The Coldest Blood

She covered her mouth and lifted the wineglass, so Dryden looked away. ‘You told them you didn’t steal those things?’ he asked.

‘We did. But only once, that first morning. After that it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was avoiding the police, getting away from there. And we didn’t want to say where we were – out in the marshes. That would just have been admitting we were not in the chalets, that we could have been out thieving. We couldn’t talk together so we didn’t know what we’d said. It happened so quickly I don’t think any of us had the wit to see the link – between what we’d seen the night before and what had happened the next morning. But it’s clear now, isn’t it? That they’d done it to get us away, before we could go back to the boat. If we’d told someone, they wouldn’t have believed us – and there’s no way Gedney would still have been there – not that day, not that morning.

‘So we just went along with it, their version of what we’d done. Except for one thing. They asked who the other boy was. But we never told them that.’

Dryden felt that sense of loss again, for the children who had refused to betray him. ‘And the Blue Coat?’

‘Well – yes. An irony. It was Chips Connor. Mum had paid for swimming lessons, so we knew him. We were terrified, of course, so I can’t remember much, but like I said, they gave him a kind of statement to sign – you know, just setting out that he’d gone to look under the huts and that he’d found the bags and what had been inside. And we all watched, and his hand just shook, like a leaf, shook so much he could hardly hold the pen.’

37

Out at sea, the bank of advancing cloud was now an almost tangible barrier. It appeared to drop to the surface of the water itself, and Dryden watched as a falling curtain of snow turned a red container ship grey before obliterating it entirely.

Dryden and Marcie Sley sat in a perspex shelter by the Dolphin’s swimming pool, shielded from the wind. The blind woman was still, the wind buffeting the shelter at her back, while Dryden described the scene.

‘There are clouds at sea,’ he said. ‘Creeping in. But it’s snow still, no sign yet of the rain.’

Marcie’s husband had gone back to their chalet, but Dryden still sensed his antagonism. Humph had retreated to the sand dunes with the Capri, the dog and a bag of chips.

Dryden was acutely aware that Marcie Sley had yet to ask again about the witness he had uncovered, the missing boy. Trying to postpone the moment further, he found his own question.

‘Tell me about John,’ he said. ‘Have you ever seen him?’

She laughed. ‘No. No, I haven’t. But I could tell his face in a thousand,’ she said, stretching out her fingers inside her gloves. ‘I trust him with my life, Dryden – quite literally. But he doesn’t trust you. Forgive him, he’s not a sociable man at all, but he loved the Gardeners’ – and he could spend time with Declan and Joe. They were happy there, and so was I.’

She ungloved her right hand and reached out, taking his own. ‘And he doesn’t trust you because he doesn’t know who you are. But I do. Philip.’

Dryden laughed, strangely elated by the moment of recognition. She held out both her hands, palm up, and he meshed his fingers with hers. ‘I wondered why you hadn’t asked. A guess?’

A blast of snow peppered the perspex. Her face, suddenly animated, looked younger, and Dryden saw again the girl who had played in the dunes.

‘Perhaps, at first. There was something when we met – at the Gardeners’. I don’t know what it was, but first names are odd like that. I always think you can end up liking people you should hate just because their name reminds you of someone you liked. I’ve always liked the name – perhaps that’s down to you.’ She smiled. ‘When you called it made me think – but it seemed such an extraordinary coincidence, that you should be… our Philip. But it isn’t, is it? You’re a reporter, they died in Ely. Then today, down by the old boat, you called Joe plain Smith – but I thought that might be something you’d found in the files, or a cutting. But Dex – I knew then, I don’t think anyone has called him Dex for twenty years.’

In the distance, through the side window of the shelter, Dryden saw John Sley standing under the canopy by the camp’s reception, a flare of light briefly illuminating his face as he lit a cigarette.

‘I’m sorry. When we were children…’ He stopped, recognizing what an extraordinary statement that was. ‘When we were children – I didn’t think there was anything wrong – with your sight, I mean.’