‘Mother,’ she said with emphasis, ‘was petite by comparison. She was also very depressed about losing her home again. Such an irony, to be driven out by the fascists, then the Luftwaffe, and then the MoD. She was quite calm about it, quite accepting, and devastated in a way. She’d found a place for herself at the Ferry. People liked her – well, most people liked her. And she hadn’t compromised much at all. My mother was a flamboyant character, Mr Dryden, not a trait much prized in the Fens. But we were certainly part of the community – Jake and I. So I think that after all that anguish – the flight to England, the bombing, Dad’s death – she had this notion that she’d found a place that belonged to her. And then they took it away. It was profoundly depressing for her and I think the idea of starting again really frightened her. After all, she didn’t want us around, she wanted us to use our educations and get on. But what was she to do?’
‘Do you mind if I quote you in the paper? I don’t have to,’ asked Dryden, unsettled by her frankness.
‘It’s kind of you to ask but it’s OK. The library service sent me on a course, on how to deal with the press. So I know that if I don’t want it in the paper I should just not say it. But I’m proud of Mum, what she achieved, and what she left behind.’
Dryden tilted his chin by way of a question, sipping the gritty coffee.
‘The diary,’ she said, something like arrogance in the square set of her shoulders. ‘When Dad died she took the store at Jude’s Ferry. Grief led to depression even then and she needed something to focus on, something that wasn’t inside her. I think what she really wanted was to go back on the road, to take the comfort of motion, which I can really understand,’ she added, looking fondly around the mobile library. ‘The comfort of just being on the way somewhere, without the disappointment of ever arriving. But she stayed for us. Have you heard of an organization called Mass-Observation, Mr Dryden?’
Thunder rolled out on the Fen and the rain came in gusts, rocking the suspension under them and clattering on the metal roof.
‘Sort of. Wasn’t that during the war – people kept diaries of everyday life and then sent them in to a government department as part of a sort of national chronicle? Morale, crime, sex, families, grief, all of human life.’
‘Indeed. Well, it wasn’t a government department actually. It’s all held at the University of Surrey now and they started again in the eighties. Mum applied to be a correspondent and they accepted her. She wrote well, with a real eye for detail. So every day she chronicled village life – no names, just initials for all the characters. They insist on that because they want the entries to be as candid as possible. Then she’d make a copy and send it in.’
Dryden finished the coffee, crunched the cup and checked his watch.
‘Have you read the diary?’
‘Bits of it. In fact, I’m working my way through the whole thing right now. The police asked if I would read it and see if there might be anything which would help explain what happened in the cellar.’
She waited for him to ask. ‘And is there?’
‘Nothing and everything. The diary is full of tales of the kind of petty maliciousness which marks out a small community – little feuds, stifling marriages, secrets which are interesting only because they’re secrets. And the prejudice against us, against the family, which was always there but which faded I think, as the years went by.’
‘But no names,’ said Dryden.
‘No. Just initials. And this is all – the bits I’ve read so far – back in the early eighties, so I can’t even guess the real identities. I was a teenager, all I was interested in was other teenagers.’
She closed her eyes for a second. ‘It’s very good, the quality of her description. I thought I might put it all together as a book, and the people at Mass-Observation are ready to release the material for publication. So who knows.’
She raised her cup to her dry lips and let her eyes run along the bookshelves. Dryden wondered if that had been what had drawn her to the library – the prospect of writing a book herself.
‘She loved books?’ asked Dryden.
‘It was the only thing she brought to this country – that and the clothes she stood up in. A Magyar Bible, some poetry and a blank notebook from her father. Books were almost sacred.’
‘And she filled in her diary… well, religiously?’
They laughed together.
Dryden watched the rain bouncing on the tarmac outside. ‘The police looked at the diaries when she disappeared, didn’t they?’
‘Yes. Mum didn’t send everything she wrote to MO, the stuff about her own thoughts and the family she kept separately. The police did look briefly and I think she’d been honest about how she felt, how the prospect of leaving was like a kind of death approaching – but they had to admit she never mentions harming herself. Not once.’
Dryden stood and climbed down the metal steps, letting the cool rain wash against his face. He took out his card and handed it over. ‘If you do find something of interest you might call? I know there’d be no names, but let me know if you can.’
She nodded, reading the card, and Dryden thought she’d never ring. He imagined her mother, working diligently at her diary in the bedroom above the shop, listening perhaps to the life of Jude’s Ferry outside – a dog barking, a voice raised in anger, feet running home.
‘Did anyone know she kept this diary while she was alive?’
‘No. It was a secret, and that was certainly the rule. But then…’
Dryden waited.
8
He stood on the doorstep of Ely police station, the automatic doors of which refused to open, and looking up watched the drops plunging from a low grey cloud, falling into his eyes. A police communications mast rose into the low cloud, held in position by a series of steel hawsers – home to a flock of chattering starlings. Otherwise the squat two-storey 1970s building appeared to be devoid of life – uniformed or plain clothed. Five squad cars were parked up, smartly washed and waxed, like exhibits in a museum of the motor car. There was a persistent rumour in the town that the station was often completely empty – all semblance of activity being created by a series of time-switch lights. It was where the sleeping policemen worked.
Dryden tried another charge at the immobile doors and, bizarrely, this time they swished open. A police constable appeared at the counter window, recognized Dryden and unclipped his radio from his tunic to access a sheaf of papers in an outside pocket. He thrust a piece of neatly folded A4 into Dryden’s hand: ‘Jude’s Ferry? There’s a statement, but it’s not much. It’s all being run from Lynn, if you want more I’d ring them. Detective Inspector Peter Shaw’s your man.’
‘Shaw,’ said Dryden. He’d already tried CID at Lynn and been told Shaw was running the inquiry. The switchboard had refused to put him through and redirected him to the press office, so he’d hung up. The West Norfolk Constabulary’s website was of little more help. Detective Inspector Peter Shaw was listed as head of the Lynn anti-burglary unit, under a helpline number which took messages when Dryden tried it. He’d searched the website for other mentions of Shaw and found nothing except a reference under the force’s social club to Detective Chief Inspector Jack Shaw, which rang a distant bell, like the sound of a police car on the bypass. Dryden checked The Crow’s library and found a cutting from September 1997. DCI Shaw had taken early retirement after being severely criticized by the judge at Cambridge Crown Court in the trial of a Lynn man for the murder of a six-year-old child. The case had ended in an acquittal amid accusations that the police had fabricated evidence. The Police Complaints Authority had been notified. Father and son? Possibly.
Dryden entered DI Peter Shaw in Google and was directed to the website of Lincoln University. Shaw was listed as a visiting lecturer in forensic science. ‘Nobody likes a smart arse’ thought Dryden. He’d left a message for Peter Shaw but had heard nothing back.