Broderick closed a book on his desk in which Dryden glimpsed a line drawing of an orchid. ‘I had a visit yesterday. CID from Lynn. DI Peter Shaw. Same question. Which is good news for you because I think he did most of the work.’
The major led the way along a painted brick corridor to a staircase. At the bottom was an iron door with a double lock. Inside they were blinded by an array of hanging, naked light bulbs illuminating half a dozen metal bookcases packed with box files. The room smelled of old newspapers and something stringent, possibly rat poison or disinfectant.
‘Regimental records,’ said Broderick. ‘The 36th took the key security role for the 1990 operation, organized the evacu ation, the final convoy out and then a complete search, for obvious reasons.’
Dryden recalled reports at the time that opponents of the evacuation were threatening to get through the wire and hide in the village, a human shield against bombardment.
‘Then the Royal Engineers got stuck in, mapped the place, ran up an inventory of what was there in terms of the built environment: homes, commercial premises, cellars, drains, electrics. That was Colonel Flanders May and his men.’
‘You in the TA then?’ asked Dryden.
‘Yup. Cadet. We did the transport on the day – big job actually, nightmare to organize, especially when dealing with civilians. That wasn’t in the village though, it was my job to help run the depot here in Ely. You can tell a soldier where to go but these people had to be eased out in front of the press with cameras everywhere. Up until the passing of the deadline we had very little actual jurisdiction. Persuasion, not force. As I say, bloody good training.’
Dryden saw again the old woman being dragged from her home on The Dring.
‘There was trouble on the day,’ said Dryden.
Broderick nodded, but made no response.
At the end of the room a trestle table held a few spilled box files.
The major picked up one of the sheets of paper, covered with the archaic jumble of a manual typewriter’s letters.
‘This is the stuff on Jude’s Ferry?’ asked Dryden.
‘Yup. The CID man – Shaw – brought a warrant but I told him he’d wasted his time. What with freedom of information and everything we’d have to allow public access – hardly needed the power of the courts behind him. Thorough kind of policeman. Anyway, nice bloke. Bit odd – dyed hair. Blond.’
‘Good God,’ said Dryden, trying for irony, and reflecting that a career as a part-time soldier seemed to have aged Broderick well beyond his thirty-something generation.
Broderick bristled. ‘Still. Seemed to know what he was up to. No tie, mind you, which was a bit sloppy. I bet he makes his DS wear one.’
There was a long silence into which a kettle whistled somewhere on the ground floor above.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said the major. ‘Clearly, you can’t take anything away, and I’d ask you to use a pencil to take notes. Sounds like my corporal is making tea – I’ll get him to bring you some.’
Dryden wondered if he was being nice to head off a bad press over the Jude’s Ferry bombing.
‘The paper’s out,’ he said, handing him the copy he’d bought from Skeg.
Broderick took it, snapping the front page flat. ‘Right. I’d better sit down and read this.’
‘Help yourself.’
The major closed the door crisply behind him and Dryden settled at the table with his back to it and the rest of the room. The hair on his neck bristled and he kept hearing the tiny shuffle of paper creaking in the box files, so he pulled out the table and took a seat on the far side. Under the crude, unshaded lights dust drifted like blossom in May.
DI Shaw had indeed made his job simple. The documents had been sorted into four separate sets, the first being the questionnaires the villagers had filled in to assist the engineers in mapping Jude’s Ferry. Dryden flipped through until he found the New Ferry Inn, Woodruffe, Ellen – Licensee. Tick-boxes and sketches indicated the position of rooms, attic spaces, main services, building materials and, finally, cellars. Those beneath the inn were clearly shown, three rooms, with electric and water supplies. No cellars were marked for the outbuildings. The signature was Ellen Woodruffe’s, although the hand was shaky and irregular.
The principal set of documents was a census of Jude’s Ferry taken after the MoD gave the villagers notice to quit three months before the evacuation. The announcement was made on Friday 20 April – each household receiving a letter that day. A copy was on the file. Dryden took a shorthand note of the key line:
While there is a pressing military need for the village to be evacuated to allow unhindered use of the surrounding firing range there is every expectation that the international situation will allow a return of the civilian population in due course.
Dryden’s tea arrived, a half pint in a tin mug, ferried down by a sullen corporal.
Alone again he considered the details of the first census. The number of inhabitants was listed as 112, including forty-six women and eight children. These were distributed in fifty-one households – including the four single-occupancy almshouses on The Dring. There were sixteen commercial properties, including the then defunct beet factory, which still had a watchman/caretaker on site. It took Dryden only a few minutes to work out that there were just twenty-one men aged between twenty and thirty-five in the village at that point – early May 1990. Any one of them could have ended up on the end of a rope in the cellar.
The second census narrowed the search. It had been taken six days before the final evacuation. It listed all those people from the first document, but most had left by that point and were marked as NON RESIDENT. The total population was given as just forty-three – of which only seven were men in that age bracket. Dryden took the names down:
Paul Cobley, Mere Taxis, Bridge Street
Jason Imber, Orchard House, Church Street
James Neate, Neate’s Garage, Church Street
Mark Smith, 14 The Crescent
Matthew Smith, 14 The Crescent
Peter Tholy, 3 The Dring.
Ken Woodruffe, New Ferry Inn
