep, the other must have been trying to win a bet as she was wearing the school uniform. She looked up with barely concealed annoyance from a well-thumbed copy of
‘Hi. Is the head around?’
‘You here about the vandals? Amazing – guess what they did?’
The headmaster, Bernard Matthews, poked his head out of his office as Dryden produced his notebook.
Matthews had that haunted look any teacher would get in a school like West Fen High if they shared their name with East Anglia’s best known turkey farmer. The sound of poultry clucking had dogged him down the years.
‘Dryden. Thank you, Gayle. I’ll look after our unexpected guest’
‘Vigilant as ever,’ said Matthews, grabbing a regulation corduroy jacket from the back of his door. ‘You might as well follow me.’
They set off down one of the cavernous corridors that linked the central block to the outlying classes and the sports complex. Every window was open and snow had blown in on to the lino.
‘Bastards got in late last night. Caretaker was away for the weekend – they must have known. The police made checks but only from the outside. Tell me. Coppers do have legs these days, do they?’
They passed a nature table in the corridor on which was a tank of tropical fish. Tropical no longer, they had suffocated thanks to a thin layer of ice above their heads.
Dryden walked on briskly, leading Matthews away from the nature table. ‘And they just opened all the windows?’
‘No. They started by opening all the windows. Then they got into the cellar and closed the heating system
