Mike Yarr had been told by PA’s news desk in London to get a terrorist line on the killings. That would ensure the copy was used nationwide. ‘Clearly there are concerns about terrorist attacks, Major. Can you comment on that?’ he asked.
August sighed. ‘We are ever vigilant here at USAF…’As August began to run through a tedious prepared line on the terrorist threat Dryden stood, stacked a paper plate with individual miniature pork pies and sat before one of the PC screens. He’d pulled the cork on a bottle of red wine and poured himself a large glass. The PC was logged on to the USAF Mildenhall site. He scrolled on through the site to the official ‘Welcome’ from the President, short statements from the USAF and RAF commanders on the base, and fifteen pages of on-base sport which proved to be fifteen too many. Local baseball teams lined up for pictures. Endless league tables read like a roll-call of Middle America from the Big Rock Busters to the New Jersey Fliers. The social pages pointed up a production of A Street Car Named Desire at the base theatre, and Die Hard 3 at the cinema. Ten Pin Bowling was now available twenty-four hours a day at the Lincoln Leisure Center.
And finally ‘Noticeboard’ – a message page dominated by vital events.
B Block Stateside congrats to Jaynette and Mike on the arrival of Mike Jnr. Go Fella!
Friends of Michael J. Doherty, base medic 1975–2000 will want to know that he died peacefully in his sleep here at home in Salt Lake on June 5. A long illness bravely borne.
Then he saw it. He read it three times before shutting the PC down to think. Then he booted it back up and took a verbatim note.
This is a long shot but it’s a message for the love birds. I was really privileged to be the witness – I guess it was the uniform that made you choose me. But look – the snapshots are great, especially the ones in the white Land Rover, and I thought that maybe one day you might want to share the memory after all. So just e-mail me and I’ll send them online, if that’s OK. The guy at the register office said I should do it this way coz you’d mentioned the base. So, no names! But e-mail me if you want to remember Cromer – I always will.
Dryden called up a fresh e-mail form and hit REPLY. The PC automatically reprinted the sender’s e-mail address: jon.cummings@norfolkconstab_cromer.
He typed:
It was great to hear from you. We’d still like to keep our secret here but we’d love the pictures. Please send them to the e-mail below – it’s a friend who’s online and he’s got a color printer. And thanks for being there!
Dryden added his own hotmail address and poured himself another large glass of red wine.
He wondered how many white Land Rovers there were in the Fens and was appalled by the consequences if there was only one. He rejoined his colleagues and tried to smile at August’s bad jokes. August was smiling too, but by then the Buxton water bottle was empty.
37
If he hadn’t tried to track down Johnnie Roe’s wife he’d have never known the dog track was there. This was Thursday night out, Fen-style. The stadium was a little cauldron of electric light in the wasteland beyond the Mildenhall wire. Darkness was beginning to fall, but even in broad daylight it would have taken you a week to find the Billy Row International Greyhound Stadium. Flags of every nation flew, rigid in an imaginary wind, supported by hidden aluminium frames. But every other one was a Stars & Stripes.
Dryden sat on the cab roof eating a beefburger. The Capri’s windows were open in the heat and he heard the seven pips on the radio. She’d said 7.45 – after the first race on the card.
A couple of Fleet Street nationals were still interested in the bizarre pillbox killing – now they wanted family, friends, anything that could put a real life to a grisly death. He’d told Newman he wanted a telephone number to do some more background work on Roe’s life. Newman had given him the ex-wife’s full name and told him to find the number for himself. Luckily, she was in the book. A house on the outskirts of Newmarket, a council estate infamous for petty drugs offences. The call had been awkward but at least she’d agreed to meet. Her voice had been tough, disfigured by suspicion.
Already the punters were arriving. The Fens were a celebration of Americana, Mid-West variety. Stock-car racing was the most popular sport and large numbers of people had never seen the sea or the city, and were proud of it. Most of the cars rolling in for the dog racing were playing one or other of Dryden’s two least favourite forms of music: country and western. Humph had his headphones on and was reading the book that went with his language tapes: Greek Language and People.
Then came the real Americans. The state plates, the blonde wives and the kids weighed down with enough dental work to embrace the Golden Gate Bridge.
Dryden sipped Coke and burped for fun. He liked Americans. He liked the brash good humour, the lack of two-faced English subtlety and the simple determination to have plenty of fun as loudly as possible. Dryden slid off the roof, down the windscreen and across the bonnet of the Capri to land lightly on the hot tarmac. It was a good trick, and one the crowd in his head always cheered.
By the turnstiles was The Greyhound ‘Nite Spot’. Neon strip lighting picked out the shape of a racing dog. Class in spades, thought Dryden, as he ordered a pint of imported Bud at the bar and watched two US pilots playing pool on a table with a blue baize top. Two middle-aged guys at the bar played with their cigarette packs and vied, in a half-hearted way, for the attentions of the barmaid.
Dryden had another Bud and left at 7.29 precisely, but was still able to find an empty half-acre of terrace by the time the first race began. The bell rang. The dogs were paraded in their neat waistcoats. Handlers, in mock-lab coats, tried to look disinterested. The dogs were bundled into the starting gate with indecent haste, like murderers into the noose. The hare did a lap and Dryden laughed at its silly teetering progress, but as it lapped the starting gate the dogs exploded out of their traps. Their speed and beauty thrilled him, and they took the first bend in a tight hurtling pack of sporting colours. By the time they crossed the finishing line after three laps he was cheering with the rest. He didn’t know which mutt had won, and he didn’t care. The punters dropped their torn-up betting slips, a tiny snow shower of disappointment. The winners swaggered, but only as far as the bar.
She was beside him suddenly, with a tray of race cards and cigarettes. She was probably under fifty but she’d been given a double helping of wrinkles, and none of them were laughter lines. The hair was once blonde, but now it was grey and cut lifelessly short. She had the slight stoop of the habitual smoker and the nervous searching fingers of someone feeling for a filter-tip.
‘Well?’ she said, and sat down on the concrete terrace. She searched in her pockets for cigarettes, then stopped herself by clasping her hands in her lap.
‘Sally Roe?’ asked Dryden. She nodded, looking at her hands. ‘You were married to Johnnie Roe?’ he asked, trying to think fast and talk slowly at the same time.
‘In 1978.’
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet.’
‘Not a lot of choice once you had the number.’ She smiled in half-apology for the aggressive tone.
Dryden smiled back. ‘The police said you were divorced. Years.’
She nodded, watching the dogs being led towards the starting booths again.
‘Yeah. I got out in’ ninety-three.’
‘Any reason?’
‘Loads. Private now. Best forgotten. But one thing Johnnie never forgot was that kid. When he’d had too much that was what it all came down to. Every argument. Every fight. We never had children. So he grieved for Matt. It brought it all back – what you wrote in the paper.’
Dryden was thinking fast, but he’d just been lapped.