The Coldest Blood (31 page)

The DI leant his back against the door. ‘She’s with a WPC now, up in the flat. They won’t be long – then they’ll bring her here.’

They all glanced at the living-room door.

Nabbs nodded. ‘I just don’t understand… How can it be Chips?’

He looked at Dryden for an answer while the DI consulted a notebook. ‘There’s some confusion at Wash Camp,’ said Parlour. ‘The governor is talking to his people now but Connor was counted in at lunch and out again at 1.30pm, went to his room and then to the gym for an hour, that’s
his daily routine. Then there was a run, outside. Then the weather turned bad, the light went, they brought them in early. The next time there was a count was back in the showers at 3.00pm – he wasn’t there. They were running in tracksuits and that’s what he’s got on now. Plus a wedding ring and the watch.’

‘It’s twenty-five miles away,’ said Nabbs. ‘More.’

The DI shrugged. ‘He could have hitched – he could have run and walked. He had the time. Map?’

Nabbs spread an Ordnance Survey sheet out on the kitchen table, edging the fish to one end, cleaning the trail of blood away with a piece of kitchen towel. Briefly Dryden imagined he could smell the haemoglobin, a rusty metallic edge which made him wince.

With a finger Nabbs traced the course of the main river back inland. One tributary led towards the prison, stopping short by five miles.

‘He could have fallen in there,’ said Nabbs. ‘Suicide?’

DI Parlour shook his head, the cigarette clamped between his lips. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said, launching the stub into the flames of the fire. ‘Pathologist says the neck was broken, the head twisted round and back over the left shoulder. He’s only making an educated guess but there appears to be little fluid in the lungs – so it’s probable he was dead before he hit the water. Hypothesis has to be he was attacked from behind, his chin wrenched round, then dumped.’

Parlour put down the coffee cup and, interlacing his fingers, cracked the bones.

Dryden nodded. ‘A few problems with all that. You’ll find the channels up inland are frozen – they have been for a week. He’s got to have fallen into salt water, below the tidal reach of the main channel – about a mile inland, or in the marshes over here.’ He pointed to the intricate tracery of
channels to the west of the camp. ‘When you get the water off his clothes or out of his lungs I bet you very little of it’s fresh. And there were strands of weed on the body – that points to the marshes too.’

‘Right,’ said Parlour, making a note.

‘So he got here sometime this afternoon – probably late,’ said Dryden, just – he thought – as Paul Gedney had done more than thirty years before.

The door opened and a WPC brought in Ruth Connor. Naturally pale, she’d blanched further, some hastily applied lipstick a gash across the face. Dryden, who relied almost entirely on first impressions when judging character, thought she looked genuinely shocked, her eyes fighting to keep focused on the real world around her. Dryden felt she made a conscious effort not to look at William Nabbs, but took a chair by the fire and a whisky she hadn’t asked for.

‘One moment please, Mrs Connor,’ said DI Parlour, opening the living-room door just wide enough to slip beyond. The WPC stood guard, a puddle of meltwater forming at her feet.

‘It’s Chips?’ she said, turning to look at Dryden as Nabbs stood behind her, both hands on her neck.

‘You’ll have to make sure – but yes, I’m sorry, it’s Chips.’

She put a hand across her mouth, and when it dropped her lips had left a kiss on the palm. ‘Why?’ She twisted her head to look at Nabbs.

‘We know someone didn’t want him to come back,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice. ‘But he did come back – why do you think he did that?’

She looked into the fire and Dryden could see her fingernails digging into Nabbs’ palm.

‘You called him in prison, you said. Perhaps…’

Nabbs stiffened. ‘Is this the time?’

‘You tell me,’ said Dryden, standing and walking to the window. ‘I don’t know how much time you’ve got.’ He came closer while the WPC answered a radio call. ‘I think it’s probably time to stop lying…’

The living-room door opened and Ruth Connor jerked visibly in her seat. ‘Mrs Connor? Would you…’ The WPC came over and took her arm, but she held on to Nabbs and allowed him to encircle her waist as they went through the door.

DI Parlour let them go first. ‘If you’d wait a little longer, Mr Dryden – we need a statement.’

The door closed and the silence in the cottage was complete. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked on: 2.15am. Dryden closed his eyes and felt a rush of nausea. Why had Chips left the security of his prison cell to come back to the Dolphin? Dryden dwelt again on the message the prisoner had left scrawled on the unfurling paper ball: I DIDN’T KNOW. Chips had helped, perhaps unwittingly, to set the children up for a crime they didn’t commit – the punishment for which had haunted them throughout their lives. Dryden remembered then what Chips had said: ‘I never knew their names.’ But he had known their names, he’d signed the statement at the time confirming he’d found the stolen goods beneath their chalets. What he’d meant, of course, thought Dryden, was that he never knew the names of the witnesses who had come forward thirty years later. Once Dryden had told him, his remarkable memory had pieced the past together: he’d helped to frame them, helped to frame himself.

The outer door opened and a uniformed PC appeared with John Sley.

Dryden helped himself from the malt whisky bottle Nabbs had left on the kitchen table.

‘This is ridiculous…’ said Sley. ‘It can’t be a crime to walk on a fucking beach.’

‘Sir. Please. Just take a seat for a moment. This is a crime scene. A man has been murdered. I’m afraid we just need to ascertain that we don’t require a statement from you – OK? Just routine, if you could wait a moment.’

From the living room they heard a sob and a low murmur of sympathy, and the PC slipped back out, leaving them alone.

‘Murder?’ said Sley, subsiding into a chair by the fire, his donkey jacket flecked with ice. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Who?’

‘Chips Connor. Early-morning stroll for you, is it, or late-night?’ said Dryden.

Sley looked to the door. ‘We’d been talking, but Marcie’s asleep now. I couldn’t – too much to think about.’

‘Now there’s a bit more to think about. Tell Marcie – tell her tonight. Chips got out of prison and came home, then someone killed him and chucked him out with the tide.’

They heard movement beyond the door and Dryden decided it was time to see John Sley in action. ‘And tell her something else. Tell her the safe’s still there, the one Paul Gedney robbed. I’m sure it’s still there because Ruth Connor wants me to think it isn’t. You could talk about that. About how interesting it might be to know what’s in it.’

John Sley held his hands in his lap, the fingers unlaced and still.

The PC returned and began taking down a brief statement from Sley so that he could return to his chalet. Dryden closed his eyes again. Sleep swept over him as if he’d been drugged. When he opened his eyes he was still alone and the clock read 3.15am. Then he remembered DI Reade, who would no doubt arrive unannounced at 9.00am. He fished
out his mobile and called the number Reade had given him. Typically, the detective’s mobile was off.

‘Hi. This is Philip Dryden. There’s something you need to know. Your colleagues from Lynn are all over the Dolphin. Chips Connor’s body has been found on the beach. Someone broke his neck. This might change your plans. Sorry about that. Ring me when you can.’

Dryden wondered what the murder of Chips Connor would do for Reade’s career prospects. The chief constable was unlikely to view the appearance of a fresh corpse as a suitable opportunity to wrap up a troublesome case.

Dryden let his head loll back, his eyelids fighting gravity. Under the deal table the fish had bled again, creating a second pool on the quarry tiles as blood bled on blood. Something malevolent stirred in Dryden’s subconscious and he struggled to rationalize his fear. When sleep did come he dreamt of the black blood again, this time dripping from the beaten, jagged lips of Paul Gedney.

41

At dawn the snow was falling again from an inkblot sky. A brisk wind blew and helped offset the effects of a fitful sleep in William Nabbs’ kitchen chair – interrupted only by a laborious and studious interview with DI John Parlour. Dryden had kept his statement brief and factual, leaving more tortuous matters for the arrival of DI Reade, who had not returned his call. Finally, released to return to his chalet, he found Laura asleep, the COMPASS blank, the comforting light of the monitor blinking red in the dark.

As he walked between the chalets the air was as cold as a butcher’s fridge. A North Norfolk Electricity van was already parked in the staff car park beside two squad cars and a police van. Ruth Connor sat in reception, behind the downlit counter, drinking from an espresso cup. Her pale fingers encircled the thin china, and Dryden expected to see it shatter under the suppressed anxiety which radiated from her like a colour. A WPC sat in one of the foyer’s comfy chairs by the internet café, arms folded, with a stare as blank as a bank teller’s. Dryden let his shoulders sag in the sudden damp heat which seeped into the room from the misty heated pool.

Ruth Connor looked up, looked through him, and turned to the WPC. ‘You don’t have to wait, really…’ She caught Dryden’s eye. ‘There’s work to do here, I’ll be fine now.’

As if to prove it they heard a shout from the indoor pool followed by a splash.

The policewoman checked her watch. ‘No problem – I’ll
stick around till your partner gets here. About seven thirty you said?’ Dryden noted that apparently some truths may have been told during the night, if not all.

He pulled a high stool up to the reception counter. ‘You all right?’ he said, wanting to hear her talk, wanting to see her struggle to maintain that remarkable façade. She looked like she hadn’t slept, the hair failing for once to divert attention from the spider’s web of wrinkles by her eyes.

She nodded. ‘William’s out with the engineers, at the pylon. We’re going to take a break away; a few days, when the police are done.’

They both tried identical insincere smiles. The phone rang and she grabbed it, her relief palpable as she became immersed in taking down a booking. Dryden was more convinced than ever that she was hiding something, but other than her discreet relationship with William Nabbs he’d got no closer to finding out what it was.

Tyres crunched over snow outside as the Dolphin’s staff minibus edged up to the foyer. Russell Fleet dashed over the tarmac and in through the automatic doors. He swapped a glance with his boss, a nod with Dryden, and headed for the bar.

She finished the call and before Dryden could resume the questions she stood. ‘Excuse me. Russ phoned earlier – I need to get him up to speed – he’ll be running the place for a few days.’

Dryden sat down opposite the WPC, who continued to examine a spot in the mid-distance. Outside, the minibus idled, waiting for its return passengers to Whittlesea and the surrounding villages. Dryden considered his options: for a day at least the Dolphin would be crowded with police, a team working inside the taped-off scene of crime area by the beach, while a separate search was being carried out by
frog teams and foot parties across the saltmarsh. DI Parlour, he knew, planned further interviews, and they’d swapped mobile numbers. And then there was DI Reade. But Dryden calculated that a fresh corpse outranked a thirty-year-old miscarriage of justice. The review of Chips Connor’s conviction would have to await the completion of the inquiry into his murder. Dryden’s role, as witness, victim, amateur detective and, for all he knew, suspect, would be central. He didn’t relish being around when DI Parlour discovered just how many details Dryden had left untold, or having to watch the tussle for power in the investigation.

And there was still one place he wanted to go: one central character in the tawdry tale of Paul Gedney who remained a cipher: Elizabeth Lutton, the pharmacist who had made his crime possible and then slipped away from the scandal of Whittlesea Hospital. She was a crucial link to the real story of Chips Connor. Her successor at the hospital had been circumspect. What Dryden desperately needed was a more immediate witness, someone who could tell him how she had felt, who else might have been entangled in their deception, how she’d lived out the rest of her short life. He logged on to one of the screens in the camp’s internet café and punched in her husband’s name. From the website of his private clinic at Lynn he took up a weblink to Whittlesea District Hospital’s outpatients clinic.

‘Bingo,’ he said, waking up the WPC. George Lutton’s NHS clinic ran every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

He took a decision then, and deserted the warm embrace of the Dolphin’s foyer. The minibus was fugged up, the onboard heater gently cooking the only occupant – the driver. Dryden tapped on the window. ‘Sorry, I know this is a bit cheeky – I need to get into Whittlesea – any chance?’

The driver was a middle-aged woman, big-boned with a
moon face and a nylon uniform bearing the Dolphin’s blue motif. ‘Sure. At your own risk, mind – we saw three accidents on the way up, and I don’t normally drive this old tub. And these don’t help…’ The windscreen wipers had locked, and the glass was a web of cut-glass ice, like a Victorian fruit bowl.

She passed Dryden a can of de-icer and he sprayed the wipers free, before taking the front passenger seat.

‘Philip Dryden,’ he said, as she pulled out onto the coast road and then almost immediately turned south on the long road to Whittlesea. ‘So, if you don’t normally drive, what do you do?’

‘I’m Muriel,’ she said. ‘I run the cleaners, chambermaids.’ She let a silence lengthen that threatened to last the whole journey. ‘Muriel Coverack – it’s Cornish.’

On the dashboard was a bunch of keys attached to a key ring in the form of a small plastic photo frame: two children, teenage girls, leered into the camera, clutching each other.

Dryden tapped it. ‘Yours?’

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Sister’s. But they come for the hols.’