The Coldest Blood

Later, said Mr Asquith, Connor disposed of the body and the money – almost certainly at sea. The court would hear that Connor was a keen fisherman and owned a small open boat moored at the camp’s river wharf. Forensic evidence would show that traces of Gedney’s blood, skin and hair were found on the boat.

Six weeks later, on the evening of 15 September, vandals lit a fire beneath one of the beach huts. All the huts were affected by smoke damage and on the morning of 16 September Mrs Connor ordered winter staff to repaint and clean the worst affected.

Mr Jack Cley, a painter, of Sea’s End Lane, unlocked the shutters of Sun Up House – Hut 16 – and saw that the interior was blood-spattered, an empty holdall lay on the mattress, and several items of discarded clothing were scattered on the floor.

Blood had dried on the mattress, and soaked through to the wooden slats beneath. There were also deposits of blood in the sand under the hut.

Forensic evidence would be presented to the court showing beyond doubt that Connor had been present at the scene, said Mr Asquith. His fingerprints were found on a metal bed-frame in the room, while fibres from his clothing were embedded in the dried blood.

The prosecution would suggest that Connor, who held keys to the huts so that he could open them for guests prepared to pay a weekly fee, had planned to make sure the hut in question remained empty for the season.

However, Mr Connor’s plans had been interrupted by illness. On 31 August he was admitted to a private clinic in King’s Lynn suffering from stress. On 16 September he was arrested and charged with the murder of Paul Gedney.

Mr Asquith told the jury that the forensic evidence collected at the scene of the crime was the key to the prosecution case. Experts would testify that the blood on the stapler used as a weapon by Connor – which was the same group as Gedney’s – was identical to that found in the beach hut.

Mr Asquith conceded that the prosecution had not only a duty to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Connor was the killer, but that Paul Gedney was dead, as his body had never been recovered.

He told the jury that medical opinion would be brought before the court to the effect that the blood loss sustained at the scene – in excess of five pints – was undoubtedly fatal.

North Norfolk coastguard had searched for Mr Gedney’s remains, he said, but currents may have taken his body out into the North Sea. There was, further, overriding circumstantial evidence Mr Gedney was dead, he told the jury.

This included a substantial, untouched bank account, and the absence of any known sighting of the victim since the night of the robbery. Evidence from Mr Gedney’s doctor and close friends would be put to the court showing that the victim had no known history of depression, and had never exhibited suicidal tendencies.

The case continues.

24

The Dolphin Holiday Spa

Sunday, 8 January

‘That’s nasty…’ said Ruth Connor, sliding a microchipped keycard across the counter.

Dryden turned his wrist where the jagged scar of the wound was still red, the criss-cross stitches picked out in white across the skin.

‘Accident: DIY. I’m useless.’ They laughed, but Dryden noticed she didn’t let the warmth reach her eyes.

The woman stepped back to punch some details into the PC. ‘Everything seems to be fine, Mr Dryden.’ The pale blue tracksuit she wore was expertly tailored to show off a narrow waist, a model’s tapered legs, and a cantilevered bust. To one side of the panelled reception area a full-length black and white picture, framed in steel, showed a blonde in a bikini with a sash: Miss Holbeach 1970.

As she turned back, Dryden nodded to the poster. ‘That you?’

She laughed again, and Dryden realized for the first time what was so odd about her. Everything was colourless: the bone-blonde hair, the pale skin, the perfectly modulated icecube coloured teeth. Even the lipstick, a bubblegum pink, hinted at ice. Dryden calculated her age quickly. She might be eighteen in the picture – so early fifties now, even if she looked ten years younger. He doubted that Chips Connor looked as good after thirty years in prison for the murder of Paul Gedney, and he doubted even more that Ruth Connor’s long campaign to free her husband had been marked by celibacy.

‘Hard to believe,’ she said, inviting the compliment.

Dryden had done his homework on Ruth Connor. He’d found a feature piece online from the Lynn News a year after her husband’s conviction for the murder of Paul Gedney. She was the daughter of the camp’s founder, John Henry, a local celebrity who’d once earned a living as a stand-up comic. He’d ploughed his life savings into founding the Dolphin in 1952. By the early 1970s he’d been fighting a losing battle against diabetes and his daughter had left school at eighteen to learn the ropes running the office. By the time Dryden had come to stay in 1974 she was the manager, while John Henry limped on to an obscure death in 1980.