face was slightly blushed with the cold, and one eye was watering as the wind blew in from the north, but she looked more alive than Dryden could remember since the crash six years earlier.
‘That’s the buoy we used to swim out to,’ he said, pointing.
Ruth Connor nodded, before realizing that Dryden had been talking to his wife. ‘The huts were over there…’ He pointed west, beyond the new indoor swimming pool and the leisure complex which had supplanted the old prefab offices. A white van, emblazoned with a blue dolphin, pulled up and a posse of chambermaids alighted, giggling.
A mobile trilled and Ruth Connor located it efficiently in her tracksuit pocket. She registered the number. ‘Oh. Will you excuse me? One minute.’ She took a few steps away, colour flooding back into her face as she listened to a crackling voice.
‘Good. Good. That’s wonderful, love. It’s what I want and it’s best…’ She stepped away a few more feet and Dryden lost the thread of the conversation. It sounded like she was talking to a child, the tone vaguely patronizing, the concern intense.
He cupped a hand under Laura’s chin. ‘I loved this place, right from the start,’ he said, kneeling down so he could speak into her ear. ‘When we drove into the car park that first morning I could see the sea. It was high tide, and all the children were crammed into the last few yards of dry sand, and they’d run – you know – back and forth with the waves as they swept in, and we had the windows open in the car so I could hear the sound. There’s nothing like it, the sound of a beach in summer.’
Ruth Connor walked back into earshot as she finished the call. ‘Now, will you do that for me?’ she said, then smiled at the reply and cut the mobile off, the face instantly realigning itself for business.
They set out again as she produced a stylish woollen ski hat which she pulled down low over her hair. ‘The sea keeps the temperature up, actually,’ she said, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. ‘Although the wind doesn’t help. The chalet’s got storage heaters – and some hot air blowers if it needs a boost. They’re double- glazed, very snug,’ she said, wriggling her neck down into the thermal collar.
Dryden held his overcoat lapels to his chin. The north wind was still freezing, and the danger of an ice storm still hung over the Fens and its coast. Emergency services and the power companies were on constant alert, and councils had stockpiled grit and salt to keep the roads open. Looking along the coast westwards Dryden could see the diminishing line of massive electricity pylons linking the national grid to the outlying communities of The Wash. Each one glinted silver-white in the sunshine, the connecting cables hung with decorative ice.
An elderly woman in running shorts jogged past, her legs a livid red, the flesh juddering with each blow of foot against gravel.
They walked down towards the beach between lines of chalets, brick now rather than clapboard, with modern plastic windows and doors, and set within neatly trimmed lawns scorched by frost. White picket fences separated each plot from its neighbour, potted fir trees and brass carriage lamps adding a further suburban touch. Each had a tarmac parking space and several cars were on the site – mostly expensive 4x4s or people carriers. Through one window Dryden could see a couple on a wicker sofa, both fast asleep, a flat-screen TV showing indoor bowls.
Down by the beach there was evidence that the Dolphin’s traditional attractions had not been entirely abandoned. The summer fairground was mothballed: a helter-skelter swaddled in stiff tarpaulins. A blackthorn hedge still enclosed the outdoor swimming pool, an Olympian stretch of 1930s artdeco concrete, now empty except for a kidney-shaped slick of ice on the base and a beached pedalo full of accumulated hailstones.
The eastern perimeter of the camp was marked by Morton’s Leam, a tidal channel which ran inland through high sandbanks, a single fishing boat keeled over in the sluggish water of low tide. A footbridge crossed the water where the coastal path met the creek: a graceful curve of timber with double handrails, which took the path east. But Ruth Connor led them west to a line of chalets built on wooden stilts in the sand dunes. Dryden pushed Laura up a ramp and over the specially widened threshold. Connor gave him a brief professional tour of the facilities, then left. He positioned Laura’s chair by the window, carefully wiring up the portable COMPASS they had purchased for the trip so that Laura could speak. Then he used the hoist to transfer his wife to a lounger, put a talking book on the tape deck provided, and went out to the verandah with his binoculars. He swept the glasses east and found Humph’s Capri easily, parked up beyond the footbridge beside a clump of wind-torn pine trees, with a clear view of the chalet.
A glint of cold reflected light came from the driver’s side of the cab. He guessed that they were swapping telescopic images and he raised his hand in greeting. Two miniature fountains of water leapt out like whiskers from either side of the Capri’s bonnet and the windscreen wipers swished once in reply.
25
Fear: it was still the emotion which haunted him despite the seven days which had passed since the fire on board
The police had no time for Dryden’s conspiracy theory. The inquest into Petulengo’s death had recorded a verdict of accidental death, dismissing any concern that he might have taken his own life. The victim had died of hypothermia, although his fall into the ice had resulted in particularly severe injuries to his left leg. The detective who had taken a statement after the fire on board
So Dryden was on his own. He’d spent a night in hospital while a surgeon expertly stitched his butchered hand. Then, for a week he’d slept at Humph’s council house on the Jubilee Estate, keeping clear of the boat where shipwrights were repairing the fire damage; and clear of
One question dominated his thoughts, and was the root of his fear. Had the killer struck because he thought Dryden was a potential witness along with Petulengo and McIlroy in the Connor case, or because the reporter’s inquiries into their abrupt deaths was getting him close to the truth?
To Dryden the first possibility seemed outlandish: he had told no one he was the child in Ed Bardolph’s picture. It was a secret he held in his head. Had someone guessed? If so, Dryden had moved swiftly to try and reassure his assailant. He’d prepared a story making it clear the campaign to free Chips Connor had been derailed by the deaths of the two key witnesses: all hopes of an appeal were lost, unless the elusive witness, the boy known only as
