Jim Kelly - The Water Clock

PENGUIN BOOKS
THE WATER CLOCK

Praise for Jim Kelly

A significant new talent Sunday Times

The sense of place is terrific: the fens really brood. Dryden, the central character, is satisfyingly complicated a good atmospheric read Observer

A sparkling star newly risen in the crime fiction firmament Colin Dexter

Kelly is clearly a name to watch a compelling read Crime Time

Beautifully written The climax is chilling. Sometimes a book takes up residence inside my head and just wont leave. The Water Clock did just that Val McDermid

An atmospheric, intriguing mystery, with a tense denoument Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

Excellent no-frills thriller with real bit. 4 stars FHM

A story that continuously quickens the pulse makes every nerve tingle. The suspense here is tight and controlled and each character is made to count in a story that engulfs you while it unravels Punch

Kellys evocation of the bleak and watery landscapes, provide a powerful backdrop to a wonderful cast of characters The Good Book Guide

Jim Kelly is a journalist. He lives in Ely with the writer Midge Gillies and their young daughter. He is the author of five novels: The Skeleton Man, The Coldest Blood, The Moon Tunnel, The Fire Baby and The Water Clock, which was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best novel of 2002. He is currently at work on his new mystery, Death Wore White, featuring DI Peter Shaw (who is introduced in The Skeleton Man).

In 2006 Jim Kelly was awarded the Dagger in the Library by the Crime Writers Association for a body of work giving greatest enjoyment to crime fiction readers.

To find out more about Jim Kelly and other Penguin crime writers, go to www.penguinmostwanted.co.uk

JIM KELLY

PENGUIN BOOKS

For Midge

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Michael Joseph 2002
Published in Penguin Books 2003
This edition published 2007
11

Copyright Jim Kelly, 2002
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-190642-3

I would like to thank Beverley Cousins, my editor, for her skill, determination, and patience in championing The Water Clock, Faith Evans, my agent, for living up to her name, and Martin Bryant for meticulous copy-editing. Dorothy L. Sayers deserves some belated glory for the inspiration provided by The Nine Tailors. I am indebted to Renee Gillies, Donald Gillies, Bridie Pritchard, Eric Boyle and Jenny Burgoyne for helping with the text. I read many accounts of the 1947 floods in Fenland but must thank all those at The Cambridgeshire Collection for their work in the archives.

The landscape of the Fens is, of course, real but details of geography and history have been altered for the sake of the plot. All characters are, however, entirely fictitious.

Out on the Middle Level midnight sees the rising flood nudge open the doors of the Baptist chapel at Black Bank. Earlier the villagers had gathered for a final service loaded down like Balkan refugees with suitcases and bundles. Now the water spreads across the Victorian red-brick floor; a creeping congregation, lifting the pews which shuffle forward to press against the altar rail. Finally the wooden lectern lifts and tips its painted golden eagle into the chocolate-coloured flood. But no one hears the sound, all are gone. Outside, below the flood banks, fenceposts sucked from the sodden peat pop to the surface. On what is left of the high ground hares scream a chorus from an operatic nightmare.

The flood spreads under a clear November moon. Cattle, necks breaking for air, swim wall-eyed with the twisting current. At Pollards Eau, just after dusk, the Old West River bursts its bank, spilling out over the fields of kale and cabbage. A dozen miles away the lookouts in the lantern tower of Sutton church take the noise for that of a train on the line to Kings Lynn. They wait, fatally, for the fields to reflect the stars, before raising the alarm.

Burnt Fen Farm, now a ruin, stands on its own shrinking island.

Philip Dryden climbs the stairs of the farmhouse in which he was born.

His knees crack, the damp air encouraging the rheumatism which waits in the joints of his six-foot-three-inch frame. He stops on the landing and the moonlight, falling through the rafters, catches a face as expressionless as a stone head on a cathedral wall.

He leans on the twisted banisters and feels again the anxieties of hischildhood welcome by comparison with the present and approaching fear.

Will the killer come?

Outside the ice creaks on the Old West River. Unheard, small voices of perfect terror rise with the approach of death. Rats dash in synchronized flight to beat the flood, crowding into the steep pyramids of winter beet.

Shivering, he walks through the hallway and pushes open the slatted door to the attic stairs. He climbs again to the old schoolroom where he was the only pupil. The view from the dormer window frames a snapshot of memory; his father, sat in a pool of midsummer sunlight in a blue-striped deckchair, dozing under a wide-brimmed cherry pickers hat.

Outside the wind brings the slow crash of a tree subsiding into the flood. A dying cow bellows and briefly, with a gust of heavenly sound, church bells ring the alarm too late from Littleport. The lightning cuts a gash across the night and Dryden sees the serried rows of waves marching south.

Waiting for a killer on Burnt Fen. A single, double, killer, coming.

On the horizon occasional car lights thread to Quanea. Locals, quitting at the nicely judged last moment, speed to the high ground. One stops, the headlights swing round, and the car idles beside the Eighteen Foot Drain. A false alarm: it executes a three-point turn, a dance of light from yellow to red, leaving Dry dens heartbeat rattling. He shivers now in judders which make it difficult to hold the torch.

Another car on the fen. So quickly is it there his eyes struggle to focus on the headlights as they snake nearer. Hes come from the south, along the drove. Hes almost here and Drydens underestimated him. Threading through the fields along the narrow banks of the lodes.