The Coldest Blood

by Jim Kelly

  Dryden heard the scream in his memory, with its hint of triumph. A zigzag wound, thought Dryden, and he saw another memory from that summer, of the subtle urgent rocking of white bodies in the sand.

  ‘I heard the boys coming back then,’ said Marcie. ‘Behind me, but I just couldn’t stop watching. Gedney’s eyes were closed, but the pain made him jerk his head to one side, and when he opened them he was looking at us. That’s why we remembered the face, and the eyes. It’s what Declan said when he saw that poster the newspaper printed: “I’ll never forget the eyes.”

  ‘We panicked then, and ran back through the marsh to the chalets. I was terrified, I think we all were – even Smith. We heard footsteps behind us, I think Declan always did.’

  Dryden nodded and looked seawards, where a bank of black cloud stood on the horizon like a mountain range. ‘Do you think he knew who you were – that night, I mean? Do you think Paul Gedney could have known who you were?’

  ‘I know he did,’ she said, breathing in the air, heavy now with damp as the ice storm finally edged towards the coast. ‘Because of what happened the next day.’

  36

  Humph swung the cab off the coast road and up on to the sandy verge, the exhaust pipe whacking the grass with a dull thud. A flock of seagulls circled the Capri and Dryden guessed the cabbie had been jettisoning food at regular intervals from the driver’s side window.

  ‘I was asleep,’ said Humph, brushing crumbs from his Ipswich Town top with a delicate hand.

  He’d said nothing more when Dryden had rung twenty minutes earlier to ask for the pickup.

  ‘Back to the Eel’s Foot,’ said Dryden, checking his watch. Flipping open his mobile he found another text message from DI Reade – another reminder to be available for interview the next morning. What he needed first was to hear the rest of Marcie Sley’s story, to take it beyond the point where his childhood self had left the other children that summer’s night.

  They drove on in silence, the black, peat-black winter fields so featureless there was a powerful illusion they were standing still. The chimneys of the Eel’s Foot came into view along the floodbank. He was at the bar when he heard the tyres of John Sley’s 4x4 on the car park gravel. Dryden met Marcie at the door and found a table in a corner. Marcie’s husband left them, sitting at the bar nursing a pint of beer and a local paper.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Marcie. ‘I needed to warm up – and John’s worried about me. Bronchitis, it comes and goes.’ She turned her head towards the fireplace where the logs crackled, the source of the radiating heat.

  Dryden lowered his voice. ‘You said that you know for sure that Paul Gedney recognized you that night – how?’

  Marcie patted the seat beside her, an unconscious effort to find her husband’s hand. ‘It’s best if I just tell you what happened, all of it. In retrospect – now – we can see why it happened. But then, it was just baffling for us – for all of us. We were only children.’

  The eyes had filled and Dryden was startled to find the question had brought her to an emotional edge. He wanted to hold her, to tell her quickly who he was, but the promise of the story to come held him back.

  She pushed the base of her wineglass a few inches across the table top and Dryden guessed she didn’t trust herself to lift it.

  ‘I was woken up by Grace Elliot, my foster mother. It was just before seven on the morning after we’d run away from the boat. I can remember leaning over and reading the alarm clock, and then remembering two things, two really dreadful things: I remembered the night before, and then that it was the day we were going home. And then I was afraid, because she’d never knocked on the door before. Grace had two other kids – boys, toddlers, and they’d slept next door with her and Jack, her husband. Anyway, I got up and there was this man there on the stoop outside, a security guard.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought they knew – you know, that we’d been out at night.’ She went for the wineglass and it tipped alarmingly as she took a sip. ‘Anyway, he asked Grace if they could look under the chalet.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There was a Blue Coat there too. He didn’t say a word. But the security guard said there’d been a complaint about us – he didn’t mean the whole family, he spelt it out – he meant us…’

  ‘You, Dex and Smith…’ said Dryden.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly smiling again, that secret smile. ‘He said there’d been a spate of thefts in the camp and that they’d had information – that’s exactly what he said: “information” – that it was us. That someone had seen us, after dark, out amongst the huts.’

  Dryden leant back and drained his pint.

  ‘He said they didn’t want to call the police. I can remember the relief even now – pathetic, really; I should have just gone on saying we were innocent. He said it was probably all a misunderstanding, but they needed to look under the huts. So Grace said they could.’

  She laughed. ‘It was underneath, of course. We’d got a string bag, for the beach things. It was usually stuffed under the steps. But they found it buried, full: biscuits and sweets, some cash – I remember a five-pound note – a couple of watches, and a single ring – a gold wedding ring. He laid it all out on the bed, on my bed. I just looked at it and Mum looked at me.’

  Dryden refilled their glasses at the bar and checked that Humph was still happy, the cab gently vibrating to an Estonian nursery rhyme.

  ‘Grace left the kids with Jack and took me to the office. Smith and Declan were already there and on the table was another bag – Declan’s bag from St Vincent’s, I remember the purple crest. And there was more stuff: a fountain pen, a hip flask, a musical box with a silver lock, just a magpie’s haul really. The kind of stuff kids love.’

  ‘No police?’ asked Dryden.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Not even then. They said they didn’t want the publicity. Declan said thank you. He was crying, and Smith held him. The security guard was different this time. I guess he was the one in charge. He said they couldn’t just forget it. They had to do something, just to make sure we never came back, in case the police did get involved. So he wrote a letter, setting out what had happened, and he put a statement with it from the Blue Coat as well. Then they copied them on a machine, three copies, and gave Grace two.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She drove us all home – that morning. We went back to the chalets and packed. Grace had got most of it all sorted anyway the night before. We just got our stuff into the car and piled in. I can’t remember much…’

  She looked towards the wineglass. ‘She drove to St Vincent’s first and dropped the boys off. We all saw it. She gave the letter to the priest. Declan looked so fragile, Smith was better. He was strong enough for both of them, otherwise I really don’t believe my brother would have got through it.

  ‘Then she took us home. Nothing happened for a week. I didn’t ask, but I knew. She’d been talking about taking Declan as well, so we could be together. But I knew that wouldn’t happen now. And then the next weekend – on the Saturday night – we heard this row downstairs. It was her and Jack shouting, and it was a real shock because they never argued. Then the next day she just told me to pack, that I was going back to the council home. I’d been with her three months, which was the trial period, but they’d decorated my room, and we’d talked about holidays for the next summer. I’d have stayed, I know that. But it changed everything. She said she’d never see me again, and she hasn’t. She might be dead now and I wouldn’t know, she wasn’t that strong.’

  She covered her mouth and lifted the wineglass, so Dryden looked away. ‘You told them you didn’t steal those things?’ he asked.

  ‘We did. But only once, that first morning. After that it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was avoiding the police, getting away from there. And we didn’t want to say where we were – out in the marshes. That would just have been admitting we were not in the chalets, that we
could have been out thieving. We couldn’t talk together so we didn’t know what we’d said. It happened so quickly I don’t think any of us had the wit to see the link – between what we’d seen the night before and what had happened the next morning. But it’s clear now, isn’t it? That they’d done it to get us away, before we could go back to the boat. If we’d told someone, they wouldn’t have believed us – and there’s no way Gedney would still have been there – not that day, not that morning.

  ‘So we just went along with it, their version of what we’d done. Except for one thing. They asked who the other boy was. But we never told them that.’

  Dryden felt that sense of loss again, for the children who had refused to betray him. ‘And the Blue Coat?’

  ‘Well – yes. An irony. It was Chips Connor. Mum had paid for swimming lessons, so we knew him. We were terrified, of course, so I can’t remember much, but like I said, they gave him a kind of statement to sign – you know, just setting out that he’d gone to look under the huts and that he’d found the bags and what had been inside. And we all watched, and his hand just shook, like a leaf, shook so much he could hardly hold the pen.’

  37

  Out at sea, the bank of advancing cloud was now an almost tangible barrier. It appeared to drop to the surface of the water itself, and Dryden watched as a falling curtain of snow turned a red container ship grey before obliterating it entirely.

  Dryden and Marcie Sley sat in a perspex shelter by the Dolphin’s swimming pool, shielded from the wind. The blind woman was still, the wind buffeting the shelter at her back, while Dryden described the scene.

  ‘There are clouds at sea,’ he said. ‘Creeping in. But it’s snow still, no sign yet of the rain.’

  Marcie’s husband had gone back to their chalet, but Dryden still sensed his antagonism. Humph had retreated to the sand dunes with the Capri, the dog and a bag of chips.

  Dryden was acutely aware that Marcie Sley had yet to ask again about the witness he had uncovered, the missing boy. Trying to postpone the moment further, he found his own question.

  ‘Tell me about John,’ he said. ‘Have you ever seen him?’

  She laughed. ‘No. No, I haven’t. But I could tell his face in a thousand,’ she said, stretching out her fingers inside her gloves. ‘I trust him with my life, Dryden – quite literally. But he doesn’t trust you. Forgive him, he’s not a sociable man at all, but he loved the Gardeners’ – and he could spend time with Declan and Joe. They were happy there, and so was I.’

  She ungloved her right hand and reached out, taking his own. ‘And he doesn’t trust you because he doesn’t know who you are. But I do. Philip.’

  Dryden laughed, strangely elated by the moment of recognition. She held out both her hands, palm up, and he meshed his fingers with hers. ‘I wondered why you hadn’t asked. A guess?’

  A blast of snow peppered the perspex. Her face, suddenly animated, looked younger, and Dryden saw again the girl who had played in the dunes.

  ‘Perhaps, at first. There was something when we met – at the Gardeners’. I don’t know what it was, but first names are odd like that. I always think you can end up liking people you should hate just because their name reminds you of someone you liked. I’ve always liked the name – perhaps that’s down to you.’ She smiled. ‘When you called it made me think – but it seemed such an extraordinary coincidence, that you should be… our Philip. But it isn’t, is it? You’re a reporter, they died in Ely. Then today, down by the old boat, you called Joe plain Smith – but I thought that might be something you’d found in the files, or a cutting. But Dex – I knew then, I don’t think anyone has called him Dex for twenty years.’

  In the distance, through the side window of the shelter, Dryden saw John Sley standing under the canopy by 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 fact
ory. 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.