The Coldest Blood

40

Tuesday, 10 January

Within the hour the sea had spilled back into the pool, edging up towards the sand dunes. Dryden and Humph dragged Chips Connor’s body to the high-water mark, pulling it through the broken ice and flotsam onto the sandy path beyond. A police squad car, answering Dryden’s mobile call, edged down through the seagrass, its tyres crunching in the frost. The moonlight shone into Connor’s open and unblinking eyes. The black body bag, stiff with ice, cracked as they zipped it up. In his memory Dryden saw another corpse, curled on a doorstep, shrouded in ice.

The wind, blustery now, threw spray over the pathologist, whose examination was cursory. Chips Connor’s pale hand, reclaimed from the frozen glove, seemed to call the tide inland. Lighthouse Cottage was requisitioned as a temporary morgue, and Dryden told to wait there for the arrival of the duty inspector from Lynn, while Humph was allowed to retreat with Boudicca to the privacy of the Capri. Dryden left them there, hugging each other.

Lighthouse Cottage bustled with discreet activity and the edgy electronic static of police radios. William Nabbs gave Dryden coffee and threw driftwood on an open fire set quickly beneath a brushed aluminium hood in the kitchen: the clock above read 1.30am. Chips Connor’s body had been taken inside first, through to the front room. Outside, a group of uniformed PCs, conducting a fingertip search of the beach, dunes and riverbank in relay teams, made periodic appearances for hot drinks and shelter.

Nabbs drank coffee too. His hair was matted and wet, the blond dyed streaks in stripes through the natural brown. By the door stood a sea rod and tackle, while on the deal table lay a brace of cod glistening in the flickering light, more life in their iridescent scales than in their dead eyes. Dryden, vaguely aware that Nabbs had put something strong in the coffee, watched in fascination as blood dripped from the open mouths to the quarry-tiled floor beneath.

‘You OK?’ said Nabbs, fussing with the wood.

Dryden nodded. ‘Fine. I like midnight walks, I deserve what I get.’

A DI arrived, a raincoat stiff with ice plastered to his legs. He was young – mid-thirties – and would have been keen if he hadn’t just worked forty hours straight. He had weak eyes, close together, in a face which looked worried at rest. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector John Parlour of King’s Lynn CID, and tried to suck some nicotine from a packet of low-tar menthol cigarettes.

‘Where is she?’ asked Nabbs, giving the detective coffee too, complete with whisky.

The DI leant his back against the door. ‘She’s with a WPC now, up in the flat. They won’t be long – then they’ll bring her here.’

They all glanced at the living-room door.

Nabbs nodded. ‘I just don’t understand… How can it be Chips?’

He looked at Dryden for an answer while the DI consulted a notebook. ‘There’s some confusion at Wash Camp,’ said Parlour. ‘The governor is talking to his people now but Connor was counted in at lunch and out again at 1.30pm, went to his room and then to the gym for an hour, that’s his daily routine. Then there was a run, outside. Then the weather turned bad, the light went, they brought them in early. The next time there was a count was back in the showers at 3.00pm – he wasn’t there. They were running in tracksuits and that’s what he’s got on now. Plus a wedding ring and the watch.’

‘It’s twenty-five miles away,’ said Nabbs. ‘More.’

The DI shrugged. ‘He could have hitched – he could have run and walked. He had the time. Map?’

Nabbs spread an Ordnance Survey sheet out on the kitchen table, edging the fish to one end, cleaning the trail of blood away with a piece of kitchen towel. Briefly Dryden imagined he could smell the haemoglobin, a rusty metallic edge which made him wince.

With a finger Nabbs traced the course of the main river back inland. One tributary led towards the prison, stopping short by five miles.

‘He could have fallen in there,’ said Nabbs. ‘Suicide?’

DI Parlour shook his head, the cigarette clamped between his lips. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said, launching the stub into the flames of the fire. ‘Pathologist says the neck was broken, the head twisted round and back over the left shoulder. He’s only making an educated guess but there appears to be little fluid in the lungs – so it’s probable he was dead before he hit the water. Hypothesis has to be he was attacked from behind, his chin wrenched round, then dumped.’

Parlour put down the coffee cup and, interlacing his fingers, cracked the bones.

Dryden nodded. ‘A few problems with all that. You’ll find the channels up inland are frozen – they have been for a week. He’s got to have fallen into salt water, below the tidal reach of the main channel – about a mile inland, or in the marshes over here.’ He pointed to the intricate tracery of channels to the west of the camp. ‘When you get the water off his clothes or out of his lungs I bet you very little of it’s fresh. And there were strands of weed on the body – that points to the marshes too.’

‘Right,’ said Parlour, making a note.

‘So he got here sometime this afternoon – probably late,’ said Dryden, just – he thought – as Paul Gedney had done more than thirty years before.

The door opened and a WPC brought in Ruth Connor. Naturally pale, she’d blanched further, some hastily applied lipstick a gash across the face. Dryden, who relied almost entirely on first impressions when judging character, thought she looked genuinely shocked, her eyes fighting to keep focused on the real world around her. Dryden felt she made a conscious effort not to look at William Nabbs, but took a chair by the fire and a whisky she hadn’t asked for.

‘One moment please, Mrs Connor,’ said DI Parlour, opening the living-room door just wide enough to slip beyond. The WPC stood guard, a puddle of meltwater forming at her feet.

‘It’s Chips?’ she said, turning to look at Dryden as Nabbs stood behind her, both hands on her neck.

‘You’ll have to make sure – but yes, I’m sorry, it’s Chips.’

She put a hand across her mouth, and when it dropped her lips had left a kiss on the palm. ‘Why?’ She twisted her head to look at Nabbs.

‘We know someone didn’t want him to come back,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice. ‘But he did come back – why do you think he did that?’

She looked into the fire and Dryden could see her fingernails digging into Nabbs’ palm.

‘You called him in prison, you said. Perhaps…’

Nabbs stiffened. ‘Is this the time?’

‘You tell me,’ said Dryden, standing and walking to the window. ‘I don’t know how much time you’ve got.’ He came closer while the WPC answered a radio call. ‘I think it’s probably time to stop lying…’

The living-room door opened and Ruth Connor jerked visibly in her seat. ‘Mrs Connor? Would you…’ The WPC came over and took her arm, but she held on to Nabbs and allowed him to encircle her waist as they went through the door.

DI Parlour let them go first. ‘If you’d wait a little longer, Mr Dryden – we need a statement.’

The door closed and the silence in the cottage was complete. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked on: 2.15am. Dryden closed his eyes and felt a rush of nausea. Why had Chips left the security of his prison cell to come back to the Dolphin? Dryden dwelt again on the message the prisoner had left scrawled on the unfurling paper ball: I DIDN’T KNOW. Chips had helped, perhaps unwittingly, to set the children up for a crime they didn’t commit – the punishment for which had haunted them throughout their lives. Dryden remembered then what Chips had said: ‘I never knew their names.’ But he had known their names, he’d signed the statement at the time confirming he’d found the stolen goods beneath their chalets. What he’d meant, of course, thought Dryden, was that he never knew the names of the witnesses who had come forward thirty years later. Once Dryden had told him, his remarkable memory had pieced the past together: he’d helped to frame them, helped to frame himself.

The outer door opened and a uniformed PC appeared with John Sley.

Dryden helped himself from the malt whisky bottle Nabbs had left on the kitchen table.

‘This is ridiculous…’ said Sley. ‘It can’t be a crime to walk on a fucking beach.’

‘Sir. Please. Just take a seat for a moment. This is a crime scene. A man has been murdered. I’m afraid we just need to ascertain that we don’t require a statement from you – OK? Just routine, if you could wait a moment.’

From the living room they heard a sob and a low murmur of sympathy, and the PC slipped back out, leaving them alone.

‘Murder?’ said Sley, subsiding into a chair by the fire, his donkey jacket flecked with ice. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Who?’

‘Chips Connor. Early-morning stroll for you, is it, or late-night?’ said Dryden.

Sley looked to the door. ‘We’d been talking, but Marcie’s asleep now. I couldn’t – too much to think about.’

‘Now there’s a bit more to think about. Tell Marcie – tell her tonight. Chips got out of prison and came home, then someone killed him and chucked him out with the tide.’

They heard movement beyond the door and Dryden decided it was time to see John Sley in action. ‘And tell her something else. Tell her the safe’s still there, the one Paul Gedney robbed. I’m sure it’s still there because Ruth Connor wants me to think it isn’t. You could talk about that. About how interesting it might be to know what’s in it.’

John Sley held his hands in his lap, the fingers unlaced and still.

The PC returned and began taking down a brief statement from Sley so that he could return to his chalet. Dryden closed his eyes again. Sleep swept over him as if he’d been drugged. When he opened his eyes he was still alone and the clock read 3.15am. Then he remembered DI Reade, who would no doubt arrive unannounced at 9.00am. He fished out his mobile and called the number Reade had given him. Typically, the detective’s mobile was off.

‘Hi. This is Philip Dryden. There’s something you need to know. Your colleagues from Lynn are all over the Dolphin. Chips Connor’s body has been found on the beach. Someone broke his neck. This might change your plans. Sorry about that. Ring me when you can.’

Dryden wondered what the murder of Chips Connor would do for Reade’s career prospects. The chief constable was unlikely to view the appearance of a fresh corpse as a suitable opportunity to wrap up a troublesome case.

Dryden let his head loll back, his eyelids fighting gravity. Under the deal table the fish had bled again, creating a second pool on the quarry tiles as blood bled on blood. Something malevolent stirred in Dryden’s subconscious and he struggled to rationalize his fear. When sleep did come he dreamt of the black blood again, this time dripping from the beaten, jagged lips of Paul Gedney.