The Fire Baby

not.

‘I can’t see the glass,’ he said. Lyndon’s head obscured the diamondlike beauty of the water on the shelf.

Lyndon dug his thumbs into the sallow dehydrated flesh. ‘What do you see?’ he said again, knowing now he would have to give his father the answer. And he knew why he’d avoided speaking until now, for he felt an urge to be tender, to cradle the head of the man who had run into the flames of Black Bank to save his son.

He fought it back, and thought instead of his mother, tortured too by the knowledge that to save her son she must give his life away. ‘Think of a mirror,’ said Lyndon.

Johnnie tried to think. His mind screamed for water, for the glass beyond the jailer’s eyes. His head swam and those eyes filled his world.

‘My eyes?’ he said, knowing instantly he was right, feeling his heart contract with dread.

‘I’m your son,’ said Lyndon, and let him, brutally, fall to the ground.

Johnnie fainted then, the thirst beginning to destroy his brain, as it had ravaged his flesh.

When he came to the pain had gone. His mind floated free, and he could consider what he knew with shocking clarity. ‘You can’t be,’ he said, angry that the jailer should torment him further. ‘Matty died. In the fire.’

‘Maggie switched us. Me and the American kid. She did it to cheat you. Because of what you were.’

Lyndon stood and Johnnie noticed that his fingers shook violently and a nerve in his lean, tanned face was in spasm.’You made her do it, and it’s destroyed my life. Our lives.’ He showed Johnnie the wedding ring on his finger, balled his fist, and hit him hard. The cartilage of Johnnie’s nose collapsed, pushing up towards the brain, and the blood flowed out in gouts.

But this time Johnnie didn’t pass out. He sat back on his haunches despite the cramp in his legs. ‘What was I?’ said Johnnie, trying hard to remember how he’d lost Maggie, how he’d lost the life he could have had.

‘You took pictures. Making love to Maggie. Was it in here? Or did that come later?’

Johnnie remembered then, and felt ashamed that he had forgotten this crime, rather than all the others. ‘Later,’ he said, looking at the water in the glass as the thirst returned.

Lyndon hated him then, not because of what he’d done to Maggie, but because he couldn’t know what he’d done to him. So he wrapped his bleeding hand in his T-shirt, took the glass, stood before his father, and drank it dry.

42

They drove towards Adventurer’s Fen under a rotting sky. The drought was dying, overblown with heat, and ants had invaded the dashboard of the Capri, in anticipation of the final storm. The lightning-struck pine tree burned beside the road as they left Black Bank, the crackling static fire in counterpoint to the dull rolls of thunder. Dryden had the window down, and as they pulled past the memorial stone to the victims of the 1976 air crash, he felt a wind on his cheek. For the first time that summer it carried the taste of rain.

In the rear-view mirror Dryden watched Estelle. She’d left a message for Lyndon telling him about the last tape, about her adoption. ‘We’re OK. It’s OK,’ she’d said, but none of them, least of all her, believed it now. Her eyes told Dryden what she feared. That if they found Lyndon on Adventurer’s Fen, they’d find him dead. That the real tragedy was that he’d risked so much for nothing. Had done so much which could not be undone.

Dryden’s mobile rang, the signal splintered by the storm: ‘Hi. Police have just issued a statement…’ It was Garry. The signal broke, then made contact again. ‘Newman is out there now.’

‘Repeat that. Lost most of it,’ said Dryden.

‘They’ve found a body at Sedge Fen. At the old processing works under the silos. Gunshot to the head, apparently; high-calibre rifle. Guy at the station says they think it’s linked to the people smuggling…’

‘Arrests?’

‘Kabazo. Your mate from the mortuary. Gave himself up at the scene. Sergeant said he was as happy as Larry. They found him standing over the corpse.’

‘Get out there. Ring Mitch. He needs to get out anyway, the drought’s breaking. These lightning strikes will start fires – some will spread. And there’s a wind. These fields are like moondust – there’s bound to be a blow or two as well. Tell him to get some shots at Sedge Fen and then cruise round. Got that?’

Garry was gone, lost in a hail of static.

They drove north on the old Aio past fields the colour of sackcloth. Before Southery they turned east beneath a sky beginning to boil with clouds. To the east, coming towards them on an angled path, Dryden spotted the first Fen Blow – a dust storm a mile high and rolling forward like a giant tumbleweed from an outsized Western. It rolled across the sun and a burnished gold shadow dashed across the landscape.

Humph suddenly slowed the Capri, swung it off the metalled road and hit the shingle of a drove road. A small copse of half-hearted pines was a sheaf of fire in the middle of Adventurer’s Fen. The rest lay before them as it had always done in Dryden’s dreams: 300 acres of blissful solitude and beauty. To the north and west the Little Ouse was its boundary, edged by fields of reed marsh. To the east lay the razor-sharp edge of Thetford Forest, the ancient border between the black peat of the fen and the sandy brecklands.

A single drove road ran down to the river past Flightpath Cottages. A hogweed grew from an upstairs bedroom window and both doors had crumpled in the damp of the last winter. Two ‘For Sale’ boards stood at crazy angles in the peat.

‘I guessed wrong,’ said Dryden, amazed that intuition had led him astray.