The Fire Baby (29 page)

‘Canada?’ he said, opening his eyes. She was ready to go, so he tried a last question. ‘Did you ever see Maggie again?’

‘Once. I was out in Ely, shopping. It must have been five years after the crash, more. She was with the daughter and I remember thinking how lucky she was. That kid was beautiful. Maggie wasn’t ugly, you know, but she was a Fen farmer’s
daughter. Heavy bones, and the skin – potato white we used to call it at school. But the little girl was perfect, like kids can be. Cute, that olive skin, and the butter-yellow hair.

She stood. ‘Kids are a blessing,’ she said, and left.

38

The river slapped itself against the bank like a wet fish as the last of the pleasure cruisers swept past the quayside and turned into the marina. Customers on the verandah of the Cutter Inn sat happily, oblivious of the fact they were being eaten alive by Fen mosquitoes. It was the end of another long summer’s day, and a hint of a mist was hauling itself out of the river.

Dryden left Humph parked up on the bank with his Greek language tape, six diet chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches, and a miniature bottle of Metaxa 3-star brandy. He got himself a pint of bitter in the pub and cradled a well-wrapped bottle of decent whisky under one arm. He needed more information about Johnnie Roe’s secret life, and the Water Gypsies traded in best single malt.

Did Lyndon or Estelle know Johnnie was Maggie Beck’s lover? Did they know that they’d met at the pillbox as lovers?

He set off south along the river bank past the ghostly white forms of the floating gin palaces which made up 80 per cent of the summer traffic on the main river. Each one was a hymn in fibreglass to the enduring bad taste of the English middle classes. Brass bristled at every vantage point while miniature ensigns and Union Jacks hung from useless masts.

Life, such as it was, within these floating suburban semis was oddly public. In one, a large middle-aged woman was lying on a bunk bed eating chocolates in her bra and knickers, presumably under the impression that while she could see passers-by on the towpath they couldn’t see her. In the
next a couple traded insults over a folding dinner table stacked high with a takeaway curry and a two-litre bottle of Chianti. In a third a large Dobermann pinscher scrabbled its paws along the porthole windows as Dryden hurried past with his pint.

Soon he left the up-market tastelessness of the summer tourist trade behind. The bright lights of the Cutter disappeared round a bend in the river and the moorings were taken up with narrow boats. Some were in darkness and even in the late evening of a long summer’s day the accumulated damp of a dozen spendthrift winters was in the air. Most bore the scars of homemade patches and makeshift repairs. A few sported wind generators, and even cheap solar panels.

Dryden took a gulp from his pint, pausing by the
Solar Wind
, a narrow boat painted jet black but studded with hand-painted stars. The windows showed no light but from somewhere the distinct aroma of hash drifted with the mist off the river. Dryden treated himself to half a dozen lungfuls and pressed on. He found the
Middle Earth
at the end of the line. It had four rectangular windows at towpath level and light flooded out of all of them. This far out along the towpath passing walkers rarely strayed. There were no lights on shore and the reputation of the boat’s crews guaranteed a certain exclusivity.

Dryden approached the first lighted window and watched without surprise a male bottom rising rhythmically, accompanied by faint whimpers of pleasure. Dryden expected similar scenes might be viewed in the other windows, but he checked each to make sure.

‘Excellent,’ he said, finishing the pint of beer. ‘An orgy.’

He put a foot on the narrow boat’s back landing stage and thumped hard on the roof of the
Middle Earth
, settling his now empty pint into one of the flower pots.

A motheaten man with no clothes and a wayward erection threw open the rear double doors.

‘Nice out,’ said Dryden, grinning.

‘Dryden. What the fuck do you want?’

Dryden looked suitably affronted. He held up the bottle of malt whisky. ‘I’ve got this for Etty – and a tenner for information received.’

Etty appeared, having recently extracted herself from under the pink bottom. Dryden felt a brief but intense surge of jealousy.

‘Dryden. Welcome. Why the clothes?’

‘Call me conventional. Can I…?’

Garments were being hastily draped over various genitalia and all the blinds on the
Middle Earth
were belatedly drawn. Dryden counted five girls and three men and tried not to work out what had been going on. Someone produced glasses and he poured out the malt.

There was a satisfying fug in the closed compartment enhanced by the aroma of a recently devoured vegetable curry. Tin dishes with livid green stains obscured the map table. The light came from a single storm lamp with a gas wick. A calendar hanging by the sink listed organic recipes while on the draining-board a pile of freshly picked carrots waited to be washed. Dryden guessed these had been liberated from a nearby field.

Etty sniffed the tenner Dryden had given her and secreted it amongst the underclothes which surrounded her. ‘I was actually looking for some more information,’ said Dryden, sipping his own malt.

The bloke with the erection and one of the girls shuffled off towards the forward cabin, presumably to conclude unfinished business.

But Etty had sharpened up, overcoming the effects of whatever she’d been smoking. ‘About…’

‘Johnnie Roe. The people smugglers. They used to use the Ritz, but now that’s closed down. And they had people living up at the old air base at Witchford. The police are on to that too. So – unless they’ve stopped the lorries, which I doubt, they must be operating out of somewhere else. Any idea where?’

‘Why would we know…?’ It was Etty’s partner. He was thin, with sandy hair, and a pointy beard like Catweazel. He began to roll a plump spliff. When he lit it he took about a centimetre off the beard, and there was a faint smell of old-fashioned barbers in the air.

Dryden ignored him and looked at Etty. ‘There’s some new pickers out for the harvest,’ she said. ‘They arrived the day before yesterday. My guess is their papers are phoney. They get dropped off by van for the night shifts. They don’t know exactly where they’re living and their English isn’t great, but I heard them talking. There’s a lot of languages, but English is the only one they share. They call it the silos – where they’re sleeping. They’re pretty unhappy with it as far as I can gather – no shops around, no nothing.’

‘Silos?’ said Dryden.

Etty finished her malt and licked her lips. ‘A cluster of them. It has to be Sedge Fen. The old grain works.’

39

Laura’s room was silent and flooded with light. The COMPASS machine trailed a six-foot tickertape. Dryden knew, sensing the incoherent patterns, but sat by the bed and studied the letters anyway. Half-way down, still lost in the random signals, he took Laura’s hand, knowing it was for his own comfort rather than hers. When he reached the foot of the tickertape he kept his eyes down, folded the tickertape, and kissed her once.

The messages had stopped, he knew that now. He stood by the window in flat, cheerless heat and thought about what it meant for him if she had finally retreated, back into the coma which had engulfed her after the crash in Harrimere Drain. It meant that the nightmare was coming true. A lifetime spent at the foot of a hospital bed pretending to talk to a comatose figure which used to be his wife. A dialogue of self-deception he felt he could neither face nor abandon. As in all true nightmares, escape was beyond his control.

‘If you’re not there, why do I have to be?’ he asked out loud.

He waited for an answer, feeling the anger lift his pulse rate. The silence in The Tower was complete, until he heard the caretaker in the corridor outside.

It was Ravel this time,
Bolero
.

‘The whistler,’ said Dryden, and kissed Laura’s hand.

Out in the corridor he heard the sound of a pail of water being slopped on to a floor. Through a door he found his way on to a cast iron spiral stairway. When the door slammed
behind him the light fled, leaving him blinded. Looking down through where he imagined the open metal rungs of the steps to be he sensed rather than saw the faint glow of distant, reflected light. Edging down he stumbled repeatedly on the narrow, triangular steps.

The light came from a series of four bulbs strung, like half-hearted illuminations, along fifty yards of cellar corridor. The pools of darkness between were deep and cool, the lights picking out a brutal black and white pattern of shadow along the bare brick walls. Under the far light the caretaker was working, expertly using his weight to push the mop forwards, backwards, and forwards again.

Dryden watched from the shadows. The caretaker was perhaps sixty, tall, but with a spine bent into a curve by years of labour. A minute passed and then a kettle’s whistle blew. He straightened his back, took his mop and pail and disappeared through a doorway. The whistle died. Then the music began. Bruch, the violin concerto, swelled to fill the damp air.

Under cover of the London Symphony Orchestra Dryden walked to the door and looked in. It was a sitting room of sorts. A single table, single chair, and a single bed were the only furniture. A bookcase, made of planks on bricks, filled one wall. On the other narrow, vertical, wooden tape holders. There were hundreds, possibly thousands.

‘Quite a collection,’ said Dryden, in a pause in the Bruch.

The caretaker wheeled round, the tin cup he held shaking instantly. Dryden could only imagine what kind of life had produced a face like that. In the cellar’s half light the deep lines were as sharp as knife wounds, the eyes hooded and cast down. Without looking at Dryden he walked to the tape recorder and hit the stop button, holding his finger on it for a few seconds before speaking. It was the recorder Dryden
had bought Maggie. Its predecessor, a moulded 1970s version three times as big, stood beside it still.

The voice was a revelation, pitched high, clear and pleasantly musical. I’m sorry, I thought they’d left it behind. I…’

Dryden held up his hand. ‘Keep it. It’s not important. Was there a tape inside?’

The caretaker looked puzzled. ‘A tape? Yes, yes… I’m sorry. I didn’t think… Again. I’m sorry. So sorry.’ He rummaged amongst the flotsam and jetsam of a kitchen drawer. He held up the tape, the fingers of his hand trembling clearly, and Dryden took it, turning it like a diamond in his hand.

Dryden left and as he climbed the stairs he heard the Bruch swell out again.

Outside, Inspector Newman had parked his Citroën next to Humph’s cab. They were busy ignoring each other as Dryden appeared, flopping into the passenger seat beside the policeman. ‘Anything new?’

The back seat of the car was nearly obscured by Newman’s photographic equipment. He’d clearly been up to the coast in pursuit of the Siberian gull.

‘If you count an ID on the body in the fire house at Mildenhall, yes,’ he said. ‘This is unofficial, OK?’ Dryden nodded. ‘Bob Sutton. Teeth gave it away – military work. We got the X-rays from Singapore. He was a Red Cap. Perfect match. Wife’s upset.’

‘Getaway. Some people, eh?’

Newman refused to take the bait. ‘Which sort of cuts him out as number one suspect for torturing and killing Johnnie Roe.’

‘Why does it rule him out? He had a great motive. His only daughter had been lured into that pillbox, raped, abused. She’d been drugged, and for all he knew at that time murdered
as well. He must have thought Johnnie Roe knew where she was. Perhaps he was trying to get it out of him.’

‘So who killed Sutton?’

‘You tell me. But he’s still my call on Roe’s torturer,’ said Dryden, watching Humph tear open a pre-wrapped sandwich.

‘Great,’ said Newman, viewing the cabbie with distaste. ‘Two killers, not one.’

As he got out Dryden tried a last question: ‘The bag in the pillbox. The picture, the food. It was Emmy Kabazo’s?’

‘Yup. Dad identified it for us during questioning before his release on bail. Doesn’t put him in there though, does it? And it’s Bob Sutton’s prints on the knife, anyway. Work that one out.’

Jimmy Kabazo hugged himself and thought of Emmy, his son. He smelt his hair and the memory quickened his heartbeat. Then he lifted the rifle barrel to his lips and kissed the cool stock, leaving two lips of condensation on the dull yellow gunmetal. He watched the lips fade and then whispered ‘Emmy’ as he lowered his eye to meet the icy metal oval of the gunsight. The target crosshair swam slightly through a tear, and then cleared to reveal a crisp cross.

He swept the telescopic sight across the familiar contours of Sedge Fen. The main silos stood in an urban cluster rising out of the black peat flatlands. The Victorians had built them, and the New Elizabethans had let them rot. Each, empty now, was an open throat to the sky. The crows circled in the early morning heat, rising from their roosts inside.

At the foot of the silos clustered the little agricultural city which had been Sedge Fen. Storage sheds, machine shops, offices, canteens, a first-aid block and the charge hands’ tied cottages. And at the edge of the complex, beneath an elevated and dilapidated conveyor belt, the loading bays where the produce had been dumped into the railway trucks for Ely Dock, and then London. Through the gunsight Jimmy watched a rat investigate some rotting grain sacks, its long tail stiff and silvery.

He shivered, not because the cool morning air was warming, but because he knew he would use the gun today. It would be Emmy’s last revenge: the skinhead.

He’d botched his first revenge. Jimmy sobbed with the memory, the tears welling again. He thought of Emmy, and the body in the mortuary that was all that was left of Emmy, and the pain doubled him up. He clutched his arms around his chest and waited for the despair to subside.
He looked around him, but the room was comfortless. Red brick stripped of plaster, the concrete base where the diesel pump had stood, and the single window through which the sun poured on to the dusty floor. It had provided him with the perfect eyrie. A lonely water pumping station, long abandoned, far enough away to avoid their perfunctory patrols, but within range. Well within range.