The Fire Baby (20 page)

‘How did Maggie know that?’ asked Dryden.

August shrugged. ‘The dead child was found amongst the wreckage of the farm house. The body was clearly visible. The boy had died instantly from massive internal wounds caused by the impact. He had been travelling in a baby seat with a belt and had been thrown clear. My guess is Maggie found him, quickly realized the similarity in age and saw her chance to swap the babies. It looks like Maggie removed the blanket the Koskinski kid was wrapped in and used it to swaddle Matty Beck.’

Dryden paid for another round, feeling the room begin to gyrate on oiled wheels.

August was smoothing down his uniform in Mickey’s bar mirror.

‘The child who survived was examined by the base medic on duty that night, a different one had delivered the child at the US clinic. By the time of the crash the original doctor was Stateside, his tour over. The Koskinski child had been
cared for twenty-four hours a day by his mother, they lived in married quarters on the base. Jim, the father, had returned for the birth from Vietnam.’

August downed a fourth drink, but Dryden wasn’t counting. ‘There was a problem they should’ve checked out,’ said August. ‘But hey, the grandparents had been told, they wanted the kid, the rush was understandable.’

‘What kind of problem?’ said Dryden, aware he was slurring his words.

‘Blood. They gave the kid a transfusion because of a slight head injury. He’d lost some blood. Luckily they double-checked the type. It didn’t match the records. They put it down to an error. Sounds incredible now, but remember, Dryden, this woman had given her own son away. Nobody could have imagined she was lying. The base medics took him that night and as far as I can see she never saw him again until this summer. Never looked back. All the Koskinskis had seen was a few shots taken after the birth – and we all know what newborn kids look like, right? Walnuts. What was anyone supposed to think? Perhaps they didn’t want to think. And don’t forget, Maggie Beck went on to identify the kid in the mortuary as her son. Who’s gonna step forward and ask: “You sure about that, lady?” ’

‘What about the autopsy?’

‘Not our jurisdiction. Local coroner. It’ll be in the records. But apart from weight and vital statistics they had nothing else to go on. She identified him, for Christ’s sake.’

August sipped the bourbon, realizing that he’d reached that point where the rest of the day was going to be spent in a fog of alcohol. ‘Any idea why she did it?’

Dryden burped into his glass. ‘Nope. She left some tapes – recordings she’d made setting out her life story. Perhaps
the reason is in there.’ He burped again. ‘What do you know about Koskinski? What happened to him in the desert?’

August gave him a sidelong look and pushed the empty glass across again. ‘Let’s sit down.’

They took a booth.

‘He came down in Iraq. Engine failure. Captured and taken in for interrogation. He was held in Al Rasheid – the Baghdad Hilton. I don’t need to paint pictures, I’m sure, but every expense was spared. So when they did fly him out it was felt, understandably, that we owed him some R&R, and not least some time to recuperate. He’s under medical treatment as well – base hospital unit are dealing with that. Enough?’

Dryden nodded but remembered his golden rule: there’s always one more question.

‘And he’s back on the base?’

‘He has a room. We don’t keep tabs. As I said, we owe him. He has accumulated leave and the medics wouldn’t let him back anyway. The base commander has requested an interview, as have the local police. Clearly there’s the issue of the paternity – which affects nationality. I can’t imagine it’s an insuperable problem. But who knows? Bureaucracy can kill. He needs the passport checked – that kind of thing. There’s the issue of the crime that Maggie committed. But there seems little to gain from anyone taking that any further.’

‘Grandparents been in touch?’

August flipped the coaster on the table top and siphoned up an inch of whiskey. ‘They’re anxious to talk to him. I’ve taken a call. It’s clear they don’t know about Maggie’s confession. They’ve been informed of her death.’

Dryden tried again. ‘Medical treatment, you said. Anything
specific?’ August stood, indicating that it was time to change bars.

‘Claustrophobia,’ he said, and gave Dryden a genuinely happy smile. Six bourbons, thought Dryden, that’s all it takes.

26

Dryden walked to the Capri with the light steps of someone propelled by alcohol. Humph was holding his mobile, which had a text message from Inspector Andy Newman. It read simply: ‘Sardine’. Dryden told Humph to head north to the coast to West Lynn, Gifford’s Haulage Yard. The raid had been on the cards for weeks and Newman had promised Dryden the story once the police decided to go in. Code name Operation Sardine. But Dryden’s expectations were low, he’d been on similar outings which had produced a string of dull down-page stories. The idea was to catch the people smugglers with their cargo on board, but so far all they’d found had been empty containers and parked-up cabs. But now, at least, Dryden’s interest in this illicit trade had quickened. The pillbox on Black Bank Fen was at the centre of the operation, and Jimmy Kabazo was waiting for a consignment to be dropped with his son on board. And then there was the porn. Bob Sutton had discovered that the import/export of the pictures was running parallel with the people smuggling. And Bob Sutton was still out there.

They drove north in companionable silence. Humph was still sulking after the attack on his beloved cab. He’d put masking tape on the seats and the fluffy dice had been re-attached to the rear-view mirror. The cabbie had acquired a tape of Greek balalaika music from Ely Market and he played it now, aware that it would drive Dryden to despair.

Gifford’s lorry park was the size of six football pitches; acres of bleak concrete, enlivened by nearly two hundred
HGV containers. A modern-day maze. A Saharan heat haze was already rising from the baking metal boxes and the smell of blistering paint was like a heady drug on the air. Dryden mistook a heavy sense of foreboding for the beginnings of a hangover.

The northern perimeter fence of Gifford’s ran beside the beach. The sea was the only thing moving in the landscape, sucking at a bank of baked mud. The coast appeared a featureless foreshore on the estuary of the Ouse, except for the plastic cartilage skull of a conger eel which stuck up like a pagan symbol from the beach and was collecting early morning flies.

Dryden, pressing his face against the diamond-weave electric fence, picked up an electric charge which made his watch run backwards for a week. Humph, sitting in the cab, was beginning a Greek conversation with Eleni. The great Romantic, thought Dryden, trapped in a 1974 Ford Capri with soiled swinging dice and surrounded by the corrosive aroma of old socks.

‘Claustrophobia,’ said Dryden out loud to nobody, kicking the wire fencing. That’s local journalism for you, he thought, unbearable excitement in exotic locations. He felt tired and drained. The black eye throbbed and made him feel bilious. The pillbox murder had shocked him far more than he had admitted, even to himself. People smugglers and porn pushers made his flesh crawl. He had no interest in meeting them and a positive fear of them trying to meet him. The newspaper cutting left on the Capri’s windscreen was a clear enough warning to leave the story of Black Bank Fen to history. He felt threatened, confused, but most of all defeated by his inability to see clearly how events were linked. But he had little doubt that they were.

Then the dogs arrived. At least that prompted a sharp emotion: fear. Three vans pulled up and half a dozen uniformed
coppers spilt out. Inspector Andy Newman arrived in an unmarked police car. Unfortunately he
was
marked, having had ‘copper’ inscribed on his forehead at birth.

One of the uniformed PCs rolled up the backs of the three vans: Dryden counted fourteen dogs, and every one an Alsatian with a regulation string of saliva hanging from custard yellow canines. ‘Dogs,’ he said, to Newman. ‘I don’t like dogs.’

‘Who cares?’ said Newman, looking at a map upside down.

Two of the dogs, immediately aware that Dryden was an international-class coward, nosed his crotch with indecent interest. Briefly, as if from another world, Dryden could hear Humph laughing.

The keyholder was in the second van. He was tall, with the kind of fissured face reserved for those addicted to illegal substances in commercial quantities. The gates swung open on the sunlit maze of the container park and the dogs ran, abandoning Dryden’s privates.

Viewed from above, the scene must have been bizarre; a laboratory maze with the role of the mice taken by fourteen skittering dogs. They were using their noses, but if they’d used their eyes they would have seen the gravid cloud of flies hanging, despite the onshore breeze, over a lime-green container marked ZKA-RAPIDE.

It took the dogs twenty minutes to find it. While they were waiting Dryden told Newman about the Nissen hut at the old airfield at Witchford. ‘Looks like that’s where they let them sleep – kind of depot, I guess.’

Newman, ill-tempered, was watching the dogs scrabble round the lime-green container. ‘We’ll check it out. But my guess is they’ve changed their routine. Roe’s death must have put the fear of God into them. They’ll be finding a new route.’

Two PCs with bolt-cutters got to work on the tailgate restraints on the container. But Dryden knew what they’d find. An empty container full of filth. The one abandoned in the lay-by had been the worst, the sixteen illegal immigrants inside had not been let out for nearly four days. The toilet had started in one corner and then trickled across the whole floor. Sickness had, not surprisingly, been a problem. Food had consisted of cans of Coke and clingfilm-wrapped pasties from a Seven-11 at Felixstowe.

And then there was the dead dog. Curled around a spare tyre. The only fatality and the only occupant of the container with a real name.

The bolts sheared and the container door swung open to emit an overpowering wall of stench.

Pork
, thought Dryden, the smell of cloying grease immediately unbearable. Dead pigs, about thirty of them, scattered the floor. The heat in the container drifted out. The meat was slow cooked, no crackling, but plenty of juices. A slick of animal fat began to trickle over the tailgate. Between the pigs were the telltale signs that people had shared their final journey – but had got off just in time. Ice-cream wrappers, some burger bar cartons and the usual shipment of human faeces.

‘Unbelievable,’ said Newman, spotting a heron on a rotting wooden post just off the beach. Then he checked the ever-present clipboard. ‘Nark told us there were two.’

The next container along was lime green as well. It still had a cab attached. Same markings: ZKA-RAPIDE. The cab was blue, dusty, with a black oil-slick under one tyre, which Dryden noticed was slightly flat.

The same two PCs got to work on the tailgate. But this time Dryden didn’t watch, his complacency already shattered by the casual slaughter of the dead pigs. One of Inspector
Newman’s DCs had broken open the cab door, and he climbed up after him. On the first three jobs this had made the best copy, giving Dryden a chance to examine the detritus of the real villain – the driver who knew he had a human cargo. Maps, fags, sweets, and always the soiled copy of the
Sun.
He looked at the date: 10 June, seven days old. He sat on the wide driver’s seat and picked through the evidence. Tape in the deck: Indian pop songs, glove compartment, packet of condoms (unopened), map of Birmingham, some black sticky binding tape, and an alarm clock.

He knew something was wrong when he looked in the wing mirror. Newman was smoking. He’d given up a year earlier after an autopsy on a down-and-out who died in a ditch of lung cancer, but he was gulping in the nicotine now. And the change in the atmosphere was tangible, the squad of cynical coppers tautly alert. The dogs went berserk as Dryden jumped down and ran to the back.

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?