have loved, here, was stolen long ago. He spent nearly thirty years thinking he’d lost his mother when he was two weeks old – then he discovers she’s alive with almost her last breath. How much grief can one person take? What would you feel?’
Dryden felt the familiar panic sweep through him as he faced answering a question rather than posing one. ‘I guess I’d want to know why she’d done it, why she gave me away.’
‘Which is exactly what we don’t know. She was unhappy at Black Bank, she hated her life in many ways. The tapes are very clear about that. About what my mother suffered…’
‘You’ve listened to all of them?’
She answered immediately, as if under cross-examination in a courtroom. ‘Yes. All those we found under the bed. Each one. From her earliest memories on Black Bank to her final illness…’
‘Forgive me,’ said Dryden, stepping closer. ‘Are you sure? Did you get the sense that she’d completed the story? Does the last tape end abruptly, run out, what?’
She climbed effortlessly on to the playground see-saw and sat, perfectly balanced, at its fulcrum: ‘It just runs out. You think there’s more?’
‘Possibly. The tape recorder’s gone – you didn’t take it?’
She shook her head, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘No. I said, we left it for you.’
Dryden looked at the shadow condensed at his feet. ‘And she gave no hint about her decision that night. Why she gave Matty away?’
‘She said she had no choice,’ said Estelle.
‘Those are her words?’
‘Yes. She said she had no choice and that she’d never regretted what she’d done, even though she grieved for her son for nearly thirty years.’ She walked off to tap a barometer mounted on the schoolhouse wall next to a thermometer. She had her back to him when she spoke: ‘So who’s looking for Lyndon?’
‘The local police need to talk to him about Maggie’s confession. At the very least his ID needs to be changed, records amended. I doubt it makes much difference to his nationality in reality, but it might. They’ve asked Mildenhall to help – they don’t want to push it but they need to get Lyndon back before it becomes an issue, an incident.’
She turned with a smile on her face. ‘If you find him first, Mr Dryden, tell him to speak to me. Will you take that message to him? Tell him to ring the mobile.’ She touched her breast pocket to check the phone was still there.
Dryden walked back with her towards the classroom where a crescendo of babble indicated that Jonathan had lost control of his charges. ‘One question. Did Lyndon take the Land Rover?’
‘Yes, yes he did.’
Dryden spun on his heel, taking in the perfect circular horizon of the Black Fen. ‘That’s going to be difficult to hide. You can see for ever.’
She considered the view; a shimmering expanse of tumbling hot air. ‘Sometimes the truth’s a lot closer.’
33
Humph drove him to Barham’s Dock as the sun fell. He left Humph rummaging in the drinks compartment and rang his landline answerphone: still no further word from Gillies & Wright. How could Maggie have miscalculated so badly? She’d been convinced Lyndon’s father would come forward. If there was no further news soon Dryden needed a new lead on the story to run the appeal again – this time in
He checked his watch: 8.45pm – time for night calls. Every evening he did the round of six: police headquarters at Cambridge, local cop shop at Ely, fire station at Cambridge, county ambulance control at Histon, the coastguard at Cromer, and the AA regional centre at Peterborough. Most nights it was six blanks, which was a good job as Dryden usually made the calls having taken a series of nightcaps with Humph.
Tonight it was miniature
Dryden waited a full minute with the bottle vertically poised above his lips to allow the last of the green slurry to seep out. Then he hit the mobile. He knew something was wrong when he finally got through to the duty officer at the county police HQ.
‘Yeah. We’ve got two units on the perimeter wire at Mildenhall. Request from the base commander. Fire. No other details at this time.’
‘Shit,’ said Dryden, cutting straight to fire HQ. Humph carefully screwed the top back on to his second bottle and started the cab’s engine.
‘We’ve got three tenders on the airfield,’ said the control room operator.
‘From…’ said Dryden, hoping his luck would hold.
‘Mildenhall, Ely and Soham.’
The military at Mildenhall had three tenders of their own on the air base. If they’d called for assistance something had gone off with a big bang. He flicked through his contact book. He knew one of the Ely firemen whose wife was a nurse at The Tower. They’d met at a fund-raising barbecue four years earlier, the summer before Laura’s accident. He’d been on the
‘… here. Darren Peake here. Darren…’
‘Hi. Hi. It’s Philip. Philip Dryden from The Crow. Sorry. We met at one of the fund-raisers. Are you at the Mildenhall fire?’
