The Fire Baby

she was a child, then clothes, CDs, pictures of the desert, and the city where they lived: the pool, the Christmas tree, the people-carrier. And she’d sent pictures back, from the awkward Fen child in farm clothes clutching her American doll, to the blonde teenager with the all-American smile.

‘Pretty kid,’ said his grandfather, sourly. They’d resented the contact, his grandparents, he knew that now. He knew that it was Maggie who had kept them together, persisted, and used their guilt to keep the link alive.

And Estelle had envied him his family as well, with all the cruelty of a child. The lack of parents, the doting grandparents, the freedom. Her father had died when she was four, long before her memory had been born. And her mother had loved her as her second child, precisely that and nothing more. A great love, but always, she sensed, short of its absolute potential. Estelle knew that even before memory began.

And so they’d shared a childhood, an adolescence, despite the 5,000 miles that had always separated them. When he’d been stationed overseas he’d flown out via the Pacific – but they’d told Maggie he was posted in Iraq and that if he came back through the UK he’d visit. He’d dreaded the thought, the reality of the contact after all these years, but his grandparents had insisted it was only right. Only what Maggie deserved. She’d saved his life. But after Al Rasheid he couldn’t face them, despite the calls from home telling him Maggie was ill.

But his depression had deepened, alone in his room at the base. He had to drive, drive anywhere without a map. Perhaps he knew it would happen. He’d seen the sign and felt the past pulling him towards the centre of his life: that moment when the plane had disintegrated in a fireball of burning aviation fuel. He’d never wanted to see it the spot where his parents had died. But just after the sign came the stone, the memorial stone. He’d always carried the picture in his wallet. But now he got out and ran his fingers over the raised names on the stone, back and forth like a prayer said in Braille.

He’d left the car and walked to the house. There was no answer so he walked round to the yard. She had a towel out on the grass by the greenhouses. A bikini, in sky blue he remembered, contrasting with the corn-yellow hair. A CD player belting out country and western. She hadn’t heard him so he stood and considered her, trying to recall what it was like to hold such a body. He couldn’t remember the name of the last woman he’d made love to. It seemed like an episode from a book he’d read, on a forgotten train journey. Or even the last time he’d held anybody, or been held. In the cell, at Al Rasheid, he’d held Freeman, to hold someone, and to keep him alive. But now he wanted to hold this woman.

So he’d said hello. She’d jumped up and removed her sunglasses. And that was the start of it, and now there was an end to it.

Thursday, 19 June

35

‘The pillbox,’ said Dryden to himself, looking up at the shimmering bulk of the cathedral where a mirage already played above the lead roof. On Palace Green a gaggle of Japanese tourists had surrounded an ice cream van, but otherwise the town centre was deserted. The wet pools beneath the hanging baskets in the High Street had long since been burnt dry.

Dryden checked the court list again. He was first up on the rota for the magistrates: Peter Selby, of Caddus Street, Rushden. The stud from the pillbox porn show. Dryden zig-zagged through the streets from shade to shade until he reached the imposing facade of the courthouse. Inside, an assortment of Ely low-life shuffled about in ill- fitting suits, and they were the solicitors.

In the main courtroom the press bench was empty except for Alf Walker, a veteran wireman who had the county magistrate circuit stitched up, making a decent living filing anything juicy to the nationals. But he was no Rottweiler. He cut The Crow in for a nominal fee, which saved Henry Septimus Kew a fortune every year in staffing the court, while in return The Crow tipped him off if they heard something lively was on the court list.

Normally Dryden would have left this one to Alf, but he was beginning to take a strong personal interest in the pillbox on Black Bank Fen and everything that had happened there.

Alf was the opposite of the Fleet Street stereotype. Teetotal, with 180-wpm perfect Pitman shorthand, he dressed in country tweeds and sported a hat with a bird’s feather sticking out of the band. His hobby was birdwatching and his notebook pages alternated between beautifully inscribed shorthand verbatim notes and mildly gifted line drawings of British birds. He was half-way through a fine kestrel when Dryden slumped on to the bench next to him.

At that moment the court clerk entered and promptly called the court to order with an ‘All rise!’ The magistrates trooped in.

‘How’s Andy?’ Dryden whispered. Walker was a member of the same birdwatching society as Inspector Andy Newman. Dryden had noticed that he and Alf were occasionally blessed with the same inside information as a result.

‘Chasing his arse. He’s got two corpses and no idea. But I doubt he’s losing any sleep over it.’ Alf nodded at the dock: ‘Hey up.’

There stood Peter Selby, the stud from Newman’s pornographic snaps. Dryden reckoned he was six feet two, blond lifeless hair cut short and trendy with a French peak. He’d been given bail at his last appearance and was in a casual T-shirt which showed off the flawless muscles Alice Sutton had, at first, found so sexy. Even more so after she’d been slipped the date-rape drug in her drink.

But it was a face that was most forgettable. It was odd but true that a complete set of perfect features can make a face repellent: a hymn to symmetry without a trace of character. He looked like a computer-enhanced superhero; a somewhat pathetic one, given his inability to fly the confines of a chipboard dock in a small town magistrates court.

His lawyer stood, which was the first clue that Peter Selby had friends with wallets. This was no country circuit solicitor; the suit was navy blue, pinstripe, and cut to perfection. The legal bags were black leather and reeked of fees in excess of ?400 an hour. Behind him sat two juniors armed with papers, mobile phones, and bottles of Evian.

‘I think we can assume Selby has wealthy friends,’ said Alf.

The prosecuting solicitor stood slowly as two court ushers brought in four cardboard boxes and set them on the solicitor’s bench.