The Fire Baby

August ploughed on before anyone could delve deeper. ‘As to timing. The last fire exercise was two weeks ago. The building was cleared then. So any time between then and now.’

Mike Yarr had been told by PA’s news desk in London to get a terrorist line on the killings. That would ensure the copy was used nationwide. ‘Clearly there are concerns about terrorist attacks, Major. Can you comment on that?’ he asked.

August sighed. ‘We are ever vigilant here at USAF…’As August began to run through a tedious prepared line on the terrorist threat Dryden stood, stacked a paper plate with individual miniature pork pies and sat before one of the PC screens. He’d pulled the cork on a bottle of red wine and poured himself a large glass. The PC was logged on to the USAF Mildenhall site. He scrolled on through the site to the official ‘Welcome’ from the President, short statements from the USAF and RAF commanders on the base, and fifteen pages of on-base sport which proved to be fifteen too many. Local baseball teams lined up for pictures. Endless league tables read like a roll-call of Middle America from the Big Rock Busters to the New Jersey Fliers. The social pages pointed up a production of A Street Car Named Desire at the base theatre, and Die Hard 3 at the cinema. Ten Pin Bowling was now available twenty-four hours a day at the Lincoln Leisure Center.

And finally ‘Noticeboard’ – a message page dominated by vital events.

B Block Stateside congrats to Jaynette and Mike on the arrival of Mike Jnr. Go Fella!

Friends of Michael J. Doherty, base medic 1975–2000 will want to know that he died peacefully in his sleep here at home in Salt Lake on June 5. A long illness bravely borne.

Then he saw it. He read it three times before shutting the PC down to think. Then he booted it back up and took a verbatim note.

This is a long shot but it’s a message for the love birds. I was really privileged to be the witness – I guess it was the uniform that made you choose me. But look – the snapshots are great, especially the ones in the white Land Rover, and I thought that maybe one day you might want to share the memory after all. So just e-mail me and I’ll send them online, if that’s OK. The guy at the register office said I should do it this way coz you’d mentioned the base. So, no names! But e-mail me if you want to remember Cromer – I always will.

Dryden called up a fresh e-mail form and hit REPLY. The PC automatically reprinted the sender’s e-mail address: jon.cummings@norfolkconstab_cromer.

He typed:

It was great to hear from you. We’d still like to keep our secret here but we’d love the pictures. Please send them to the e-mail below – it’s a friend who’s online and he’s got a color printer. And thanks for being there!

Dryden added his own hotmail address and poured himself another large glass of red wine.

He wondered how many white Land Rovers there were in the Fens and was appalled by the consequences if there was only one. He rejoined his colleagues and tried to smile at August’s bad jokes. August was smiling too, but by then the Buxton water bottle was empty.

37

If he hadn’t tried to track down Johnnie Roe’s wife he’d have never known the dog track was there. This was Thursday night out, Fen-style. The stadium was a little cauldron of electric light in the wasteland beyond the Mildenhall wire. Darkness was beginning to fall, but even in broad daylight it would have taken you a week to find the Billy Row International Greyhound Stadium. Flags of every nation flew, rigid in an imaginary wind, supported by hidden aluminium frames. But every other one was a Stars & Stripes.

Dryden sat on the cab roof eating a beefburger. The Capri’s windows were open in the heat and he heard the seven pips on the radio. She’d said 7.45 – after the first race on the card.

A couple of Fleet Street nationals were still interested in the bizarre pillbox killing – now they wanted family, friends, anything that could put a real life to a grisly death. He’d told Newman he wanted a telephone number to do some more background work on Roe’s life. Newman had given him the ex-wife’s full name and told him to find the number for himself. Luckily, she was in the book. A house on the outskirts of Newmarket, a council estate infamous for petty drugs offences. The call had been awkward but at least she’d agreed to meet. Her voice had been tough, disfigured by suspicion.

Already the punters were arriving. The Fens were a celebration of Americana, Mid-West variety. Stock-car racing was the most popular sport and large numbers of people had never seen the sea or the city, and were proud of it. Most of the cars rolling in for the dog racing were playing one or other of Dryden’s two least favourite forms of music: country and western. Humph had his headphones on and was reading the book that went with his language tapes: Greek Language and People.