‘When you called looking for help after Tommy’s body was found he couldn’t stop himself, he saw it as a way of paying off his debts. And of course he sought vindication for his deceit. He always said Tommy Shepherd was guilty. The fact that he’d fabricated the evidence didn’t mean he was innocent. He wanted you to prove it.’
Dryden presses his forehead to the glass in the schoolroom window. ‘The water clock. Clepsydra.’ He saw again the gurgling glass mechanism and the ornate fretted face of the clock in Stubbs’s conservatory.
‘And the tribunal?’
Stubbs sighs deeply. ‘Busted me down to DC. Wish they’d thrown me out.’
The next sound is not nature’s. The shotgun blast is sharper than the thunder, nearer. When they get to the window they see Billy sprawled in the slush, a dark black, spreading river running from an ugly jagged hole through the thigh of the waders. The shotgun, still uncocked, lies beside him.
The banging back door misses another beat.
‘Who?’ asks Stubbs, but there is no time. There are only seconds now until they must meet Tommy’s killer.
Dryden leads the way into the front bedroom. Stubbs casts his torch beam across the iron bedstead, the wardrobes, the two armchairs coated with melting frost.
In one corner stands a screen Dryden’s mother used to block the draught. A large silvered mirror, blackened at the edges, hangs over the bed. On the window ledge a crow’s carcass twitches in the wind.
‘I need a minute with him,’ Dryden said. ‘Just listen. He thinks I’m alone. Go behind the screen.’
Stubbs hesitates.
‘I asked you to bring a gun.’
The policeman takes a pistol from his jacket pocket. ‘It was his. Shooting club,’ he says, slipping behind the screen.
Dryden plays decoy and settles in the armchair by the window. He counts sixty seconds in which his life does not flash before his eyes. Then he sees a torch’s swaying beam touch the wallpaper in the hallway. Then it dazzles his eyes, and he braces himself for the shot, but knows it will not come. A second’s silence deepens and the doubt blossoms. But then he hears it, the wheezing breath. The torch moves quickly on, checking the screen, the wardrobes, the bedstead and the mirror.
Dryden’s eyes reassemble the greys and blacks to form a picture. Josh Nene stands in the doorway, a shotgun held in the crook of his elbow. His boots glisten with water over the ever-present blue overalls.
‘Dryden.’ A cloud of steaming breath rises and catches a moonbeam. The ice is returning with the night. ‘My congratulations.’
Nene takes a step closer. The barrel of the shotgun shakes and his fingers clench and unclench themselves around the stock.
‘Who was the man outside?’
‘Billy Shepherd. I don’t blame you for not recognizing him. It’s been a long time.’
Nene’s eyes widen, the whites catching the flicker of the lightning outside.
Dryden keeps talking. ‘Surprised? That was one of the keys of course. He was alive because you thought he was in America. No need to kill him when Tommy’s body was found. But if he’d been here you’d have tracked him down. He didn’t know your name, but you couldn’t have risked him finding you if he knew Tommy was dead.’
He cocks the gun. ‘We have very little time, Dryden, but I am intrigued. May I ask how we find ourselves here?’
Dryden hears a footstep slide behind the screen, Nene misses it.
‘We find ourselves here because of Martha Jane Elliott – 1891 to 1976. Or rather because of her gravestone.’
‘My wife’s aunt.’
‘Your wife’s aunt and benefactor. The woman who left a small fortune to your wife, which enabled you to buy the building yard and a business in which, until then, you had been merely a lowly employee.’
‘A badly paid, exploited and abused employee.’ Nene takes another step forward into the light. Despite the cold Dryden can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
‘The churchyard at St John’s at Little Ouse tells a different story. Martha died a pauper. She had no money to leave. I checked with the Registrar of Wills to make sure. That was a mistake, vandalizing the headstones.’
Nene’s eyes flicker, calculating. ‘One mistake. I left the stone. There was no hurry. But things got out of hand. I had to act quickly’
‘You were there that night I visited John Tavanter?’
Nene studies the room and makes no answer.
Dryden keeps talking. ‘Did Reg have to die? You’d ruined his life of course, but was he the killing type? But then he wanted to die anyway, he’d tried enough times. Perhaps he would have come after you, or gone to the police. That’s more likely. A confession would have been fatal for you. You’d have lost everything. And you’d risked so much to keep it.
‘And he’d never guessed. No one had. Pretending your wife inherited the money was a masterstroke. And you waited ten years. That’s impressive. A decade of patience. Perhaps you were Gladstone Roberts’s silent partner in Cathedral Motors? Good return, no doubt. And silence guaranteed.’
Nene laughs but his calculations are running too fast now, out of control.
‘What did you tell your wife?’
