The Fire Baby

He inched open the second door to find a Nissen hut: a curved corrugated iron roof over a concrete floor. The windows were all skylights again and high enough to give no view. Moss and lichen had covered them anyway, giving the whole room a sickly green tint. Rows of iron bedsteads crowded against the side walls. The springs were rusted and shot. At the far end Jimmy Kabazo, the foreman from Wilkinson’s celery plant, stood watching him.

Dryden walked in and decided to try easy informality. ‘Hiya.’

Jimmy turned and tried a door in the end wall, indicating that this ploy had failed. It was locked and when he turned back the smile had returned. He bent down and turned off a portable CD player. Dryden noticed that not all the beds were bare. Two or three on each side had sleeping bags on them, and fresh twenty-first century rubbish under them, from sandwich wrappers to tin cans and empty crisp packets. A modern Calor gas heater stood in the middle, with four plastic milk-bottle crates drawn up as seating.

Dryden picked one of the bare beds and sat where the pillow should have been, bringing his legs up off the floor. ‘Looking for someone?’ he asked, nodding to the sleeping bag on the next bed.

Kabazo grinned. ‘Nope. Just waiting.’ But he wasn’t listening.

‘Friend of mine saw them,’ said Dryden, knowing he didn’t need to spell it out. Evidence of the people smugglers was all around them. He guessed Kabazo was an illegal immigrant too, or at least mixed up in the trade.

‘We safe?’ Kabazo asked. Dryden couldn’t be sure if he was referring to the fire, or to the likelihood that he would go to the police over what he’d found.

Dryden decided innocence was best. ‘Just a peat fire – the combines start them. We’re fine – it’s mostly smoke.’

‘Saw dem where?’ said Kabazo.

‘Black Bank Fen. Going across country – east. From the lay-by on the A14. That’s where they took them out of the lorries.’

‘Ritz,’ said Kabazo, nodding, trying to calculate what Dryden knew and who he would tell.

Dryden folded his arms in a sign, he hoped, of patient informality. ‘This is between us, OK? I’m not after anyone – just a story. No names. No need for names.’

Kabazo nodded but didn’t move. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said again. ‘My boy. Today maybe. Tomorrow. Police mustn’t know.’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Sure. Why should they?’

‘Who you tellin’ den?’

‘Nobody. It’s not my job. I’m interested in the story. I mean it; I don’t need names.’

Kabazo nodded. ‘He’ll come. The skinhead said. Winston. He said last week, this week… maybe later. I don’t trust him.’

‘Winston?’

Kabazo stood at the foot of Dryden’s bunk. ‘The driver. Our people pay him, he does the dirty work. With the Ritz man – Johnnie.’

Suddenly sunlight blazed down through the green skylights, indicating the runway fire was out.

‘They’ve found a body. On Black Bank Fen,’ said Dryden, cruelly, but didn’t let the silence last more than a second. ‘A man. In his forties. I think it’s Johnnie – but they won’t say.’

Kabazo’s eyes widened. ‘How long?’

‘A few days – perhaps. What would they have done if Johnnie hadn’t been there? Where’s the next drop?’

Kabazo shook his head. ‘Nottingham. If the driver knew. Perhaps Winston doesn’t come, then they don’t know.’

‘I can ring you with a positive ID on the body at Black Bank. OK?’

Kabazo shook his head. ‘Yes? Ring the factory. Leave a message.’

They walked back to the main hangar in silence and stood in the sunlight at the door. Outside the crowd was being marshalled towards the cars. Two vehicles had been dragged away from the rest into the middle of a field where they smouldered still. The bones of the combine harvester were black and crumpled, fire still licking around the driver’s padded seat. A scene of incident officer in a bright orange jacket was examining the threshing mechanism, pulling scorched straw from the blades.

‘Can you contact them? Get Winston?’ asked Dryden.

‘They don’t like it. They got the money. And I left them a bag for Emmy. Food and his things. His music. I sit tight some days. Wait some more. Sensible boy, my boy. He’s the first I send for with the money. Emmy’s a good boy.’

Kabazo took a wallet from his jeans pocket and flipped it open to show a snap: a boy, maybe fourteen, stood grinning under an African sun. In the background a great river, too wide to offer a view of the far bank, swept past. But it was what the boy was holding that made Dryden’s blood freeze: a mongrel dog with a rope collar. They looked happy together: impossibly happy.

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