The Coldest Blood (26 page)

‘Daniel’s only trying to protect my privacy,’ said the priest.

Dryden nodded, thinking how thin it sounded, how self-pitying.

‘Paul Gedney. Why didn’t you tell me he was an orphan at St Vincent’s?’

Martin turned slightly to rest the plate on the desk. ‘The smart answer you know…’

‘Because I didn’t ask,’ said Dryden.

‘Quite. Paul Gedney came in 1957, I think. He’d be five or thereabouts. His mother had died, an only parent. There was a place at St Vincent’s, and the doctor was a member of the congregation here at Lane End. In those days such human details counted for much. He was with us for more than a decade.’

He took a single small bite of the sandwich and tucked a crumb back between thin lips.

‘You weren’t troubled by this double coincidence. That two of your boys should be the witnesses in the case of the murder of another?’

‘Well – it isn’t as much of a coincidence as you might think. Perhaps I can explain?’

Dryden nodded. ‘You didn’t seem keen to explain on the phone, Father.’

‘Ah, well. A different question. There are some things I must not discuss. But history is history.’

He put his fingertips together and closed his eyes, shutting Dryden out. ‘So. Paul found a foster home in 1967 at Whittlesea. A woman known to the diocese – Gedney was the family name – she’d taken several children and in fact took Paul’s older half-brother a few years before she took
Paul, which is something St Vincent’s always encouraged, of course.’

Dryden nodded, wishing he’d taken a notebook.

‘Anyway, he did very well with the family – at school and so on, given his background and the inevitable emotional problems. In fact he did much better than the older brother. That didn’t last – he came back to us before moving on, although the brothers were in touch. But Paul was adopted, finally. He was an intelligent child, highly intelligent in many ways.’

‘I’m sorry – how do you know… this is all before your time here, isn’t it?’

‘Files. We have files. I had anticipated some interest. And I got to know him much later – after he’d begun his training, actually, to become a nurse.’ He stopped eating, and Dryden sensed he was enjoying the exposition.

‘And very laudable that was. I should have said that it was a peculiarity of his character that this coldness was allied to a sincere – I believe – a sincere wish to protect his adopted family, and indeed to help others generally. He was intensely close to his adopted mother, and the other children. One of his mother’s great interests was in helping make life easier for those pupils here not lucky enough to find a home. She was in constant touch with St Vincent’s – indeed, she was a governor for a short period – and she ran outings and suchlike – trips to the seaside, the zoo, the pantomime at Christmas, that kind of thing. Remarkable, really, considering their straitened circumstances and her worsening health.’

Father Martin sipped the milk, which left a white slick across the glass like medicine.

‘At school – in Whittlesea – Paul met Ruth Henry, as she was then. They were all friends, Chips too. Paul’s foster
mother asked Ruth if it was possible her father would set aside a few chalets in the summer for children from St Vincent’s at the Dolphin. She agreed to ask – her father was by then a very sick man I have to say. Anyway, he had taken great solace from the Church and was happy to agree, and so for a few years at least we were able to send children on a holiday, a rare opportunity for them in those days, believe me. We paid a vastly reduced rate – as I think I mentioned to you on the phone only yesterday – a few pounds to cover costs. The year Declan and Joe went was the sixth year – unhappily the last, as I also mentioned.

‘Usually I sent one of the priests too – but that year Declan’s sister, Marcie, was included with her foster parents as I’ve explained. Not the kind of arrangement we could get away with today, of course, but I think everyone’s motives were for the best.’

Father Martin, stopped, peeling back the sliced bread to examine the cheese within. They both watched as snow fell against the window.

‘I tried to revive the holidays a few years ago but Mrs Connor declined – insurance, apparently – and they did other good works which suited them best. A young-offenders scheme, I believe; such is progress.’

Dryden stood, the noise of the chair scraping on the lino echoing in the empty house. ‘You said Paul Gedney had a half-brother, Father. What was his name?’

Father Martin ran a fingertip along an eyebrow: ‘Paul’s family name was…’ he flicked through the file. ‘Ah, here, yes: Earnshaw. But he and his half-brother shared a mother, and as I say he was ultimately adopted by another family. I can dig it up if it’s helpful. Can I ring? I’ve got your number.’ He glanced at the desk and at a notebook with an alphabetical staircase opposite the spine. Beside it lay a green file,
with the diocesan crest in gold on the front, tied with a red lawyer’s ribbon.

‘I don’t suppose I can see Paul’s file?’

Father Martin shook his head. ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate. There’s a picture, though.’ He pulled the bow free and slid out a passport-sized snap; Paul Gedney aged ten.

‘Those eyes,’ said Dryden.

‘Yes. A thyroid complaint, I’m afraid, which may well explain some of the behavioural problems. He was seen by doctors here, but there was little they could do. Painful, I think. A tortured life, Dryden, but there were many. I will pray for his soul.’

Dryden nodded. ‘You do that, Father. I’ve got twenty-four hours to find out who beat him to death.’

34

Back at the Dolphin Dryden craved sea air to clear his head. Lighthouse Cottage clung to the horizon on a narrow spit of wind-tossed dune grass. Dryden picked his way along the beach between the clumps of marram, retracing Ruth Connor’s brief journey of the night before. It was time, he’d decided, to find out more about the private life of William Nabbs. The path was well-worn, a sandy twisting alley between the overarching sea-thorn. On the beach the tide was piling shards of ice towards the high-water mark, a jumble of miniature icebergs stained with yellow seafoam.

The cottage itself had been partly buried over the decades by the creeping dunes which protected it from the sea, the garden encircled by a dry-stone wall, a barrier which had kept alive a solitary sheltered palm. Dryden clattered the gate and rapped the door. Satisfied Nabbs was out, he peered in through the double-glazed windows. The kitchen was high-tech and stylish, the appliances black, sleek and edged with chrome. To the seaward side there was a sitting room with a large window looking out over the sand and the surf. Before it was a Mastermind-style black leather chair with kick-out foot support. On one wall an eight-foot-square canvas of a wave breaking mirrored the reality beyond the glass. There was a flat-screen TV, a CD and DVD deck. Fitted bookshelves covered the walls, the volumes neat and precise. Dryden couldn’t be sure, but he’d guess they’d be in alphabetical order.

It looked like a bachelor pad, but there was something
distinctly feminine about the sofa, covered with a silk throw, and on the coffee table two mugs sat, a copy of a celebrity magazine on the glass top.

On the seaward side a wooden garage stood low in the sand, the roof weighted down with rocks and pebbles from the beach. Through a small glass pane in the door Dryden glimpsed the dull white gleam of a surfboard, its skeg like a shark’s tooth. Further back a machine, covered with a tarpaulin. Black, with dull rust-dotted chrome, and the glazed emblem of a starburst on the petrol tank: a British motorbike, without number plates. He didn’t bother to try the door, which boasted two padlocks and a triple bolt.

‘Did he come back here?’ Dryden asked himself. He imagined the wounded Paul Gedney taking refuge on the night of the robbery, watching the distant blue light of the police patrol car on the coast road to the south, answering Ruth Connor’s call. Had the motorbike lain for three decades untouched? Surely not. Unless someone had wanted to keep it hidden in those first few weeks when the police had been trying to track Gedney down. After that it was perhaps too dangerous to sell, or even risk dumping without the plates.

From the top of the wide garden wall Dryden looked inland across a landscape of brittle frosted seagrass. Half a mile to the south stood one of the huge electricity pylons. High security fencing ran round its four splayed girder feet, while by a gate a blue electricity company van was parked, an amber light pulsing silently on the roof.

By the time Dryden got to the wire the engineer was climbing the encased ladder within to the pylon’s lower gallery. William Nabbs was outside the wire looking up, swaddled in a heavy-duty yellow thermal jacket, charting the climb through binoculars.

‘Hi,’ said Dryden, exhilarated by a sudden squall of hailstones. ‘What’s up?’

‘Snow and ice,’ said Nabbs, not lowering the glasses.

‘I was always terrified of these,’ said Dryden, looking up through the concentric squares of the superstructure to the high ceramic insulators which held the wires nearly 150 feet above. ‘We’d fly kites – down on the beach. They always looked closer to the wires than you’d think. I guess that’s what the fencing’s for, eh?’

‘Four hundred kilovolts,’ said Nabbs. ‘One touch and you’d fry.’ He let the binoculars fall on a chain round his neck, but continued to look up, knocking his gloved fists together for warmth. The engineer was on the first tier of the structure, about 120 feet above them, his harness clipped to a metal rail. He’d a set of tools held on a belt and with a hammer he was dislodging compacted ice which had congealed on some of the transmission gear. The splinters fell, glittering in the air, and smashed into the rock-hard grass below.

‘So. What’s up?’ said Dryden, emphasizing the repetition.

Nabbs straightened. ‘They’re worried. It’s so cold the snow gets compressed and forms ice. There’s enough up there to put a real strain on the girder structure. If we get freezing rain as forecast, that can coat the gear, moisture can seep into the electrics and… bang!’

Dryden jumped. ‘What about the wires?’

They both looked south towards the next pylon half a mile away. The cables looped towards it, each one decorated with occasional icicles. The pylons marched to the horizon, daring the eye to see for ever.

Nabbs shrugged. ‘The wires are high tension – in fact they help hold the pylons up. One of those wires snaps, I’d duck first, then I’d run. One pylon goes, they start crumpling down the line. Especially one like this – its a deviation tower, it’s
where the pylon lines change direction. It’s bigger than the others – it has to take the tension in the wires from both directions.’

Dryden tried to imagine it, the wires snaking in the air.

‘Hear that?’ said Nabbs.

Dryden listened and picked out a high electrical buzzing.

‘As the weight of ice builds up the hum changes – the note rises.’

The vibration had an edge, like a wire shorting inside a plug. Dryden thrust his hands deeper into his overcoat pocket. Across the dune grass by the camp’s reception building he could see the staff minibus disgorging the next shift of cleaners, the blue dolphin etched on its side.

Nabbs looked out to sea where the surf was beginning to rise. The grey water buckled, built a black shadow where the wave was rising, and then fell with a blow on the sand.

‘Bit cold for catching a wave,’ said Dryden, reeling him in, trying to get beneath the well-tanned surface.

‘Yeah. Even I’d have second thoughts… I normally go in Christmas Day though – local tradition.’

They turned back towards the camp reception. ‘I thought you’d be off when winter came, chasing the sun, chasing the swell.’

Nabbs ran a hand through the dyed blond streak in his hair. ‘Once, perhaps. And there’s nothing wrong with British winter surf that a decent wetsuit can’t normally cure.’

Dryden smiled, thinking about the young William Nabbs, arriving in the eighties, becoming part of the world Chips Connor had left behind. He nodded towards Lighthouse Cottage. ‘How long you lived there? It’s quite a spot. The cottage yours?’

Nabbs nodded. ‘I’ve been here fifteen years – the house is a perk.’

‘And Ruth Connor – she lives on the site still? I seem to remember an old house, is that right?’

Nabbs nodded, running the field glasses along the line of pylons to the west. ‘That was Dolphin House, her dad built it in the fifities. There’s a picture in the bar. It went in the redevelopment – there’s a flat now, above reception. Very swish.’

Dryden nodded, waiting to see if his witness would incriminate himself. ‘What about the other partner – Russell?’

‘A semi on the edge of Sea’s End. He’s got kids, they go to the school at Holbeach. Wife works down in Whittlesea; he’s always lived off the camp.’

‘So in winter it’s just you and Ruth Connor on the site.’ Dryden knew he’d hit the wrong note, so he pressed on quickly, making it worse. ‘Ruth Connor. She’s a good looking woman, I wondered… it seems odd… Her husband’s been locked up for three decades, I guess no one would blame her if she’d found someone else.’

Well, you cocked that up, thought Dryden, as Nabbs’ face hardened.

‘That is something you could ask her,’ said Nabbs. ‘If you had the decency and the guts. I’d like to see you try. If they sold tickets I’d buy one. As a point of information, several people live on the site – including a security guard and a caretaker. OK? Otherwise I guess Ruth deserves the same level of privacy the rest of us enjoy. Don’t you?’

There was nothing quite like pompous self-righteousness to get Dryden fired up. ‘Fancy her, then, do you?’

Nabbs turned to go, then wheeled back. ‘Anything you’d like to tell me about your life, Mr Dryden? Married? Wife love you? Kids?’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. She was in a coma
for five years after a car accident. You could ask her – although I can’t get any answers at present. I think she’s becoming suicidal. She’s over there – in the last chalet.’ Dryden pointed, both his voice and his finger trembling slightly.

Nabbs held up a hand by way of truce, then took a deep breath of the freezing sea air. ‘Look. My private life is discreet, OK, but it’s not a secret. No doubt you’ve been talking to the kind of people who like living other people’s lives for them. It’s a small place, and a lot of people have got small minds. I didn’t have you down as one of them, that’s all.’