The Fire Baby

That open ended dash said it all. For more than thirty years they’d fought to save the pickers from Methodism – and lost. They even called it ‘The Pickers’ Church’, but they still wouldn’t come. More than 2,000 of them had lived on the fen according to the census taken at the turn of the century, living along the dykes and banks in skewiff homes which creaked in the wind. Then the Great War swept the men away. Even the evangelical Methodists retreated, closing the Bethel, and falling back into the Fen towns. With peace the machines came and the Revd Conrad Burroughs melted into the past, without the time, or energy perhaps, to pause and mark the date.

The church, and its tiny bell tower, had sagged with the years into the rich peat soil. For more than eighty years the building had limped on as a machine store, estate office, and finally a community centre. A single pool table stood on the altar, a razor-blade slash exposing the chipboard beneath the sun-bleached green baize.

Dryden laughed out loud again, enjoying the atmosphere of ingrained disappointment.

Inspector Andy ‘Last Case’ Newman, arranging papers on a trestle table, looked up. ‘That’s them.’

They heard cars bumping along the drove road. Her Majesty’s Press was on parade. There was plenty of interest. Dryden had filed early morning pars for the late editions of the Fleet Street papers, and a full story for the first editions of the local evening papers in Cambridge, Norwich and Peterborough. He’d left an answerphone message for Charlie Bracken telling him he was at the press conference and would be in the office by ten. Then he’d called Mitch and told him to get some scene of crime pix at the pillbox, if he could get near.

Newman had pinned the cuttings from the nationals to a large board by the church door marked ‘Incident Room: PRESS’.

‘Pillbox Killing Baffles Police’, was Dryden’s favourite, from the Mirror. Although ‘Gruesome Pillbox Killing in Fens’, from the Daily Mail, had more lip-smacking sensationalism.

There was a small room to the left of the church doors where the local branch of Darby and Joan met. Newman’s sergeant, Peter Crabbe, was making tea. Half a dozen uniformed coppers were trooping in having spent the early hours combing the fields for evidence. A woman PC was sticking photos and maps to the main incident room board. Nobody appeared to be in a hurry.

‘You’ll miss all this excitement,’ said Dryden, smiling.

Newman was sitting on a plastic chair, tilted back, examining a swifts’ nest in the roof.

Dryden stood. Even now, as the sun began to rise above the treeline, the cotton of his shirt stuck to his back where it had touched the pew. ‘So why here? Why not use the nick in Ely? It’s a long way for the press to come.’

Newman parked an ample backside on what had been the wooden altar rail. It creaked like a door in the wind. ‘Exactly. Some peace and quiet – once I’ve got rid of you lot.’

Dryden considered this explanation more than sufficient. ‘I’m a key witness. I can haunt the place. I might even have done it.’

‘I wouldn’t push your luck. I’ve managed to get through an entire career without a miscarriage of justice. But I could just fit one in…’

The press arrived. They shuffled in like the extras from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The man from the East Anglian Daily News, Joey Forward, was the best dressed, and he had his flies open. PA’s man, Mike Yarr, appeared to have his pyjamas on under a jumper. The rest headed for the free coffee. They all knew each other, so nobody said hello, a subtle indication that there were no strangers in their sad little world.

Dryden had one more chance for a private question. ‘What about the porno shots? Is it the same pillbox?’

Newman showed his irritation by pulling at the tight collar which had helped turn his face red. ‘Too early, Dryden. Looks the same – but then most of ’em do.’

Dryden knew he was bluffing. The military code-number Newman had spotted on the pictures could be easily matched if it was the same pillbox. He kicked himself for panicking the night before and not checking the walls before he’d rushed back to the cab to phone the police.

‘Are you looking for Bob Sutton?’ He knew Sutton’s search for his daughter’s rapist must make him a leading suspect.

Newman’s patience snapped. ‘For Christ’s sake, just wait, Dryden. Patience. It’s a virtue. Look it up.’

The press pack, fired up by mugs of Nescafé, took their places. In the mid-morning heat there was indeed a whiff of something unwashed, something, Dryden noticed with satisfaction, that liked a drink. He felt a twinge of admiration for his trade.

Newman flicked open a manila folder. Someone farted loudly and the press giggled. Newman adjusted his reading glasses and wished, with an almost religious intensity, that he was in the metaphorical bird-hide of his retirement, removed to a world where communication was not only inessential, but a liability.