‘There!’ said Estelle, at the moment he saw it too. Leaning between Dryden and Humph she pointed down the drove road to the edge of the reed marsh. It was a new house, despite the old reclaimed bricks. It was roofed in slate and an old-style wooden verandah appeared to surround it at ground level. At the southeast corner a tower rose above the second floor, a tiny folly. A kitchen garden had gone to seed on the south side. A gate stood, but no fence. Dryden’s heartbeat quickened, but he kept at bay the knowledge that it was with recognition.
Humph rattled down the rutted track to within a hundred yards of the house and then pulled up as the Capri’s suspension groaned and cracked under the strain. The white Land Rover, until now hidden behind the house, had come into view.
‘Tell him I love him,’ said Estelle, terrified, Dryden guessed, at what she would find inside the house. ‘Tell him it’s OK.’
Dryden swung the door out and in the oppressive silence heard the rust scrape.
He leant back in through the open passenger window. ‘I’ve got something to tell him. Something he still doesn’t know,’ she said. ‘If he’s alive, tell him that.’
Humph struggled out on the driver’s side, sure testimony that he thought Dryden was about to do something stupid. Dryden nodded to the Capri. ‘Stay with her.’ Humph simply raised a finger and pointed east to where the forest edge had stood a minute earlier. Not now. The tumbling front of the dust storm rolled out from the trees towards them. Dryden felt his guts liquidize and in the panic of the moment he simply repeated himself. ‘Stay with her.’
So Humph ducked back into the Capri and Dryden was alone when the dust fell. At first it merely shimmered over his skin, accompanied by a slight fall in the light level. A hissing of minute particles of dry earth seemed to fill Adventurer’s Fen. Then the light clipped again, the sun disappeared, and the wind began to drive the dust into his eyes, nose and ears. The house had disappeared but the path remained at his feet. Dryden staggered down it, away from where the car had been. He choked once, then stopped, doubled over, and filled his lungs with the air close to the ground. For a minute, less, he ran in a void of orange-brown dust. Then the facade of the house appeared, like cheap scenery, a one-dimensional grey, featureless outline. He threw himself against the door and tried the handle, knowing it was locked. He took another breath from below his knees but this time it too was clogged with dust. The muscles at the back of his knees fluttered with fear. He needed to find a door that opened. The windows, if they were all like the one beside the front door, were double-glazed and locked.
He sensed the lightning bolt before it struck and turned to see it plummet through the gloom, followed by the frenzied crackle of trees burning.
He began to skirt the house, cupping his hands at the first window to the right of the door to view a sitting room, furnished cheaply, with rugs on the polished floorboards, job-lot pictures and unmatched lightshades. There was no sign of life. ‘Rented,’ he said out loud, pressing his forehead against the window for coolness and sucking in air by pressing his lips to the glass. He left the kiss on the pane and moved on, past another locked door, and round the far corner. The wind here dropped and looking up he could see the weight of the dust storm tumbling over the pitch of the roof. He could smell the earth now, a stringent aroma of blood and rotted wood. The smell of the grave.
French windows extended the length of the verandah at the back of the house. Lyndon Koskinski sat inside, unmoving, on a cheap white sofa. In one hand he held a mobile phone, in the other his GI Zippo lighter. Both hands rested on his lap and his eyes appeared to be closed. The rest of the room was sparsely furnished. A three-shelf bookcase held some cheap volumes, a coffee table a single mug. To one side of the French windows a door stood open. Dryden slipped through and into the kitchen, and closed the door behind him. He gulped the relatively clean air but a layer of dust already covered the MFI fittings and the lino felt gritty under his feet. As soon as he closed the door the hissing stopped, the dust soundlessly pounding the double-glazed window.
The next door was glazed and opened easily into the room with the white sofa. Lyndon didn’t turn his head but Dryden saw that a curtain of sweat gave his lean face an oddly reflective sheen. But his eyes were open now, although they were empty of light.
‘Lyndon,’ said Dryden, and nothing moved.
He took a step forward and caught the smell. He guessed it was petrol – but aircraft fuel was possible. The fumes were rising and billowing out from the sofa. Dryden could see now that it was soaked, the damp dark stain only lightening at the armrests and behind Lyndon’s head. Dryden breathed in deeply and felt a wave of fume- induced nausea which almost knocked him down.
‘Things have changed,’ he said, trying to control his voice.
Lyndon blinked again, slowly like a lizard, but did not turn from the view from the window. ‘I know. Estelle told me everything.’ He held up the mobile and let it drop in his lap. An empty spirit bottle lay in the folds of the sofa.
‘It changes things,’ Dryden said again.
‘For Johnnie Roe? He’s still dead.’ He laughed then, and made a frighteningly good job of it. ‘The only thing that’s changed is that he died for nothing.’
‘And you killed him.’ As Dryden said it he knew it must be true. The motives were compelling and multiple. Johnnie Roe was the father who had denied him a life, a mother, and finally a wife.
Lyndon smiled then, and Dryden knew the end was near. He fingered the Zippo lighter expertly at his chest. ‘Yes. I suppose I did. I never planned to. At first I just wanted to hurt him. You know?’ Dryden nodded stupidly. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
‘Hurt him bad. My life – everything, was down to him. Losing Mum was down to him. Al Rasheid was down to him. So I thought I’d recreate it for him. The prison. My cell. I enjoyed that.’
‘What did you want?’
‘At the beginning I wanted him to confess. We’d listened to the tapes. Maggie told us why she’d given me away. But I wanted to hear him say it. Tell me what he’d done to make her do it.’
‘You used the knife,’ said Dryden, recalling the intricately decorated Arab dagger.
Lyndon nodded, almost distracted by the memory. ‘I got it in Aden – in the Souk, with Freeman.’
Dryden nodded. ‘And the manacles? The chain you used?’
‘Mine. The jailer at Al Rasheid gave me the key when the invasion of Baghdad began. They let all the prisoners
