Time is running out for Philip Dryden . . .

In the snowbound landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens, a body is discovered, locked in a block of ice. High on Ely Cathedral a second corpse is found, grotesquely 'riding' a stone gargoyle.

Journalist Philip Dryden knows he's onto a great story when forensic evidence links both victims to one terrifying event in 1966. But the murders also offer Dryden the key to a very personal mystery. Who saved his life two years ago? And, more importantly, who left his wife to die?

The answer will bring Dryden face to face with his own guilt, his own fears - and a cold and ruthless killer . . .

‘Beautifully written … The climax is chilling. Sometimes a book takes up residence inside my head and just won't leave. The Water Clock did just that’ 
Val McDermid

‘An atmospheric, intriguing mystery with a tense denouement’ 
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

Humphrey H. Holt's licensed minicab crept across the fen like the model motorcar on a giant Monopoly board. The Ford Capri was an icon - from the fluffy toy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror to the beaded seat covers. The back window was stacked with dog-eared children's books hoarded by his daughter - who had fitted the red plastic nose to the radiator and the Jolly Roger to the aerial. Emblazoned with a triple H motif the cab was, not surprisingly, rarely in great demand for weddings. It had once made up the numbers in a funeral cortège - and the family had had the presence of mind amidst their grief to ask for their money back.
Philip Dryden shifted in the passenger seat as they cleared the railway crossings at Queen Adelaide, and turning up the collar of his giant black greatcoat he eyed the cab's meter. He coughed, drawing in the damp which was already creeping out of the fields. The meter read £2.95. It always read £2.95. He could see the frayed wires hanging loose below the dashboard. The cab hit a bump and the exhaust struck the tarmac with a clang like a cowbell.
Humph wriggled in his seat, setting off concentric rings of wave-like motion in his seventeen stone torso which he had snugly slipped into his nylon Ipswich Town tracksuit top. Somewhere, deep inside, a large length of gut cavorted.
Another bump on the drove road put the car briefly into flight before it returned to earth with a bone-shaking thud. The suspension, a matrix of rusted steel, was not so much shot as dead and buried.
The jolt dislodged the passenger side vanity mirror which dropped neatly in front of Dryden's face. He stared at himself in irritation: his imagination was romantic and he found his own face a dramatic disappointment, which was odd, as most people, and almost all women, found it striking if not handsome. But self-knowledge was not one of his virtues. The bone structure was medieval, the face apparently the result of several blows of a Norman mason's chisel into a single limestone block. Jet black hair followed the architectural design - cropped and severe. It was the kind of face that should have been illuminating an Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
He flipped up the vanity mirror and smudged a porthole in the condensation of the window. 4.10 p.m. A lead expanse of chill cloud over the fen, occasionally lit by the red and green of half-hearted fireworks. The temperature had not risen above freezing all day and now, as the light bled away, a mist crept out of the roadside ditches to claw at the cab's passing tyres.
Dryden checked his watch. 'We could do with being there,' he said. Like most reporters he'd learnt the hard way that patience is a vice.
Humph adopted an urgent posture which produced no discernible increase in speed. The cab swept on while beside them a flock of Canada geese, just airborne, began its long slow ascent into the sky.
Two miles ahead a blue emergency light blinked - a lighthouse in the dusk. A mile away to the east the fairy lights of a pub twinkled in the gloom.
'Tesco trolleys,' said Dryden, searching his coat pockets for a pen. Instead he produced a miniature pork pie, the remnants of a quarter-pound of button mushrooms, and an untouched half-pound of wine gums.
Humph adjusted the rear-view mirror by way of answer.
He'd known Dryden for two years now, since the accident which had put Dryden's wife, Laura, in a coma. Humph had ferried him to the hospital through those first critical weeks. In that time he'd learnt to let Dryden finish his own sentences. If you can have a conversation entirely based on rhetoric then they did.
Dryden kicked his feet out, irritated that the cab afforded no more legroom than the average car. Had Humph answered? He was unsure.
'I bet you. Three sodding Tesco trolleys and a hubcap. If we're lucky. Brace yourself: another Pulitzer Prize.' Dryden stretched scepticism to breaking point: it was often, wrongly, seen as cynicism.
They came to the sudden T-junction. They were common in the Fens, abrupt full-stops in the usually uninterrupted arrow-flight of the drove roads. Death traps. Over-confident drivers, lulled by seven miles of tarmac runway, suddenly found themselves confronted by a bank, and then a ditch with ten foot of iced water in the bottom.
A signpost stood at an angle beside the road: FIVE MILES FROM ANYWHERE CORNER. Dryden laughed, mainly because it wasn't a joke.
Across their path lay the bank of the River Lark, a tributary of the Great Ouse - the Fen's central artery. They parked up, short of a yellow-and-black scene-of-crime tape.
As Dryden reached the top of the bank an industrial arc lamp thudded into life, picking out a circular spotlight on the ice. Cue Torvill and Dean, he thought.
In the dusk the bright circle of light hurt his eyes. The Canada geese, having caught them up, flew startled through the arc lamp's beam like bombers picked out in the search-lights of the Blitz. They attempted a landing on ice downriver - a disaster of flailing webbed feet shrouded in gloom.
Dryden started listing hardware in his notebook - a sure sign he knew he might be short of facts to pad out a story. Eight vehicles were drawn up along the foot of Lark Bank. Two local police patrol cars - blue stripes down the side of Ford Fiestas, the county police force's diving unit in a smart purple-striped Cavalier with trailer, the fire brigade's special rescue vehicle, a Three Rivers Water Authority Ford van, and an unmarked blue Rover which might as well have had CID in neon letters flashing from its number plate.
Out on the river four frogmen were trying to break through the ice to attach cables to something just below the surface. One called for oxyacetylene torches and soon the diamond-blue flames hissed, generating vertical mushroom clouds of steam in the frozen air.
What Dryden needed was a story line: and for that he needed a talking head. What he didn't have was time. The Crow's last deadline was 5 p.m.
He scanned the small crowd. He ruled out the senior fireman - politely known as 'media unfriendly' - and ditto the Water Authority PR who was even now smoothing down a shiny silver suit under a full-length cashmere coat.
With relief he recognized a plain-clothed detective on the far bank. Detective Sergeant Andy Stubbs was married to one of the nurses who cared for his wife. They'd met occasionally at the hospital, both keeping a professional distance. Dryden decided businesslike was best: 'Detective Sergeant.' It was nearly a question - but not quite. An invitation to chat.
Detective Sergeant Stubbs turned it down. 'Dryden.' He zipped up an emergency services luminous orange jacket. The body language shouted suspicion.
Dryden looked out over the floodlit river with an air of enthusiasm more suited to the terraces at Old Trafford. He grinned, rubbing his hands together with excitement, then he made his pitch. 'What's all this about then, Mr Stubbs?' A mixture of deference and jollity which Dryden judged the perfect combination. The jollity was more than a front. He suffered from the opposite of clinical depression - a kind of irrational exuberance.
'County has put a stop on all information, Dryden. We're not quite sure what we've got. We've been out here three hours. Give me ten minutes and if nothing has come up I'll give you a statement.'
'I need to file in twenty minutes to make copy.'
DS Stubbs nodded happily He didn't give a damn.
In the distance Dryden could see Humph's cab. The internal light was on and dimly he could see the taxi driver gesticulating wildly. Humph was at conversational level in four European languages which he had learnt from tapes. This year it was Catalan. In December, to avoid Christmas, he would take two weeks holiday in Barcelona - alone and blissfully talkative. Typically he sought fluency in any language other than his own.
Stubbs appeared to have the same problem.
Dryden tried again. 'Car then - under the ice.' He beamed in the silence that followed as if he'd got an answer.
Out on the frosted river the frogmen were attaching four metal cables to the car roof at its strongest points, having melted the surface ice with hand-held blowtorches fed by gas lines running back to the fire brigade's accident unit. The steel cables ran to the county police force's portable winch, which in turn was connected by cable to the fire engine's generator. An industrial pump was churning out hot water in a steaming gush from the bank, gradually producing a pond of churning slush which bubbled around the divers. Beside the single arc lamp uniformed police officers were setting up lights along the bank. One of the firemen was filming the scene with a hand-held video camera. There was enough hardware for the climax of a Hollywood disaster movie - on ice.
Dryden had seen it all before. The emergency services could never pass up an opportunity to wheel out their toys and put in some real-time training. He half expected the force helicopter to thwup-thwup-thwup into earshot.
'Quite a show, Mr Stubbs.'
Stubbs looked right through him. The effect was oddly unthreatening. Dryden felt better and grinned back.
For a detective sergeant of the Mid-Cambridgeshire Constabulary Andy Stubbs managed to radiate an almost complete absence of authority. His face was so undistinguished it could have been included in a thousand identity parades, and his eyes were an equally forgettable grey. His hair was short and fair, echoing the talcum-powdered dryness of his skin. He reeked of Old Spice.
Dryden fingered his collar. Stubbs's colourless coolness always made him uncomfortable. He put on his desperate face: one down from suicidal and one across from murderous. He stepped closer. Any ideas? I'm a bit pushed for time.'
Stubbs decided to talk, not because he could see any advantage in it, but because he liked Dryden, or more accurately he envied him: envied him his lack of order and responsibilities, his freedom, and his untied existence. And he pitied him. Pitied him for the very reason for that freedom: a beautiful wife confined to a hospital bed for the rest of her life.
'There's something under the ice,' he said.
Dryden screamed inwardly He could see that for himself.
'And that's off the record - it's all off- OK?'
Dryden held out both hands to indicate that his notebook was back inside the greatcoat - not that that had ever stopped him remembering a good quote. 'We never spoke, Mr Stubbs.'
'The river froze last night around 2 a.m. - the frogmen say the sheet of ice was unbroken. So the car went in before then. The nearest habitation is the Five Miles from Anywhere, the pub over there. Must be a mile. They don't get much trade in winter. They've heard nothing - saw a few fires around last night - but that's par for the course around Guy Fawkes.' As if on cue a distant percussion echoed round the fen. They turned to see a cascade of orange and red fireworks burst over the distant silhouette of Ely Cathedral, standing two hundred feet above the black peat fens.
'Who found it?'
'Kids. Skating. You can see something clearly from above. But today's the first day they've been out on the river - so it could have been there for weeks.' Stubbs looked reluctant to go on. 'I've got no real idea what we've got, Dryden, and that's off the record too. I can't afford some damn fool quote in the paper.'
Not again.
Six weeks earlier Stubbs had responded to an emergency call relayed from county headquarters. An anonymous member of the public said a car had crashed in a field known as Pocket Park on the edge of town. It was a local landmark and the site of Ely's annual fair. By the time Stubbs got there it was dark and there was no sign of the car in the field. So he called it a hoax and went home to tea.
The following day they found the driver dead at the wheel in the next field. The coroner ruled that the victim, an eighty-four year-old pensioner, had died instantly from a heart attack, having swerved off the main road and carried a ditch.
It was the local TV that crucified Stubbs. A two-man team from Cambridge caught him on his front step the next night.
The house was in worst Barrett Estate Tudor. His wife, Gaynor, made the mistake of coming out to greet him with the two kids - a show of solidarity which made good TV. The news crew flooded the front garden with an arc lamp and blinded the kids, who started crying. It was just about the worst time to be asked the one question he couldn't really answer.
'Any message for the family of the dead man, Detective Sergeant?'
Fatally, Stubbs tried irony: 'We all make mistakes.'

Jim Kelly is a journalist and education correspondent for the Financial Times. The Water Clock is his first novel and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel of 2002. This captivating and evocative murder mystery - skillfully punctuated with significant events frozen in time - marks Jim Kelly as the new master of suspense. In our interview, we discover more about the main protagonist Philip Dryden, plus Kelly reveals why he loves the Fens and discusses his interest in the sixties.

You also work as a journalist - so is Philip Dryden you?
As he is tall, dark, handsome and clever, the answer is yes. But in reality, just a little bit. I was a local journalist on papers for ten years and you do come across some amazing stories. So he is not me, but he is my life - or at least part of it. The most startling element of the plot of The Water Clock was stolen from real life. I was working in York and called one night at the cathedral where they were preparing to film the enthronement of the new archbishop. They found a corpse on the roof when they were putting up the TV lights. He'd been up there for several weeks. He'd committed suicide by jumping from the central tower. The man's name, by the way, was Kelly.

Will all your novels feature Dryden?
I'd certainly like to go on writing about Dryden. He has begun to get a life of his own. In many ways he is the classic sleuth. He is inquisitive, awkward, sceptical, and a born observer. The life of a journalist is about as close as you can get in modern times to that of the classic amateur detective. They have time, and motivation, to find out the truth. Dryden, like many classic mystery heroes, is also slightly trapped. His wife is in a coma so he has to stay in the Fens to be near her. In many ways he is biding his time until something else happens, but something else may never happen. This gives him a slightly surreal existence. And being a journalist means that the stories tend to come to him - a long line of trivial, comic, or sinister plots which are the bread and butter of local newspapers.

What is it about the Fen landscape that so inspires you, and works so well in this genre?
The Fen landscape is not what it seems. It is a very odd combination of openness and secrecy. You can see almost forever, or at least to the horizon, and yet it is so easy to hide within it. It also has some of the magnetic quality of the sea - when you look out at the flatlands from Ely you have everything behind you, and nothing in front of you. Because the sky is so important in the flat country of the East of England the mood can change dramatically. It is very easy to feel very small, and overwhelmed, by the East Anglian skyscape. It is also a moving landscape because it is full of water, which can make it very dramatic in storms, ice, or flood. But most of all the fens bring you as close as you can get in this country to wilderness. A few miles from Ely you can park up the car, walk half a mile, and be in a spot beyond sight of any buildings, people, or roads. Being featureless everything seems lost.

Are there any other landscapes which attract you as a setting?
I was a student in Sheffield in the 1970s and the ravages of unemployment, and the collapse of the steel industry, had left their mark on the city. It is a stunning urban backdrop, high hills topped with tower blocks, and streets lined with furnaces. I think it had the quality of a man-made maze, with large areas of the city deserted and waiting for the bulldozer. Dotted throughout this were small communities of great spirit. At the time I probably felt Sheffield had always been like that - but in fact it was a short interlude between its heyday as an industrial city and the rather trendy place it has become. It would be a great backdrop for a murder.

One striking feature of The Water Clock is the flashbacks to the sixties, in particular the day of the World Cup. What made you choose this event?
I think some events are emblems for whole generations. The 1966 World Cup Final is impossible to forget if you lived through it. I can recall pacing up and down in the back garden while the rest of the family seethed in front of the TV after Germany's equalising goal. I was nine. But it is so long ago that in many ways the world looks completely different. The mood was different I think, which is dramatic if you want to use flashbacks. I think most people were less cynical - perhaps less than they had been for decades. But there was also this tough underbelly to life - the leftovers of the crime which had been spawned in the war and thrived in the fifties. Life then was not as cosy as it is now, and people took more risks.

Which other crime writers do you enjoy reading?
I can never answer this question without mentioning The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers. It's a dreadful cliché but it did change my life. I've ended up living parts of it by moving out to the Fens. It is the best mystery novel I've read about place - and perhaps the best novel about the importance of place. I was a big fan of Morse, for the company of the characters mainly and the perfect control of the plot. The most astonishing crime book I've read is A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot, which is built around the First World War trenches and the punishment of a group of deserters. I am just discovering George P. Pelecanos. I normally dislike US crime writers as I don't feel much empathy for the landscapes, or cityscapes, but he writes brilliantly and the violence has impact because the characters are real people. I read Shame The Devil first and my pulse rate went up in the opening chapter.

Can you give us a taster of what your next novel will be about?
The Fire Baby is about the damage that can be done by lies. It begins with an aircrash in the Fens during the drought summer of 1976. The only survivors are a woman and a baby. From a lie told that night several lives are eventually destroyed and a man's life is brutally ended  - starved to death in a lonely Fen pillbox. The hunt for the killer opens up the complex latticework of lies which have been spawned by that first, original, falsehood. It's also about a despicable modern crime - that of people-smuggling. A crime which has come to be linked recently with the Fens and the flows of migrant workers into the fields. It all sound a bit grim – but I think Dryden's resolute good humour survives, as does the indifference of his side-kick, Humph, the ever-present taxi driver.

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

"An atmospheric, intriguing mystery with a tense denouement."
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

"Beautifully written... The climax is chilling. Sometimes a book takes up residence inside my head and just won't leave. The Water Clock did just that."
Val McDermid

"This is a thriller debut of genuine distinction, an evocative murder-mystery in which significant events, frozen in time, mark out an uncompromising narrative."
Crime Time

When a mutilated body is discovered in the boot of a car, dumped in an icy Fenland river, reporter Philip Dryden is at the scene in minutes and covers the breaking story for The Crow.

But he knows he's onto a big story when, a few days later a second body is found on the roof of Ely Cathedral. It has been there for over thirty years and incredibly, forensic evidence links the two bodies to a single event in 1966.

Dryden becomes deeply involved in the murder inquiry which leads him to a flooded, isolated Burnt Fen and a dramatic confrontation with the killer.

JIM KELLY is the education editor for the Financial Times. His father was a detective on the murder squad for Scotland Yard so Jim became interested in investigation and the crime genre at an early age. The Water Clock is his first novel. It pays homage to one of his favourite crime novels, The Nine Tailors, with its evocative wintry Fenland landscape - and the major flood towards the end.

Beverley Cousins, Crime Editor at Penguin says of The Water Clock, "It displays Jim's wonderful talent, in particular for creating stunning visual images and atmospheres. It is a classic murder mystery that marks Jim Kelly as the new master of suspense" Jim is currently working on his second novel for Michael Joseph, The Fire Baby, which again features Philip Dryden and is due to be published in February 2004. He lives in Ely with his wife, the writer Midge Gilles and their young daughter.

For more information or an interview contact Clare Pollock 020 7010 3354 / clare.pollock@penguin.co.uk