The Fire Baby

He saw the name but didn’t recognize it, even though he felt his skin goosebump, despite the eighty-degree heat. Until now Laura’s messages could have been simply the product of her unique view on the world. A view of hospital visitors whispering and discussing family secrets around the deathbed of Maggie Beck. But this? This was a warning.

WATCH WHITE

He knew that if he concentrated on something else the memory would come back. He watched a trawler running in on the gravy-brown tide, while on the beach a child stuck lollipop sticks into the tops of sandcastles.

Then he had it: Freeman White, Lyndon Koskinski’s fellow prisoner in Al Rasheid jail. Koskinski had said he was stationed at Mildenhall, undergoing medical treatment.

They were back at The Tower within an hour. Dryden sensed now that Laura had been at the centre of what had happened to Maggie Beck in the last days of her life. The life she had recorded on tape.

He climbed the stairs to Laura’s room. The COMPASS machine was silent but a length of tickertape hung motionless in the room’s fetid air. She was getting more expert at using the machine, Dryden could see that now. The gibberish was probably all involuntary movements. But when the message came it was separate and clear.

SHDUTUF F GKO GLDJUCN TAPESECORDER

FDHGFI FHGO SHSYGFKF DHDYWISJ SJSOSOJ

He felt the hair on his neck prickle. She was one letter out. He should have noticed before, the tape deck Estelle and Lyndon had left on the window ledge was gone.

The nurse on duty at the desk in the foyer seemed mildly affronted that Dryden could suggest one of the staff was a thief.

‘I can’t imagine anyone has taken it,’ she said, a practised smile revealing sharp teeth.

‘So where is it?’

‘Perhaps Mrs Beck’s family took it?’

‘They said they left it, it’s mine. But I’ll double check,’ said Dryden. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you could ask around. If it turns up, no questions will be asked – OK? Otherwise, I guess it’s the police.’

He showed his teeth back.

Then he told Humph to take him home. They drove in silence to Barham’s Dock where PK 129 lay motionless under a large moon.

‘Drink?’ asked Dryden, getting out, and not looking back.

He knew something was wrong before he reached the boat. It lay low in the water and he could see now that the bow was much lower than the stern. Some of the pots in which he grew herbs on the deck had spilled on to the bank.

He heard Humph behind him. ‘Shit.’

About three foot of black, stinking river water lay inside the main cabin. A crude siphon pump had been set up to draw the river water up, over the bulwarks, and into the cabin well. He plucked one end of the pipe from the river and climbed aboard. He submerged the pipe in the water in the wheelhouse and then flipped one end of the pipe back overboard, reversing the flow and beginning the long task of draining the boat dry. Peeking through the forward portholes he saw debris floating: a picture of Laura’s parents in Turin, some plastic plates, and a half-full bottle of malt whisky, bobbing cork up.

They edged on board, aware that PK 129 had a dangerous list to port. Humph found the newspaper cutting – identical to the one left on the Capri’s windscreen. It was pinned to the chart board in the galley. Pinned with a carving knife.

The childless house had mocked Maggie Beck from the first day: the day they’d driven through the military monotony of the Forestry Commission estates. The windows mocked her with their identical views of pine trees and sandy paths. And the ivory dress mocked her too, even now, from its crêpe-paper package above the wardrobe. She longed for the view across Black Bank Fen, wondering at the same time how she could miss, so much, something she had hated so much. The memory of an amphitheatre sky haunted her claustrophobic life. She longed for a horizon, a distant view of miniature people, a cloud casting a shadow half a county away.