‘I must see him,’ said Jimmy simply, seeing DS Crabbe advancing, accompanied by the two PCs from the squad car. Some of the anger had washed out of him, and his shoulders sagged. Crabbe left the PCs to take Kabazo into custody and led the way towards the mortuary doors. He pushed a button to one side which opened up an intercom to the desk inside. ‘OK. Open up now, please – the situation is under control. DS Peter Crabbe.’ He held up his warrant card to the glass.
An orderly edged forward to read it before the doors slid electronically open, spilling shattered glass as they did so. One of the PCs from the squad car slipped handcuffs on Jimmy as they waited in the reception area. He didn’t resist, his eyes set on the interior doors to the mortuary. One of the two medical orderlies behind the foyer counter held a bandage to his head, from which a thin trickle of blood had run down to his collar.
‘I’ve radioed for medical,’ said Crabbe, turning to Kabazo. ‘While we’re waiting, Mr Kabazo – I presume?’
Dryden nodded. ‘Mr Kabazo wished to identify the body of his son,’ he said.
Crabbe turned to him. ‘Mr Kabazo. Are you responsible for this?’ He gestured towards the orderly with the head wound.
‘They wouldn’t let me see him,’ said Kabazo, his eyes still on the mortuary doors.
‘We called at Wilkinson’s, Mr Kabazo, to invite you to a formal identification. They said you were sick.’
Great stuff, thought Dryden. His son is dead and you’re lecturing him about taking a sickie. But he said: ‘Perhaps. While we are waiting, detective sergeant?’
Crabbe decided that he might as well press ahead with the ID while he had Kabazo in the building.
One of the mortuary assistants hit some security buttons on the desktop and the interior set of doors swished open. Beyond that Crabbe led them through two sets of industrial doors, the kind that have plastic sheeting attached to stop draughts. The floors were concrete and streaked with stains which turned Dryden’s stomach. There was a smell in the air, a scent really, which Dryden could not identify. It was sweet, and medicinal, and it brought a lump to his throat. They stopped in front of a door marked: ‘Autopsy Unit’. They were there too quickly. Dryden didn’t know why he was there at all. Inside, the room was lit by sunshine from skylights, while metal boxes, like those in left luggage, were in serried ranks on either wall. A row of surgical tables stood in the centre. There was a body on one and the sunshine fell on the zip-up hospital-green bag in which it was wrapped.
A woman in a white body-suit appeared out of the blaze of light and stood by the table with her hand on the zip. Crabbe took Kabazo’s arm, marched him forward to the table and nodded briskly, almost cheerfully, and the bag was unzipped to the chest of the child. Dryden had waited too long. He felt rather than heard the breath leaving Kabazo’s body. He watched as Kabazo bent stiffly to kiss the child on the forehead. When he stood, Dryden noticed Emmy’s face was splashed with tears, as if turned up to a summer shower. Kabazo sank to his knees by the table and they all stepped back, even Crabbe feeling it was time to release his custodial hold.
Dryden fled the room, and so he only heard the scream of despair. He waited outside in the car park in the long silence that followed, and thought about Johnnie Roe, staked out in the pillbox. What did his torturer want to know? Did Jimmy Kabazo track him down when his son failed to turn up with the people smugglers?
They put Kabazo in the back of the squad car and waited for Crabbe to appear. He came out clutching some paperwork and a plastic zip-up bag. Dryden guessed it was the boy’s clothes and other belongings retrieved from the HGV container. He could see a green T-shirt and a pair of trainers and what looked like a notebook. Kabazo took it and as they drove him off he bowed his head and hugged it to his chest, as if it were the son he had lost.
31
The US air base at Mildenhall lay somewhere near the heart of the mystery of Black Bank. Humph edged the cab forward in the queue at the security gate, behind a Cadillac with two rear exhaust pipes like the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. The air-base wire ran into the distance like the edge of a giant chicken run. A Doomsday-grey B-52 was coming in to the main runway leaving a streak of lead half a mile wide hanging like a dirty washing line in a ceramic blue sky. His request for an interview with Captain Freeman White had got a prompt response from August Sondheim by text message: INTERVIEW NOON. Dryden wondered what was in it for August.
‘No wisecracks,’ said Dryden, as they edged towards the heavily armed military guards.
‘Where are we?’ said Humph, looking around him with indignation.
‘It’s not a hijack. You drove here. Where do you think we are? Vladivostok?’
In truth Dryden shared his disorientation. USAF Mildenhall was a world of its own. The Stars & Stripes hung from a flagpole with no enthusiasm. They could have been on the Great Plains. The sentry probably thought he was. He ambled up to Humph’s cab dragging a size-10 arse behind him in combat fatigues. Then he made the mistake of tapping on Humph’s window, a little military two-tap.
The cabbie wound it down. ‘Wing Commander?’ he said, beaming.
Dryden leant across with his wallet open to show a press pass. ‘Excuse me. Major Sondheim is expecting us.’
The guard wore 100 per cent reflective dark sunglasses which meant Dryden could only guess how vacant his eyes actually were.
The barrier went up and the sentry barked. ‘Follow the red lines, sir. To the red car park. Major Sondheim will meet you there, sir.’
Humph saluted as they sailed past at a stately twenty miles an hour.
The base was home to 7,500 people; a town crowded round a single runway long enough to take the big transatlantic planes. One and a half miles of reinforced concrete scattered with scurrying hedgehogs trying to avoid the ultimate roadkill. Dryden shifted in his seat, immediately aware that his claustrophobia had kicked in as they slipped inside the high-wire cordon of the base. Military hardware dotted the horizon, from the bristling communications masts to the rocking radar dishes which swept the sky for aircraft or, worse, incoming missiles. Some of the buildings were pre-war and smacked of the great days of aviation in the 1930s: the tailplanes of the latest modern aircraft sticking out of their open doors. A now-disused mast had once anchored giant airships over the Fens before they set out for the four corners of the Empire. The more modern buildings, mostly associated with the arrival of the US Air Force in the 1950s, were squat and ugly by comparison. They swept past one of the many on-base canteens which was built of blood-red brick and boasted a single, neon sign for McDonald’s.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11 security had been stepped up at all US bases abroad. Signposts and information boards had been taken down to confuse the enemy, and everybody else. A GI with a brutal crewcut stood at a crossroads consulting a map. Traffic lights controlled the runway crossing. A sentry waved them on, before changing his mind and waving them down to ask where they were going.
‘On-base communications unit,’ said Dryden.
The GI looked bemused. He scanned the horizon as if August’s unit were hiding out there. Then the GI took an executive decision: ‘I’m lost, mister,’ he said, genuinely exasperated.
Dryden nodded happily. ‘I’ll ring Major Sondheim – he’s our contact.’ But there was no need. August thumped his hand on the roof and leant in on Humph’s side.
‘Hiya. Over there.’ He pointed to a group of pre-war hangars. Humph parked and began to inflate the in-flight pillow he’d bought at Stansted Airport for just such occasions.
August took Dryden by the arm and led him to a US military Jeep. It was 11.45 and August was sober, but the strain was showing. His diction was as sharp as the crease on his trousers. In the back of the Jeep was one of his junior PR staff, a woman in fatigues with a clipboard which Dryden noted with approval held a piece of clean A4 paper with nothing on it.