The Fire Baby

His brain swam, unable to compute the interlocking facets of three stories which had become fixed in a baffling embrace. Was there any way forward? He sensed that if he could find the last tape that Maggie made before her death he could begin to unravel the truth. He would visit The Tower that night, and begin his own enquiries.

When he opened his eyes it was to see a crocodile of walkers making its way across the grass runway from Gate B. Her Majesty’s Press had arrived en masse, and were being escorted by Sergeant DeWitt, August’s statuesque assistant. The bedraggled group were hot, bad-tempered and in search of a decent story. Sergeant DeWitt promised cold drinks, a buffet lunch, and best of all – alcohol.

Inside, the old hut had been turned into a mini-conference centre. Plush seats with flip-down note tables were set in rows. A generous spread of sandwiches and nibbles had been laid on a new pine table down one side of the room. A dozen bottles of wine had been provided – although Dryden noted with suspicion the usual trick: they’d been opened and then re-corked, the contents thereby being unlikely to bear any relation to the labels. On the opposite side of the room an identical table had a series of six PCs linked up to the internet with the base website permanently online: USAF Mildenhall: The US Gateway to Europe.

August had invited Inspector Andy Newman along to take questions too. Technically the base was sovereign US soil while the 120-year lease ran its course. In practice a suspicious death on a US air base had attracted the interest of the Home Office in London and the US Embassy. Discreet calls had been made to secure the cooperation of the local constabulary in clearing up the crime as quickly as possible. Newman’s first job was to settle nerves at HQ in Histon that the killing was not a terrorist act. Post-September 11 nerves amongst the top brass were still frayed.

Joey Forward, the local man for the East Anglian Daily News, played idly with his trouser zip as he considered his first question. ‘So, this body that was burnt up – like a cinder the camera man said. Nasty business. Any ideas, sergeant?’ He studied a briefing pack they’d all picked up on the way in.

‘Major. Major August Sondheim. The murder victim…’

‘Murder?’ cut in Dryden. ‘Why so sure?’

‘All windows and doors on the fire house were locked from the outside. We don’t know if the man died inside, or was dead before the fire was lit… we never will, I’m afraid. We’ll be lucky to get an ID off the dental records. Not a piece of flesh left on him.’

Mike Yarr, the PA wireman, was working a piece of gristle out of his teeth, having hastily eaten a beef sandwich. He burped loudly without covering his mouth.

‘Murder then,’ he said, still working at his teeth. ‘Any link with the Black Bank killing?’

August shrugged. ‘Local CID investigating, gentlemen. Inspector Andy Newman will take your questions on that.’

There was a short but audible groan.

Newman stood and pinned a large Ordnance Survey map on the display board at the front of the conference room. Red circles marked the pillbox in Mons Wood and the fire house on the air base.

‘For any strangers who may have wandered in, we are here,’ said Newman, pointing to the old RAF huts marked outside the base’s perimeter wire. ‘Clearly, two such incidents within five miles of each other give us cause for concern, gentlemen. At the moment we will be operating two incident rooms and two enquiries – but I shall head both. I shall keep Major Sondheim’s superiors briefed at all times. If there are links, I can assure you we will not miss them.’

‘Timing on the ID?’ said Dryden.

Newman consulted some notes. ‘It has to be forty-eight hours. This is no ordinary medical examination. The inside of the fire house is essentially a crematorium. We are dealing with bones and ashes.’

‘Any clues at the site?’ said Forward.

August shot the cuffs on his uniform. ‘All I can say is that there are no fingerprints on the metallic locks. The victim was male. Lot of bridgework on the teeth, which might help with the ID. Oh – and a metallic cylinder by the body could be the core of a heavy-duty torch.’

‘Racial type?’ asked Dryden.

‘Indeterminate,’ said August, who was beginning to lose a battle with a raging thirst. He fingered a bottle of Buxton water he’d brought into the briefing. Dryden might have been imagining it but the fluid inside seemed to leave a suspicious film on the inside of the bottle.

‘Anyone missing on the base?’ asked Forward, wandering over to the food to add to a plate already resembling International Rescue’s Tracey Island.

Good question, thought Dryden.

August didn’t miss a beat. ‘No member of the base complement is unaccounted for. Nor outside civilian staff.’

Lyndon Koskinski, of course, was neither: a nice distinction.