The Fire Baby

Dryden imagined Newman joining up. ‘People should get out more.’

‘They did,’ said Newman, nodding at the brown envelope. ‘The pictures turned up in a house in Nottingham. A raid – illegal immigrants.’

One of the HGVs shuddered past, drowning out for a second the whine of the cars on the A14. Dryden felt one of the small bones in his ear vibrate in tune with the diesel engine.

‘Operation Ironside,’ said Newman. ‘April 1940. They thought the Germans were going to invade on the east coast. Plan was to blow up the sluices at Denver and flood the Fens. The Isle of Ely was the HQ for the region post-invasion. So they built pillboxes. About a hundred and fifty of them across the region, mostly around the edge of the island and on the old cliff-line.’

Newman handed Dryden the binoculars and pointed north across a field of dry peat soil to a windbreak of poplars.

It took Dryden a minute to find it. One of its six sides caught the sun. The narrow machine-gun slit a jet-black shadow like an ugly mouth.

‘That one?’

‘Nope. Roof’s collapsed.’

Dryden looked again through the binoculars. One side had crumbled and the roof did indeed sit at an angle on top. While pillboxes came in many guises, this he knew was the standard design. Hexagonal, single-storey, with gunslits on up to four of the sides. A door would be located to the ‘rear’ depending on the engineer’s guess as to the direction of attack. Once inside with the door locked a small group of soldiers could hold out for days, even weeks. Dryden had been inside a few in the Fens covering a variety of stories from devil worship to juvenile drug taking. Most were squalid, with ash-covered floors, and all the detritus of low-life from used syringes to discarded condoms. One had been daubed with the signs of the zodiac.

Dryden didn’t believe in ghosts or devils but some places, he felt, radiated evil. He could sense it now, even across the open fields of a summer’s day, a palpable sense of menace focused on the pillbox.

‘And there’s this,’ added Newman.

One of the prints Dryden had ignored was a blow-up of part of the wall. He’d thought it was just a duff picture but now he could see faintly stencilled letters neatly set out by a wall bracket.

‘It probably held a phone,’ said Newman. ‘The number identifies the pillbox. At least it would if we had the records. Which we haven’t.’

‘But?’ There had to be more.

‘The first three numbers give the area: 103. Isle of Ely. Local TA boys still use them for orienteering.’

Dryden didn’t move. He considered the 150 or more pillboxes circling the city, each, perhaps, protecting its own sordid secrets. ‘So what’s the story? More to the point, what’s the crime?’

Newman got out and leant on the Citroen’s baking roof. Dryden followed suit and they faced each other over the hot metal. ‘We’re looking for anyone who’s seen anything unusual around a pillbox. Cars at night. Lights. Clothing left in them. Kids might have seen something. The crime? My guess is the girl’s drugged. She’s somebody’s daughter, somebody’s girlfriend.’

Dryden let the sun bake his upturned face for a few seconds. He thought about the girl in the pictures, considering the six grubby walls pressing in, and the stench of decay: ‘Could she be missing?’

‘It’s possible. You can say we’ve got the national police force computer on the job and the missing persons files have been scoured.’

What a place to be trapped, thought Dryden: his claustrophobia made his pulse race at the thought. Six walls, pressing in. He remembered Harrimere Drain and the vanishing air pocket in which he and Laura had been trapped. The car, forced off the road by an oncoming driver, had plunged into the icy water of the deep ditch. He had been pulled clear by the other driver, letting himself rise through the dark water towards the air above. As consciousness faded he had told himself then, and always, that he had given Laura up to get help, but he knew others doubted his motives. Had he simply fled the nightmare of the underwater cell? The panic-stricken retreat of the coward?

He thought of the girl in the picture and the look of bewildered fear in her eyes. He didn’t have much pity left, even for Laura. But he had some anger.

3

The Crow’s offices stood on Market Street between a seed wholesalers and the old town gaol. It had a single door to the street which boasted a catflap and a flip-over plastic sign which could read ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’. Inside, the floorboards were bare and behind a single counter sat Jean, The Crow’s half-deaf receptionist and switchboard operator. As a front lobby it hardly compared to that of the News, Dryden’s one-time Fleet Street employer, which had been manned by two jobsworths in quasi-military uniforms and contained a fountain and enough seating for a planeload of waiting holidaymakers. The Crow had three wooden chairs, a flimsy coffee table and a pile of magazines so dog-eared they had adverts priced in pounds, shillings and pence.

The Crow. Established 1846. Circulation 17,000 and steady. The News, circulation 3.6 million and rising. Dryden breezed through the door, checked his watch at 1.30pm and flipped over the sign to ‘Closed’. Ely was still a member of that sleepy band of towns where some of the shops close for lunch just in case someone wants to buy something. Besides, Thursday was early closing and most of the shopkeepers had headed home for a siesta. Jean was knitting and singing to herself a tuneless ballad. Outside, Market Street cooked in the midday heat and nobody moved. The girls in the shoe store opposite had opened all the doors to assist the air conditioning, not realizing they were asking the system to cool the whole of East Anglia before it started on the inside of the shop.

He took the wooden, uncarpeted stairs three at a time and pushed open the hardboard door at the top marked, with misplaced confidence, NEWSROOM. The room on the other side wouldn’t have qualified as a cupboard on Fleet Street. Dryden had left the News after Laura’s crash. The Crow paid the bills for his floating home and gave him plenty of time to be at Laura’s bedside. The insurance company paid for The Tower, an arrangement on which they were, at present, unable to renege. Laura’s accident had resulted in a media blitz and the story had taken up the front pages of the tabloids, on and off, for a month. At the time she had been one of the principal characters in the TV soap opera Clyde Circus. Her