They faced each other between two bare rose bushes. ‘He wasn’t at the Crossways.’
She fished inside the suede coat, produced a small leather snapshot holder and flipped it open. Inside was a picture of two people laughing, drenched in sunshine after a rainstorm. One was Liz Barnett, hair a bright red, twenty years old, no make-up, in a white linen blouse. She looked fabulous. High cheekbones, flashing green eyes, and a perfect wide smile revealing flawless white teeth.
The boy looked a lot younger than eighteen. The blue-black hair lay in rich curves over a fine narrow face. The eyes dominated the neat features, black and wide and slightly watery. He looked unsure, nervous even, but happy, his hair and shirt damped down from a shower, his bony shoulders showing through.
Dryden flipped the snapshot over.
‘Got one of Roy?’ It was a cheap shot but she laughed.
‘Just for the dartboard. We all make mistakes. Tragedy is when you make one that ruins your life.’
‘He’s a good socialist.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘Yes. Yes, he was. That must have been it.’ Her eyes searched the fen beyond the river.
‘But it wasn’t politics with Tommy?’
She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘No, Dryden. It wasn’t politics. But it was a lot more than sex. All right?’ She looked back at the waiting car as if uncertain whether to go on. ‘He wasn’t at the Crossways. He was with me.’
Dryden considered this alibi. ‘Wouldn’t it have been helpful to have said that at the time? You might have saved his life.’
She took a step back and Dryden thought she’d decided to walk off but she rocked back on her heels and delivered a full-handed slap across his face before he’d even thought of ducking. His eyes swam for a second and he felt tears well.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Dryden managed to suppress the surge of adrenalin. ‘That’s all right then.’ He placed his cold palm against the stinging skin.
She didn’t look sorry. ‘This isn’t a game, you know. A newspaper story. It’s about two ruined lives – three.’
Dryden, having overcome the urge to punch her in the face, now fought back the urge to apologize. ‘So why didn’t you tell the police?’
She ignored the question. ‘We were at the coast. We went to Newmarket on the way, Tommy won, he wouldn’t say how much but he was flush. Then we went to the beach. We had a radio and Tommy listened for the news all afternoon. I guess he knew the job was on.
‘He paid for the B&B at Orford. God knows what they thought. I was married, twenty. He was eighteen. Sounds a bit sordid, doesn’t it? Actually it was rather romantic. I’d been married eighteen months, things weren’t working out. Tommy was fun. He’d never been to the cinema. He’d never sat down to eat a meal unless it was at home. He’d never been on holiday. He’d certainly not been to school, none of the kids at Belsar’s Hill could muster an attendance record. Illiterate.’
She paused and changed tack. ‘Sensitive. He was the youngest in the family, spoilt I suppose. He’d been in trouble a few times, but no more than a lot of kids. But he’d done a fraction of the things they said he had. He’d been set up a few times for things he couldn’t have done. They planted evidence, drummed up witnesses, basic stuff. But with his record he didn’t stand a chance in front of the bench in a town like this. Gyppo. The family couldn’t pay fines.
‘We were away that night at the B&B when they raided Belsar’s Hill. We’d given false names so there was no need to run. They took his brother, Billy, in for questioning, along with the father – Old John. Then they put out the statement, on the morning news, saying they’d found Tommy’s fingerprints at the Crossways. Billy said they’d picked up the prints from Tommy’s caravan.
‘After that there was no point in coming forward with an alibi. The people at the B&B couldn’t swear Tommy was on the coast that afternoon. Anyway the police were hardly likely to let it stand in the way of forensic evidence they’d planted themselves. And we knew they’d planted it.’
The mayoress drifted off into a memory as she started a fresh cigarette.
Dryden smuggled a wine gum from his jacket pocket into his mouth. ‘And then?’
‘Billy phoned the B&B. Tommy trusted him. Left him the number. He said to stay away but they cooked up some place for Tommy to hide. Billy was like him, coarser, knew a bit more about the world, but he loved Tommy. Billy said the police would charge him with murder if the Ward woman died, even if they were claiming he was the third man, the one outside on the forecourt.
‘And he didn’t want to hurt me with the alibi anyway. Roy still had a chance of the parliamentary nomination then. Wouldn’t have looked very good, would it? Family values weren’t an issue in the 1960s, they were taken for granted. It was a basic requirement: wife, family and church. He wouldn’t have got on the parish council if the papers had said his wife was having an affair with an eighteen-year-old boy, let alone a gypsy.’
‘Did Roy ever know? Does he know?’
Dryden took half a step back by way of precaution.
‘Does he care? Don’t ask me. He guessed the basics I think – but no details.’
‘Jealous man?’
‘Indifferent man. Our marriage had broken very quickly. He’d been the first to find someone else. He paid for his.’
Dryden bit his tongue.
‘And I didn’t,’ she said, answering the question anyway.
