The Coldest Blood

Dryden told Humph to go back to the car, and set off along the coast path towards Lighthouse Cottage. The smell of ozone on the air was thrilling, the air so cold his lips tingled. Dryden turned his fear into energy, running along the frozen sandy path towards the dark silhouette of the house. What did he hope to find? Pictures, perhaps; documents; a careless clue to the former life of William Nabbs. How had he done it? How had he remade a life in the months and years after staging his own murder? Who did he have to fool? Some of the staff at the Dolphin had glimpsed him that night, but only briefly. Lizzie, the maid who’d spotted him with Ruth Connor, was no doubt swiftly sacked. And there was Ruth Connor herself – but then he didn’t have to fool her.

A light burned within the cottage and the gate to the walled garden stood open. The palm tree, an exploding ball of crystal spears, had snapped and lay shattered. Dryden looked in the kitchen window. Where the fish had lain on the deal table a bloodstain remained. He pushed open the door and called: ‘Anyone?’ The echo within told him he was alone, so he walked through the kitchen to the front room and up the narrow wooden stairs to the bedrooms above. One was empty except for a sunbed, the source of William Nabbs’ surfer’s tan. There was a double bedroom at the front, with two windows – one overlooking the sea, the other the dunes. A set of framed pictures cluttered the landward sill: in one, Ruth Connor and Nabbs sat in a tropical sun, perhaps a decade earlier, perhaps more. Her hand reached under his T-shirt, his fingers through her hair. In another they walked on the beach below, their bodies so close she was almost falling into him, while the huts of the old camp dotted the dune grass beyond.

The electric lights fluttered, blanked out for a second, and returned.

On the bed was the holdall he’d seen Nabbs bring to the Dolphin the night before, empty now. In the bathroom a cabinet of cosmetics. On the tiled edge of the bath itself a plastic case for a set of contact lenses. Dryden prised one out and held it up to the light: a deep marine-blue pigment made it glow like a piece of mosaic.

‘The fake surfer,’ said Dryden. ‘Fake hair, fake eyes.’ But something gnawed at his memory, and he tried, and failed, to recall in colour the poster of Paul Gedney.

Back in the bedroom he picked up the picture of the sunshine couple, searching Nabbs’ face for the likeness he knew must be there. He heard the footstep at the same moment that he heard his voice. ‘What exactly…?’

Dryden was proud of himself. He didn’t panic, he just placed the framed photograph carefully back on the sill and picked up the next: a shot of Ruth Connor in a one-piece swimsuit, laughing with delight that someone had caught her on film.

Nabbs, a mobile Velcroed to the outside of his jacket, held a builder’s lamp. The streaked hair was matted to his head, and he looked tired, haunted even.

‘The pylon’s coming down,’ said Dryden. ‘I came to say.’

Nabbs placed the lamp carefully on the bedside table and something crossed his face which wasn’t fear. ‘I was unlikely to be in bed…’

Through the landward windows Dryden could see the flashing light of an emergency vehicle at the camp gates.

Nabbs re-zipped his jacket. ‘Look. The engineers can’t shut the power down, the gear’s frozen. I need to be out there – I came back for tools and saw the door was open. The police – Parlour – he’s looking for you. They’re in the old dining hall. He said he’d stay the night. We should go…’

‘I heard you were planning a trip,’ said Dryden, nodding at the holdall. ‘But this looks more like a runner. What brought it on? The new witness perhaps – and this time you don’t know who to kill.’

He laughed at him then, right in the eyes, and Dryden’s heart contracted at the change in tone, the confidence in the voice when he finally spoke. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Dryden.’

Dryden, unsettled by doubt, blundered on. ‘Birth certificate, driver’s licence, National Insurance number. It’s only a guess – but you’ve got none of them. How’d you manage the holiday abroad?’

Nabbs’ eyes darted to the holdall. ‘So there’s a passport – of course, that’s where you went after Chips was arrested? Out of the country? A year perhaps, two… time enough for the operation, time enough for the hair, an extra stone of muscle.’

‘Sorry. What the fuck are you talking about? This doesn’t make any sense,’ he said, but he was dancing on his feet, desperate to leave.

‘It does if you’re not William Nabbs.’

A flash, like lightning, lit up the window and the night beyond, although the sound which followed wasn’t thunder but the fizz of shorting electricity.

‘You’re Paul Gedney,’ said Dryden, and he saw Nabbs flinch. ‘The motorbike you dumped in ’74 is still in the garage downstairs.’

Nabbs wiped the back of his hand across his lips. ‘The bike’s not mine. All the stuff’s Ruth’s. I just keep the surfboards in there, for the class.’