The Fire Baby

The humiliation came back now, fresh and powerful. He stood, and took up his post at the open window again, pulling the gunsight to his eye and training it on the loading bays. ‘It’s where he sleeps,’ he said, out loud this time. The skinhead who had driven the lorry. The skinhead the black men paid to do the job. His hatred for the skinhead made him vomit, heaving up over his chin, but at least the taste of the bile stopped him shaking, so he put the crosshairs of the gunsight over the red door they always used, and waited, counting the seconds into minutes.

He thought of Emmy’s body in the morgue, but this time there were no tears. He’d kissed him that one last time and although his skin had been cold, as the barrel on the gun was cold, he’d made him a promise as the lips touched his cheek. The skinhead. Then the red door opened and he led them out, the metal in his teeth catching the sun. A truck must be coming. The skinhead blinked in the sunlight and spread his arms wide in an embrace of life, while the others went to flag the truckin off the drove road. Arms wide, his face to heaven; the skinhead grinned and rubbed his hands in his short, cropped hair. So Jimmy put the crosshairs on his neck, waited a second to make sure they were both still, pulled the trigger, and sent him to hell in a spurt of bright, arterial blood.

Friday, 20 June

40

Dryden had considered playing Maggie’s last tape on the Capri’s deck. Did he have the right? Technically it was Maggie’s testament, and it had been left for Estelle and Lyndon to hear. But he couldn’t wait. He’d try Estelle at Black Bank first, then he’d play it. Still he had one other option to try to find his own answers to the mystery of Black Bank. What he needed was to talk to someone who had been there in 1976, but was prepared to tell the truth now about the Beck family, and its secrets.

Tracking Constance Tompkins down had been easy enough. Estelle was not answering calls at Black Bank and Johnnie Roe’s ex-wife had offered him few details. But she must, he reasoned, be close by to have attended Maggie’s funeral. He’d checked with a contact at County Hall and they’d traced her through the files on the county library service. She had emigrated, but she was back now, and drawing a pension. They were happy enough to give Dryden the address once he explained that Maggie Beck’s children wanted to contact their great-aunt.

Which had led him here: Fenlandia. The wooden sign on the stone gate post said ‘Rest Home’, and Dryden felt a familiar surge of nausea at the euphemism. The house stood somewhere in a stand of pine trees at the end of a dreary, dead-end lane out of town. An unnecessary and undiplomatic sign added: DEAD SLOW in letters so large they were hard to read.

Dryden left Humph ordering a bottle of make-believe retsina at Nicos’s taverna and crunched his way up the gravel drive until the building came into view. He was surprised to find it was ultra-modern, boasted two satellite dishes and solar-powered roof panels. In a nod to the more traditional model it had a large conservatory along the building’s frontage, overlooking lawns. Wisteria drooped from the eaves in a splash of washed-out purple and ivory.

‘Wisteria,’ said Dryden happily, thinking it was the perfect plant to reserve for old age.