The Coldest Blood

the camp’s reception, a flare of light briefly illuminating his face as he lit a cigarette.

‘I’m sorry. When we were children…’ He stopped, recognizing what an extraordinary statement that was. ‘When we were children – I didn’t think there was anything wrong – with your sight, I mean.’

She nodded, and released his hand. ‘When I left the home in Peterborough – that was in ’82, Christmas – I just walked out, I was old enough, past my eighteenth, anyway. There were schemes, a hostel, all sorts of safety nets I guess. But I knew better. I had a friend who’d gone into a squat in a terraced house down by the river. It was unbelievably exciting, being free from… from everything, and it outweighed what I should have seen, that the house was dangerous, that the drink and drugs would crush me like they crush everyone.

‘But I let it happen. It is really disorientating, that kind of experience. I can’t really remember anything concrete, real, about the next three years at all. I drew benefit and I know that one day someone from the council tracked me down and said that there was still a place in the hostel. I laughed in his face, and then when we’d chucked him out I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. I just didn’t have the guts to do the right thing.

‘One day in summer we crashed out down in the park, all of us, and when we got back the landlords had moved in and boarded the place up. There was tape over the windows and new locks. I had this box, a writing box, which Grace – my foster mum – had given me before I’d left and it was on the lorry. I lifted it out but this bailiff just pushed me over and took it back. After that I ended up sleeping rough, around the city centre mainly, there’s a place under the inner by-pass where they let you sleep in cardboard boxes. I had this dog and we begged on the pedestrian subway.’

Dryden found his hip flask and sipped the malt. ‘Were you in touch with Dex?’

She shook her head and dropped her chin. ‘I wasn’t in touch with anything. The last time I’d seen Declan was in ’81. He was still at St Vincent’s then – and so was Joe. Declan was fourteen. We had a day together, in Peterborough. They dropped him off by mini-van. He cried most of the time – they’d punished them, you see – for the theft. They’d taken them off the register for adoption and fostering – Declan said they were losing kids and the place was running down and he thought they’d done it just to keep the numbers up. And they abused them. Because they could. They’d locked him in a toilet cubicle; he said they often did it, that he’d be there for days. It’s incredible, isn’t it? That’s where the claustrophobia came from, of course. I could tell how scared he was when they came to pick him up.’

‘And that was because of the letter that was sent home with them, from the camp?’

‘Yes. As far as I know they did nothing to check it out, they just took it for the truth. That was wrong too, Dryden. Another injustice.’

She accepted the flask. ‘I was never an alcoholic. I hated it really – even what it did.’ She drank and handed it back. ‘Then one day I went down to the exchange to pick up the benefit and they gave me this form to fill in – they did it most times. And I looked at it and I couldn’t see bits – they were just like black patches in my vision, moving, slipping. I was frightened then, so when they gave me an appointment at the clinic I went. But it was too late.’

A gust hit the shelter like a blow, whipping over and dashing snow into the empty swimming pool. Through the perspex Dryden could see a jagged white seascape.

‘Toxocariasis,’ she said. ‘You catch it from dog shit. There are worms, and if the eggs get in your eyes you get this disease. I had it in both – and the retinas were damaged. They tried to stop it but by the winter I couldn’t see at all.’

Dryden nodded. ‘And John?’

‘Being blind saved me. I couldn’t survive down there any more, not on the street. I got the place in the hostel and a disability allowance with the benefit. They found Declan for me, he was on benefit, and he came to Peterborough. He said he had these friends and that there was somewhere I could stay. I said no to the flat, I needed to be alone, but it was spring then – 1987 – so they put up a bed in the Gardeners’ Arms. Joe’s business was going well: like I told you, he’d given John a job at the factory. He was part of the crowd. We got married that winter. He saved my life.’

Dryden nodded. ‘You didn’t say what John had done to get put away.’

‘He’d been in and out most of his life, mainly burglary, but he had good hands too…’ She smiled. ‘Safes. It’s a dying art. He’d got five years for the last one. And that was the last one. But he still has good hands.’ She shivered, clasping her coat at her neck.

Dryden’s shoulders began to shake in the suddenly damp cold.

They stood. ‘I must get back to him,’ she said. ‘Can I ask you something? The solicitor said you’d found the missing witness. I think you let him presume something, didn’t you? That young Philip had seen what we’d seen that night?’

Dryden pressed her hand. ‘It’s a presumption he made, yes. And it might be true. I can’t think of any other way of finding out who killed them.’

She tried to find his eyes with hers. ‘I’m sorry, it was unfair of me, it’s brave of you. They ruined our lives, didn’t they, just as they could have ruined yours. Have you asked Ruth yet? Asked her who told Chips Connor to look under the huts?’

Dryden shook his head. ‘No. But it’s not the only question she has to answer, it’s just first in the queue.’

38

The lorry driver was trapped inside the cab of the HGV parked on the tarmac outside the Dolphin’s glass- fronted reception block. Steam from the engine rose in clouds which obscured the lorry’s windscreen. Russell Fleet, embedded in an oversized fluorescent green windjammer, was working on the passenger side lock with a hair dryer. Through the side window Dryden could see the driver reading the Sun spread out on the steering wheel.

‘Freezing locks. The windows are jammed too,’ said Russell. ‘The snow’s damp. The forecast says we’ll get the ice storm tomorrow.’ The flaccid skin of his face was flushed and, despite the cold, a sheen of sweat glinted on his forehead. Dryden was struck again by the almost tangible odour of illness which hung over the Dolphin’s assistant manager. It looked like he’d been out in the weather for hours, his hair matted with ice and the outer fabric of his windjammer flecked with water.

The lorry’s rear lights glowed in the gloom, the sign on the side of the container read: Propane