path beyond. A police squad car, answering Dryden’s mobile call, edged down through the seagrass, its tyres crunching in the frost. The moonlight shone into Connor’s open and unblinking eyes. The black body bag, stiff with ice, cracked as they zipped it up. In his memory Dryden saw another corpse, curled on a doorstep, shrouded in ice.
The wind, blustery now, threw spray over the pathologist, whose examination was cursory. Chips Connor’s pale hand, reclaimed from the frozen glove, seemed to call the tide inland. Lighthouse Cottage was requisitioned as a temporary morgue, and Dryden told to wait there for the arrival of the duty inspector from Lynn, while Humph was allowed to retreat with Boudicca to the privacy of the Capri. Dryden left them there, hugging each other.
Lighthouse Cottage bustled with discreet activity and the edgy electronic static of police radios. William Nabbs gave Dryden coffee and threw driftwood on an open fire set quickly beneath a brushed aluminium hood in the kitchen: the clock above read 1.30am. Chips Connor’s body had been taken inside first, through to the front room. Outside, a group of uniformed PCs, conducting a fingertip search of the beach, dunes and riverbank in relay teams, made periodic appearances for hot drinks and shelter.
Nabbs drank coffee too. His hair was matted and wet, the blond dyed streaks in stripes through the natural brown. By the door stood a sea rod and tackle, while on the deal table lay a brace of cod glistening in the flickering light, more life in their iridescent scales than in their dead eyes. Dryden, vaguely aware that Nabbs had put something strong in the coffee, watched in fascination as blood dripped from the open mouths to the quarry-tiled floor beneath.
‘You OK?’ said Nabbs, fussing with the wood.
Dryden nodded. ‘Fine. I like midnight walks, I deserve what I get.’
A DI arrived, a raincoat stiff with ice plastered to his legs. He was young – mid-thirties – and would have been keen if he hadn’t just worked forty hours straight. He had weak eyes, close together, in a face which looked worried at rest. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector John Parlour of King’s Lynn CID, and tried to suck some nicotine from a packet of low-tar menthol cigarettes.
‘Where is she?’ asked Nabbs, giving the detective coffee too, complete with whisky.
The DI leant his back against the door. ‘She’s with a WPC now, up in the flat. They won’t be long – then they’ll bring her here.’
They all glanced at the living-room door.
Nabbs nodded. ‘I just don’t understand… How can it be Chips?’
He looked at Dryden for an answer while the DI consulted a notebook. ‘There’s some confusion at Wash Camp,’ said Parlour. ‘The governor is talking to his people now but Connor was counted in at lunch and out again at 1.30pm, went to his room and then to the gym for an hour, that’s his daily routine. Then there was a run, outside. Then the weather turned bad, the light went, they brought them in early. The next time there was a count was back in the showers at 3.00pm – he wasn’t there. They were running in tracksuits and that’s what he’s got on now. Plus a wedding ring and the watch.’
‘It’s twenty-five miles away,’ said Nabbs. ‘More.’
The DI shrugged. ‘He could have hitched – he could have run and walked. He had the time. Map?’
Nabbs spread an Ordnance Survey sheet out on the kitchen table, edging the fish to one end, cleaning the trail of blood away with a piece of kitchen towel. Briefly Dryden imagined he could smell the haemoglobin, a rusty metallic edge which made him wince.
With a finger Nabbs traced the course of the main river back inland. One tributary led towards the prison, stopping short by five miles.
‘He could have fallen in there,’ said Nabbs. ‘Suicide?’
DI Parlour shook his head, the cigarette clamped between his lips. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said, launching the stub into the flames of the fire. ‘Pathologist says the neck was broken, the head twisted round and back over the left shoulder. He’s only making an educated guess but there appears to be little fluid in the lungs – so it’s probable he was dead before he hit the water. Hypothesis has to be he was attacked from behind, his chin wrenched round, then dumped.’
Parlour put down the coffee cup and, interlacing his fingers, cracked the bones.
Dryden nodded. ‘A few problems with all that. You’ll find the channels up inland are frozen – they have been for a week. He’s got to have fallen into salt water, below the tidal reach of the main channel – about a mile inland, or in the marshes over here.’ He pointed to the intricate tracery of channels to the west of the camp. ‘When you get the water off his clothes or out of his lungs I bet you very little of it’s fresh. And there were strands of weed on the body – that points to the marshes too.’
‘Right,’ said Parlour, making a note.
‘So he got here sometime this afternoon – probably late,’ said Dryden, just – he thought – as Paul Gedney had done more than thirty years before.
The door opened and a WPC brought in Ruth Connor. Naturally pale, she’d blanched further, some hastily applied lipstick a gash across the face. Dryden, who relied almost entirely on first impressions when judging character, thought she looked genuinely shocked, her eyes fighting to keep focused on the real world around her. Dryden felt she made a conscious effort not to look at William Nabbs, but took a chair by the fire and a whisky she hadn’t asked for.
‘One moment please, Mrs Connor,’ said DI Parlour, opening the living-room door just wide enough to slip beyond. The WPC stood guard, a puddle of meltwater forming at her feet.
‘It’s Chips?’ she said, turning to look at Dryden as Nabbs stood behind her, both hands on her neck.
‘You’ll have to make sure – but yes, I’m sorry, it’s Chips.’
She put a hand across her mouth, and when it dropped her lips had left a kiss on the palm. ‘Why?’ She twisted her head to look at Nabbs.
‘We know someone didn’t want him to come back,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice. ‘But he did come back – why do you think he did that?’
She looked into the fire and Dryden could see her fingernails digging into Nabbs’ palm.
