19
Belsar’s Hill – the travellers’ site that had been the home of Tommy Shepherd at the time of the Crossways robbery – had been an encampment for more than a thousand years. A ten-foot-high earthwork in a perfect circle surrounded a hollow corral. Through the site ran an old drove road, cutting in half a landscape already a thousand years old when the Normans landed at Hastings. The earth couldn’t be farmed, and the site couldn’t be levelled, because of its status as an Ancient Monument. The rampart provided natural protection from the elements and for animals – with wide gates closing off both ends of the drove road after dark. In the sixties the county council had put in a waterpipe and a toilet block on the basis that a gypsy site at Belsar’s Hill was in very few people’s backyards. Protests from the few local farms had been vociferous, then bitter, then resigned and now folklore.
As Humph’s Capri clattered through the open gate the dull percussion of barking dogs rose to greet them. An unruly pack strained from a set of leashes tied to an iron stake in the centre of the clearing. Half a dozen shiny aluminium caravan trailers stood neatly in the lee of the western half of the ramparts. The snow was dotted with dogshit and paw prints.
Dryden put a leg outside the car. He dangled it as if fishing for a Dobermann pinscher. He caught an Alsatian instead, which came bounding out from beneath one of the caravans and left four feet of bubbling slobber along the nearside cab window.
A caravan door opened and Joe Smith appeared.
Why am I not surprised? thought Dryden. And he’s got that bloody wrench again.
Humph switched his latest language tape back on and closed his eyes. The sound of the sea filled the cab as Manuel described a day on the beach at Tarragona.
‘Thanks. A friend in need,’ said Dryden.
Smith ambled up to the car with the calm assurance of ownership. The dogs orbited the vehicle like satellites. He wore a heavy quilted jacket against the cold, the empty left arm pinned up across the chest. Dryden inched the window down and fed a brown envelope through the crack. It held large photographic prints of the circus winterground’s fire. Smith examined them slowly, nodding.
‘Coincidence, you here,’ offered Dryden, looking around the encampment as if for the first time. ‘I was looking for Billy Shepherd. Tommy’s brother.’
Smith crouched down on his haunches. ‘You’ve seen him, Mister.’
Dryden noted that the accent was stronger, more streetwise, less forgiving. He wasn’t surprised by the answer but he contrived to look it. Smith bore so little resemblance to the one picture Dryden had seen of Tommy that it was difficult to believe they shared a mother, let alone that they had been born less than a year apart. Only the cobalt blue-black hair provided a link across four decades.
‘Any chance of talking to him as well?’
Shepherd stood in answer and walked away towards one of the caravans with the Alsatian at his heels. Both disappeared inside. Dryden followed after a decent interval.
The trailer’s interior was immaculate: a museum of trinkets and mementos of dubious taste. The Alsatian had metamorphosed into a family pet and was curled under the table. China figurines crowded the shelves and the walls were all but obscured by heavy gilt-edged frames around prints and photographs. Lace fringed the net curtains, cushions and tablecloth. The smell of furniture polish was so strong it hurt Dryden’s throat. It seemed colder inside the caravan than out, the cosiness of the heavy snow being replaced by an almost antiseptic, over-polished cleanliness. Billy Shepherd lit a gas heater with a pop, its warmth creeping out to reawaken the damp.
Dryden sat at a glass-topped table and Shepherd offered him a cigarette–Lucky Strike. Dryden took one and examined it carefully. Billy answered the unspoken question. ‘US air base at Mildenhall. Old habits.’
Under the glass table top was a large black and white print of Houdini’s successful attempt to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
‘America?’ asked Dryden. It was as good a place to start as any.
Shepherd drew deeply on the Lucky Strike. ‘Nineteen sixty-eight. After Tommy went missing.’
Dryden wondered, if Tommy had lived would he look like this? Smith’s face was hard and unforgiving, the facets meeting in sharp cheekbones below the bottle-green eyes.
‘We’d dreamed about it as kids. Grandad had been.’ He tapped the glass top over the print. ‘Full of stories. Kids’ dreams. So I went.’
Dryden’s silence enticed him on.
‘There was an uncle in Jersey City – Mum’s brother. I worked in a car breakers in Washington Heights. Married a local girl. Family. Then this…’
He nodded at the empty sleeve pinned to his overalls.
‘Accident?’
‘Car crusher.’ They winced together. ‘Came back last Christmas. Left the wife – we’re separated. Brought the daughter. That’s my life, anything else while you’re here?’
‘I’m trying to find out who killed your brother. I need some help.’
Shepherd fixed his extraordinary green eyes on Dryden. The Alsatian growled in his sleep.
Dryden pressed on. ‘The police thought Tommy had killed himself when they found his body. Now they’re not so sure. The body pulled out of the Lark last week was Reg Camm, who left his prints at the Crossways. Something he had in common with Tommy. The only difference being that they already had Tommy’s on file. Did you see your brother after the robbery?’
Shepherd put a finger into his eye and appeared to remove his pupil. He examined the contact lens while Dryden’s stomach did a somersault.
‘I don’t want to be involved with the police.’
Dryden decided, bizarrely, on honesty. ‘This is more than a story for me. I need to know because I have to help
