The Fire Baby

Two of the dogs, immediately aware that Dryden was an international-class coward, nosed his crotch with indecent interest. Briefly, as if from another world, Dryden could hear Humph laughing.

The keyholder was in the second van. He was tall, with the kind of fissured face reserved for those addicted to illegal substances in commercial quantities. The gates swung open on the sunlit maze of the container park and the dogs ran, abandoning Dryden’s privates.

Viewed from above, the scene must have been bizarre; a laboratory maze with the role of the mice taken by fourteen skittering dogs. They were using their noses, but if they’d used their eyes they would have seen the gravid cloud of flies hanging, despite the onshore breeze, over a lime-green container marked ZKA-RAPIDE.

It took the dogs twenty minutes to find it. While they were waiting Dryden told Newman about the Nissen hut at the old airfield at Witchford. ‘Looks like that’s where they let them sleep – kind of depot, I guess.’

Newman, ill-tempered, was watching the dogs scrabble round the lime-green container. ‘We’ll check it out. But my guess is they’ve changed their routine. Roe’s death must have put the fear of God into them. They’ll be finding a new route.’

Two PCs with bolt-cutters got to work on the tailgate restraints on the container. But Dryden knew what they’d find. An empty container full of filth. The one abandoned in the lay-by had been the worst, the sixteen illegal immigrants inside had not been let out for nearly four days. The toilet had started in one corner and then trickled across the whole floor. Sickness had, not surprisingly, been a problem. Food had consisted of cans of Coke and clingfilm-wrapped pasties from a Seven-11 at Felixstowe.

And then there was the dead dog. Curled around a spare tyre. The only fatality and the only occupant of the container with a real name.

The bolts sheared and the container door swung open to emit an overpowering wall of stench.

Pork, thought Dryden, the smell of cloying grease immediately unbearable. Dead pigs, about thirty of them, scattered the floor. The heat in the container drifted out. The meat was slow cooked, no crackling, but plenty of juices. A slick of animal fat began to trickle over the tailgate. Between the pigs were the telltale signs that people had shared their final journey – but had got off just in time. Ice-cream wrappers, some burger bar cartons and the usual shipment of human faeces.

‘Unbelievable,’ said Newman, spotting a heron on a rotting wooden post just off the beach. Then he checked the ever-present clipboard. ‘Nark told us there were two.’

The next container along was lime green as well. It still had a cab attached. Same markings: ZKA-RAPIDE. The cab was blue, dusty, with a black oil-slick under one tyre, which Dryden noticed was slightly flat.

The same two PCs got to work on the tailgate. But this time Dryden didn’t watch, his complacency already shattered by the casual slaughter of the dead pigs. One of Inspector Newman’s DCs had broken open the cab door, and he climbed up after him. On the first three jobs this had made the best copy, giving Dryden a chance to examine the detritus of the real villain – the driver who knew he had a human cargo. Maps, fags, sweets, and always the soiled copy of the Sun. He looked at the date: 10 June, seven days old. He sat on the wide driver’s seat and picked through the evidence. Tape in the deck: Indian pop songs, glove compartment, packet of condoms (unopened), map of Birmingham, some black sticky binding tape, and an alarm clock.

He knew something was wrong when he looked in the wing mirror. Newman was smoking. He’d given up a year earlier after an autopsy on a down-and-out who died in a ditch of lung cancer, but he was gulping in the nicotine now. And the change in the atmosphere was tangible, the squad of cynical coppers tautly alert. The dogs went berserk as Dryden jumped down and ran to the back.

Pork, he thought. But this time it wasn’t pigs; this time it was people. Three of them were crawling on the ground throwing up what little they had in their stomachs on to the sun-bleached tarmac, where it sizzled obscenely. Those in the van were alive, but another few hours in the heat of the afternoon sun would have done for them. All of them were black and soaked in sweat and urine. They blinked in the sun and cracked bent limbs. There was an almost complete lack of any human sound, except that of lungs sucking in air. The heat and smell formed an almost physical barrier. Gradually Newman’s team helped them out, down from the tailgate, while Dryden took a walk up-wind, gulping in lungfuls of sea air.