The Fire Baby

‘Hi,’ said Dryden. She was tall, leggy, with blue eyes and dyed blonde hair held up in an untidy coconut top. She didn’t look eighteen but the last time Dryden had seen her she’d been posing in Inspector Andy Newman’s illicit porn shots. Alice Sutton was holding a cutting from last week’s edition of the Express. It was Dryden’s story on her: Father’s Plea Over Missing Girl, with her picture, across two columns. He’d run it dead straight without any link to Newman’s pillbox porn story which he’d got into The Crow. But he’d left Newman a message telling him the ID of his snapshot star.

‘It’s about this,’ she said.

Dryden nodded. He took her over to an alcove where they conducted interviews. Jean watched with eagle eyes from the switchboard.

‘You turned up?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve been to the police. OK. It’s all over. I told them everything. I want to leave it at that.’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Sure. And your dad?’

Which is when the tears started to flow. Dryden put his arm round the girl and he felt Jean’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Jean was one of those extraordinary people who live entirely moral lives. A hospital visitor, she had spent many hours beside Laura’s bed in the months after the accident, when Dryden had been too traumatized to endure lengthy visits. She’d read Laura books, knitted her a bedspread and believed, far more vehemently than Dryden, that her coma would one day end in a miracle return to full consciousness. She was determined that when that time came Dryden would be in the perfect position to resume his married life. She was a woman with a romantic mission and nobody, least of all Dryden, would be allowed to get in her way.

She appeared now beside them. ‘Tea?’ she asked, and Dryden nodded.

‘We can’t find him,’ said Alice, as soon as Jean was out of earshot.

‘We?’

‘Mum. I got back last night. She said he’d gone a couple of days ago – on Saturday. Said he knew what was going on. Who’d done those things to me, and taken the pictures. Jesus,’ she said, burying her face in her hands. ‘The pictures.’

‘How did he get to see them? The police normally keep that kind of thing pretty much under wraps.’

‘He had friends, didn’t he? He has friends everywhere, that’s how he does his job. He got an attachment by e-mail. That made it worse. He said they’d be all over the net, just like real porn.’

‘How’d he take it?’ asked Dryden, wishing he hadn’t.

‘Mum said he sparked out. Broke some furniture. He wouldn’t let Mum see them, carried them with him so she wouldn’t get close. Then he drank some whisky on his own. All night, Mum said.’

‘Do the police know he’s gone?’

She nodded, snuffling. Jean appeared with a cup of tea. Just the one.

‘Any idea where he’d been looking? Did he say anything to your Mum?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He just said it was something to do with the lorries.’ She slurped tea noisily from the cup. ‘He works in transport security – HGVs – so he’s always talking to the drivers. I guess it’s his job. And he likes talking,’ she smiled, but it faded quickly. ‘He told Mum someone had said something. About…’

Dryden let the silence lengthen.

‘About… the pictures.’

The pictures. How could he forget? He held Alice’s hand.

‘And nothing else?’

‘Mum’s upset. She’s in pieces, really. I shouldn’t have gone away.’

‘What happened that night? The night in the pillbox…’

Alice’s hand trembled slightly as she brought the cup to her lips. ‘You tell me. God. I… I sort of remember the sex, I guess.’ Tears welled up and plopped into her tea. ‘This bloke started chatting to me at the pub where I work – The Pine Tree. It’s dull, you know? But I need the money and the landlord is a friend of Dad’s, so it’s OK with them too. The police said he put something in my drink – but they couldn’t prove that. The dishwasher took all the traces off the glass. Anyway, it’s a drug, OK? It… makes you feel sexy.’

‘It’s used for date rape. It’s illegal. Do you think he’d done this before?’

Her eyes widened. She hadn’t thought of that. ‘Yeah. Sure… he didn’t put a foot wrong. He just let me do what I wanted to do. He was good looking, I guess. Slim, with a tan.’ The embarrassment flooded back. ‘Jesus. How could I? Look – you ain’t gonna put this in the paper, are you?’

‘No,’ said Dryden. ‘But I should write about your dad, yes? See if anyone has seen him.’