The Fire Baby

And so they’d shared a childhood, an adolescence, despite the 5,000 miles that had always separated them. When he’d been stationed overseas he’d flown out via the Pacific – but they’d told Maggie he was posted in Iraq and that if he came back through the UK he’d visit. He’d dreaded the thought, the reality of the contact after all these years, but his grandparents had insisted it was only right. Only what Maggie deserved. She’d saved his life. But after Al Rasheid he couldn’t face them, despite the calls from home telling him Maggie was ill.

But his depression had deepened, alone in his room at the base. Hehad to drive, drive anywhere without a map. Perhaps he knew it would happen. He’d seen the sign and felt the past pulling him towards the centre of his life: that moment when the plane had disintegrated in a fireball of burning aviation fuel. He’d never wanted to see it the spot where his parents had died. But just after the sign came the stone, the memorial stone. He’d always carried the picture in his wallet. But now he got out and ran his fingers over the raised names on the stone, back and forth like a prayer said in Braille.

He’d left the car and walked to the house. There was no answer so he walked round to the yard. She had a towel out on the grass by the greenhouses. A bikini, in sky blue he remembered, contrasting with the corn-yellow hair. A CD player belting out country and western. She hadn’t heard him so he stood and considered her, trying to recall what it was like to hold such a body. He couldn’t remember the name of the last woman he’d made love to. It seemed like an episode from a book he’d read, on a forgotten train journey. Or even the last time he’d held anybody, or been held. In the cell, at Al Rasheid, he’d held Freeman, to hold someone, and to keep him alive. But now he wanted to hold this woman.

So he’d said hello. She’d jumped up and removed her sunglasses. And that was the start of it, and now there was an end to it.

Thursday, 19 June

35

‘The pillbox,’ said Dryden to himself, looking up at the shimmering bulk of the cathedral where a mirage already played above the lead roof. On Palace Green a gaggle of Japanese tourists had surrounded an ice cream van, but otherwise the town centre was deserted. The wet pools beneath the hanging baskets in the High Street had long since been burnt dry.

Dryden checked the court list again. He was first up on the rota for the magistrates: Peter Selby, of Caddus Street, Rushden. The stud from the pillbox porn show. Dryden zig-zagged through the streets from shade to shade until he reached the imposing façade of the courthouse. Inside, an assortment of Ely low-life shuffled about in ill-fitting suits, and they were the solicitors.