Dryden checked his watch. He had time for the round trip but he left the news editor an e-mail explaining where he was, and when he’d be back. He grabbed his mobile phone, summoned Humph and met him by the war memorial at the bottom of Market Street. The rain had fallen steadily overnight, soaking the distant landscape into winter colours, illuminated now by a milky sun. They left the cathedral and zigzagged over West Fen towards the low hill that had once been the island of Coveney. En route Dryden phoned his press contact for the Friends of the Ferry to see if the shelling of the church had changed their decision to drop all attempts to win the right of return to the village. There was an answerphone, so he left a message.
The mobile library, decked out in 1950s cream and blue, sat in a lay-by at the village’s central T-junction. A Methodist chapel was the only building of any size, leaving the village green to be dominated by a netball court and social club with four ugly halogen floodlights. There was a children’s playground, empty at this hour except for an elderly man whistling tunelessly. Somewhere a hammer struck wood rhythmically, but nobody else was in sight. The village’s principal asset was the distant view of Ely cathedral, like a battleship steaming head-on, flag flying.
Ruth Lisle was stamping a small pile of large-print books for a woman with grey hair and a stiff back who held a polished stick. Dryden hung back, flicking through some pamphlets on local history, wondering if places like Coveney had a trove of secrets to match that of Jude’s Ferry. Humph, bored with the cab, appeared at the door, considering the flight of four metal steps. He took the banister and the whole vehicle tilted a foot, the woman with the stick seeking safety by gripping the counter. Once on board the cabbie tiptoed down to the travel section and began, Dryden guessed, to search for a book on the Faroe Islands to complement his language tape.
Dryden leaped forward to help the elderly reader down the steps and noticed with a flood of relief that Ruth Lisle was wearing a round green badge with white letters proclaiming: Friends of the Ferry.
Alone, except for the snuffling figure of Humph, Dryden decided to try absolute honesty for a change.
‘My name’s Philip Dryden, from The Crow. I’m sorry to bother you – perhaps the police have been in touch already – it’s about Jude’s Ferry.’ He nodded at the badge.
‘You mean it’s about my mother.’ She didn’t say it unkindly, and she offered Dryden a seat in the small reading area by the counter.
The mobile library squeaked on its hinges as Humph edged along the travel section.
‘I’m so –’ Dryden tried to say, but she cut in.
‘No. It’s OK. They seem to think they might have found her, in this cellar near the inn. I told them I think they’re wrong, Mr Dryden. I just don’t see her there, not like that. I’ve never believed that she killed herself. But they’ll do some tests, and then we’ll know. I’m prepared to be wrong, and in some ways it would be a relief. I gave them a, what do you call it? A swab – yes, a swab of cells from inside my cheek. It’s a miracle really, isn’t it, DNA? Twenty years ago we’d have never known.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dryden. He paused, forcing himself to keep the pace of the interview languid and informal. ‘Magda – it’s an unusual name.’
‘Hungarian gypsies,’ she said quickly, smiling almost wickedly. ‘Not a popular ancestry in the Fens, as I’m sure you may know.’
Dryden nodded, trying to suppress the clichéd image of the roadside caravans, the rusted gas bottles and the half-hearted washing lines. Every year saw a fresh outbreak of hostilities between travellers and Fen farmers. The open, fenceless Fens provided an ideal landscape for the itinerant. And each summer saw a fresh influx of Irish travellers, modern-day tinkers, equipped with the local knowledge and the cash to buy up land before moving the rest of the caravans into view. Several long-running planning disputes were wending their way towards the High Court while villagers seethed, watching house prices stagnate, then fall.
‘Mum’s father, my grandfather, was in a concentration camp at Terezin in Bohemia before the war; we were active, you see – politically. We’d got out of Hungary when it was obvious what was coming – but Czechoslovakia was worse. The Nazis started with the Roma, a fact that’s sometimes forgotten. A million died in the camps before ’45. Mother got out in ’38; they sold everything they had for her train ticket.’
Dryden laughed, unable to comprehend the sacrifice.
‘My grandmother died within a few months. They say heartbroken, don’t they, and I never believe that, but she was only fifty.’
Dryden thought what an extraordinary looking woman she was – perhaps six foot, in her late thirties, with large long bones and a broad face out of which the skull seemed to press, the cheekbones stretching the leathery skin. She’d moved easily but with a slight effort, as if her body was a burden to her, but now, seated, she seemed to relish the stillness.
‘Mum was always very careful to say that it was the family decision for her to leave – that she didn’t flee, or seek refuge. The idea that the Nazis had succeeded in forcing her out of her home, even if it was a caravan, made her very angry, but of course it was the truth. She stayed with an uncle in the suburbs – Croydon – but they got bombed out when they attacked the airport in the Blitz, so they moved out to Harlow in Essex. It was just villages then, of course. That’s where she met Dad, he was a farmer, although I think that’s actually a bit grand. A smallholder perhaps, with pigs. I always think that was so important for Mum – that he was of the land, as it were, something she’d never had. He belonged, didn’t he? In a way she never could. Jacob, my brother, was born in the farmhouse – a cottage really, but very idyllic.’
She stopped herself, suddenly worried. ‘You can’t have something that’s just a bit idyllic, can you?’
‘I guess not.’
She patted her knee. ‘So. Idyllic then. But Dad died in 1970 after a long illness, which was not the kindest of deaths.’
Dryden wondered how much suffering was salted away in that casual phrase. A breeze blew open the door of the mobile library and they could see that the rain was falling steadily now, the playground deserted.
‘No one will come now,’ she said. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ There was an automatic cuppa-machine behind the counter and Humph accepted one too, retreating with it to the cab.
She sat eventually, one of her large hands almost encircling the plastic cup, and looked Dryden flatly in the eye.
‘I was there when they found the skeleton – she was a slight woman, your mother?’ said Dryden.
Ruth laughed. ‘I take after my father, Mr Dryden – the Hollingsworths are all country stock, big boned. Although I’m relying on mother’s descriptions and the photographs of course. I was born at the Ferry six months after he died. We never met – like Posthumous in the Greek story.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dryden, trying to think of something else to say.
‘So am I,’ she said, smiling and tilting her chin. Dryden could see how strong she was, how she never used the past as an excuse for weakness.