The Fire Baby

He was at her bedside when she died.

Major Koskinski is on leave from the USAF after active service in Iraq, where he was forced to bail out of his aircraft while patrolling the no-fly zone in January and spent two months in a Baghdad gaol before coalition forces liberated the city.

He spoke exclusively to the Express about his feelings.

‘I’m a US pilot. That’s my life. This doesn’t change anything, shouldn’t change anything. I do feel cheated and angry. And lost. I can’t imagine why she did it. We never had a chance to speak.

‘Yes, I’m confused. Who wouldn’t be? I’ve just visited my own grave,’ he said. It now appears the grave marked Matty Beck at St Matthew’s Church, Black Bank, is that of Lyndon Koskinski.

Dryden, who’d decided to leave his notebook in his pocket during his discussion with Lyndon, made the quotes up. He didn’t so much rely on his own memory as the poor memories of others.

Military police at USAF Mildenhall will be investigating the original crash records to see how Mrs Beck was able to fool doctors and officials at the time.

Ely police will be informed of the confession and will have to re-open the inquest into the reported death of Matty Beck in 1976. But detectives indicated that they are unlikely to take the case any further, given the length of time involved and the death of Mrs Beck.

Before her death Mrs Beck left instructions that the father of Matty Beck should be allowed to contact his son now that the truth had been told about the events at Black Bank in 1976.

She has made provision for him to inherit a sum of ?5,000 if he contacts solicitors Gillies & Wright of Ely. They are in a position to verify his claim.

Dryden re-read it once, made some small changes, and filed it to the news-desk computer basket with a note attached to make sure the subs left the last two paragraphs. He would track the story down electronically later to make sure they had respected his instructions.

He was pleased: it was a good story, and now that he had written it he saw how clearly one question still hung over Black Bank Farm: why did Maggie Beck give her son away?

Charlie Bracken had not returned and was clearly administering emergency stress relief in the Fenman bar opposite The Crow’s offices. The rest of the team was hard at work. Garry was exploring his nose with a Biro and behind his glass partition Septimus Henry Kew, editor in chief, was reading the proofs for the edition. Either he was distinctly unimpressed with his news editor’s efforts, or he was sniffing cocaine.

Dryden checked his watch: nearly noon. He picked up the phone and ran through the usual litany of last- deadline calls to the emergency services. The fire brigade had two fires, less than average in that incendiary summer. The first had started in a lock-up garage on the edge of town, swept through a nearby allotment and gutted two council houses. The smell of burnt vegetables apparently hung, even now, in the air over the Jubilee Estate.

‘Anyone hurt?’

‘Nah,’ said the control-room operator. ‘It was mid-morning. Mum at work, kids at school, Dad’s a travelling salesman. Nice to come home to, though – a real fire,’ he said, laughing at the old joke.

‘Cause?’ asked Dryden.

‘Kids. Mucking about round the garages. They found some matches, traces of lighter fuel… but I doubt anyone can be nailed for it. The other one’s a bit different.’

Dryden heard the inexpert two-finger tapping of a PC keyboard. ‘Here we are. Register Office – at Chatteris. Someone broke in, smashed the place up, set fire to the filing cabinets – destroyed all the records. Every last one.’

‘Bloody hell. Someone’s honeymoon went wrong.’ Dryden took the details for a par in the Stop Press. With almost telepathic timing the phone rang again as he put it down. It was Jean. ‘Dryden!’

Dryden felt his ear-drum pink like an overloaded loudspeaker.

‘There’s a girl here to see you.’ Jean had taken up a voluntary unpaid job as Dryden’s chaperone. ‘Shall I tell her to go away?’

Dryden took the stairs four at a time on the way down, missed the last one and went flying. The girl helped him get up.

‘Hi,’ said Dryden. She was tall, leggy, with blue eyes and dyed blonde hair held up in an untidy coconut top. She didn’t look eighteen but the last time Dryden had seen her she’d been posing in Inspector Andy Newman’s illicit porn shots. Alice Sutton was holding a cutting from last week’s edition of the Express. It was Dryden’s story on her: Father’s Plea Over Missing Girl, with her picture, across two columns. He’d run it dead straight without any link to Newman’s pillbox porn story which he’d got into The Crow. But he’d left Newman a message telling him the ID of his snapshot star.

‘It’s about this,’ she said.

Dryden nodded. He took her over to an alcove where they conducted interviews. Jean watched with eagle eyes from the switchboard.

‘You turned up?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve been to the police. OK. It’s all over. I told them everything. I want to leave it at that.’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Sure. And your dad?’

Which is when the tears started to flow. Dryden put his arm round the girl and he felt Jean’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Jean was one of those extraordinary people who live entirely moral lives. A hospital visitor, she had spent many hours beside Laura’s bed in the months after the accident, when Dryden had been too traumatized to endure lengthy visits. She’d read Laura books, knitted her a bedspread and believed, far more vehemently than Dryden, that her coma would one day end in a miracle return to full consciousness. She was determined that when that time came Dryden would be in the perfect position to resume his married life. She was a woman with a romantic mission and nobody, least of all Dryden, would be allowed to get in her way.