The Fire Baby

by The Fire Baby

  August adjusted the forage cap held beneath his epaulette: ‘Well, technically they’d have to refuse exit permission. But he might get through – we haven’t put a stop on the passport number. But we’ll have to if we can’t talk to him soon.’

  ‘Have you tried out at Black Bank?’

  ‘Ms Beck? She says she hasn’t seen him since her mother’s funeral.’

  ‘So you want me to interview the roommate. Run the story with an appeal for Lyndon to come forward and help the police clear up loose ends. Bit of a heart-sob piece. That it?’

  August didn’t answer, but led the way. The block smelt of carbolic and old trainers, an oddly reminiscent aroma which made Dryden uneasy. A pilot sat on the stairs, his head between his legs, breathing deeply. A pool of sweat was spreading on the concrete step. He didn’t look up as they climbed to the top floor.

  ‘Exercise,’ said Dryden: ‘Why do people do it?’

  August stopped in front of one of the dried-blood-red dormitory doors marked:

  R145

  Major Lyndon Koskinski

  Capt Freeman White

  Base Fire Team

  August knocked smartly like he owned the place. Lyndon’s roommate was black, with grey curly hair and watery brown eyes. He was a big man, heavily built, with the manner of someone who finds it tiresome to carry around their own bones. Dryden and August sat on one bunk, White opposite. His bed was covered in several layers of newspaper in the middle of which was a jumble of oily machinery: cogs, cables and bolts. His fingers showed the grease where he’d been working.

  And there was the wound. Lyndon Koskinski had said he’d been injured ejecting from their plane over Iraq. A welt about six inches long had healed on White’s skull but could still be traced from his right cheekbone up into the hairline. The right eye was cloudy and Dryden guessed from the way he held his head to one side that it was blind.

  ‘Mechanic, eh?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘I ain’t seen Lyndon for days,’ he said, ignoring the question. His face was a smooth ebony black, polished like a banister, and impossible to date.

  Dryden tried to recall the stature of the motorcyclist who had vandalized Humph’s cab. The height was right. The shoulders maybe.

  ‘We weren’t that close, you know…’ He spread two huge hands on his knees. ‘Guy’s got a life to lead, yeah? He wanted time. Space.’

  August folded a knee flat over the other. ‘But you were in Iraq together. You had to ditch. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  White glanced up at a picture pinned above Lyndon’s pillow. An F-111 on a hot white runway somewhere sandy where the tide never came in. He had a hi-tech flying helmet under his arm. White was next to him and they wore the expansive smiles people often affect just before they think they might get killed.

  Dryden flipped open a notebook

  ‘Yeah. Lyndon was the pilot that day – I was navigating. We bailed out, got separated…’

  ‘How come?’ said Dryden standing and looking at the snapshots pinned to a cork board.

  ‘We parachuted down a few miles from each other. I got picked up right off by a field patrol. Republican Guard. I’d hit the canopy on the way out when we ejected. Made a mess of my head. I don’t remember that much about it. They was happy guys though, you know? Jumpin’. Lyndon came down over the horizon. They sent a squad of the local militia after him – took ‘em a week to find him. We both ended up in Al Rasheid. Some cell. It was grim, you can guess.’

  ‘So you had that in common,’ said August. ‘Eight weeks together in that cell. That was a bond. You must feel close, no?’

  ‘Sure,’ said White, beginning to rearrange the cogs and bolts on the newspaper. ‘Lyndon saved my life in there. Fed me, gave me his water, kept the wounds clean. I really don’t remember a lot – but I’d be dead otherwise.’ Dryden sensed he hadn’t wanted to say this, but couldn’t help himself.

  ‘So you owe him your life. That’s a big debt,’ said Dryden, probing.

  White ignored him again. ‘Three months ago he was great, when we got back. He was going Stateside once he’d got his weight back. Then he went out to the farm – Black Bank. You know…?’ Dryden and August nodded.

  ‘That seemed to go OK. He was kinda pleased. He loves his grandparents. That’s dem.’ He pointed at a colour snap of Lyndon on a beach. The grandparents stood stiffly on either side. She’d been beautiful once, he looked distinguished now, but nobody touched anybody else. ‘Maggie was really pleased to see him. I went out too, a coupla times. I guess she wanted to get close.’

  ‘He saw a lot of them?’ asked Dryden, looking through the small barred window. A platoon of junior airmen were drilling while an orderly with a ladder was painting a white line down the side of a Nissen hut.

  ‘Yeah. He stayed out there – they gave him a room. Food was good, that’s what he wanted. It got him off the base. He looked great. Got a tan, this summer of yours is unreal.’

  Dryden sat on the bunk beside him. ‘It’s a one-off. Even we don’t believe it. So – then Maggie died.’

  ‘Yeah. Then she died and, well, he kinda collapsed.’ They left the silence for him to fill. ‘He came back the next morning. Brought his stuff.’

  ‘Stuff?’ August leant back against the wall. Dryden appreciated the classic interview technique. Relax when things get interesting.

  ‘Clothes. Books. Everything he’d taken. I asked him what was up. He said Maggie had died, that everything was different. Then he shut up. Packed a kit-bag with his washing stuff and fresh clothes and went. Didn’t say goodbye, didn’t say anything.’

  Dryden spoke from the window: ‘Did he leave anything valuable – anything that you knew was precious to him?’

  White shook his head. Dryden was looking through the window when he saw the box. He guessed it was made from an exotic hardwood, almost ruby red, and constructed in a carved fretwork like a confessional screen.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Dryden being careful not to touch it. ‘Middle Eastern?’

  ‘Yup. Aden, the souk – what a hole. Anyway, good for presents, I guess.’ White looked at his watch. ‘I’m due on duty, gentlemen. Flying a desk. Then physio.’ Neither Dryden nor August believed him, but they stood anyway.

  Dryden thought, There’s always one more question. ‘And you’ve not had contact with Lyndon at all – telephone, text, letter… nothing?’

  ‘Like I said. Nothin’. Nothin’ for days.’

  ‘Can I?’ said August, pointing to the bathroom.

  ‘Sure.’ White made himself busy collecting some papers while Dryden looked around. He waited until August pulled the chain and then he stepped in close and picked up one of the fly-wheel cogs on the bed.

  ‘Motorcycle?’ he asked.

  White looked him in the eyes. ‘Yup.’

  ‘Thought so,’ said Dryden, tossing the cog into White’s hands. ‘Dangerous things. You should be careful.’

  August appeared, so he grabbed White’s hand. ‘Thanks. You’ve been really helpful.’

  Back in the Jeep August set out the ground rules. ‘There’s no hiding the fact Koskinski’s gone AWOL, I know that. But he deserves some sympathy too. Two months in a cell can mess up anyone’s head. Then he gets home and discovers he isn’t who he thought he was. He gets a mother twenty-seven years after he was made an orphan.’

  Dryden held his hands up. ‘I hear you. No problem. I never planned to label him Most Wanted Man.’

  ‘You can quote White, but no name, OK? Just a friend on base. Pilot – you can say that in The Crow this week. Yup?’

  Dryden felt a line had been crossed. ‘I can say what I bloody well like, when I like. But, as it happens, I won’t name him, and yes, it will be in this week’s paper. OK?’

  ‘I owe you a drink,’ said August, but really he owed it to himself, so they drove in silence to Mickey’s Bar.

  32

  The primary school at Barrowby Drove was on the wrong side of the Sixteen Foot Drain. A graceless iron bri
dge crossed the snot-green water. The main building was a postwar prefab which appeared to be entirely constructed of asbestos sheeting. The heat outside was ninety degrees and rising; inside, under a corrugated iron roof, it must have been higher. As soon as Dryden went through the door the heat hit him, just before the smell did.

  ‘Fen kids,’ he said, trying to shut his nostrils by willpower. Humph was in the cab outside baking, but at least he was pot-roast; this was cabbage and socks.

  Dryden was standing in an ante-room full of pegs marked with names. He’d gone to a similar school himself on Burnt Fen, fifteen kids from six families, and he’d smelt of cabbage too. There were about thirty names here, but very few surnames. Family inter-marriage wasn’t a crime out here, it was a necessity.

  Dryden peeked through a glass porthole into the single classroom. The classroom of the future, much trumpeted by the government, had missed the Fens by about eighty years. This could have been a Victorian snapshot: five rows of wooden single-unit desks with bench seats, a roll-round blackboard with triple dusters with retread felt, and a large map of the world. At least India had been removed from the Empire.

  But the teacher looked thoroughly modern: Estelle Beck was at the front of the class perched precariously on the teacher’s desk, her legs up in the lotus position. On the blackboard were some mathematical symbols Dryden didn’t dwell on. Every head in the class was down, tiny fists holding pencils in cack-handed grips.

  She didn’t look much like a teacher and she certainly didn’t look like a teacher who should be at Barrowby Drove. She was wearing sports gear and an array of pencils stuck out of her hair like punk spikes.

  Dryden knocked and every head turned except hers. The silence dissolved in excited whispers as Estelle beckoned him inside. By the time he got to the front the class was in a state of nearly hysterical agitation.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Estelle, holding up a hand for silence. ‘Let’s try and remember our manners. Remember what we’ve learned about how to behave with visitors. Jonathan…?’

  Jonathan stood. ‘Welcome to Barrowby Drove School,’ he said, turning scarlet.

  She then introduced Dryden to the class. ‘This is Mr Dryden,’ said Estelle: ‘He’s a reporter with The Crow’

  Jaws dropped universally, indicating that visitors to Barrowby Drove School were rarely as exotic.

  ‘OK – little ones around the art table please with crayons and paper. Middle group please read the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Jonathan is in charge.’

  Estelle led the way out through another door into a small grassed playground which, looking south, was a stranger to shadows. The sun hammered down on a wrought-iron set of swings and a slide which were, as a consequence, radiating heat like boiler pipes.

  ‘It’s Lyndon,’ said Dryden, looking north towards the only thing on the horizon – the giant grain silos at King’s Lynn twenty miles to the north.

  When he turned back he saw that the electric-green eyes were extremely bright, almost preternaturally alive. Dryden could pick up most human emotions on his own antennae even if he was largely incapable of feeling his own. He was picking up an odd double transmission of anger and fear.

  ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, officially he’s AWOL from Mildenhall.’

  ‘They seem pretty relaxed about it. Lyndon’s under… pressure, he’s confused, I think everyone understands that. I’m sure you do…’

  On the Forty Foot a small motor launch swept past, a man at the tiller protected by a large sunhat.

  ‘Have you any idea where he might be? Did he attend the reading of the will?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He’d said from the start he wanted nothing. Which is a bit awkward as he got everything.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ said Dryden, cursing himself for a maladroit question.

  ‘Mum knew I hated Black Bank. I hated it almost as much as she did. I think leaving it to Lyndon was a master-stroke. I feel free of it for the first time in my life. That answer your question?’

  Dryden ignored the hostility. ‘The last time you saw him, what was his mood?’

  She looked out over the fen. ‘He’s very angry. He’s certainly desperate. I worried about him when he was at Black Bank. Now he’s gone, it’s worse. I think he’s gone away so he can’t hurt anyone he likes. Loves.’

  ‘Could he hurt himself?’

  She shook the neat blonde bob and said: ‘Maybe.’ She forced herself to go on. ‘I think so. Yes. Don’t you? He’s an American, he fought for his country, and now that’s been taken away from him. And a life which I think he would have loved, here, was stolen long ago. He spent nearly thirty years thinking he’d lost his mother when he was two weeks old – then he discovers she’s alive with almost her last breath. How much grief can one person take? What would you feel?’

  Dryden felt the familiar panic sweep through him as he faced answering a question rather than posing one. ‘I guess I’d want to know why she’d done it, why she gave me away.’

  ‘Which is exactly what we don’t know. She was unhappy at Black Bank, she hated her life in many ways. The tapes are very clear about that. About what my mother suffered…’

  ‘You’ve listened to all of them?’

  She answered immediately, as if under cross-examination in a courtroom. ‘Yes. All those we found under the bed. Each one. From her earliest memories on Black Bank to her final illness…’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Dryden, stepping closer. ‘Are you sure? Did you get the sense that she’d completed the story? Does the last tape end abruptly, run out, what?’

  She climbed effortlessly on to the playground see-saw and sat, perfectly balanced, at its fulcrum: ‘It just runs out. You think there’s more?’

  ‘Possibly. The tape recorder’s gone – you didn’t take it?’

  She shook her head, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘No. I said, we left it for you.’

  Dryden looked at the shadow condensed at his feet. ‘And she gave no hint about her decision that night. Why she gave Matty away?’

  ‘She said she had no choice,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Those are her words?’

  ‘Yes. She said she had no choice and that she’d never regretted what she’d done, even though she grieved for her son for nearly thirty years.’ She walked off to tap a barometer mounted on the schoolhouse wall next to a thermometer. She had her back to him when she spoke: ‘So who’s looking for Lyndon?’

  ‘The local police need to talk to him about Maggie’s confession. At the very least his ID needs to be changed, records amended. I doubt it makes much difference to his nationality in reality, but it might. They’ve asked Mildenhall to help – they don’t want to push it but they need to get Lyndon back before it becomes an issue, an incident.’

  She turned with a smile on her face. ‘If you find him first, Mr Dryden, tell him to speak to me. Will you take that message to him? Tell him to ring the mobile.’ She touched her breast pocket to check the phone was still there.

  Dryden walked back with her towards the classroom where a crescendo of babble indicated that Jonathan had lost control of his charges. ‘One question. Did Lyndon take the Land Rover?’

  ‘Yes, yes he did.’

  Dryden spun on his heel, taking in the perfect circular horizon of the Black Fen. ‘That’s going to be difficult to hide. You can see for ever.’

  She considered the view; a shimmering expanse of tumbling hot air. ‘Sometimes the truth’s a lot closer.’

  33

  Humph drove him to Barham’s Dock as the sun fell. He left Humph rummaging in the drinks compartment and rang his landline answerphone: still no further word from Gillies & Wright. How could Maggie have miscalculated so badly? She’d been convinced Lyndon’s father would come forward. If there was no further news soon Dryden needed a new lead on the story to run the appeal again – this time in The Crow.

  He checked his watch: 8.45pm –
time for night calls. Every evening he did the round of six: police headquarters at Cambridge, local cop shop at Ely, fire station at Cambridge, county ambulance control at Histon, the coastguard at Cromer, and the AA regional centre at Peterborough. Most nights it was six blanks, which was a good job as Dryden usually made the calls having taken a series of nightcaps with Humph.

  Tonight it was miniature crème de menthes. Sickly green bottles of alcoholic medicine.

  Dryden waited a full minute with the bottle vertically poised above his lips to allow the last of the green slurry to seep out. Then he hit the mobile. He knew something was wrong when he finally got through to the duty officer at the county police HQ.

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got two units on the perimeter wire at Mildenhall. Request from the base commander. Fire. No other details at this time.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dryden, cutting straight to fire HQ. Humph carefully screwed the top back on to his second bottle and started the cab’s engine.

  ‘We’ve got three tenders on the airfield,’ said the control room operator.

  ‘From…’ said Dryden, hoping his luck would hold.

  ‘Mildenhall, Ely and Soham.’

  The military at Mildenhall had three tenders of their own on the air base. If they’d called for assistance something had gone off with a big bang. He flicked through his contact book. He knew one of the Ely firemen whose wife was a nurse at The Tower. They’d met at a fund-raising barbecue four years earlier, the summer before Laura’s accident. He’d been on the News then but could never let a social occasion pass without ruining it by asking someone for their mobile telephone number. He rang it now, it picked up, but all he could hear was garbled shouting and a mechanical roar like the sound of the sea, heard underwater.

  ‘… here. Darren Peake here. Darren…’

  ‘Hi. Hi. It’s Philip. Philip Dryden from The Crow. Sorry. We met at one of the fund-raisers. Are you at the Mildenhall fire?’

  Generally firemen were press-friendly. They liked seeing the pictures taken from the at-scene videos in the local paper and The Crow covered all their sports sponsorship events. During the firemen’s strike Dryden had done a vox pop for the Express which had thrown up unexpectedly strong support for their claim.