Pork, he thought. But this time it wasn’t pigs; this time it was people. Three of them were crawling on the ground throwing up what little they had in their stomachs on to the sun-bleached tarmac, where it sizzled obscenely. Those in the van were alive, but another few hours in the heat of the afternoon sun would have done for them. All of them were black and soaked in sweat and urine. They blinked in the sun and cracked bent limbs. There was an almost complete lack of any human sound, except that of lungs sucking in air. The heat and smell formed an almost physical barrier. Gradually Newman’s team helped them out, down from the tailgate, while Dryden took a walk up-wind, gulping in lungfuls of sea air.
When he got back there was only one person left in the back of the container. He knew immediately it was a corpse. The lower limbs were rigid and ugly, the torso’s upper body slightly raised from the floor of the van on one side. One arm was flung behind the neck, which craned up for air, while the other stretched towards the place where light would have been. He didn’t want to see the face but he did. Later, he couldn’t describe it even to himself, but he knew what it wasn’t: it wasn’t ‘Died Quietly in His Sleep’. It was Emmy Kabazo.
27
Did Jimmy Kabazo kill Johnnie Roe? It was a thought Dryden could not dislodge as he sat in the Capri, the doors open, and drank in the big sky over the sea like some visual antidote to the image of Emmy Kabazo’s tortured body. They’d parked by the beach at Old Hunstanton so that Dryden could phone over the story – single paragraphs for the tabloids, but more substantial stories for the white broadsheets: Guardian, Telegraph, Times and Independent. He got the basics over to the BBC’s Look East and made a note to bill them for the tip-off fee. The spate of work helped him deal with the helplessness he felt. Jimmy had to be a suspect. When Dryden had talked to him at the old airfield he claimed to be waiting for Emmy’s arrival. But what if his son was long overdue? Had Jimmy tried to track him down through the Ritz? Had he tortured Johnnie to find out where his son had gone? Had Johnnie died not knowing how to give him the answer he needed, the answer which would have saved his life?
Dryden filled his lungs with ozone but failed to eradicate the lingering aroma of cooked pig. Humph, silent, looked out to sea. He liked the beach, principally because there was so much to look at before you needed to get out of the car. ‘Gonna swim?’ he said, scrambling in the glove compartment for a miniature bottle of gin. He’d bought a large bottle of tonic and a lemon at a roadside service station. He produced two plastic cups and sliced the lemon with a Swiss Army knife marginally smaller than a fork-lift truck.
‘Sorry, no ice,’ he said, trying pathetically to cheer Dryden up.
‘What’s Emmy short for?’ asked Dryden.
Humph gave him the drink, and sipped his own. ‘Emerson? Emmanuel?’
Dryden gulped the drink, failing to blot out the double image of Emmy’s corpse and Johnnie Roe’s skin grafts. Then he rooted in the Capri’s boot for his swimming shorts and a towel. He wanted the North Sea to dilute whatever was left on his skin of the odour of rotting flesh. And worse, much worse. He walked off into the dunes to change, then ran towards the sea, a sprint which turned into a long-distance run. The water was a Mediterranean blue but the temperature of meltwater off a snow-covered roof. That was the problem with the Norfolk coast, the ice-cream vans were manned by Norwegians. Dryden’s testicles jockeyed violently for re-entry to his body.
The shock helped. He managed to dislodge from memory the sight of that single, juvenile arm stretching up to the light. But the slick of putrid pork fat still lapped at the edge of consciousness. Thankfully the fizzing white spume of the waves gave off a cleansing rush of ozone.
He sat in the dunes and thought about being there with Laura four summers ago. They’d talked about the two cottages they’d seen, on Adventurer’s Fen: Flightpath Cottages. Derelict and sodden with damp they would cost less to knock down than restore. It had been a discouraging day and Laura had seemed distant, preoccupied by some inner anxiety she seemed reluctant to share. The cottages weren’t right, they’d agreed that. And there had been something mean and pinched about the man who’d shown them round. But they shared a view which redefined the concept of panoramic. The wide snaking river running north, the reed beds to the east and west, and the deep cut of the Thirty Foot Drain providing the final defence against the outside world. And Laura’s reticence seemed coupled with another emotion, just below the surface, like the snaking green weed of the river. Excitement? Perhaps. Dryden sensed a coiled spring of elation somewhere within her, something brimming towards the surface but constantly hidden from him. He was growing impatient with their search and suspicious that Laura was avoiding the commitment the house, the home, would symbolize. She’d hugged her secret to herself, for that is what Dryden knew it to be that day, like a lonely child. It was a bad memory, but one of the last ones with any vividness before the crash in Harrimere Drain which had changed their lives for ever.
The memory didn’t improve his mood. He felt depression sweeping over him like a cold front over a trawler at sea. He took evasive action, retrieving a white folded piece of paper sticking out of his trouser pocket. It was the printout from Laura’s COMPASS machine that he had failed to read the night before. Now he laid it in the sand and put two pebbles at either end to hold it firm.
He saw the name but didn’t recognize it, even though he felt his skin goosebump, despite the eighty-degree heat. Until now Laura’s messages could have been simply the product of her unique view on the world. A view of hospital visitors whispering and discussing family secrets around the deathbed of Maggie Beck. But this? This was a warning.
WATCH WHITE
He knew that if he concentrated on something else the memory would come back. He watched a trawler running in on the gravy-brown tide, while on the beach a child stuck lollipop sticks into the tops of sandcastles.
Then he had it: Freeman White, Lyndon Koskinski’s fellow prisoner in Al Rasheid jail. Koskinski had said he was stationed at Mildenhall, undergoing medical treatment.
They were back at The Tower within an hour. Dryden sensed now that Laura had been at the centre of what had happened to Maggie Beck in the last days of her life. The life she had recorded on tape.
He climbed the stairs to Laura’s room. The COMPASS machine was silent but a length of tickertape hung motionless in the room’s fetid air. She was getting more expert at using the machine, Dryden could see that now. The gibberish was probably all involuntary movements. But when the message came it was separate and clear.
SHDUTUF F GKO GLDJUCN TAPESECORDER
FDHGFI FHGO SHSYGFKF DHDYWISJ SJSOSOJ
He felt the hair on his neck prickle. She was one letter out. He should have noticed before, the tape deck Estelle and Lyndon had left on the window ledge was gone.
The nurse on duty at the desk in the foyer seemed mildly affronted that Dryden could suggest one of the staff was a thief.
‘I can’t imagine anyone has taken it,’ she said, a practised smile revealing sharp teeth.
‘So where is it?’
‘Perhaps Mrs Beck’s family took it?’
‘They said they left it, it’s mine. But I’ll double check,’ said Dryden. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you could ask around. If it turns up, no questions will be asked – OK? Otherwise, I guess it’s the police.’
He showed his teeth back.
Then he told Humph to take him home. They drove in silence to Barham’s Dock where PK 129 lay motionless under a large moon.