The Fire Baby

President Gerald Ford sent a message of condolence which was read at the military service of remembrance at Mildenhall’s bleak, brutal, 1950s chapel on the base perimeter. All US personnel killed in the crash were flown home for burial or cremation. An official USAF inquiry cleared the pilot of any negligence but severely admonished the air traffic controllers at Mildenhall and the senior officer in command of the base. He finished his tour of duty in the UK, and then returned to a desk job in the Pentagon.

Maggie’s parents were buried at the church on Black Bank Fen. It had been their last wish, according to an interview with William Beck’s sister, Constance, shortly before the funeral. The Crow carried a brief report of the ceremony itself with a single-column heading: ‘Crash victims buried within sight of home’. An honour guard from USAF Mildenhall escorted the coffins to the graveside. Matthew John, known as ‘Matty’, was cremated at his mother’s request.

The Revd John Peters, team vicar for the parish of Feltwell Anchor, which embraced Black Bank, delivered a eulogy at the Becks’ funeral, fully recorded in The Crow. ‘They were transported from here to eternity in an instant,’ he told the congregation. Dryden wondered how often Maggie Beck had relived the few seconds which had destroyed her life.

6

Dryden lowered the window of the Capri and let the breeze buffet his ear. It was evening time but the heat of the day still made the cab stink. Hot plastic, socks, and sump oil merged in an odour that Humph liked to call ‘Home’. The promise Dryden had made to Maggie Beck weighed heavily on him, but he felt he had done everything he could, short of touring the north Norfolk coast himself on the off-chance he could spot her missing daughter. In the meantime he had a job to do, which meant he had to find a decent story for the next edition of the Ely Express, The Crow’s downmarket tabloid sister paper.

Dryden had spent many hours that summer scanning the national papers for stories to follow up in the Fens. The so-called ‘silly season’ had struck early that year. Nobody could be bothered to make news in the heat, or even make it up. Last week The Crow had splashed on the drought for the sixth time in a row. From ‘It’s a scorcher!’ to ‘Mains water to be cut’ the soaring temperatures had dominated everything.

The Crow’s meagre editorial budget did not stretch to a full set of national papers each day so Dryden spent an hour in the library every afternoon. He’d begun to spot the pattern in the first days of May. The odd paragraph here and there but, essentially, always the same story. Police raids on lorry parks on the motorways. Illegal immigrants in small, bedraggled groups. Mainly sub-Saharan West African in origin, all Francophone. They probably crossed the Med from the North African coast to the ports of the South of France. Then north to the Channel and via container ship to Felixstowe where they could be shipped across country by lorry. Some had got out en route for the West Midlands. At night, in roadside lay-bys, welcomed by silence and fear.

And the same promise. Jobs. Pickers in the fields. An idyllic picture, laughably misplaced. Dryden scanned the horizon. Miles of empty dry peat. Thousands of acres and not a single living thing on two or four legs except the wheeling birds and a single conspicuous black cat picking its way across the ridges of a vast field. No pickers. Even at harvest time you couldn’t see them in the fields. They shuffled along in the shade of the picking machines. An ambling production line. Then they disappeared inside the sheds for the rest of the summer. Sorting, cleaning, and packing, but always hidden.

He knew that several police forces were tracking the illegal trade. ‘Operation Sardine’, as it was called, had been coordinated by East Cambridgeshire and the East and West Midlands forces with help from Norfolk and Suffolk. He’d been given a briefing in Coventry at the regional crime squad’s HQ by the detective leading the operation. Dryden had been on several raids but little of substance had been found so far. So he’d started to made his own enquiries, which was why he was going to try his luck at Wilkinson’s celery plant.

‘Appointment’s at six o’clock,’ said Dryden, checking his watch.

Humph grunted and pressed the tape button on the dashboard. All the cabbie’s copious spare time was devoted to taped language courses. Each Christmas he would take a holiday in the country of choice, neatly avoiding the necessity to endure the festive season alone. Greek this year, Polish last year. Only France was taboo. He and his ex-wife had gone there for their honeymoon. That was before she’d run off with the postman. Humph had seen him once, loitering outside the divorce courts in London. He’d been balding, with sloping shoulders and a paunch and Humph’s daughters had held his hands with, he judged, obvious distaste. So not France.