The Fire Baby (19 page)

Kabazo grinned. ‘Nope. Just waiting.’ But he wasn’t listening.

‘Friend of mine saw them,’ said Dryden, knowing he didn’t need to spell it out. Evidence of the people smugglers was all around them. He guessed Kabazo was an illegal immigrant too, or at least mixed up in the trade.

‘We safe?’ Kabazo asked. Dryden couldn’t be sure if he was referring to the fire, or to the likelihood that he would go to the police over what he’d found.

Dryden decided innocence was best. ‘Just a peat fire – the combines start them. We’re fine – it’s mostly smoke.’

‘Saw dem where?’ said Kabazo.

‘Black Bank Fen. Going across country – east. From the lay-by on the A14. That’s where they took them out of the lorries.’

‘Ritz,’ said Kabazo, nodding, trying to calculate what Dryden knew and who he would tell.

Dryden folded his arms in a sign, he hoped, of patient informality. ‘This is between us, OK? I’m not after anyone – just a story. No names. No need for names.’

Kabazo nodded but didn’t move. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said again. ‘My boy. Today maybe. Tomorrow. Police mustn’t know.’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Sure. Why should they?’

‘Who you tellin’ den?’

‘Nobody. It’s not my job. I’m interested in the story. I mean it; I don’t need names.’

Kabazo nodded. ‘He’ll come. The skinhead said. Winston. He said last week, this week… maybe later. I don’t trust him.’

‘Winston?’

Kabazo stood at the foot of Dryden’s bunk. ‘The driver.
Our people pay him, he does the dirty work. With the Ritz man – Johnnie.’

Suddenly sunlight blazed down through the green skylights, indicating the runway fire was out.

‘They’ve found a body. On Black Bank Fen,’ said Dryden, cruelly, but didn’t let the silence last more than a second. ‘A man. In his forties. I think it’s Johnnie – but they won’t say.’

Kabazo’s eyes widened. ‘How long?’

‘A few days – perhaps. What would they have done if Johnnie hadn’t been there? Where’s the next drop?’

Kabazo shook his head. ‘Nottingham. If the driver knew. Perhaps Winston doesn’t come, then they don’t know.’

‘I can ring you with a positive ID on the body at Black Bank. OK?’

Kabazo shook his head. ‘Yes? Ring the factory. Leave a message.’

They walked back to the main hangar in silence and stood in the sunlight at the door. Outside the crowd was being marshalled towards the cars. Two vehicles had been dragged away from the rest into the middle of a field where they smouldered still. The bones of the combine harvester were black and crumpled, fire still licking around the driver’s padded seat. A scene of incident officer in a bright orange jacket was examining the threshing mechanism, pulling scorched straw from the blades.

‘Can you contact them? Get Winston?’ asked Dryden.

‘They don’t like it. They got the money. And I left them a bag for Emmy. Food and his things. His music. I sit tight some days. Wait some more. Sensible boy, my boy. He’s the first I send for with the money. Emmy’s a good boy.’

Kabazo took a wallet from his jeans pocket and flipped it open to show a snap: a boy, maybe fourteen, stood grinning under an African sun. In the background a great river, too
wide to offer a view of the far bank, swept past. But it was what the boy was holding that made Dryden’s blood freeze: a mongrel dog with a rope collar. They looked happy together: impossibly happy.

24

Dryden stood alone in the graveyard of St Matthew’s, and looking at his shoes in the dust, observed that he had no shadow. The sun beat down vertically on Black Bank Fen for Maggie Beck’s funeral. Despite the discovery of the corpse in the pillbox the fen was deserted. Andy Newman’s team had finished their trawl for clues and were now out interviewing Johnnie Roe’s friends, relatives and lovers. The pillbox body lay in a mortuary at Cherry Hinton, its chest torn open by the pathologist’s knife, its dull eyes sightlessly open to the white-tiled ceiling.

The funeral cortège had left Black Bank Farm a few minutes earlier. He could see it now zig-zagging towards St Matthew’s. A brief ceremony had been held on the farm first – he’d checked the details with Samuel H. Gotobed; Undertakers. Private burial. No flowers. Donations to Cancer Research. Humph had parked the Capri under a stand of lime trees by the churchyard gates and stood beside the cab, a mark of respect only Dryden could truly appreciate.

By the time the hearse crunched to a halt a thin layer of red peat dust had taken the shine off the immaculate paintwork. The heat was pulsatingly intense. A trickle of cool sweat set out across Dryden’s forehead from the thick black hair above. He thought it was a good day to bury Maggie Beck. No splash. No clawing slurp of dark peaty water over polished pine. It was the first burial at St Matthew’s since Maggie’s husband Don more than twenty years earlier. The newly dug grave lay open next to those of Maggie’s mother
and father, which, according to the stone, also contained the small corpse of Matty Beck, aged two weeks. ‘Even stone can lie,’ said Dryden, touching the warm marble.

Estelle rode in the first limousine, alone, her black, tailored shirt the only concession to funeral etiquette. Her shoulders were hunched in a silhouette of sadness. The second car carried a woman who had to be helped into a wheelchair. She wore a small pillbox black hat and veil, which had been fashionable in at least three different decades. The rest of the funeral party walked behind the cars led by a priest in white and black. A dozen farm workers followed in ill-fitting suits, their heads bowed by the heat rather than grief. But no Lyndon. Dryden considered his emotional state. The last time they’d talked, the anger had been visible. Anger at Maggie for giving her son away. Bewilderment as to the reason for that betrayal. Determination to find some sort of justice amidst the mess that his life had become. And Estelle? What part did his half-sister have to play in the rest of his life? He’d felt a distance between them, a fracture opened up by Maggie’s deathbed confession.

Estelle saw Dryden as she walked to the graveside and seemed to shrink further into herself at the sight. At their first meeting Dryden had detected anxiety and anger; now she radiated something else, something far more dangerous: defiance?

Dryden retreated to the shade of a lime tree as they gathered around the letter-box trench of the grave. The priest’s vestments, which hung lifeless in the heat, drank in the light. Dryden squinted at the white surplice, and looked away to rest his eyes on the horizon, where he found a lone figure standing in a group of pine trees. He felt his skin prickle as he shaded his eyes to try and see more. The trees had been planted to provide a windbreak for a storage barn
which stood on what had once been a small island of clay in the peaty marsh of the fen. A white Land Rover was parked on its far side, the open tailgate just visible beyond the barn’s end. The figure, Dryden could now see, was dressed in USAF grey. He watched the head fall in a brief bow, then someone touched Dryden’s arm.

Estelle Beck’s eyes were bloodshot but bright. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she gripped his arm. ‘The police came, this morning,’ she said, watching the funeral party shuffling out of the graveyard. ‘About the man they found, in the pillbox. It’s terrible. It feels so close,’ she added, clutching at her throat. ‘It’s frightening – I’m frightened. Out here.’ She looked to the distance where the heat of the day was beginning to distort the strict symmetry of the fens.

‘They’ll find who did it,’ said Dryden, realizing quickly just how unlikely that was. ‘Newman – the inspector. He’s an old hand, and they’ve got a whole team on the job. Try to put it out of your mind – at least for today.’

‘Out of my mind?’ said Estelle, too loudly. ‘God! The torture… how could anyone do that? Such an inhuman thing…’ She covered her mouth. ‘Like Tantalus.’

Dryden considered the classical allusion and how perfect it was. The king chained to a pillar in a pool of water and left to die of thirst. The perfect torture.

The woman in the wheelchair was pushed towards them by the priest. Estelle stooped to kiss her. ‘Come back to the farm, Connie, at least.’

The woman shook her head: ‘God bless, dear. I won’t, forgive me. But come and see me soon.’ The priest pushed her on towards the waiting cars.

Dryden took his chance. ‘The solicitors have had a call. A letter, actually, delivered by hand. A man claiming to be Matty’s father – Maggie’s lover.’

‘Yes. I know. They rang here. We won’t be able to verify his identity until the will is read. I’m going into town this afternoon. I can let you know… You are interested?’

Dryden nodded looking round. ‘No Lyndon? I thought he’d be here.’

Her features softened but Dryden still struggled to see a shadow of Maggie’s humanity in the bitter green eyes. ‘Well, he’s not. I told him he’d regret it – but he said one more regret wouldn’t change his life. He may be right.’ She paused, looking briefly north towards the old barn.

‘Give him time. His life is in pieces,’ he said.

She shivered despite the heat. ‘Yes. Pieces.’ She looked about.

‘At least he has you. And a home.’

‘Lyndon isn’t comfortable at Black Bank, I’m afraid. He went soon after Mum’s death. I don’t know where. Perhaps back to the base. He won’t tell me. Says he needs the space and the time. The farm is suddenly very empty. And very frightening. It’s amazing how much you can hate a place, isn’t it? Really hate.’

Dryden wondered why Lyndon Koskinski did not want to spend time with his newly found half-sister, but he said instead: ‘Ring me after the will is read? Please. I’d like to know.’

Estelle looked to the funeral cortège. ‘I must go. Some of the hands are coming back for a drink. It’s the least I could do. They’ve run this place for Mum.’

‘Will you sell?’ asked Dryden.

She shrugged. ‘It may not be mine to sell. Lyndon’s the oldest child. And male.’

‘You should sleep,’ said Dryden. ‘You can’t do anything for Maggie now.’

She smiled. ‘I’ve been listening.’

‘Listening?’

‘The tapes. The tapes Mum made. Her life.’

Dryden thought of the long hours Maggie had talked and Laura, perhaps, had listened.

‘And does she say why she gave Matty away?’

She shook her head and looked north. Dryden saw that the white Land Rover had gone.

‘Not a word,’ she said. Dryden sensed the lie, and wondered if she’d listened to the tapes alone.

25

Mickey’s Bar stood by one of the giant concrete blocks the Americans had used to block Mildenhall air base’s residential roads from terrorist attack. Beyond the wire stretched the fen, but this side Mildenhall was like any other small Mid-Western town of 7,500 lost souls. Most of them needed a drink and a reminder of home. The place was riddled with homesickness. The barman had given Dryden a small draught Schlitz and was now staring into the middle distance. There were two other customers sitting at the long bar on high stools praying over their drinks. One wore a lumberjack’s checked shirt and was reading
USA Today
, the other smoked Lucky Strikes with obvious enjoyment. Mickey’s had a third customer – he stood, legs set wide apart, playing a one-armed bandit while swaying slightly to the piped music.

Dryden pulled his glass closer and sat watching the bubbles rise. One puzzle had brought him to Mickey’s Bar. How could Maggie Beck swap two babies and get away with it? He’d trusted her, and so had his mother. But even dying women lie. He found it difficult to believe she could have got away with the subterfuge. He’d promised to help her put right the damage her lie had done – but he couldn’t go on without being sure he wasn’t helping to construct a greater lie. And the good reporter in him told him he had to check the story out one last time, now that it seemed Lyndon’s new father had come forward. At least then he would feel confident that only one question would remain: why had she swapped the babies?

The walls of Mickey’s were hung with pictures of fighters, bombers, transport planes and their crews. The haircuts and the technology changed over the years, but not the over-confident smiles. Dryden checked the three clocks behind the bar. 13.30 GMT. 08.30 NY. 05.30 LA.

He drank his cold beer and looked at himself in the bar mirror. He was unaware he was handsome, an oversight which had saved his character from vanity at least. What he didn’t look like was a US serviceman. The jet-black stubble and the unruly hair were reasons enough to mark him down as local civilian staff. The gleaming blue-black eye added to his eccentric appearance and explained why the barman having served him and moved off, was continuing to watch him surreptitiously as he washed a small tower of glass ashtrays.

The bottles behind Mickey’s Bar shook as a B-52 lumbered overhead bound for the US.

Major August Sondheim walked in briskly and took the next high stool. He looked like he owned the place, which considering his position as head of public relations for the base, and the amount he spent in Mickey’s, was close to the truth. The barman needed no prompting: double Bourbon on ice minus the fancy umbrella.

‘Philip. Good day,’ said August, draining his drink and pushing the glass back across for the barman to refill. Dryden put a ten-pound note on the bar top and looked forward to the small change.

Today August was a drunk, just like every day. He ran a hand through his militarily trimmed white hair. ‘Laura?’

That was the problem with Dryden’s friends. They all asked the same question.

‘Same. Better. I get messages. Sometimes they make sense.’

August slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter but the bartender was way ahead of him.

Dryden started his second beer fighting off a dual attack – hiccoughs and burps. He’d phoned August the day before to ask for details on the Black Bank air crash, 1976. For Maggie to successfully switch the babies she would have had to hoodwink the US military authorities into accepting that her own son, Matty, was in fact Lyndon Koskinski. How had that been possible?

August never wrote anything down but luckily he had a good memory before lunch. ‘I read the file on the crash. Not much. Why would the woman lie, after all? This kid, her kid, was about the same age as the Koskinski boy – a few days’ difference. Their colouring and weight were similar.’