There was nothing quite like pompous self-righteousness to get Dryden fired up. ‘Fancy her, then, do you?’
Nabbs turned to go, then wheeled back. ‘Anything you’d like to tell me about your life, Mr Dryden? Married? Wife love you? Kids?’
Dryden shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. She was in a coma for five years after a car accident. You could ask her – although I can’t get any answers at present. I think she’s becoming suicidal. She’s over there – in the last chalet.’ Dryden pointed, both his voice and his finger trembling slightly.
Nabbs held up a hand by way of truce, then took a deep breath of the freezing sea air. ‘Look. My private life is discreet, OK, but it’s not a secret. No doubt you’ve been talking to the kind of people who like living other people’s lives for them. It’s a small place, and a lot of people have got small minds. I didn’t have you down as one of them, that’s all.’
Dryden turned. ‘The two witnesses, the kids who saw Paul Gedney that night in 1974, before someone spilt five pints of his blood in the sand. You know what I’m talking about, yeah?’
Nabbs was suddenly wary. ‘Sure.’ The hum of the transmission lines above shifted up a note.
‘They’re dead, like it said in the paper. They were friends of mine, in a roundabout sort of way. I think someone killed them. Someone who didn’t want Chips Connor to come home.’
Nabbs coloured visibly, despite the cold. ‘Jesus. You’re mad. It’s 2005, not 1805. Do you think anyone – least of all Chips – thinks he’s coming home to the loving wife he left thirty years ago? Look, that marriage was over long before they took Chips away, OK? Christ – she’s visited him every week for three decades. He’s pretty happy in a room six by eight. I don’t think dealing with the wide open world is really on any more, do you? It’s not about whether he can get out of an institution – it’s about which institution he’s going to spend the rest of his life in.’
‘So he knows, does he?’
They heard the tap-tap of the engineer’s hammer on the metal superstructure of the iced pylon.
‘It’s not part of his life any more, Dryden, OK?’
‘But if he came home – what about the business?’
Nabbs shook his head, laughing, exasperated. ‘You don’t give up, do you? Ruth and Russell run the business. If Chips ever gets out he’ll be rich thanks to the work they’ve done. What would he have done differently if he’d been here? Plenty. But I doubt he’s bothered, do you?’ But he looked away then, hoping perhaps that Dryden didn’t have an answer.
Dryden squinted, watching a small fishing boat crossing the sea in the mid-distance. ‘Just to give you the picture: Declan McIlroy, one of the witnesses who was going to get Chips free, the killer got him drunk, then they left him to die of the cold. Hypothermia. The police found him frozen to death in an armchair. The guy had no life to speak of – alcoholic, depressive, a childhood in care. But they took it away anyway.’
‘I’m sorry about your friends.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dryden. ‘But I’m more interested in Paul Gedney’s friends. What does Ruth Connor think happened? She must have discussed it. Pillow talk,’ he added, trying to make him angry again.
But the interview was nearly over. ‘Gedney was low-life, all right? They’d been friends at school, the three of them. Chips was popular, a gateway to other friends. Ruth was going to be rich one day – at least by standards around here. He used them: he used everyone. Then he did a runner, but Ruth always thought there were others involved. She said it wasn’t his thing – crime – that he was subtler than that. But he needed the money, perhaps he helped himself to more than his share, so some other specimen tracked him down and beat him to death. It’s what low-life is all about.’
They’d reached reception and Nabbs turned to look back at the pylon. ‘I think about him sometimes – Gedney – when I’m out on the surfboard. I think about his bones – what’s left, you know – rolling over each other on the sea bed. Cheers me up.’
He smiled at last, while above them a wire hummed, as taut as a drawn bow.
35
Marcie Sley looked out to sea, her green eyes reflecting the surface of the water. Her husband stood six feet behind her on the beach, a precisely calibrated distance which seemed designed to let her remember alone, but to offer the consolation of company. Dryden watched them from the verandah of the chalet for several minutes as the physiotherapist worked inside, massaging Laura’s back, oiling the skin and filling the small room with the sleepy aroma of almonds. The handheld COMPASS lay on the bed, the tickertape still blank.
It was a break, he knew that. And just in time. DI Reade would be there in the morning, but first he had a chance to talk to the one witness he was certain could tell him so much that he didn’t know. What exactly had the children seen that night through the single porthole? And why had they been sent home in disgrace, while he had been spared?
Out on the sand the wind was rising and John Sley wrapped himself tighter in his black donkey jacket. Dryden briefly spoke to the physio, organizing another trip to the pool, then slipped out on to the verandah, jumped down on to the sand below and walked towards the distant couple, trying to imagine what Marcie was seeing through unseeing eyes: her brother Dex perhaps, unpicking the string on one of Smith’s homemade kites, or the young Philip, staggering down the sides of the sun-splashed dunes with logs for the dam the children had built.
John Sley saw him first, and a word passed between the couple, the cigarette smoke dripping out of his mouth. In his other hand he held a key with a solid brass dolphin attached.
By the time Dryden was beside Marcie she was smiling. He felt again the urge to touch the skin, to be closer to the dense black hair.
Instead he stood, looking out to sea as well. ‘So you’re staying? First time back?’
Her hand rose, seeking her husband’s. ‘Yes. The phone call – you’ve got news?’
Dryden checked his watch, ignoring the question. ‘You came quickly. Thank you. We don’t have much time.’
