Half-blind, Dryden scrambles down the stairs. The water is knee-deep in the hallway below. Frantically he wades to the front door and throws it open as the lightning comes again. The world outside is a riot of water. Ice, cracked and floating past, gathers against the farmhouse walls. He backtracks down the hall and hears upstairs Nene’s stumbling footfalls.
The panic buzzes in his spine and lifts the hairs on his head. He runs across the yard as the thunder crashes again and, passing Billy’s body, rounds the barn. Here, in his childhood, he fished in the pond which stretched to the road. In the darkness he does not know he is on it until his feet slip on the surface. The still deep water, in the long shadow of the barn, has kept its carapace of ice.
He skates for a few seconds and then falls, breaking through, and the water goes over his head. The shock almost stops his heart and he sinks, blindly struggling now, out of the light.
And back. Slowly back, as he falls into the darkness and the pain begins to fade. The panic has obliterated the present. He leapfrogs the years to his childhood, past Laura, past Fleet Street, past school. A newsreel of his life in reverse.
And then it’s Boxing Day again. So he closes his body into a ball so that he can reach the skates. The Christmas skates. It’s his nightmare and he’s living it again. He finds the laces and releases them and the weights fall away.
For a moment he hangs in perfect balance. Then slowly he rises. Rises to the clear ice surface above. The pain has gone and he gulps the anaesthetic water until his face touches the ice and his hair begins, instantly, to freeze to the surface. His hands press up with a feeble force.
The sense of loss is overwhelming, as it always is. The warm farmhouse at Christmas. The fire. The present still to be opened. And his parents. All of this, just the other side of the ice.
He hears the footsteps before he sees them. The thuds rhythmic and ever stronger. For a second he finds a new fear. That they’ll pass him by. But then they’re over his head. The familiar patterned soles of his father’s waders.
The blow is stunning when it falls. Cracking the ice and covering the world with millions of silver fissures. And the sound! From the cotton-wool silence of the frozen water to the storm above. The sudden crackling of the lightning, the rolls of thunder and the liquid rush of the flood.
A hand, massively strong, reaches down and drags him back into the world. He hugs him then. And calls his father’s name. And Philip Dryden cries for joy.
Billy Shepherd pulled Dryden from the ice. The shotgun had removed a chunk of thigh muscle but nothing worse. He had been conscious when Dryden had run across the farmyard. His call had been lost in the sound of the storm. Once he got him out of the water he used the mobile to phone the police. By the time they arrived he’d lost three pints of blood. He made a full recovery and returned to New York with his daughter and grandchildren. Dryden paid for the tickets.
Josh Nene died from a pistolshot which severed his windpipe and jugular.
Detective Constable Andy Stubbs was severely injured by Nene’s single shotgun blast. He was hospitalized for six months. He appealed against his demotion without success. His father visited him the night after the events at Burnt Fen Farm. Bryan Stubbs stayed for an hour. Then he returned to his country house, fed the dogs, and took an overdose of sleeping pills. He left a note that said he wasn’t sorry for anything except the events at Harrimere Drain. He repeated his belief that Tommy Shepherd had been at the Crossways.
George Parker Warren was charged with car theft and convicted. In the dock, scandalized by the quality of prison food while on remand, he decided to cut his sentence and cooperate with the police. He said he had stolen the car for Gladstone Roberts. Roberts in turn admitted giving Warren ?200 for the car, having been paid ?800 by Josh Nene to get a vehicle at short notice. He’d pocketed the difference. Warren got six months.
Roberts had a less comfortable time. The police requested details of the partnership that had set up Cathedral Motors. His silent partner had indeed been Josh Nene. Roberts had bought him out in 1976. He escaped a charge, there being no evidence that he knew the origins of Nene’s capital. But his fingerprints were found on?? 122.He said Nene had told him to stop Dryden’s investigation or face the consequences if the builder was arrested and revealed the source of his capital. He also admitted twice getting into the Tower and moving Laura to leave the cuttings from the maps under her pillow. He was jailed for two years.
John Tavanter, Liz Barnett, and husband Roy, read about the end of the case in The Crow.
Gary Pymore spent forty-eight hours stranded on a roof at Lode Cottages in the middle of the worst natural disaster to hit the Fens for a century. He filed regular news stories and features by army radio which were syndicated in the Daily Telegraph. He won an award as Provincial Reporter of the Year as a result and Henry gave him his own desktop PC by way of reward.
Kathy recovered her sight but was plagued by headaches and dizzy spells. She was offered ?16,000 by the town council’s lawyers to settle out of court. She took it. She packed what she owned into the red MG and left Ely for Fleet Street. Dryden got her the job. They never met again but he smiled when he saw the by- line.
Laura is still in the Tower. If Gladstone Roberts’s evidence could be believed he had broken into her room twice. This suggested that the first time she had shown signs of coming out of her coma – on the night of Friday, November 2 – she had indeed made a critical breakthrough in her recovery. If Gladstone Roberts was telling the truth…
Dryden is at her bedside. Waiting.
Humph is listening to his latest language tape in a lay-by. Polish.
