Shipment, thought Dryden, seeing the boy’s twisted arms reaching for the air. ‘Local labour market,’ he said. ‘You’d been into Wilkinson’s. Only them?’
Newman nodded to say no. ‘There were others. Same business. Itinerant labourers, high turnover. It’s perfect for them. Some of them moved on, some didn’t.’
The warden in the boat began to spread grain on the water. ‘ID on the kid in the lorry?’ Dryden tried to make the question sound as casual as possible.
Newman laughed. ‘Nobody’s talking. We haven’t got names for the ones that survived yet. But we will. The passports are fake and once they realize they’re heading back to the Channel ports, they’ll talk.’
Dryden had promised Jimmy Kabazo he wouldn’t go to the police. But that was before his son had turned up dead in the container on the coast. Dryden had always distrusted promises, and this one begged to be broken. He told Newman about his meeting with Kabazo at Wilkinson’s, and again at the old airfield, and the snapshot he’d shown him of Emmy.
‘It’s the same kid?’ asked Newman.
‘Pretty sure,’ said Dryden.
Newman made two mobile phone calls: one to the station at Ely to get out and interview Kabazo at Wilkinson’s, the second to a scene of crime unit to re-examine the Nissen hut the people smugglers had used as a dormitory. He’d visited it himself after Dryden had told him it was being used, but now he had a child’s death on his hands. Any forensic link between the hut and the HGV could be crucial in tracking down the people responsible for Emmy Kabazo’s death.
Dryden let Newman watch the flamingoes in silence for a few minutes, but he figured he was now owed some information. ‘The dirty pictures. Is it the same pillbox in which the pictures of Alice Sutton were taken. And if it is, where’s her father?’
Newman sighed, tearing his eyes away from the pink splodges of the birds. ‘It’s the same box. I can tell you that detectives from the East Midlands force will be reinterviewing our friend the pornstar stud tomorrow morning. He’s already facing a holding charge relating to the possession of pornographic material. So far he’s not talking. The fact that a corpse has been found on the film set may loosen his tongue – but I wouldn’t bet on it.’
‘Name yet for the stud?’
Newman slipped out a notebook from his windcheater. ‘Selby. Peter. Aged twenty-six. No further charges as yet, although there are developments. I can’t be more specific. You want the address?’
Dryden was forced to produce a notebook.
‘Caddus Street, Rushden. Worked for a haulage company in the town: A. Ladd & Sons.’
Dryden produced a squiggle and snapped the notebook shut. Facts always made him nervous. ‘Thanks. So you think what…?’
Newman was listening, not to Dryden, but the rhythmic crack of the great wings and the plaintive cawing. The warden saw them too and stood in the grain boat to pebble the motionless water with more feed. They watched in silence as the cloud grew into a flock of forty swans. By the time they’d landed in a riot of flailing legs, feet, and wings, another flock had crept up behind them from the east, swinging suddenly overhead and obliterating the sun.
Dryden looked at Newman’s face. Joy had rubbed twenty years off it. He looked like a kid in the front row at The Jungle Book. The detective produced a camera with a telephoto lens and Dryden heard the automatic shutter whir.
‘What do you know?’ said Newman at last.
‘Well – I know Maggie Beck swapped the body of her own child for that of a US serviceman’s in the 1976 air crash.’
‘I can read the paper too,’ said Newman.
‘Should it be that easy?’
Newman shrugged: ‘It’s a thirty-year-old case. I need a statement off Koskinski for the record. We’ll accept written affidavits from the grandparents. Then we can authorize the change of passports. There should be no problems. Just red tape. But he shouldn’t travel until it’s been completed.’
Dryden nodded, watching the water crease with an early morning breeze. ‘And the pillbox killing? You found fingerprints at the scene,’ said Dryden.
‘Yup.’ Newman slipped the binoculars into their case. The entire flock had landed now. A jostling snow-white field of raised wings and necks on a purple sea. He sighed. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, pausing briefly before adding: ‘Bob Sutton. Don’t tell his wife. In fact don’t tell anyone until The Crow comes out on Friday. OK?’
It was Dryden’s turn not to listen, he was thinking too fast. So Alice Sutton’s father had gone looking for her and not come back. Now the body of Johnnie Roe had been found in the pillbox where the pornographic pictures had been taken. According to Alice, her father had been to the Ritz and was probably aware of Johnnie Roe’s role in running a depot for the people smugglers.
‘Jesus! Did Sutton kill Roe? If he did, he could run far enough we’d never find him.’
Newman shrugged. ‘It’s getting pretty crowded in this pillbox. Alice Sutton and the stud. Then Johnnie. Now Sutton looking for his daughter. If it had a turnstile they could have sold tickets.’
Newman pocketed the binoculars: ‘When you write the Bob Sutton story I’d like you to add an appeal for information. There’s no body yet – we can’t presume he’s dead. We can’t presume he killed Roe. Anything anyone knows about him, and his recent movements. And that goes for Johnnie Roe too. He’s been a loner for ten years. Doesn’t mean his life was empty. Any information dealt with sympathetically – you know the form.’
A third flock of swans joined the mêlée around the grain boat.
‘Two things,’ said Dryden, following Newman down the vertical wooden ladder to the reed bed below. ‘Someone’s following me. Bloke on a motorbike. Red leathers, black bike. He attacked Humph’s cab, vandalized it, left a copy of the story I wrote about Black Bank. Not very subtle, really.’
‘Your mate all right?’
‘He wasn’t in the cab.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Newman. ‘I thought he was welded to the Capri – you know, like a luggage rack.’
Dryden ignored the insult. ‘Anyway, he was back last night. The biker. He tried to scupper my boat at Barham’s Dock. She’ll take a week to pump out and everything inside is a write-off.’
They’d reached the cars parked at the National Trust centre. Humph was in the Capri and immersed in his tapes. Newman got in the Citroën and wound down the window. ‘And you’re telling me for why? You’ve reported it in the normal way?’
‘Sure. Just insurance. A patrol car might make the occasional visit to Barham’s Dock – it might help.’
Newman snorted.
‘One other thing,’ said Dryden. ‘Someone stole a tape recorder from the room in which Maggie Beck died at The Tower, the room she shared with Laura. I’ve asked the staff, and it may turn up. If it doesn’t turn up in the next twenty-four hours I’d appreciate a visit from a uniform. It might do the trick.’
‘Anything else?’
Dryden’s mobile rang, so he let Newman drive off. It was Gillies & Wright, solicitors. ‘Mr Dryden? Just a courtesy call. The man who claimed to be Lyndon Koskinski’s father – the name does not match that left by Maggie Beck, I’m afraid. The £5,000 has been withheld. And I’ve informed the police. Clearly it was an attempt at fraud – although he did seem to have known Mrs Beck when they were teenagers.’
‘Thanks. I see.’ Dryden felt a wave of disappointment that Maggie’s last wishes had again been thwarted. ‘By the way – can you tell me how Maggie’s will dealt with Lyndon?’
‘Yes. Yes I can – it’s not usual, of course, but as you know Mrs Beck was very keen that all aspects of her estate should be above board and open to public scrutiny. And the will has now been read. The estate is left entirely to Mr Koskinski, as the eldest child. She stated quite clearly, however, that it was his duty to provide for his half-sister.’