The Coldest Blood

A seagull screeched over Dryden’s head, snapping him back to the present. The sea was calm and still, creased only by the tide slipping in towards the creek. He looked at his watch now as he stood on the chalet’s verandah. He didn’t have forty-eight hours any more.

Looking towards the horizon he suppressed an image: the drifting body of Paul Gedney nudging the sandbanks. Who had killed him, and why? If he could overcome his fears, he told himself, he could think more clearly. He swept the glasses east, panning round the camp’s layout: past the fairground, the outdoor pool, the leisure complex and the line of pylons running west. And there they were, the original wooden huts, or at least a dozen rows of them. Ruth Connor’s plans for modernization had yet to sweep them away. Green with moss they stood, rimed with frost, black holes gaping in the bitumen-soaked roofs, and from a verandah post a child’s swimsuit hung in shreds, bleached by a decade of lost summers.

26

Dryden ran his finger round the curved plastic number: grimy now and chipped at the end: 9. The window had long gone and the sill was green and slippery with lichen. Inside the bedframes were rusted, the lino curled at the edges. A dead seagull lay in one corner beside a rusted bucket full of ice placed under a jagged shard of sky in the roof. He felt nothing, but turned to look across at 10. The stoop was still there, sagging under the weight of sand which had drifted in with the winter storms. He could imagine Dex waiting, waiting for the game to begin, the pent-up violence vibrating in his thin, awkward arms. Edging inside, he put a hand on the bedstead and rattled the metal, lifting the detachable headboard away from the main frame and the wire base. A cloud of rust was released, a blood-red shower of oxidized iron.

Outside again he checked his mobile: no messages. He’d left Laura resting with the monitor switched on. Reception had his numbers and the nursing assistant would look in on her every two hours, until he notified them he was back at their chalet. He’d go back soon, take her out on the sands, under the liberating sky.

But for now he walked on between the dilapidated huts, many of them partly submerged by the creeping dunes. A pile of ashes and blackened wood lay by one, evidence of a surreptitious barbecue, but otherwise there was little sign that the huts were ever visited. Snow began to fall, miniature flakes as dry as sand which blew into his eyes.

He ran for shelter through the lines of chalets towards a large building, a box-like two-storey block with tall metal-framed windows which were still intact. From inside he could hear the agonized sound of something metal being wrenched from a wall, followed by the crackle of splintering wood. There were a pair of swing doors unbolted which he pushed open with his back, wheeling round to find himself in the old camp’s dining hall. One wall was still obscured by a giant mural of a desert island, palm trees stretching over white sands, parrots in the tree, and a family playing with Day-Glo red buckets and spades.

The thrill of eating here was with him again. The sheer cacophony of three hundred people at each sitting, the sun glinting off knives and forks, the breakfast plates piled with full English, the pea-green teapots ferried out by the waitresses, reeking of tannin.

A man stood at the far end of the room, trying to prise a radiator from the wall.

‘Hi. Sorry,’ said Dryden, and an echo returned. The hall was empty, a void as cold as the hard rolled ice cream which had been his favourite pudding.

The man stooped and retrieved a set of plans from the floor. He was stocky and powerful, the musculature accentuated by a close-fitting black leather jacket, his shoulder-length brown hair well-cut, streaked with bleached blond and held at the back in a small pigtail. A beard and moustache crept over the heavily tanned skin of his face. As he walked closer Dryden noticed a necklace of thin black leather.

‘Sorry,’ repeated Dryden. ‘My name’s Philip Dryden – I’m staying at the camp.’

The man nodded, producing a packet of Gauloises and knocking out one white-tipped cigarette.

Dryden produced his own Greek equivalent and they lit up together. ‘It’s a holiday village now,’ said the man, the voice older than the bleached hair. ‘This was the camp dining hall.’

‘I know. I came here – as a kid. So what’s happening?’

He shrugged, looking up at the roof. ‘Just trying to work out what it would cost to rip it down – this is part of the problem,’ he said, thudding a boot down on the parquet flooring. ‘This stuff is worth a fortune but it would cost one to rip it up. Built to last, unfortunately. Last time we had people in the old huts was ’98… When did you visit?’

‘Seventies,’ said Dryden.

‘Seventies eh? Before my time.’

Not much before your fucking time, thought Dryden, smiling. He’d have guessed the man was forty, but the voice could have been a decade older.