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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.’