FROM ANYWHERE CORNER. Dryden laughed, mainly because it wasn’t a joke.
Across their path lay the bank of the River Lark, a tributary of the Great Ouse – the Fens’ central artery. They parked up, short of a yellow and black scene-of-crime tape.
As Dryden reached the top of the bank an industrial arc lamp thudded into life, picking out a circular spotlight on the ice. Cue Torvill and Dean, he thought.
In the dusk the bright circle of light hurt his eyes. The Canada geese, having caught them up, flew startled through the arc lamp’s beam like bombers picked out in the searchlights of the Blitz. They attempted a landing on ice downriver – a disaster of flailing webbed feet shrouded in gloom.
Dryden started listing hardware in his notebook – a sure sign he knew he might be short of facts to pad out a story. Eight vehicles were drawn up along the foot of Lark Bank. Two local police patrol cars – blue stripes down the side of Ford Fiestas, the county police force’s diving unit in a smart purple-striped Cavalier with trailer, the fire brigade’s special rescue vehicle, a Three Rivers Water Authority Ford van, and an unmarked blue Rover which might as well have had CID in neon letters flashing from its number plate.
Out on the river four frogmen were trying to break through the ice to attach cables to something just below the surface. One called for oxyacetylene torches and soon the diamond-blue flames hissed, generating vertical mushroom clouds of steam in the frozen air.
What Dryden needed was a story line: and for that he needed a talking head. What he didn’t have was time. The Crow’s last deadline was 5 p.m.
He scanned the small crowd. He ruled out the senior fireman – politely known as ‘media unfriendly’ – and ditto the water authority PR who was even now smoothing down a shiny silver suit under a full-length cashmere coat.
With relief he recognized a plain-clothed detective on the far bank. Detective Sergeant Andy Stubbs was married to one of the nurses who cared for his wife. They’d met occasionally at the hospital, both keeping a professional distance. Dryden decided businesslike was best: ‘Detective Sergeant.’ It was nearly a question – but not quite. An invitation to chat.
Detective Sergeant Stubbs turned it down. ‘Dryden.’ He zipped up an emergency services luminous orange jacket. The body language shouted suspicion.
Dryden looked out over the floodlit river with an air of enthusiasm more suited to the terraces at Old Trafford. He grinned, rubbing his hands together with excitement, then he made his pitch. ‘What’s all this about then, Mr Stubbs?’ A mixture of deference and jollity which Dryden judged the perfect combination. The jollity was more than a front. He suffered from the opposite of clinical depression – a kind of irrational exuberance.
‘County has put a stop on all information, Dryden. We’re not quite sure what we’ve got. We’ve been out here three hours. Give me ten minutes and if nothing has come up I’ll give you a statement.’
‘I need to file in twenty minutes to make copy’
DS Stubbs nodded happily. He didn’t give a damn.
In the distance Dryden could see Humph’s cab. The internal light was on and dimly he could see the taxi driver gesticulating wildly. Humph was at conversational level in four European languages which he had learnt from tapes. This year it was Catalan. In December, to avoid Christmas, he would take two weeks holiday in Barcelona – alone and blissfully talkative. Typically he sought fluency in any language other than his own.
Stubbs appeared to have the same problem.
Dryden tried again. ‘Car then – under the ice.’ He beamed in the silence that followed as if he’d got an answer.
Out on the frosted river the frogmen were attaching four metal cables to the car roof at its strongest points, having melted the surface ice with hand-held blowtorches fed by gas lines running back to the fire brigade’s accident unit. The steel cables ran to the county police force’s portable winch, which in turn was connected by cable to the fire engine’s generator. An industrial pump was churning out hot water in a steaming gush from the bank, gradually producing a pond of slush which bubbled around the divers. Beside the single arc lamp uniformed police officers were setting up scene-of-crime lights along the bank. One of the firemen was filming the scene with a hand-held video camera. There was enough hardware for the climax of a Hollywood disaster