‘Fell downstairs,’ said Dryden, not caring that he wouldn’t be believed.
Walker smiled. ‘Come on – your luck’s in. Only one resident listed on the electoral roll – James Neate. No sign of him. But there was a girlfriend. We got her out of the bungalow when it went up, we’ve got video – unbelievable she’s alive. She’s at Ely now, the burns unit.’
Dryden nodded: a good story but bad news, if the brigade had a film they’d pass it on to the networks and it would be all over the teatime TV screens.
‘And Neate?’
‘Still looking – but he wasn’t in the house, and he certainly isn’t in the garage.’
Dryden didn’t react, letting the information appear to slip by. ‘But the girl – bad?’ he said, changing tack.
‘Well, she’s out cold. The smoke got her down on the floor, which was lucky, as she could have passed out in the bed and then it would have killed her. There’s some burns on her hands, but first degree, they’ll heal. Face too.’
Dryden tried not to imagine it. ‘Stay here while I square this off,’ said Walker.
Smoke, lazy and thin, rose from the charred roof of the bungalow. Behind it the stand of pine trees still smouldered too, several blackened and stunted by fire. Dryden knew the stench well, not so much the burnt wood and the incinerated plastic, but the sodden carpets and the stagnant black water. The house was a shell, but the main shed of the garage appeared untouched, although he could see within a tape had been strung across the vehicle bay and a man in a white forensic suit was working in the office behind a glass partition. Out on the forecourt the covers to the underground petrol tanks had been raised while Neate’s car was being hauled off on its front wheels by a pick-up truck.
‘OK.’ The fire officer was back. ‘You can come with me; got a notebook?’
They stood in the small weedy garden in front of the house.
‘The name you want is Firefighter Jo Campbell. When the first pump got here at 4.30am the house was well alight, and it was impossible to gain entry through either the front door or the kitchen. Jo smashed the windows to the lounge, got to the rear bedroom wearing a fire protection outfit and pulled the girl out. The first pump didn’t have specialist breathing gear on board – so the rescue was completed unaided.’
‘He’ll get a medal?’ asked Dryden.
Big smile. ‘Yes. She will. Come on, I told you it was a decent story.’
The front door had been knocked off its hinges to reveal the hall within. All the walls were black, but splashed clean where the hoses had been at work. The sideboard which had held the family photos was charred, the pictures contorted, Walter Neate’s face almost obscured by a smoky stain. The kitchen was blackened too, and Dryden noted two suitcases on the lino floor. He got a few snaps on the digital and then moved forward to the rear bedroom. The bed itself was just wire and metal, the mattress charred springs. A small bedside table had been reduced to a jet-black box of carbon, fragile and oddly beautiful, like an artefact in a museum. The curtains were wet and black, the window glass burnt bronze.
Dryden took his snaps, taking plenty and checking them out on the display screen. Then he moved back to the hallway and out through the rear door to try to get a shot in through the bedroom window.
He stood in the cool early morning air, trying to imagine the flames. ‘Can I speak to the heroine?’ he said, using a word he hated.
‘Sure, we’ve got a mobile canteen out down the road, she’s just having some grub. You’re in luck – she’s a looker.’
They turned to go but stopped when they heard shouting from deep within the pines which shielded the house from the north. Dryden thought he heard a single word – ‘medics’ – then a dog barked once, the bark subsiding into whimpers. At the bottom of the bungalow’s rough lawn there was a path into the woods and Dryden got there as two uniformed PCs began pushing aside the charred branches, trying to see ahead through the undergrowth, much of which still smouldered from the fire.
When he burst out of the trees behind the two policemen the landscape was transformed. Ahead lay the open fenland of Whittlesea Mere, low trees and a limitless stretch of water from which a flock of birds was now rising into sunlight. Between the wood and the firing range lay a wide drain – perhaps twenty feet across – a mathematically straight ditch brimming with stagnant green water.
But there was only one thing anyone was looking at. Access to the range was barred by a ten-foot-high wire fence with a curled razor-wire top. A man’s body hung from the razor wire, his shredded mechanic’s overalls snagged by several of the vicious teeth. The body was black and distorted, the limbs set in awkward ugly angles from the torso. The dog lay still now beneath, sniffing the air, while from the corpse a thin line of white smoke rose, caressing the charred skull, wisps of black hair whitened with ash.
Had he been trying to get to the water? Or had he been trying to get away?
And then Dryden noticed something else. Almost directly beneath the body a fresh gap had been made in the wire, cut methodically in a vertical line, opening the way towards Jude’s Ferry.
34
They got Dryden off the site in five minutes, bundled into the cab with Humph, and as they drove away a line of squad cars passed them heading back into the Stopover. At the roadblock Walker had radioed ahead for the heroine firefighter and she posed while Dryden took some snaps, with the garage in the distance. Given the discovery of the body on the wire it was debatable whether Jo Campbell’s heroism would get the treatment it deserved, but everyone went through the motions, striving for the upbeat.
Dryden swigged a vodka from the glove compartment, letting the antiseptic fluid scour the stench of burnt flesh from his nostrils and throat.
Humph leant forward over the wheel, looking up into the sky, from which a light rain had begun to fall. ‘The big toys are out.’ The beating heart of a helicopter was lost in the clouds, spiralling down towards the Stopover.
‘Take me to The Crow,’ said Dryden, closing his eyes and trying to think. Who would gain from Jimmy Neate’s death? Had he decided to tell the police what had happened to his sister – and to hell with the consequences for the rest? Was he in contact with Jason Imber? Had they both posed a threat to the lynch mob, a threat which had to be removed? And why were there suitcases in Jimmy Neate’s kitchen?
Dryden told Humph to pick Laura up and run her to the unit for her regular treatment. He’d join her later, and see if he could talk to Jason Imber.
The Crow’s upstairs office was deserted, and he sat at his desk for a minute watching dust settle. It was still only 8.30am on the quietest day of the week – no paper for four days and everyone looking forward to the weekend. He rang police HQ at Cambridge for the latest from the Stopover. They were reporting a fire with one fatal casualty, male, and one woman rescued. Police units were in attendance and there was as yet no view on whether the incident was suspicious.
Dryden decided to get the heroine rescue story off his book as quickly as possible. He rang Mitch, The Crow’s photographer, and got an e-mail address to which he could send his pictures for the London agencies and the local evenings. He chose a set of six prints – putting the best aside for the Express and The Crow to use in the following week, then he bashed out a 400-word story on the heroine rescue, backed up with a few facts and figures he gleaned online. According to the press officer at the fire brigade HQ less than 2 per cent of firefighters are women, so the glory girl was a rare bird indeed.
Finished, he opened up his e-mail to send the copy to the same destinations as the pictures: again, he kept some of the best quotes and background for the Express. He deleted half a dozen junk mail messages and then clicked on one from FlandersMay@rsc.org.uk. The ‘perfectionist’ map-maker of Jude’s Ferry had taken the bait. The answers to Dryden’s questions were detailed and frank.