Thursday, 19 July
24
‘Imber,’ said Garry, covering the mouthpiece. ‘Jason Imber. He writes scripts for TV – comedy, radio, he’s sort of half-famous really. Won a Bafta in ’99. Wife turned up this morning – saw his face on the TV. She’d been away, seeing friends, and he’d said he might go to London, so she hadn’t missed him till yesterday. House out at Upwell by the Old Course.’
‘Imber?’ repeated Dryden, knowing instantly where he’d seen the name. But he double-checked the notes he’d made from the TA records Broderick had let him see and there it was: Jason Imber, Orchard House, Jude’s Ferry. He wrestled with the chances of a coincidence, but only briefly. Jason Imber had been fished out of the river less than forty-eight hours after the accidental shelling of St Swithun’s and the outbuildings by the New Ferry Inn. There had to be a link.
Dryden checked the clock: 10.30am.
DI Shaw was due to ring on the hour with the latest on the animal rights activists. Dryden stood at the coffee machine studying his face in the chrome as the mechanical innards churned. He’d cracked a cheekbone and severely bruised his skull in the scuffle on Thieves Bridge – a set of injuries which had kept him in A&E overnight while they X-rayed his head. Shaw had come to see him in hospital during the night, but would say only that they’d caught one of the men who had met him at the bridge – the one in the boat.
‘One?’ Dryden had said. ‘Oh great. Well, that’s a result. So now the other one is out there telling his mates I doubled-crossed them. Well done, well done. I can look forward to some mindless act of cruelty, can I?’
And there was more bad news. Shaw would now be certain to want him to hold the story for at least a week while they tracked down the second suspect. Dryden closed his eyes as a wave of sleepless nausea swept over him. His skull was numb but a single source of pain hovered behind his left eye. He’d only been home briefly to check Laura was OK and help her into the cab for her session at the unit; he hadn’t trusted himself to lie down for half an hour in case sleep engulfed him, and he’d brushed aside her questions about his wound. He’d told Charlie, the news editor, that he’d fallen on the boat, cracking his head on a beam. Garry, predictably, had sneered at this version of events, suspecting alcohol had led to a fight, or at the very least an undignified fall down the wooden gangway of
Dryden opened his eyes, refocused on the PC screen and began checking the newslist for that week’s edition of
‘Hi. Hi. I promised, sorry I’m early. We camped out here at Jude’s Ferry overnight to get through the rest of the forensics, we’ve been up since dawn. Is this OK for you?’
‘Yup. Bad news, right? I’m guessing I have to hold?’
‘Indeed.’ Dryden heard a door shut and the sound of the wind disappeared. He imagined him standing in front of the trestle table in the makeshift office at the New Ferry Inn, mapping out exactly what he was going to say. ‘We haven’t charged the man we arrested at Thieves Bridge – we’re still playing him out for information. He’s talking. He’s not saying a lot, but he’s talking. The other one’s on the run, but we know the route – he may even take us where we want to go – a safe house in the Midlands. The unit here has located some activists who meet on an airfield, renting one of the old sheds. If we can catch our runaway suspect trying to make contact at the airfield we’ve hit the jackpot. The unit’s guess is they’re using the sheds to store the stuff they use for raids – spray cans, wire cutters, shotguns. They may even have some “liberated” animals on the site. So yes, we’d all appreciate a bit more time. We don’t know if the leadership knows the drop-off was a set-up last night. We don’t know if they know we’ve got someone in custody. Just a few days, Dryden.’
‘An airfield?’ said Dryden, ignoring the question, recognizing its inherently rhetorical nature. Instead he remembered the background sounds to the call he’d taken on the mobile from the local activists, a plane wheeling in the sky, then returning.
Before Shaw could answer Dryden told him his plans for the Skeleton Man story in that week’s
‘No go. Part of the problem is that there are, naturally, a lot of Matthew Smiths in the world. And the one we’re looking for might be in the morgue. So there’s no point throwing manpower at it until we’ve got the DNA results.’
‘Sure. So he’s still your best guess for our friend in the cellar then?’
‘Yes. But don’t quote me, please. You’re going to be a mile ahead of the rest of the pack on this story and I’d like them to think you got at least some of it from your other sources.’
‘Right – but I can use the fight in the pub, the argument over money?’ Dryden took silence for assent. ‘Then today…’
‘Indeed. Ely’s been in touch, an ID on the man fished out of the river. Someone smart spotted the name on the list of possible victims we’d circulated to local stations. Plus he’d mentioned Jude’s Ferry, of course; apparently he thinks he was born there.’
It was Dryden’s turn to take refuge in silence.
‘So we can take Jason Imber off the list as well,’ said Shaw.
‘How about putting him on another list instead – the list of suspects?’
Shaw hesitated, but Dryden knew the detective owed him a brace of favours after the failure to secure his safety on the previous night’s exercise. Not only had he played a key part in getting the police operation an arrest, he’d taken a beating on their behalf.
‘Possibly,’ said Shaw. ‘We’re interviewing him now. My DS has gone out to the unit. There might be a link – it could have pushed him over the edge, literally. If he was involved he must have thought the crime was long forgotten. So perhaps it was a suicide attempt. But like I said, this isn’t down to one man. There’s got to be a
