A crow cackled from a hawthorn tree and made Dryden jump. The press was bunched at the gate again trying to entice comment from the mourners with little success.
They walked to Shaw’s Land Rover and the detective reached inside and retrieved the newspaper package and gave it to Dryden.
‘Sea trout,’ he said. ‘A brace. Caught just after dawn.’
Dryden could smell the ozone and the salt. ‘They’re all guilty,’ he said. ‘All of them in the cellar. The mob.’
Shaw laughed, shaking Dryden’s hand. ‘But no one was in the cellar – they all went home that night. Jan Cobley heard Paul coming in about 11.00 apparently. They shared a drink in the garden. The Smiths had their fight, made up, and split a bottle of whisky in the front room of the family council house. Their sister watched them from the stairs and remembers the clocks chiming midnight – a charming scene. Ken Woodruffe was in bed with Jill Palmer. We tracked her down in Sheffield – married with two kids. But still sticking to the story. You can’t really blame her, it’s a past she doesn’t want to revisit.
‘When he came to making a statement Woodruffe was a little more selective with the truth than he had been with you. Sure, he admits digging the grave for Ellen and concealing the trapdoor, but he insists he stayed in the bar with the others when Jimmy and George Tudor dragged Peter Tholy into the yard. He claims he never knew what happened later, didn’t want to know, and that he’d shut the pub when the mob left. He named those he claimed made up the gang – all of whom, except Walter Neate, are now dead.’
‘And George Tudor?’
‘Interviewed by police in Fremantle yesterday. He named Jimmy Neate as the ringleader who took Tholy down to the cellar – but by then he knew he was dead. Ken Woodruffe’s made six calls to Australia in the last three days according to his BT records, so not surprisingly Tudor’s story tallies beautifully with the others. He denies sending the postcards home impersonating Tholy, or ringing his mother. And, of course, he wasn’t down in the cellar either. He says he walked home alone at midnight, had a sleepless night, but heard nothing.’
Shaw leant against the damp black bodywork of the car. ‘So the only names I’ve got of those in the cellar are on stones like these,’ he said, looking into the graveyard. ‘Woodruffe now says Jimmy Neate and Jason Imber went down – along with three old boys from the almshouses. All dead. And Walter Neate of course, but he’s never leaving the bed he took to when they told him his son had gone before him. The only person who was ready to tell us who was really in that cellar was Jason Imber, and he paid for that with his life.’
Dryden looked down at the crowd, dispersing now, climbing into an army coach parked up below the allotments. ‘But Imber’s e-mail to Laura said there were twelve of them that night. So there’s six missing. My guess would be Woodruffe, Cobley, the Smiths, and Tudor. We’re still one short.’
Shaw looked at his boots in the grass. ‘My job’s getting people into court, Dryden. If there’s one missing, there’s one missing. Fact is, I haven’t enough evidence to issue a parking ticket to any of them when it comes to murder. My best bet was conspiracy to pervert, seeing as they do admit that they knew Kathryn had been killed, and that they failed to report that in 1990, and again when Peter Tholy’s skeleton came to light. But conspiracy’s a tough call – it only needs one of them to slip the charge and the whole lot walk. And do we really want a trial which highlights the fact we can’t nail anyone for the murder? The file’s with the CPS, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
‘So they got away with it, didn’t they?’ said Dryden.
‘You think? You don’t have to be behind bars to serve a sentence, Dryden. Jimmy Neate went gladly to his death, which tells you something about the life he had.’
The wind had picked up, and Dryden turned his face into it, closing his eyes.
‘I’d like them to know that their guilt isn’t a secret any more,’ said Dryden.
Shaw climbed into the Land Rover. ‘They know,’ he said. ‘Believe me, they all know. But if I can’t get a conviction I need to move on. They’ll just have to go on living with what they did. They hanged an innocent man, something they didn’t know until a few days ago. So that’s something Jason Imber would be proud of. The truth. It’s justice of a sort.’ Shaw edged the 4x4 forward, rolling up the side window, and joined the queue of vehicles edging its way down Church Hill.
The rain, heavier now, began to bounce off the gravestones.
Dryden found Major Broderick in the church standing before the wreaths arranged on the Peyton tomb.
‘Spectacular,’ said Broderick, nodding at a huge bouquet of lilies.
‘Your father grew lilies, didn’t he, when he was here at Jude’s Ferry. It was a kind of brand almost, what he did best, right?’
Broderick nodded, sensitive enough to pick up the insistence in Dryden’s voice, the edge of accusation.
‘So when he offered to decorate the church for Jude Neate’s funeral it had to be lilies. Lilies, Fred Lake said, hundreds of them beautifully arranged. And that must have been you. Your father was in a wheelchair by then and no one else had the skills, except perhaps for Peter Tholy and he said he spent all day packing in his cottage down on The Dring – except for a brief visit to your father that evening. Did you meet him then?’
Broderick stepped forward and ran the petals of a rose through his fingers.
‘Did you hate him?’ asked Dryden, walking round the tomb, aware now that they were alone. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did. He’d taken your place in some ways, a son’s place. And then he came that last evening and your father gave him something, didn’t he, some money?’
Dryden nodded as if there had been an answer. ‘He tried to buy his life with it later, in the inn, didn’t he? He told them he had money but they all laughed. Did you laugh?’
Broderick looked around, checking they were still alone. ‘Ten thousand pounds – unbelievable, really. Dad was rich, but still. It was an insult, an insult to me. Sometimes I think that if Peter had lived and stayed in England Dad would have left him the lot.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I just took it, like I’d taken all the insults down the years. Peter took the cheque and went. It was never cashed, so I guess the rats had it.’
‘And Tholy went back to pack and you went down to the New Ferry Inn to join your friend Jason Imber. He said he wasn’t the only outsider there that night. That’s you, isn’t it? And you went down into the cellar.’
Broderick took a small knife from his pocket and cut the rose free, pushing it through his buttonhole.
‘And that’s what I couldn’t work out. Why it was that nobody mentioned your name at all, why they’d all agreed to that. There was a deal, but what was in it for them?’
The Reverend Lake appeared from the vestry, and sensing the mood walked quickly past, his footsteps echoing down the nave until the door swung open and they saw the rain still falling outside.
‘Then I got an e-mail from Colonel Flanders May, outlining how he’d undertaken the survey of Jude’s Ferry in the days after the evacuation. Apparently there was this young TA cadet who volunteered. He knew your father, didn’t he? So there was no problem getting a temporary posting. Terrific help apparently, lots of local knowledge, trawled through the questionnaires making sure nothing had been missed. It can’t have been difficult I guess, steering them clear of the outbuildings. Woodruffe did a good job covering the trapdoor. But it must have been a comfort to them, to know you’d be there, that you’d always be there. And when the worst happened you made sure they all knew, and that they knew what the plan was, who they should blame when the police started asking questions. What you didn’t know was that your friend was the real killer that night, and you’d snapped the neck of an innocent boy. But you know now. Did he tell you when you visited him at the hospital that day?’