accident unit. The steel cables ran to the county police force’s portable winch, which in turn was connected by cable to the fire engine’s generator. An industrial pump was churning out hot water in a steaming gush from the bank, gradually producing a pond of slush which bubbled around the divers. Beside the single arc lamp uniformed police officers were setting up scene-of-crime lights along the bank. One of the firemen was filming the scene with a hand-held video camera. There was enough hardware for the climax of a Hollywood disaster movie – on ice.
Dryden had seen it all before. The emergency services could never pass up an opportunity to wheel out their toys and put in some real-time training. He half expected the force helicopter to
‘Quite a show, Mr Stubbs.’
Stubbs looked right through him. The effect was oddly unthreatening. Dryden felt better and grinned back.
For a detective sergeant of the Mid-Cambridgeshire Constabulary Andy Stubbs managed to radiate an almost complete absence of authority. His face was so undistinguished it could have been included in a thousand identity parades, and his eyes were an equally forgettable grey. His hair was short and fair, echoing the talcum-powdered dryness of his skin. He reeked of Old Spice.
Dryden fingered his collar. Stubbs’s colourless coolness always made him uncomfortable. He put on his desperate face: one down from suicidal and one across from murderous. He stepped closer. ‘Any ideas? I’m a bit pushed for time.’
Stubbs decided to talk, not because he could see any advantage in it, but because he liked Dryden, or more accurately he envied him: envied him his lack of order and responsibilities, his freedom, and his untied existence. And he pitied him. Pitied him for the very reason for that freedom: a beautiful wife confined to a hospital bed for the rest of her life.
‘There’s something under the ice,’ he said.
Dryden screamed inwardly. He could see that for himself.
‘And that’s off the record – it’s all off – OK?’
Dryden held out both hands to indicate that his notebook was back inside the greatcoat – not that that had ever stopped him remembering a good quote. ‘We never spoke, Mr Stubbs.’
‘The river froze last night around 2 a.m. – the frogmen say the sheet of ice was unbroken. So the car went in before then. The nearest habitation is the Five Miles from Anywhere, the pub over there. Must be a mile. They don’t get much trade in winter. They’ve heard nothing – saw a few fires around last night – but that’s par for the course around Guy Fawkes.’ As if on cue a distant percussion echoed round the fen. They turned to see a cascade of orange and red fireworks burst over the distant silhouette of Ely Cathedral, standing two hundred feet above the black peat Fens.
‘Who found it?’
‘Kids. Skating. You can see something clearly from above. But today’s the first day they’ve been out on the river – so it could have been there for weeks.’ Stubbs looked reluctant to go on. ‘I’ve got no real idea what we’ve got, Dryden, and that’s off the record too. I can’t afford some damn fool quote in the paper.’
Not again.
Six weeks earlier Stubbs had responded to an emergency call relayed from county headquarters. An anonymous member of the public said a car had crashed in a field known as Pocket Park on the edge of town. It was a local landmark and the site of Ely’s annual fair. By the time Stubbs got there it was dark and there was no sign of the car in the field. So he called it a hoax and went home to tea.
The following day they found the driver dead at the wheel in the next field. The coroner ruled that the victim, an eighty-four-year-old pensioner, had died instantly from a heart attack, having swerved off the main road and carried a ditch.
It was the local TV that crucified Stubbs. A two-man team from Cambridge caught him on his front step the next night. The house was in worst Barrett Estate Tudor. His wife, Gaynor, made the mistake of coming out to greet him with the two kids – a show of solidarity which made good TV. The news crew flooded the front garden with an arc lamp and blinded the kids, who started crying. It was just about the worst time to be asked the one question he couldn’t really answer.
‘Any message for the family of the dead man, Detective Sergeant?’
Fatally, Stubbs tried irony: ‘We all make mistakes.’
It was a great headline and excruciating TV. Stubbs was up for a police tribunal – failing to follow proper procedure. It didn’t help being the son of a former deputy chief constable. So no more quotes. And no more cock- ups – which explained what appeared to be massive overreaction to a dumped car.
Dryden was running out of time. ‘No problem – all off the record. Just a short statement saying nothing is fine, but give us a clue. I’ve got a story to file – at the moment it looks like “mystery surrounds”. Bit thin. Any idea if the driver is still on board?’
Stubbs started to answer and then they heard it: the
‘Well, we are honoured.’ Dryden made a mental note to get some stills off the fire brigade’s video for
Stubbs popped some chewing gum and tugged at the overtight tie and starched white nylon collar of his shirt. ‘It’s a car. It must have been doing sixty to get that far out from the bank. Either the driver’s in it or he got out just in time – and if he got out just in time he knew he was ditching it. So why ditch it that far from the bank? There are some fairly fresh tyre marks running to the edge, but no signs of a skid on the road. And as far as we can tell no other tyre marks at all in the last twenty-four hours.’
The detective walked off to indicate the end of the conversation. The helicopter arrived on the scene and hovered about sixty feet above the frogmen, adding its searchlight to the blaze of electricity. Dryden checked his watch. He had another ten minutes in which to file – tops. The downdraught from the helicopter had taken a few more degrees off the temperature so he walked to the high flood bank, and then eastwards beside a bleak field of winter beet.
He looked out over the black water and shivered at a memory from his childhood. Another frozen river and a skating child. The sound of cracking ice and the sudden plummet into the shocking water. The colour had been
