Bardolph reappeared with coffees and another file, which he held awkwardly, leafing through the typed pages. ‘Once Declan decided to go up with Joe to see George Holme I talked through his evidence with him to see if it stacked up. Back in ’75, during the trial, the prosecution alleged that the victim died on the night of 5 August 1974 – at the Dolphin. But Declan and Joe’s evidence would make it clear that Gedney was alive a month later – on the 30th. Friday, August 30th.’
Dryden rested a fingertip on the image of his own young face. ‘Did he see what they saw? Could this… Philip… be a witness?’
‘Possibly. Joe and Declan seemed unsure. I guess they might run the picture again – see if they can find him. Holme could even take the statements they’ve got to appeal – but I doubt that would get very far.’
Pellets of hail began to fall and Dryden wrapped the trench coat more closely to his bones. Had someone killed Declan McIlroy and Joe Petulengo to keep Chips Connor in jail? Did anyone know that he, Philip Dryden, was the missing child from the snapshot? And if they did, did they fear that he too had seen what they had seen the last night they’d played the game?
The Dolphin Holiday Camp
Friday, 30 August 1974
In the saltmarsh, under a covered boat, Philip lay still.
The dilemma was always the same one – an excruciating tension between the fear that he would never be found, and the fear that he would. Switching on his torch, he played the beam on his wristwatch: a Timex Christmas present with half-hearted luminosity. 8.42pm.
Twenty-five minutes had passed since he’d left the others by the sluice gate. He’d heard some footsteps almost immediately, timidly padding round the old boathouse. Dex. Almost certainly Dex. Then nothing, except the distant barrel-organ leitmotif of the fairground.
He lay, curled in a ball now, hoping above all that it wouldn’t be Smith. Then he’d have to lie still with Smith, waiting for the others. That was the game: each one had to squeeze in until the last one was left alone, searching.
Let it not be Smith, who smelt of the cloying tang of the chemicals they made him rub in his hair. Let it not be Smith, who would clamp a hand over Philip’s mouth if the others got near.
Or the sister? Philip’s heart leapt. The last time, she’d held his hand to stop him crying out. She smelt of the sand, and of the natural oil in her coal-black hair.
The tide, resting at the full, began to ebb. He could hear the black water slap the rotting planks of the old boathouse, and somewhere the sea began to trickle back through an open sluice. He thought again of the single lit porthole in the marsh, and wondered what lay within.
And then, as sharp as a seagull’s violent screech, a single cry of pain. Philip’s hair bristled and his heart creaked in his chest. Then a sob, but not the one he would have expected after the pain – there was relief, satisfaction, even joy. What pain gave joy?
Had something happened in the game? Dex, almost certainly Dex, falling and snapping one of his narrow bony ankles. Or Smith, vaulting a channel, breaking an arm. Would they leave him now, forgetting him, running home?
He lay, praying for it to end, praying for it not to end, and a second before it did he knew it would. A rattle, loose change in a pocket, gave him away. The tarpaulin, ripped back, showed Smith against a sky of stars.
‘Come on,’ he said, shining his torch in Philip’s face. ‘We’ve found something. Something by the river.’
They ran along a bank head high with the bristling moon-splashed reeds. Then the pale eye of the porthole was ahead of them; closer now, and impossibly bright. Against the yellow circle of light he could see Dex and his sister at the glass, peering in. Smith roughly put an elbow round his neck and a hand over his mouth, dragging him down to his knees: ‘Quiet. Did you hear it? He’s in the boat, we’ve seen him.’
He was afraid then, realizing again how lonely he was with these children, how much he didn’t know about what they shared.
They started to crawl forward to join the other children and Philip was close enough to smell Dex’s fear when they heard the second cry of pain, like the first, laced with that after-shock of satisfaction.
There was a single beat of silence before Dex screamed, his small head jerking wildly, while the sister pulled him down, away from the light.
Philip knew then that he wouldn’t get to see, that like so much else of his childhood, and his life, the night would be defined by what others had experienced, and by what he had missed.
But they’d been seen, and they were running now, all of them, back along the dyke. He found Dex’s hand in his and they ran together, back to the sluice, the jagged gasping of their collective breath louder than the waves beyond the dunes. But here Philip, haunted by what he’d missed, turned and saw the distant silhouette of a man on the boat against the sky, one arm cradled by the other.
The sister pulled him back, down the path to the leap, then over and on between the chalets. When they reached the lamp by Philip’s they stood for a second, listening, and he saw that the sister had gone.
From the fairground came the ritual screams from the falling big dipper.
Philip waited to catch Dex’s eyes. ‘What?’ he said, knowing he would answer. But Smith dragged the younger boy away. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’
23
Flares had been lit on the floodbank, throwing a guttering light across the crowd that had gathered for the races. Dryden, still struggling with the innocent collision of the past and present, left Ed Bardolph with the rest of the volunteers at the boathouse making final preparations for the long-distance skate to Cambridge. He’d found Humph still parked up on the riverbank, the cab resounding to the ritual intonation of the football results being repeated on the local news. He’d rifled half a dozen miniatures from Humph’s glove compartment, grabbed Boudicca’s lead, his skates, and set out for the ice fair.
Railway sleepers had been piled into a makeshift grandstand for the traditional start of the championships: the Flying Mile, four circuits of the oval course Bardolph’s men had earlier marked out. Other spectators were already crowding along the high floodbank, between the flares. Sparklers, sold at the gate, cascaded silver where children stood. Skaters zigzagged between the fairground stalls and the tea bars, one with a hand-held flaming torch which left a wake across Dryden’s eye.
The night sky, clear and crowded, was crushing. Dryden drank one of the bottles from his overcoat pocket, the aroma of the malt sharpened by the frost. Ice was forming in his hair and he took a black woollen hat from his pocket and drew it down over his brow. After buying a ticket, he took a seat on the sleepers at the top. There was a breeze here and he could feel the moisture turning to ice in his eyelashes. The malt made his blood rush, so he had another.
Looking out over the winter scene he tried, once again, to conjure up the heat of that lost summer. He’d met the others on the first day, let loose by his uncle and aunt to wander the camp and find new friends. Taking a book, he’d gone down to the beach and watched the three strange children, the siblings – Dex and the sister – and the brooding presence of the older Smith, with his bleached white hair. And he envied them the familiarity of the triangular world they shared. They’d dammed a stream which crossed the sands, creating a wide deep pool on which Dex sailed a paper boat. Smith had dragged logs from the dunes to reinforce the sand, while Marcie had stood, almost motionless, in the centre of the pool, waiting for the water to rise, as insubstantial as her rippling reflection.