The Fire Baby

‘Name?’

Garry laboriously leafed through his notebook. ‘Kos-kinski. Lyndon. Apparently he’s based at Mildenhall on temporary leave or something…’

Dryden saw again the tall, willowy pilot standing by Maggie’s bed. ‘Knock it out,’ he said, and booted up his own PC. He wrote quickly and fluently in perfect, objective reportese. He had a court case about a man who stole cabbages at night and an appeal for a lost snake.

Then his phone rang: ‘Hell – oo…’ Inspector Newman’s voice always sounded as if it was ten feet away from the phone.

Dryden could hear evidence of birdsong in the background and guessed Newman had it on his PC’s Screensaver.

‘A bit more. The stud. His face. It’s on the records. Although his face wasn’t to camera most of the time. East Midlands Police have picked him up. Coupla hours ago, at his flat. Few hundred videos in the spare room – Vice Squad are checking them out now.’

Dryden scratched a note as Newman spoke. ‘Name? Charge?’

‘Can’t release. No charges yet.’

‘Local?’

‘Rushden.’

‘The girl?’

‘Says he can’t remember. Said it was all consensual. She led him on. Blah, blah.’

‘So he knew the cameras were running?’

‘Looks like it. Not surprised to see his bum in the frame, anyway.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Besides shagging? Long-distance lorry driver, apparently. Surprised he had the time. And, Dryden… Nothing sensational, OK? Just an appeal for information.’

‘Would I?’ It was one of Dryden’s favourite questions. The answer was ‘yes’.

There was a pause on the end of the line which was filled with birdsong.

‘Hold on,’ said Dryden, pulling up the PA wire online. Newman’s extra information warranted an update.

Dryden found a second take on the rare bird story which had run at 1. 16 pm: ‘Rare gull finds love on the beach’.

‘There’s an extra paragraph on your gull: “Ornithologists at Holme Nature Reserve on the north Norfolk coast made a further plea for twitchers not to descend on the remote spot after news leaked out that a rare Siberian gull had been spotted by enthusiasts late yesterday. They said that two of the birds, which normally spend the summer in northern Scandinavia, had now been sighted and appeared to be a breeding pair.” ’

‘Thanks,’ said Newman. ‘I might run out and do some crowd control.’

4

The Sacred Heart of Jesus was about as spiritual as a drive-in McDonald’s and twice as ugly. This was brutally apparent because that is exactly what it was built next to. The two shrines crouched like colonial monuments up against the main wire perimeter fence which surrounded USAF Mildenhall.

Dryden hardly ever went to church, haunted as he was by a disastrously ineffective Catholic education, but he was prepared to make an exception to keep his promise to Maggie Beck. The police appeals might not work. He needed to do something else, and he needed to do it quickly. He let Humph take five minutes picking a parking spot in the otherwise empty lot the church and drive-in shared. There was enough room to re-enact Custer’s last stand but Humph cruised for a few minutes considering his options.

‘Who’s paying for the petrol?’ snapped Dryden. Humph ostentatiously took his time parking precisely between two white lines marked RESERVED.

On the far side of the base fence a smoke-grey military DC-10 sat motionless on the tarmac. The only signs of life were its winking tail-lights and a steady plume of hot exhaust which turned the horizon into a smudgy line.

The church lacked frills. It was a red-brick 1950s statement of solid devotion to dull values. Inside, it was even worse. It was so bad, Dryden concluded, it could have been Roman Catholic. But it didn’t even have the candles and the pictures. The only vaguely spiritual presence was the almost tangible smell of furniture polish.

Major August Sondheim was sitting in the front pew smoking, an act of calculated sacrilege that was typical of him. He was tapping the ash on to a copy of the Wall Street Journal laid out at his feet.

August and Dryden had two meeting places: the church, or Mickey’s Bar by the other public gate to the base. The church meant August was sober and intended to stay that way until nightfall, which was a sacrifice of supreme proportions because August was a major league drunk. His CV, however, was decked with glittering prizes: degree from Stanford, West Point, Purple Heart in Korea, Pentagon in the Gulf War. Who knows when the drinking started? August was head of PR: USAF Mildenhall, with oversight of Lakenheath and Feltwell, the two other US bases which ran north on the flat, sandy, expanse of Breckland. Three air bases with the capability to destroy European civilization. An arsenal of brutal power which could be flung into a war in Europe in the time it took to press a few buttons. It was a sobering thought: unless you were August.