She brought her other hand up beside the first. ‘He opened his eyes and he took the knife. The porthole was to his side, very close, but he was looking ahead or to the side where he’d strung up the light from the cabin roof. He cleaned his arm with a dressing – a medical dressing – and I could see the fresh wound still oozing the blood, and beside it another wound, still raw but not bleeding. The two wounds made a V-shape pattern on the muscle. Then he took the knife, put the point to the end of the fresh wound and drew it across his arm, again a few inches, opening up a third cut. Here…’ She touched her upper left arm just below the joint with the shoulder. ‘For a second the wound just gapped, and then it filled with blood, and he cried out again, that dreadful cry.’
Dryden heard the scream in his memory, with its hint of triumph. A zigzag wound, thought Dryden, and he saw another memory from that summer, of the subtle urgent rocking of white bodies in the sand.
‘I heard the boys coming back then,’ said Marcie. ‘Behind me, but I just couldn’t stop watching. Gedney’s eyes were closed, but the pain made him jerk his head to one side, and when he opened them he was looking at us. That’s why we remembered the face, and the eyes. It’s what Declan said when he saw that poster the newspaper printed: “I’ll never forget the eyes.”
‘We panicked then, and ran back through the marsh to the chalets. I was terrified, I think we all were – even Smith. We heard footsteps behind us, I think Declan always did.’
Dryden nodded and looked seawards, where a bank of black cloud stood on the horizon like a mountain range. ‘Do you think he knew who you were – that night, I mean? Do you think Paul Gedney could have known who you were?’
‘I know he did,’ she said, breathing in the air, heavy now with damp as the ice storm finally edged towards the coast. ‘Because of what happened the next day.’
36
Humph swung the cab off the coast road and up on to the sandy verge, the exhaust pipe whacking the grass with a dull thud. A flock of seagulls circled the Capri and Dryden guessed the cabbie had been jettisoning food at regular intervals from the driver’s side window.
‘I was asleep,’ said Humph, brushing crumbs from his Ipswich Town top with a delicate hand.
He’d said nothing more when Dryden had rung twenty minutes earlier to ask for the pickup.
‘Back to the Eel’s Foot,’ said Dryden, checking his watch. Flipping open his mobile he found another text message from DI Reade – another reminder to be available for interview the next morning. What he needed first was to hear the rest of Marcie Sley’s story, to take it beyond the point where his childhood self had left the other children that summer’s night.
They drove on in silence, the black, peat-black winter fields so featureless there was a powerful illusion they were standing still. The chimneys of the Eel’s Foot came into view along the floodbank. He was at the bar when he heard the tyres of John Sley’s 4x4 on the car park gravel. Dryden met Marcie at the door and found a table in a corner. Marcie’s husband left them, sitting at the bar nursing a pint of beer and a local paper.
‘Thanks,’ said Marcie. ‘I needed to warm up – and John’s worried about me. Bronchitis, it comes and goes.’ She turned her head towards the fireplace where the logs crackled, the source of the radiating heat.
Dryden lowered his voice. ‘You said that you know for sure that Paul Gedney recognized you that night – how?’
Marcie patted the seat beside her, an unconscious effort to find her husband’s hand. ‘It’s best if I just tell you what happened, all of it. In retrospect – now – we can see why it happened. But then, it was just baffling for us – for all of us. We were only children.’
The eyes had filled and Dryden was startled to find the question had brought her to an emotional edge. He wanted to hold her, to tell her quickly who he was, but the promise of the story to come held him back.
She pushed the base of her wineglass a few inches across the table top and Dryden guessed she didn’t trust herself to lift it.
‘I was woken up by Grace Elliot, my foster mother. It was just before seven on the morning after we’d run away from the boat. I can remember leaning over and reading the alarm clock, and then remembering two things, two really dreadful things: I remembered the night before, and then that it was the day we were going home. And then I was afraid, because she’d never knocked on the door before. Grace had two other kids – boys, toddlers, and they’d slept next door with her and Jack, her husband. Anyway, I got up and there was this man there on the stoop outside, a security guard.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought they knew – you know, that we’d been out at night.’ She went for the wineglass and it tipped alarmingly as she took a sip. ‘Anyway, he asked Grace if they could look under the chalet.’
‘They?’
‘There was a Blue Coat there too. He didn’t say a word. But the security guard said there’d been a complaint about us – he didn’t mean the whole family, he spelt it out – he meant us…’
‘You, Dex and Smith…’ said Dryden.
‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly smiling again, that secret smile. ‘He said there’d been a spate of thefts in the camp and that they’d had information – that’s exactly what he said: “information” – that it was us. That someone had seen us, after dark, out amongst the huts.’
Dryden leant back and drained his pint.
‘He said they didn’t want to call the police. I can remember the relief even now – pathetic, really; I should have just gone on saying we were innocent. He said it was probably all a misunderstanding, but they needed to look under the huts. So Grace said they could.’
She laughed. ‘It was underneath, of course. We’d got a string bag, for the beach things. It was usually stuffed under the steps. But they found it buried, full: biscuits and sweets, some cash – I remember a five-pound note – a couple of watches, and a single ring – a gold wedding ring. He laid it all out on the bed, on my bed. I just looked at it and Mum looked at me.’
