‘You’re Paul Gedney,’ said Dryden, and he saw Nabbs flinch. ‘The motorbike you dumped in ’74 is still in the garage downstairs.’
Nabbs wiped the back of his hand across his lips. ‘The bike’s not mine. All the stuff’s Ruth’s. I just keep the surfboards in there, for the class.’
Dryden flipped open the top of the holdall. ‘Another sunshine holiday then?’
‘This is crazy.’ Nabbs’ voice was brittle, and Dryden guessed his pulse was racing.
Dryden came round the bed to the window and looked out. ‘It was something someone said about Gedney, someone who knew him – knew you – before that night. A kind of arrogance, an ability to rise above the accepted moral code, to take action, get results, to be omnipotent. That’s why you did it, because it seemed to solve everything, didn’t it? You needed to disappear, you wanted to be with Ruth, you got both. Chips got what he wanted too, didn’t he? Or that’s what you told yourselves. So nobody got hurt, right? Except the kids. That’s where you got it so wrong. You branded them as thieves, ruined their lives, and you could have ruined mine.’
Dryden craned his neck against the window to look east towards Laura’s chalet. He could just see the light.
‘You thought they’d seen the blood box. If they’d told an adult, found an adult who’d listen, the plan was wrecked. There was no going back. So you had to discredit them, get them away.’
Nabbs looked to the door but Dryden guessed he wouldn’t go until he knew as much as Dryden.
‘And when they’d gone you met in the dunes.’ He looked at him then. ‘Was it worth it? Was she worth it?’
Nabbs, finally, was still. ‘I don’t like being accused of murder.’
‘Well done. I hadn’t, actually – but yes. You killed Declan McIlroy and Joe Petulengo because they’d seen you that night. If they’d given evidence in court, Chips Connor would have been freed. And if Chips Connor had come home it was all over, wasn’t it? Because, despite the surgery and the makeover and the intervening thirty years, he’d have recognized you with a glance: his childhood friend. And you tried to kill me.’
Dryden ploughed on, his confidence returning. ‘When you failed, you decided to quit. Run. Find a new life. Again. You couldn’t be sure, could you, that I hadn’t told someone else. The police perhaps. So you couldn’t try again.’
They heard the gate clatter below. ‘And when Chips came back he did recognize you – which is why you killed him as well. He’d guessed, not all of it, but enough. Whoever sent him out to search under the chalets had planted the stuff for him to find because they wanted the kids out of the camp. It was Ruth, wasn’t it? She paid the security guard to stick with the story – that he’d seen Marcie hiding the stuff under the huts. What was the price? A one- way ticket to the other side of the world? So Chips came back to confront her. But he met you, didn’t he?’
They heard the door bang below, but the footsteps which climbed the stairs were oddly delicate. The lights flickered again and they stood in darkness for a second as someone stopped in the doorway, breathing.
The light flooded back. Ruth Connor stood, her hands held out. They were blood red.
‘Please come. I think I’ve killed him,’ she said.
45
A wedge of electric light fell across the darkness of the office floor. The man lay on his chest, the body twisted at the waist, the limbs randomly arranged in the awkward semaphore of the dead. Across his back a line of crimson wounds punctuated the material of the donkey jacket, each edged with a black ring of burnt threads. On the air was the acrid twist of cordite and an undercurrent of urine. In the corner one of the filing cabinets had been pulled clear of the wall and a safe stood open to reveal a pile of black and gold metal safety-deposit boxes. One was open, revealing the purple-orange blush of ?50 notes. On the desk a canvas lay half unfurled, two men, naked, stood in a pool of blood.
William Nabbs put down the holdall and flicked a switch. A single neon tube buzzed like a dying insect. Ruth Connor walked to the body and ran a hand into her hair, leaving a streak of livid red on the dry skin of her forehead. ‘It was so quiet. I was down in the bar and heard the noise.’
She looked into the corner of the room by a filing cabinet. On the cracked lino lay a gun, the metal a dull silver, the handle clean.
‘It’s just for pellets, just to scare. Russ kept it behind the bar,’ she said, and laughed out of place. Dryden noted the odd tense. He stood over the body, dreading the sightless eyes, but before he could touch him a shoulder jerked, the head lifted, and he rolled over: eyes open, but clouded. It was John Sley. His face held the pallor of butcher’s fat, a living waxwork. Dryden noticed that his hand lay over his heart, the fingers feebly trying to massage the chest beneath.
He leant in close. ‘John.’ The eyes rolled back into the head and the lids closed. ‘He needs help – quick. An air gun can’t do this. A heart attack’s my guess. We need a doctor – or a nurse,’ he added, turning pointedly to William Nabbs.
‘I’ll get a doctor,’ said Nabbs, flicking open his mobile.
‘Get his wife too – Chalet 18. He may have a condition, there could be pills.’
Nabbs thought for a moment, then fled, leaving the holdall at Ruth Connor’s feet.
Sley opened an eye and Dryden glimpsed the iris, struggling to escape the upper lid. Dryden pressed his arm, and felt the cold sweat on his forehead.
‘Who did you think it was?’ asked Dryden.
Ruth Connor walked to the safe and removed one of the untouched deposit boxes, turned a key in the lock, and revealed that it too was packed with crisp cash.
‘For the trip?’ asked Dryden.
She tipped the bundles into the first bag, then knelt down and picked up the gun. ‘I don’t think that is a very clever thing to do,’ said Dryden. ‘But then you aren’t hanging around to answer any questions, either of you.’
