Dryden walked 200 yards towards the blaze, his eyes streaming as the smoke swirled around him, before a fireman emerged from the gloom in full breathing gear, and grabbed Dryden by the arm muttering: ‘Idiot. Follow me.’ Dryden tried to say ‘Press’ but the breath of air he would have used turned out to be 60 per cent carbon monoxide. The fireman led him to a door in one of the vast 1930s aircraft hangars and pushed him in with enough force to leave him flat on his face. ‘Stay in there,’ he said, fading back into the smoke.
The open door faced west so the drifting smoke was slipping harmlessly round the building. Dryden lay still, catching his breath. He heard a muffled thud which could have been a car exploding, the echo bounded around him like a giant ping-pong ball. The hangar had skylights but the thick smoke from the field fire was cutting out the sun. Somewhere very close he heard the crackle of tinder-dry grass burning.
He stood and surveyed the building, which must have been nearly eighty yards long and a hundred feet high. The hangar’s floor wasn’t entirely empty. In one corner an old RAF fire tender stood, a leftover prop from a Will Hay film. Along one wall aeroplane tyres had been stored in tall rubber stacks. The decaying carcasses of trapped birds littered the floor, and an oil slick ran from a punctured tank like blood from a head wound.
Up against the vast closed hangar doors a white van was parked. Dryden walked over and put his hand on the bonnet.
‘Still warm,’ he said. The side of the van was painted a light green with a white-lettered sign: ‘Wilkinson’s For Celery’. On the passenger seat there was a clipboard and a mobile phone. He peeked inside the windows in the tailgate doors and estimated there were about fifty boxes of fresh celery neatly packed in cellophane. He looked round the hangar again, but it was still empty.
Where was the driver? In the far wall, which was almost obscured by piled tyres, there was a single door marked ‘Flight Group’. Dryden pushed it open and looked down a long corridor listening. He could hear music, African, with a solid rock beat.
He inched open the second door to find a Nissen hut: a curved corrugated iron roof over a concrete floor. The windows were all skylights again and high enough to give no view. Moss and lichen had covered them anyway, giving the whole room a sickly green tint. Rows of iron bedsteads crowded against the side walls. The springs were rusted and shot. At the far end Jimmy Kabazo, the foreman from Wilkinson’s celery plant, stood watching him.
Dryden walked in and decided to try easy informality. ‘Hiya.’
Jimmy turned and tried a door in the end wall, indicating that this ploy had failed. It was locked and when he turned back the smile had returned. He bent down and turned off a portable CD player. Dryden noticed that not all the beds were bare. Two or three on each side had sleeping bags on them, and fresh twenty-first century rubbish under them, from sandwich wrappers to tin cans and empty crisp packets. A modern Calor gas heater stood in the middle, with four plastic milk-bottle crates drawn up as seating.
Dryden picked one of the bare beds and sat where the pillow should have been, bringing his legs up off the floor. ‘Looking for someone?’ he asked, nodding to the sleeping bag on the next bed.
Kabazo grinned. ‘Nope. Just waiting.’ But he wasn’t listening.
‘Friend of mine saw them,’ said Dryden, knowing he didn’t need to spell it out. Evidence of the people smugglers was all around them. He guessed Kabazo was an illegal immigrant too, or at least mixed up in the trade.
‘We safe?’ Kabazo asked. Dryden couldn’t be sure if he was referring to the fire, or to the likelihood that he would go to the police over what he’d found.
Dryden decided innocence was best. ‘Just a peat fire – the combines start them. We’re fine – it’s mostly smoke.’
‘Saw dem where?’ said Kabazo.
‘Black Bank Fen. Going across country – east. From the lay-by on the A14. That’s where they took them out of the lorries.’
‘Ritz,’ said Kabazo, nodding, trying to calculate what Dryden knew and who he would tell.
Dryden folded his arms in a sign, he hoped, of patient informality. ‘This is between us, OK? I’m not after anyone – just a story. No names. No need for names.’
Kabazo nodded but didn’t move. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said again. ‘My boy. Today maybe. Tomorrow. Police mustn’t know.’
Dryden shrugged. ‘Sure. Why should they?’
‘Who you tellin’ den?’
‘Nobody. It’s not my job. I’m interested in the story. I mean it; I don’t need names.’
Kabazo nodded. ‘He’ll come. The skinhead said. Winston. He said last week, this week… maybe later. I don’t trust him.’
‘Winston?’
Kabazo stood at the foot of Dryden’s bunk. ‘The driver. Our people pay him, he does the dirty work. With the Ritz man – Johnnie.’
Suddenly sunlight blazed down through the green skylights, indicating the runway fire was out.
‘They’ve found a body. On Black Bank Fen,’ said Dryden, cruelly, but didn’t let the silence last more than a second. ‘A man. In his forties. I think it’s Johnnie – but they won’t say.’
Kabazo’s eyes widened. ‘How long?’
‘A few days – perhaps. What would they have done if Johnnie hadn’t been there? Where’s the next drop?’
Kabazo shook his head. ‘Nottingham. If the driver knew. Perhaps Winston doesn’t come, then they don’t know.’
‘I can ring you with a positive ID on the body at Black Bank. OK?’
Kabazo shook his head. ‘Yes? Ring the factory. Leave a message.’
