electric light in the wasteland beyond the Mildenhall wire. Darkness was beginning to fall, but even in broad daylight it would have taken you a week to find the Billy Row International Greyhound Stadium. Flags of every nation flew, rigid in an imaginary wind, supported by hidden aluminium frames. But every other one was a Stars & Stripes.
Dryden sat on the cab roof eating a beefburger. The Capri’s windows were open in the heat and he heard the seven pips on the radio. She’d said 7.45 – after the first race on the card.
A couple of Fleet Street nationals were still interested in the bizarre pillbox killing – now they wanted family, friends, anything that could put a real life to a grisly death. He’d told Newman he wanted a telephone number to do some more background work on Roe’s life. Newman had given him the ex-wife’s full name and told him to find the number for himself. Luckily, she was in the book. A house on the outskirts of Newmarket, a council estate infamous for petty drugs offences. The call had been awkward but at least she’d agreed to meet. Her voice had been tough, disfigured by suspicion.
Already the punters were arriving. The Fens were a celebration of Americana, Mid-West variety. Stock-car racing was the most popular sport and large numbers of people had never seen the sea or the city, and were proud of it. Most of the cars rolling in for the dog racing were playing one or other of Dryden’s two least favourite forms of music: country and western. Humph had his headphones on and was reading the book that went with his language tapes:
Then came the real Americans. The state plates, the blonde wives and the kids weighed down with enough dental work to embrace the Golden Gate Bridge.
Dryden sipped Coke and burped for fun. He liked Americans. He liked the brash good humour, the lack of two- faced English subtlety and the simple determination to have plenty of fun as loudly as possible. Dryden slid off the roof, down the windscreen and across the bonnet of the Capri to land lightly on the hot tarmac. It was a good trick, and one the crowd in his head always cheered.
By the turnstiles was The Greyhound ‘Nite Spot’. Neon strip lighting picked out the shape of a racing dog. Class in spades, thought Dryden, as he ordered a pint of imported Bud at the bar and watched two US pilots playing pool on a table with a blue baize top. Two middle-aged guys at the bar played with their cigarette packs and vied, in a half-hearted way, for the attentions of the barmaid.
Dryden had another Bud and left at 7.29 precisely, but was still able to find an empty half-acre of terrace by the time the first race began. The bell rang. The dogs were paraded in their neat waistcoats. Handlers, in mock-lab coats, tried to look disinterested. The dogs were bundled into the starting gate with indecent haste, like murderers into the noose. The hare did a lap and Dryden laughed at its silly teetering progress, but as it lapped the starting gate the dogs exploded out of their traps. Their speed and beauty thrilled him, and they took the first bend in a tight hurtling pack of sporting colours. By the time they crossed the finishing line after three laps he was cheering with the rest. He didn’t know which mutt had won, and he didn’t care. The punters dropped their torn-up betting slips, a tiny snow shower of disappointment. The winners swaggered, but only as far as the bar.
She was beside him suddenly, with a tray of race cards and cigarettes. She was probably under fifty but she’d been given a double helping of wrinkles, and none of them were laughter lines. The hair was once blonde, but now it was grey and cut lifelessly short. She had the slight stoop of the habitual smoker and the nervous searching fingers of someone feeling for a filter-tip.
‘Well?’ she said, and sat down on the concrete terrace. She searched in her pockets for cigarettes, then stopped herself by clasping her hands in her lap.
‘Sally Roe?’ asked Dryden. She nodded, looking at her hands. ‘You were married to Johnnie Roe?’ he asked, trying to think fast and talk slowly at the same time.
‘In 1978.’
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet.’
‘Not a lot of choice once you had the number.’ She smiled in half-apology for the aggressive tone.
Dryden smiled back. ‘The police said you were divorced. Years.’
She nodded, watching the dogs being led towards the starting booths again.
‘Yeah. I got out in’ ninety-three.’
‘Any reason?’
‘Loads. Private now. Best forgotten. But one thing Johnnie never forgot was that kid. When he’d had too much that was what it all came down to. Every argument. Every fight. We never had children. So he grieved for Matt. It brought it all back – what you wrote in the paper.’
Dryden was thinking fast, but he’d just been lapped.
She turned to face him. ‘Johnnie and Maggie were quite an item. We all thought they’d stick together, you know – not like the other teenage flings. He really wanted the kid – that’s why he went back into the fire that night. That’s how he got the burns – you should have seen his back.’
She nodded. ‘Oh yeah. It made Johnnie what he was.’
‘And what was that?’ said Dryden, picturing the pillbox on Black Bank Fen.
Her resolution failed, she found the packet in her breast pocket and lit up in a single fluid movement. Then she took in the nicotine and waited that two or three seconds it takes before the effect floods the bloodstream.
‘A bastard, really. But he could have been something else. If he’d come out of that fire with that kid his life would have been worth something. He said that. Drunk, I know, but he meant it. As it was, he amounted to nothing, so he didn’t see the point in trying to be anything better. He said he was a zero. Mr Zero. Which was nice for me, of course, being Mrs Zero. But by the time I left him zero was an over-estimate.’
‘But at the start?’
She laughed. The bell for the next race was rung and those of the crowd still interested moved down to the rail.
‘The heat was bad then,’ she said, and pressed her hand against her forehead. ‘In 1976. I knew both of them.
