The Coldest Blood (35 page)

‘I’ll get a doctor,’ said Nabbs, flicking open his mobile.

‘Get his wife too – Chalet 18. He may have a condition, there could be pills.’

Nabbs thought for a moment, then fled, leaving the holdall at Ruth Connor’s feet.

Sley opened an eye and Dryden glimpsed the iris, struggling to escape the upper lid. Dryden pressed his arm, and felt the cold sweat on his forehead.

‘Who did you think it was?’ asked Dryden.

Ruth Connor walked to the safe and removed one of the untouched deposit boxes, turned a key in the lock, and revealed that it too was packed with crisp cash.

‘For the trip?’ asked Dryden.

She tipped the bundles into the first bag, then knelt down and picked up the gun. ‘I don’t think that is a very clever thing to do,’ said Dryden. ‘But then you aren’t hanging around to answer any questions, either of you.’

Sley groaned and a thin river of saliva bubbled at the corner of his mouth.

Dryden cradled the bony angular skull, listening to the breath rattling in his throat.

‘Questions,’ he said. ‘How long do you think it will take them to put William Nabbs in the computer and find out he doesn’t exist?’

She took a cardboard box from the desk drawer and extracted some of the tiny pellets to reload the gun. She laughed once. ‘You don’t know how wrong you are.’

‘I know one thing I’m right about. Three people have
been murdered to make sure the world thinks Paul Gedney died thirty years ago. But there was a worse crime than that, wasn’t there? A crime Chips Connor was party to – although he didn’t know it at the time. Three other lives – not ended but ruined, right from the start. Those three children who never got a chance, not a real chance thanks to the stigma: thieves. You made them thieves. Just to get them out of the camp, to make sure they couldn’t tell anyone who’d listen what they’d seen.’

He put a hand on John Sley’s shoulder. ‘That’s why he’s here. Marcie hasn’t forgiven you, she never will. Her mum – her adopted mum – thought she was a thief. I don’t suppose that troubles you, does it?’

She stood, retrieving another box from the safe. ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ she said, and Dryden noted the implication, that there was a right man. ‘William Nabbs was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1960. A cute kid – I’ve seen the pictures. His degree’s hanging on the wall. His parents visit at Christmas – his dad’s an accountant, his mum a teacher. He’s more real than you.’

On the stairs they heard Nabbs returning but Marcie Sley got to the door first. Dryden stood and she came to his voice, and let him lead her hands down to her husband’s face.

‘I’ll check on the ambulance,’ said Nabbs, leaving again. ‘DI Parlour’s on his way too.’

Marcie held her husband’s face between her palms. ‘John. Here.’ She’d brought a bottle of mineral water and she let him sip as she slipped two pills between blue lips. Dryden put an arm around her and felt the gentle vibration as she shook with stress.

‘Johnnie,’ she said. ‘Johnnie, there’s a doctor coming.’ She turned her head to Dryden. ‘What happened?’

Ruth Connor drew back, and as she stood the lino creaked. Marcie stiffened, realizing there was someone else in the room, and then found her with her eyes. She sniffed the air and smiled. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Don’t go now. Not yet.’

Dryden’s mobile chirruped, he went to kill the call but recognized the Ely number. ‘Keep his head up, Marcie,’ he said. He left then, knowing that would be what Marcie wanted. Just a minute alone.

Out on the landing there was a fire door. He pushed down the bar, desperate for air, and stepped out onto the top of the metal stairs. The call was from his voicemail box: ‘This is a message for Philip Dryden from Father John Martin. I have that information, Philip – I have a service at 7.30 but I’ll be free before that. Ring me at the presbytery. Ely 44875.’

Dryden stabbed the numbers into the keypad. He imagined the phone ringing in the chilly hallway of the house, beneath the faded Connemara landscape. There was another flash from the pylon and in it he saw a fire engine extending its ladder skywards.

‘Father?’ he said.

‘Dryden. Yes. Sorry, let me just close the door here.’

Dryden heard the clunk of the old receiver being put down, then a muffled voice. Suddenly he was back. ‘I found the records of the child who was fostered with Paul Gedney. An elder half-brother, you recall – different father. He left the foster home in ’73 – moved north. Malton, near York. I don’t have any records after that I’m afraid.’

‘The name?’ asked Dryden.

Dryden heard paper crackling. ‘Russell Fleet. Russell John Fleet.’

‘Dryden?’ asked Father Martin, after a few seconds’ silence.

‘Sorry. You’re sure?’

‘Yes. Why? The surname was his adopted family’s. And there’s something else. I remember the child – very different from his half-brother. Timid, really, and not as bright. The real problem was the father – who had access, and abused that trust. Alcohol I’m afraid. Anyway, he made an attempt to take the boy away before he came into care. He crashed the car, there were several internal injuries to the child – he was just three – and one wound which will have stayed with him all his life. The car turned over, shredding the roof, and the metal cut into his arm. In the file there’s a picture with the doctor’s report which we had for all applicants: the scar is very distinctive, Dryden – like a jagged S.’

46

Ruth Connor was gone, and so was the holdall. A paramedic knelt beside John Sley like a penitent, checking his pulse, while another unfurled a stretcher. In the flickering light of the neon tube Sley still looked deathly white, except for the skin beneath the eyes, which had the purple blush of dead meat. Dryden took Marcie’s arm above the elbow, and saw the fingers of her right hand were flecked with blood. ‘I hit her,’ she said, her voice vibrating with anger. ‘I hit her hard.’

Dryden heard DI Parlour’s voice below in the bar. He told Marcie to stay with her husband, then slipped out on to the fire escape again, and down to the rear yard. The sky was transformed: a full moon had risen at sea. It was colder again, the landscape ice-white, stiff with frost. He ran down to the old swimming pool and climbed to the first tier of the diving board. The camp lay below, lit by the occasional arc of electricity dancing between the severed high-voltage cables.

Dryden heard an inhuman cry of shearing, tortured metal. The fire engine, parked at the base of the giant pylon, played a floodlight over the superstructure. The tower twisted on its four legs, a single cross-member of steel falling as if in slow motion to the ground below. The lights in the holiday camp flickered once, died, and revived at half power.

He turned back to the sea and saw that the chalets along the crest of the dunes were still marked by their string of pale verandah lights. He thought of Laura within, alone with the glow of the flame from the propane heater, and at that
moment Ruth Connor’s silhouette broke the horizon, against the grey-silver backdrop of the sea, before dropping out of sight, down towards the old sluice.

He ran, the moon lighting the bone-white sandy path.

The tide was ebbing within the maze of channels in the marsh. Canopies of ice hung over the inlets and pools the seawater had fled. Dryden made his way along one of the fingers of stiff sand until he emerged opposite a wide expanse of open water where the main river emptied into a wide, sluggish pool. He crouched down by the water’s edge and saw across the mirror-like surface the wreck of the
Curlew
. The moon caught the gentle curve of the hull, and beside it the sleek black inflated outline of an inshore dinghy, a powerful outboard motor at the rear, silent for now.

Across the water he heard Ruth Connor’s voice, as clear and close as if she had whispered in his ear.

‘It’s all there.’ He saw her now, standing on the rotting deck, Russell Fleet beside her, between them the holdall. ‘I thought you’d come to get it all,’ she said.

Fleet knelt, looking inside the bags. ‘Is he dead?’

She shook her head in silence. He held out his hand and she put something in it: the gun perhaps. ‘Dryden knows,’ she said. ‘He knows about the blood.’

Fleet checked the horizon, zipping up a sailing jacket. ‘He was always close: and he was there, with the others. Even if he didn’t see, he’s always known it was the truth. But there’s no choice now.’

‘You said it was perfect, that nobody would get hurt.’ Her voice was louder, a challenge. ‘But you killed them.’

‘Ruth.’ He took a step towards her and she stepped back quickly, the sound of rotting wood creaking under her foot. ‘You didn’t complain when you got what you wanted – when they took Chips away. You didn’t say no that morning in the
sand dunes. I was the one who got the butchered face. What did you have to do? Remind me, Ruth. And when the witnesses came forward I did what needed to be done – you didn’t have to know.’

She folded her arms, and even by moonlight Dryden could see the chin jut out. ‘But when it was all over – when they were dead – you told me then, didn’t you, Russ – told me the details, just to share the guilt. Pouring water over the first one after you’d broken his legs, opening the windows and leaving the other to die after you’d laced his drinks with pills. But you didn’t have to do any of it. You could have left, melted away.’

He stepped down into the dinghy. ‘Yes. I could have gone, Ruth, when the witnesses came forward. Left you two alone. The lovebirds. But then I’d have had to leave the kids as well – my kids, Ruth, my family.

‘Because that’s where your guilt lies Ruth, or part of it. Telling me that you’d not had children because of Chips. That Chips couldn’t. But we found out the truth, didn’t we? You couldn’t give me a family so I found someone who could.

‘And then there was the business,’ he said, kicking the holdall. ‘Why the fuck should I let two wrecked lives stand in my way? I deserved my share. Just because I don’t have the pieces of paper doesn’t mean I don’t deserve my cut. We’d always been agreed on that, Ruth. I paid in blood. I can’t take the family with me, but I can take the money.’

She had a hand to her face and Dryden guessed she was crying, letting his words wound her.

His head was still down, counting in the holdall. ‘How did you make Chips agree to the sale?’

‘I told him it was what I wanted,’ she said, defeated now.

Fleet nodded, standing.

‘Did he have to die too?’ she asked. ‘He came to see me, he wanted to see me. I could have talked. It wasn’t about being sent away, it wasn’t about what happened to him, it was the kids. He told me when I phoned the prison. He wanted to know why we’d done that to them, Russ.’

‘It wasn’t a crime, Ruth.’

Dryden let his fingers bunch in fists, knowing that it was.

‘A bunch of kids. Jesus,’ Fleet said, lighting a cigarette, cupping it so that the flame illuminated the cradle of his fingers. ‘He wanted to see you all right. I found him at the back of the flat, under the fire escape, waiting for you to come home. It would have been a long wait, wouldn’t it? Telling darling William all about it, were you?’

‘He knows now,’ she said.

‘Oh,
now
– I see. But not
till
now – a mistake, I think. You didn’t trust him, did you, Ruth? Didn’t trust him with our secrets. It must have been a surprise for him, finding out I wasn’t a partner after all. He’ll remember that. It’s corrosive, distrust; it’ll get you both in the end.’

He unlooped a rope and pushed the dinghy clear. ‘And we were right. It’s been thirty years, but despite what every one of those years has done to my face Chips knew me – knew within seconds. So I said we should talk. We walked here while I explained that we thought it was what he wanted – to go away, to get away from the world. That nobody got hurt that way. We walked here and I took a chance – he was a strong man, Ruth, always was. But I crooked my arm around under his chin and I broke his neck. It echoed, the snap, across the water.’

She stood back then, climbing up onto the bank. ‘Go,’ she said.

Fleet threw a rope into the dinghy. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna become someone else – I’ve done
it before. Perhaps I’ll come back one day, for old times’ sake.’ He picked up the starter line for the engine. ‘You’ll know the face.’

47

Russell Fleet pulled the starter cord on the outboard engine in a fluid, practised arc, and a harsh mechanical whine filled the night. He left without looking back, guiding the dinghy out into the main channel, skirting the clumps of reeds which crowded the banks, while the sky flickered still with the arcing electric sparks from the overhead wires.

Somewhere, lost now, Dryden could hear Ruth Connor running, the rigid frozen reeds snapping, her breath rasping. He ran too, trying to keep in touch with her sound, and they emerged together, above the old sluice, on the high dune above the chalets.

‘He’s gone,’ she said, knowing Dryden was there. She pulled a hood in close to her face and looked inland where the twin red and green lights of the dinghy crept along the channels of the marsh towards the river. Blood, black in the moonlight, trickled from the corner of her mouth where Marcie Sley had hit her.

‘Not yet,’ said Dryden. ‘Where will he go? The same place he went that summer? How long was he away?’

She shivered. ‘You can’t prove anything. Not about me.’ She took a step away, then another, trying to be alone.

‘Where?’ asked Dryden again, following.

‘Two years. Abroad – travelling. He sent cards. Norway, Sweden – heat was bad for his eyes, after the operation. I said I’d wait and I did.’

Dryden nodded, recalling the expert skater glimpsed through the porthole of
PK 129
. ‘That’s why he needed
the passport,’ he said. ‘Distinguishing features: a zigzag scar.’

They heard the outboard engine surge as the dinghy reached clearer water.

‘I didn’t think he’d do that,’ she said. ‘With the knife. It always scared me; he’d do anything to have a life like other people – he just didn’t realize other people aren’t like that.’

‘I heard it,’ said Dryden, stepping closer. ‘That night, the cry of pain.’