bottle of malt whisky, bobbing cork up.
They edged on board, aware that PK 129 had a dangerous list to port. Humph found the newspaper cutting – identical to the one left on the Capri’s windscreen. It was pinned to the chart board in the galley. Pinned with a carving knife.
The childless house had mocked Maggie Beck from the first day: the day they’d driven through the military monotony of the Forestry Commission estates. The windows mocked her with their identical views of pine trees and sandy paths. And the ivory dress mocked her too, even now, from its crepe-paper package above the wardrobe. She longed for the view across Black Bank Fen, wondering at the same time how she could miss, so much, something she had hated so much. The memory of an amphitheatre sky haunted her claustrophobic life. She longed for a horizon, a distant view of miniature people, a cloud casting a shadow half a county away.
She’d married Don two years ago. The best wedding picture was in the front room over the gas fire. He could have been her dad, she knew that’s what everyone was saying behind their hands. Sometimes she wished he was. Then she could have shared the memory, the memory of the falling star that had taken Matty away.
Why had she married him? Children, security, kindness, decency. Four powerful reasons she knew now did not add up to love.
She went to the front room and touched Matty’s picture: the one she’d taken when he was a week old. She loved this image, the one she saw every day, but she loved her secret more. So she ran, up the stairs, to the laundry room where the chest was. It was burnt too, like her cheek, and she ran her finger down the scar with an almost sensual caress. She lifted it open and slipped her hand down beside the old clothes until she found the waxed wallet that held the air-letters. They’d started to arrive last year on Lyndon’s first birthday. She’d had to ask, by registered letter. She’d lost Matty, they knew that, she only asked to see how the boy she’d saved was growing. And he was growing. Her favourite showed him naked, just two, standing in a lake with a smile like a searchlight and a plastic Captain Hook cutlass.
She flipped it over but she knew the inscription, knew all the inscriptions: ‘Tokebee, Michigan. Summer 78. London plays pirates.’
That’s all she had until now: pictures of a memory. Until now. She checked her watch: 9.38.
Where was Don? He should be here, they’d agreed that, together. She ran to the nursery and checked the temperature: 74°F, just like the book had said. She rested her hand on the blanket in the cot and felt the familiar surge of grief of loss, the almost overwhelming conviction that she could feel his body warmth even now, two years later.
She cried at the funeral. Cried openly for the little boy she didn’t know, and secretly for the little boy she’d sent to live another life 5,000 miles away. Her lover’s tears were real. They burst out of him like a spring and he’d knelt in the red dust and wept like a child who can find no logic in the world’s cruelty. It was the only time she’d felt like touching him since the night she’d seen the pictures. The pictures of her. She could have reached out, told him even then, and ended those tears. But she kept her secret, and bathed instead in his grief.
The doorbell rang. She slipped on the stairs and clattered down into the hat stand. She fumbled with the latch and threw it open, knowing it was Don: two long rings and one short. It was his warning signal. To summon her from the depths of the old farmhouse. He was trying to smile, trying to hide what he felt: ‘There’s something wrong. The boy’s gone, Maggie. The boy’s gone. We have to talk to them again.’
She hated his farmer’s face then, with the cheeks nipped red by the frost.
28
Dawn: the sun broke on the eastern horizon and swung a searchlight beam over the landscape. From the observation platform on which Dryden stood he looked down on the canopy of trees which seemed to cover the earth. To the east a large freshwater lake broke the sea of feathered, sunlit green; motionless except for an excited flock of flamingoes, an impossibly pink blotch on the eggshell blue water. He was the only one in the tree hide forty feet above Wicken Fen. An elephant could have ambled out of the tall rushes and drunk at the water beneath him. Exotic bird calls cut the silence which had come over the waterscape with the start of the day. Dryden felt his spirit swell at the sheer scale of the landscape below him, and the skyscape above. In spring and autumn, when dawn was later, it was a sight which brought the crowds to see the feeding: but not today. He could see the reflective flash of binoculars from some of the other hides, but he was alone in his: a sentry against a purple sky.
The grain boat was in position. The warden sat, scanning the sky. Dryden listened. Nothing. They always managed to surprise him: either early and soundless, or late and clamouring. He heard weary footsteps climbing the wooden ladder. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Andy ‘Last Case’ Newman, climbing reluctantly to their meeting, despite the promise of some on-duty birdwatching.
He got to the top and walked to the safety bar. ‘There,’ he said, pointing south. He was right. A tiny cloud, like a puff of smoke from a distant locomotive, was wheeling in towards the open water.
‘I’ve got a paper to fill,’ said Dryden. Wednesdays were tough on The Crow, with three inside news pages to fill in a circulation area as lively as Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
Newman fixed his binoculars on the distant flock. ‘I would have thought one emaciated corpse in a pillbox would do.’
‘Old news,’ said Dryden, manufacturing a yawn which turned into the real thing. He’d spent the night with Humph in the Capri and sleep had eluded him. He’d been up at dawn to check out the damage on PK 129 And he’d rung August and requested a background interview with Freeman White, Lyndon Koskinski’s fellow prisoner in Al Rasheid. He yawned again, hearing the plastic pop of the jaw joint as his muscles stretched. ‘How about confirming the ID?’
Newman dropped the glasses and gazed over the painted water. ‘Can’t do. But you know anyway, we both do. It’s got to be Johnnie Roe – mobile tea-bar owner and general low-life.’
‘Ex-wife?’
‘She only reported him missing because the cheques stopped. Johnnie had a nice house, by the way – out at Nornea on the West Fen. Vermin and cat’s pee – unusual combination, that.’
