‘Sorry. I work for
Neate didn’t move his face, but he withdrew his leading foot an inch. ‘You probably heard about it on the radio,’ said Dryden. ‘I’m just checking on anyone who was in the village in those last days who would fit the age of the victim. Police called already?’
‘Phone,’ said Neate, drinking from the mug. Dryden noticed that Neate’s ring finger was bare.
Dryden nodded. ‘What about your dad; Walter, wasn’t it?’
‘Dad’s fine, he’s still a partner in the business. We look after him.’ He slopped the dregs of the tea in the dust.
Dryden could feel the interview dying on its feet. He wondered why Walter needed looking after but felt his witness had become hostile. From the Capri came the sound of Humph biting clean through the Cornish pasty, the upper set of teeth meeting the lower set with an enamel click. ‘You don’t sell food, do you?’ asked Dryden.
Neate nodded and walked off towards the engine shed. A small office had been built inside to house the till. The place was deserted except for a brown-sugar Labrador which lay, as fat as a pig, on the cool concrete. There was a cold unit with a few pre-packed sandwiches, rolls, pies, biscuits, crisps and sweets. Dryden bought something he didn’t want and looked around as Neate got the change. A Ford van was up on a ramp for service, the entrails of the engine spilling out, dangling down like severed arteries. At one end of the shed logs were piled for sale, and down the side charcoal bags for barbecues.
‘How’s business?’
Neate smiled, indulging Dryden’s attempt to keep the interview going. ‘No worse than it was at Jude’s Ferry.’
He threw the rag onto a workbench. ‘In fact it’s better – we specialize.’ He nodded to one wall of the old shed which was covered with a board from which hung various car parts in cellophane wrappers. An advertising banner read FIRESTONE AUTO TIRES.
‘Left-hand drives,’ said Neate. ‘We do repairs, spares, the lot. Good market with the US air bases – they all get a car, pick-up, whatever, shipped when they’re posted. They need the indicators changed, the dip altered, that kind of stuff. It’s a tidy business.’
Dryden nodded, freshly amazed at how little interest he had in motor cars.
‘Sorry about the questions,’ he said, turning back towards the cab, where he could see Humph had finished his lunch and was preparing for a siesta.
Dryden got out in the sun then stopped and swung round so that Neate was closer than either of them had planned. ‘Who’d you reckon it is? The man in the cellar? On my reckoning there are only half a dozen possibilities… you must have known them all.’
‘If he’s from the village,’ Neate said, rocking back on his heels.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Dryden, lying.
‘We went back one year for the service, coupla years after Dad’s health started to slide. There was graffiti and stuff in the church, and a campfire down by the river. The army can’t keep people out. There’s a fence here, behind the pines, and there’s a hole – they don’t check as often as they say. OK they’ve patched it up, but there are others along the boundary. I’ve seen people on the far side, dusk, with guns, out for the rabbits and pheasants. I don’t think you’ll ever find out who it is. That’s why he chose Jude’s Ferry, he doesn’t want you or anyone else to know who he is, or why he died.’
Dryden nodded, thinking it had been quite a speech off the cuff. ‘Don’t suppose you remember Colonel Broderick? He ran the cut-flower business by the allotments. Blooms – that the name?’
Neate was looking at the wreck that was Humph’s beloved cab. He squatted down, looking under the rear bumper, examining a dent in the boot.
‘Everybody knew everybody in the Ferry,’ he said. ‘But it’s not gonna be him, is it? He must have been – what – seventy?’
‘I was just interested. I know his son.’
Neate straightened up. ‘The colonel lived alone and grew his flowers. The son visited, holidays and stuff. Didn’t seem especially close, you know. Dutiful I guess. By the end the old man was in a wheelchair, so he had help, but we didn’t see much more of the son, less if anything. Anyway, the Brodericks had money so they didn’t talk to people like us except when they wanted their four-wheel drives filled up.’
‘The son’s a major in the TA, in fact he was with us when we found chummy in the cellar,’ said Dryden, wondering again about Broderick’s motives.
A car swung in off the road and skidded on the gravel, small stones pinging off Humph’s Capri. It was an American pick-up with giant wheels and a picture paint job of a Red Indian on the driver’s door.
Neate looked at his watch, a flash of anger disfiguring the carefully neutral features. A woman got out, long blonde hair black at the roots, jeans and T-shirt leaving three inches of flesh exposed at the waist.
As she walked up she threw Neate a bunch of keys. ‘He’s calling later to get her,’ she said, the accent more mid-Fen than Midwest.
‘Hi. I’m Philip Dryden.
She came up close, her breasts moving easily under a loose shirt. Her eyes, brown and frank, lingered on his. ‘I’m Julie Watts. What’s this about then, Jimmy?’ she asked, not looking at him. ‘It’s the Ferry, isn’t it? Dump of a place. Best thing about it was the road out.’
‘You were there?’
‘Sure. We lived on The Dring. Jim didn’t talk to people like us then.’ She laughed, running a hand round Neate’s waist.
‘I was asking about Broderick – the cut-flower business.’
