The Water Clock

extraordinary. The painfully clear blue of a winter’s sky seen through the crushed white lens of the ice. He’d sunk, drifting down river, away from the jagged circle where he had crashed through the ice. Looking up into the receding world, he had been too young to know he was drowning. He’d felt like sleeping after the first panic of the fall. Sleeping where the light was dimmer and wouldn’t hurt his eyes. Below. He had been ten, and drowning, looking up into a world he didn’t want to leave.

Boxing Day. He’d been given skates but told to stick to the frozen pond behind the barn. But that was dull. The channel which began by the barn led away from Burnt Fen on its tiny island and out into the secret maze of drains and ditches frozen silent in that bitter winter. He’d skated faster, faster, and finally out, with a great whoop, into the wide expanse of the river.

He still loved that place – not ten miles from where he now stood. It had been his world. He could see for ever and see no one. He hadn’t been a lonely child. He had a voice inside him to keep him company. But the voice failed him that Boxing Day morning. It didn’t see the thin ice where the swans had slept.

But the voice had not deserted him. As he sank, it whispered a single word. ‘Skates.’ They’d been his best present. He’d sat by the Christmas tree to open the blue and silver parcel. ‘Skates,’ said his voice again. And he’d understood. So he pulled the laces and watched them sink into the gloom below.

He’d risen until his head bumped the ice which froze to his hair, anchoring him to the spot. He wanted to cry then, for the rest of Christmas he was going to miss. His voice had gone. Or too far away to hear.

That was the one moment he would always remember. The unhappiest moment of a happy childhood. The empty desolation of being on the wrong side of that sheet of ice, in the cold sterile water, while the fire burnt at the farm and the smell of Christmas food seeped out of the kitchen. And above him always the criss-crossed pattern of his own skates.

Humph hooted from the cab. Dryden ambled over, drained of energy by the familiar chilling memory. The crow had called on the mobile and they wanted copy. Humph delivered all messages in a flat monotone – indicating indifference. ‘I told ‘em the police were about to issue a statement and you were holding on for that… another ten minutes. They’ll ring back…’

Dryden slammed the cab door and leant on the roof with his notebook. As so often when faced with a white sheet of paper and a deadline Dryden thought about something else. He saw Humph on the steps of the high court, the decree nisi in one hand, and his daughter by the other. It was the last time he’d seen him smile.

Humph waved the mobile at him through the side window. Dryden kicked the side of the cab and began to compose a paragraph for the Stop Press. In the best traditions of British journalism it said nothing with great style.

He was steeling himself for the ordeal of filing it to Jean, The Crow’s half-deaf copytaker, when the fire brigade’s winch started to whine. As the cables took the strain he heard the ice crack. By the time he got to the bank a spider’s web of silver lines had appeared across the ice. The helicopter dropped thirty feet and the downblast swept the loose ice to the banks. The car jerked up a foot, the steel frame creaking and howling under the strain. The metallic blue roof appeared, then the rear windscreen, and then the boot. By the time it reached the bank, water was pouring from two broken side windows. It came to rest on the bank top and, as the cables held it fast, the frogmen searched the inside by torchlight.

It took thirty seconds for their body language to tell him everything he needed to know. He could see relaxation in every practised movement. No sign of a driver or passengers.

Dumped car – big deal. But he got the details. A Nissan Spectre. Latest registration. No bumps, scrapes or window stickers. Road tax paid. Glove compartments empty. They put the torches on the boot and bonnet. Dryden was getting into the cab when one of the firemen gave a shout. He sprinted back, telling Humph to hold the copytaker on line.

They had the arc lamp trained on the open boot. For a second Dryden could not understand what he saw: it looked like the back of a butcher’s van. Inside was what was left of a large slab of ice glistening with melted water. Inside that was a body in an unrecognizable form. It had not been cut to fit, but compressed and twisted into the space.

A great Guy Fawkes rocket burst overhead, the stark white light making the image burn into his retina.

There was one body. Male? The face stared at them – one particular eyeball so close to the surface of the ice it reflected the blue electricity of the arc lamp back into the night. The thick, greying, corn-blond hair was matted with dried blood.

At first Dryden thought the head had been severed from its body. It lay twisted and back over its own shoulder. Then he saw the knuckle of bloodied vertebrae protruding from the neck and the thick flap of flesh that still joined shoulder to head. The sudden exposure to the heat of the lamps was melting the ice quickly, the fingers of one hand beginning to protrude along with a naked, blue-veined foot. Around the flesh streaks of black blood made the white skin look like ice-cream drizzled with chocolate.

One of the frogmen was sick in the long grass. Stubbs was unmoved. In control. He called the police photographer over to capture the position of the body before the ice melted. Then he used the squad-car radio to get the pathologist, coroner’s officer, and forensic team. Murder inquiry procedure.

Dryden told the copytaker the story was coming: he did that twice to make sure she’d heard the first time. Three hundred and fifty words by five-thirty. He wrote the intro and gave the rest off the top of his head. It wasn’t great – but it was in time.

Police launched a murder hunt yesterday after the butchered body of a man was found locked in the boot of a car winched out of the frozen River Lark, near Ely.

The police recovered the car – a new blue Nissan Spectre – from 15 feet of water two miles south of the village of Prickwillow after children skating on the river spotted it below the ice.

Det. Sgt. Andrew Stubbs of Ely Police, said: ‘Clearly we are treating this incident as suspicious. We have begun a murder inquiry and would appeal to anyone who can help with information to come forward.’

The police were unable to provide any clue to the identity of the dead man or the ownership of the car. Forensic experts from Cambridge were due to arrive at the scene late last night. The body was being prepared for removal to the city mortuary at Waterbeach.

One eyewitness to the recovery of the car, Ely taxi driver Mr Humphrey H. Holt, said: ‘When they got the car out it was a block of ice. Then they got to work on it with the blowtorches. All hell broke loose when they opened the boot. It must have been a horrible sight – they were obviously distressed.’

Detectives will concentrate on trying to identify the dead man. It is understood that his head was nearly