The Coldest Blood

Chips looked at him again. ‘I remember everything. When I got to the office the light was on and the door was open when I tried it – which was wrong. I always locked it – even when someone was inside who should have been inside. He’d got the safe open when I came to the door, they said at the station he’d lifted the office keys out of Ruth’s bag in the bar, but they couldn’t explain how he’d opened the safe. He had the notes in little piles – ones, fives, tens, twenties. I thought he’d run, but he didn’t. He put the money in one of those boxes you clip on to the back of a motorbike – like panniers. Then he just kind of walked past me… like I wasn’t there, like I didn’t count. He didn’t think I’d do it, you see. Didn’t think I was capable of it.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Capable of what?’

Connor cracked his knuckles. ‘In the office we had a desk stapler – big thing, with a solid wooden base. So I picked it up and I hit him, from behind. Hard.’

The prisoner was breathing faster now. ‘That’s why there was blood there when the police arrived – and the splashes on the path outside, and the skin and hair on the stapler…’

‘Did you like Paul, Chips? You were at school together, yeah?’

‘I liked Paul. He could talk to the girls, but I couldn’t. They said he looked like a pop star.’ Chips was silent, a smile surfacing slowly.

Dryden tried to imagine the scene at the holiday camp on the night of the robbery, playing back in Connor’s memory. The warm night, the distant laughter from the bar and the casual cruelty of being ignored.

Connor ran a tongue along dry lips. ‘He ran after I hit him. I followed for a bit but he cut between the huts, towards the car park. He had a motorbike. I heard the engine and saw the tail-lights on the coast road… So I ran to our chalet and told Ruth and we called the police. That’s what I told them happened, because that’s what happened.’

The last sentence lacked emotion, a pro forma recital.

‘Why do you think he came back, Chips? Why did he end up on the boat in the marsh?’

‘The Curlew,’ he said.

‘The Curlew? Was that what it was called?’

He nodded. ‘Ruth’s dad owned it, John Henry. We were gonna rent it out but it needed a lot of work. She shipped water, and she was well stuck in the mud. Big job, that, so we left it a season. She’s still down there, Ruth says – but she’s gone to rot now.’

‘But why did he come back, Chips?’

A gentle buzz came from a device on the ceiling by the grille for the hot-air system. Connor looked up. ‘That’s the timer. You’ve got ten minutes. Never more, they trust us.’

Dryden leant forward. ‘The newspaper story said you talked to Paul Gedney earlier that night, didn’t you – with Ruth. That he needed somewhere to stay. Did you think he was afraid of anyone? Because if you didn’t kill him, Chips – someone else did.’

Connor was agitated now and Dryden could see a disturbingly ordered line of sweat drops along his brow, just below the hairline.

He fingered the arc-like scar which crossed his forehead. ‘He said he thought someone would get him, someone who’d helped him steal the drugs. He said he’d got involved with people, that he’d got in too far and that was why he needed to get away, make a fresh start. So we let him stay that night.’

‘Did he name names?’

‘He said they’d find him. So he couldn’t stay longer.’

Dryden nodded, even though he hadn’t got an answer, while outside in the corridor a family went by, several conversations networked into one.

‘Can you think of anyone who would want to keep you in here, someone who would want to stop you coming home?’

He grinned then, an adult’s cynical smile. ‘What about me?’

‘Don’t you want to be free? See your wife?’

‘I see her every week. I saw her yesterday. I’m looking forward to seeing her soon.’ His eyes widened. ‘Really soon.’

Dryden found it hard to believe the simplicity of Connor’s emotional life. He sensed a keener intelligence hidden inside the child. ‘What about the life you’ve missed, Chips? Children – don’t you regret that? You were good with children, weren’t you, Chips?’

‘Ruth couldn’t. We tried those first years,’ he said, suddenly standing and looking at a heavy-duty diver’s wristwatch. ‘They said we should adopt and we talked about it, but then…’ He looked out of his window at the night, studded with institutional lights, touching the scar again.

They didn’t shake hands but Chips did look him in the eyes for the only time. ‘Thanks for coming. I’m sorry about your friends.’

Later, outside, in the cold but reviving air, Dryden leant on the cab’s frosted roof and retrieved the ball of paper from his pocket. Connor hadn’t touched the application form, but he’d written on the blank side, in capitals, each stroke of the pen incised into the paper, overrunning its prescribed length.

I DIDN’T KNOW.

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