‘Not here,’ he said, without conviction, as he considered the smoke slithering under the door, and then the tongues of flame which began to curl under, like searching fingers.
Then the door imploded with a silent percussion which popped his ears. In slow motion the wood became kindling. Then a tumbling fireball swept towards him and as he turned his back on it he was yelling – Humph said that later – yelling for water. Then he yelled for anything that would stop the pain which was eating into his back. As he screamed he imagined the worst because he could not see: imagined the flame digging in to the bones of the spine, uncovering them by burning away the thin layers of flesh and muscle. Firing the bone like human pottery.
Which is when he thought of Laura. It was the coolness of her bed which called him. The lack of fire and warmth. The iciness which he desperately craved now. He wanted to be by her bedside for ever, forever cool, under the falling snowflakes which he could summon up when his eyes were closed. They could lie together in a drift, the antithesis of fire.
‘Please, God, let her see me again,’ he said, and gagging on the gases, he dropped to his knees.
It wasn’t his own death that scared him. It was the idea that she’d think he’d left her again, left her like he had in Harrimere Drain, in the flooded car. There were many things he had said since the crash, but only one thing had he repeated each night at The Tower: ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Please, God,’ he said, silently this time. ‘Let her see me again.’
When he opened his eyes he was an inch from the lock. It was the Chubb: gold, and oddly icy. He put his lips to it and the kiss was as cold as Laura’s skin. So he pulled the chain at his neck and the key rose, and he put the key in the lock and even in the screaming chaos of the house in which he should have died he heard it effortlessly tumbling, the locksmith’s wheels falling nicely into their allotted slots.
Then he thanked God, shouted his name, and pulling the door towards him, fell out, back into the world which wasn’t on fire, his arms flailing in a fiery semaphore.
43
When he came to, Estelle was kneeling, holding him, with his back to the dust storm. Ahead the house still burned, a single column now of cherry-red flame fifty feet high. The pain along his spine was distant, but he knew that it was shock which had dulled it, and that it was blossoming slowly, but relentlessly. The dust storm blew, and somewhere in the hiss of the cloud in which they existed he could hear Humph, up close, on a mobile. ‘Yup. Quickly. It’s serious,’ he said, and Dryden wondered how the cabbie had hurt himself. Dryden was unmoved by the fact that he was still alive. He glugged air, choked on the carbon monoxide, but glugged some more. Estelle’s eyes were locked on the burning house, while she held her sweatshirt to her mouth to block the fumes.
Dryden’s chest heaved. ‘You knew,’ he said. He took what air he could. ‘Lyndon died thinking he’d killed Johnnie Roe. Thinking he died of thirst. But that’s not right, is it?’
She didn’t try to deny it. ‘No.’
Dryden closed his eyes but could still see the brilliant outline of the house on his retinas. ‘You’d been there – to the pillbox. At Maggie’s funeral you said Johnnie had been tortured like Tantalus. It was too perfect a description. None of the reports had the details. But you knew…’
She watched the fire with the same intensity Lyndon had reserved for the Zippo lighter.
Humph’s voice floated into their world. ‘They’re coming,’ he said, and was gone.
She coughed back the fumes. ‘He disappeared – after the night Mum died. He knew about Johnnie then, from the tapes. He came past a couple of times and we met at the hospital – to clear away her things. Freeman came too. But I knew Lyndon was struggling, struggling, with all of it. We had to talk. He just wanted to go back home – as if nothing had happened. It was crazy. He was crazy. It wasn’t something you could just forget. Then I saw the lights one night – out at Mons Wood. And the Land Rover, in the trees.’
‘You found Johnnie?’
‘Yes. In Mum’s pillbox, she’d talked about it on the tapes. Where she’d met Johnnie. And I knew then that Lyndon had taken him there. I’d thought of revenge too. But what could I do? Then, suddenly, he was there. And I had that power, of life and death, given to me without asking. So I went back the next night with some of the chemicals they use for the fields. Weedkiller. Dad… Don, Don always said they were lethal, and to keep them away from kids because they were tasteless. Like water. And colourless. We kept supplies locked up at Black Bank. I thought if Johnnie Roe was that desperate, he could drink that. So I filled the glass with the poison and I gave it to him.’
Dryden said nothing, trying not to see Johnnie’s body twisted on the pillbox floor.
‘He started screaming. Saying it burnt him inside. So I left.’ She turned to Dryden and he sensed she’d taken a decision. She smiled. ‘I don’t regret it. I never have. I just wish I’d told Lyndon. Why didn’t we talk? I wouldn’t go back with him. We couldn’t get past that. So we hid in silence and then he left.’
They watched the house burn. ‘Now Lyndon’s gone too,’ said Dryden, shaking badly as the shock subsided. The pain was making it difficult for him to think: a pulsing electric pain, branching out from his spinal cord.
‘I had something to tell him,’ said Estelle, and she let her hands drop to her stomach, where they cradled the flesh. Dryden’s head swam, but he knew she was rocking, rocking gently to the sound of the fire.
He knew then why Laura had told him there was another baby.
‘A child,’ he said, and she turned to him again.
‘I wanted to tell him that I didn’t go.’
‘Go where?’
‘The hospital. The last time we spoke we decided. I wouldn’t go with him so he said that it would be best if the child wasn’t born. I wanted to hurt him then, for being brutal. So I said OK. I said I would get rid of the child. He must have died thinking I had. That’s terrible, isn’t it? Terrible that he died not knowing there’s still a baby.’
Humph appeared before them and the green tinge of sickness on his face told Dryden everything he didn’t want to know. ‘Your back,’ he said. ‘There’s some burns. They’ll be here soon, so sit.’
Dryden nodded and leant on Estelle. The dust storm had vanished as quickly as it had descended on Adventurer’s Fen. In the silence the house crackled like kindling.
‘Lyndon. How did he die?’ she said, standing and taking a step towards the fire.
‘The lighter. Petrol, I think. It was over very quickly.’
She twisted her head back in despair: ‘Oh Jesus! We never escaped, did we? Any of us. From that fire. From this.’
And she started to walk towards the flames. Dryden stood, felt the fen sweep around him in a dizzy vision, and lunged after her. He clutched at Estelle’s arm and then his knees buckled and he brought her down into the dust with him. The front of the house was charcoal black, but where the door had been a sheet of ruby-red flame still burnt like a shimmering curtain of beads.
‘The child can escape,’ he said, and blacked out.
Postscript
As the ambulance took Dryden away from Adventurer’s Fen the rain fell. Fizzing droplets turned to tiny clouds of gas over the burning forest and dripped from the open rafters of the house that Laura had built. The house she had built for them.
It hadn’t just been her secret; she’d shared it with her parents. Six months before the accident at Harrimere Drain they’d come back from Italy, from retirement, on a visit. She wanted to take the money left to her in trust to build the house Dryden wanted, for the family they both wanted. She took them out to the spot and let them feel the thrill of the secret too. The secret she hugged to herself that last summer, even as she understood the shadow it cast over Dryden. But with her parents she agreed to keep the secret, at least for a few more weeks, until his birthday.
After Laura’s accident her parents flew back to be at her side in The Tower, and aft
er the weeks in which she might have died had passed, they asked Dryden what he wanted to do with the money in the trust fund. They’d agreed a plan on the flight: if he said he wanted the money they’d tell him about the house on Adventurer’s Fen. If not, they’d rent it, bank the money as an investment, and keep the secret in the hope that when Laura came out of the coma she, and Dryden, could enjoy the surprise – at last. It was a sound investment, and a clever compromise. Dryden had told them to invest the money safely. He carried the key she’d given him, and they carried Laura’s secret.
Which is why Dryden’s key was made to fit a lock in a house which should have existed only in a dream.
Andy ‘Last Case’ Newman retired happily a month after the deaths on Adventurer’s Fen. All three killings, of Bob Sutton, Johnnie Roe, and Winston the people smuggler, appeared on his file as solved. Lyndon Koskinski was Johnnie’s presumed killer. Dryden and Estelle kept her secret to themselves. Newman was commended by the Chief Constable. He moved to the north Norfolk coast and shortly afterwards identified a new sub-species of Arctic Tern: Borealis Newmanii.
Estelle gave birth to a baby girl on Christmas Day at Black Bank Farm. She was christened Margaret at St Matthew’s. Dryden was invited and they stood before Lyndon’s grave in the churchyard afterwards. He’d been buried with Maggie and Don. Dryden, hospitalized after the burns he received at Adventurer’s Fen, had only just escaped a wheelchair.
‘What will you tell her?’ he’d asked.
‘Everything,’ said Estelle, hugging the baby.
Lyndon’s onetime grandparents in Austin had sent a wreath, which carried a small flag: a white star on a blue background with broad stripes of white and red – the flag of the Lone Star State. But there was no message. Privately, they approached the parish authorities responsible for St Matthew’s and paid over an endowment of L500 for the upkeep of all the graves, in perpetuity.
Estelle asked Dryden to ring them. They’d taken the call, listened to a factual account of what had happened, and thanked him. He sensed few emotions, except bitterness and loss.
Jimmy Kabazo pleaded guilty to the murder – reduced to manslaughter – of Winston Edgeley (real name Wayne) on the direction of the judge at Cambridge Crown Court. A similar plea was entered and accepted for the killing of Bob Sutton. The judge, reported verbatim in the Daily Telegraph, said the crimes were heinous, but the agonized mental state of the defendant was sufficient to warrant a plea in mitigation. Jimmy Kabazo didn’t care. He was deported to Nigeria to serve his sentence: ten years, concurrent, on both charges. Dryden saw him briefly at Whitemoor Prison, north of Ely, three months after the trial, and on the eve of his deportation.
‘How am I to tell her?’ said Jimmy of his wife, the smile now gone for ever. He saw her briefly at Poorloon Jail, Lagos, a week after his return on a scheduled flight handcuffed to immigration officers. The couple never met again. Their son Emmy was buried in the corporation cemetery at King’s Lynn and the grave carries no marker.
Alice and Ellie Sutton buried Bob in the cemetery at Ely. The gravestone said: ‘Gave his life for his daughter’. They emigrated to Hong Kong.
The memorial stone to the victims of the 1976 air crash still stands: the name of Lyndon Koskinski has been added, as Maggie requested.
Major August Sondheim was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He took sick leave and flew home to see his daughter. After three months in a Vermont nursing home with Sergeant Rachel DeWitt at his side his health improved and he took early retirement. He is still an alcoholic, but hasn’t taken a drink since his disease was diagnosed. He will be a father again in six months’ time.
Johnnie Roe’s body was released for cremation after a formal inquest returned a verdict of murder. Sally Roe cried alone at home for what might have been. Peter Selby, eventually charged with aggravated rape and indecent assault, asked for eighty-three similar charges to be taken into account. He named five other defendants before his appearance at Peterborough Crown Court. All were found guilty on all charges. Selby got twelve years, the rest fourteen. He was murdered in prison with a Stanley knife, the killer unknown.
Captain Freeman White was released from police custody after being questioned about the death of Bob Sutton. Owing to insufficient evidence no charges were ever brought. He was discharged from the US Air Force two months later at Edwards Air Base, New Mexico. His record remains clean and distinguished by the award of a Purple Heart for valour in Iraq. He cashed in his military pension for a lump sum and bought a motorcycle repair business in Austin.
Humph spent the following Christmas in Thessalonika. He is now learning Walloon.
Dryden suffered third-degree burns to his upper back, left shoulder and left arm. Extensive skin grafts were needed. The operations were performed at The Tower. He took Maggie’s bed to be near Laura, and told her the whole story. The COMPASS machine delivered no further messages.
When he was well enough to walk he stood at the foot of Laura’s bed and told her what he was going to do. The insurance money had come through after the fire. He would rebuild Adventurer’s Fen and rent it out again. It would be their home one day. One day soon. Then he went out and met a surveyor on the land.
While he was out the COMPASS machine chattered into life.
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The Fire Baby Page 26