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 after 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.