The Fire Baby

32

The primary school at Barrowby Drove was on the wrong side of the Sixteen Foot Drain. A graceless iron bridge crossed the snot-green water. The main building was a postwar prefab which appeared to be entirely constructed of asbestos sheeting. The heat outside was ninety degrees and rising; inside, under a corrugated iron roof, it must have been higher. As soon as Dryden went through the door the heat hit him, just before the smell did.

‘Fen kids,’ he said, trying to shut his nostrils by willpower. Humph was in the cab outside baking, but at least he was pot-roast; this was cabbage and socks.

Dryden was standing in an ante-room full of pegs marked with names. He’d gone to a similar school himself on Burnt Fen, fifteen kids from six families, and he’d smelt of cabbage too. There were about thirty names here, but very few surnames. Family inter-marriage wasn’t a crime out here, it was a necessity.

Dryden peeked through a glass porthole into the single classroom. The classroom of the future, much trumpeted by the government, had missed the Fens by about eighty years. This could have been a Victorian snapshot: five rows of wooden single-unit desks with bench seats, a roll-round blackboard with triple dusters with retread felt, and a large map of the world. At least India had been removed from the Empire.

But the teacher looked thoroughly modern: Estelle Beck was at the front of the class perched precariously on the teacher’s desk, her legs up in the lotus position. On the blackboard were some mathematical symbols Dryden didn’t dwell on. Every head in the class was down, tiny fists holding pencils in cack-handed grips.

She didn’t look much like a teacher and she certainly didn’t look like a teacher who should be at Barrowby Drove. She was wearing sports gear and an array of pencils stuck out of her hair like punk spikes.

Dryden knocked and every head turned except hers. The silence dissolved in excited whispers as Estelle beckoned him inside. By the time he got to the front the class was in a state of nearly hysterical agitation.

‘OK, OK,’ said Estelle, holding up a hand for silence. ‘Let’s try and remember our manners. Remember what we’ve learned about how to behave with visitors. Jonathan…?’

Jonathan stood. ‘Welcome to Barrowby Drove School,’ he said, turning scarlet.

She then introduced Dryden to the class. ‘This is Mr Dryden,’ said Estelle: ‘He’s a reporter with The Crow’

Jaws dropped universally, indicating that visitors to Barrowby Drove School were rarely as exotic.

‘OK – little ones around the art table please with crayons and paper. Middle group please read the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Jonathan is in charge.’

Estelle led the way out through another door into a small grassed playground which, looking south, was a stranger to shadows. The sun hammered down on a wrought-iron set of swings and a slide which were, as a consequence, radiating heat like boiler pipes.

‘It’s Lyndon,’ said Dryden, looking north towards the only thing on the horizon – the giant grain silos at King’s Lynn twenty miles to the north.

When he turned back he saw that the electric-green eyes were extremely bright, almost preternaturally alive. Dryden could pick up most human emotions on his own antennae even if he was largely incapable of feeling his own. He was picking up an odd double transmission of anger and fear.

‘My brother,’ she said. ‘What about him?’

‘Well, officially he’s AWOL from Mildenhall.’

‘They seem pretty relaxed about it. Lyndon’s under… pressure, he’s confused, I think everyone understands that. I’m sure you do…’

On the Forty Foot a small motor launch swept past, a man at the tiller protected by a large sunhat.

‘Have you any idea where he might be? Did he attend the reading of the will?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He’d said from the start he wanted nothing. Which is a bit awkward as he got everything.’

‘How do you feel about that?’ said Dryden, cursing himself for a maladroit question.

‘Mum knew I hated Black Bank. I hated it almost as much as she did. I think leaving it to Lyndon was a master-stroke. I feel free of it for the first time in my life. That answer your question?’

Dryden ignored the hostility. ‘The last time you saw him, what was his mood?’

She looked out over the fen. ‘He’s very angry. He’s certainly desperate. I worried about him when he was at Black Bank. Now he’s gone, it’s worse. I think he’s gone away so he can’t hurt anyone he likes. Loves.’

‘Could he hurt himself?’

She shook the neat blonde bob and said: ‘Maybe.’ She forced herself to go on. ‘I think so. Yes. Don’t you? He’s an American, he fought for his country, and now that’s been taken away from him. And a life which I think he would have loved, here, was stolen long ago. He spent nearly thirty years thinking he’d lost his mother when he was two weeks old – then he discovers she’s alive with almost her last breath. How much grief can one person take? What would you feel?’

Dryden felt the familiar panic sweep through him as he faced answering a question rather than posing one. ‘I guess I’d want to know why she’d done it, why she gave me away.’

‘Which is exactly what we don’t know. She was unhappy at Black Bank, she hated her life in many ways. The tapes are very clear about that. About what my mother suffered…’

‘You’ve listened to all of them?’

She answered immediately, as if under cross-examination in a courtroom. ‘Yes. All those we found under the bed. Each one. From her earliest memories on Black Bank to her final illness…’

‘Forgive me,’ said Dryden, stepping closer. ‘Are you sure? Did you get the sense that she’d completed the story? Does the last tape end abruptly, run out, what?’

She climbed effortlessly on to the playground see-saw and sat, perfectly balanced, at its fulcrum: ‘It just runs out. You think there’s more?’

‘Possibly. The tape recorder’s gone – you didn’t take it?’

She shook her head, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘No. I said, we left it for you.’

Dryden looked at the shadow condensed at his feet. ‘And she gave no hint about her decision that night. Why she gave Matty away?’

‘She said she had no choice,’ said Estelle.

‘Those are her words?’

‘Yes. She said she had no choice and that she’d never regretted what she’d done, even though she grieved for her son for nearly thirty years.’ She walked off to tap a barometer mounted on the schoolhouse wall next to a thermometer. She had her back to him when she spoke: ‘So who’s looking for Lyndon?’

‘The local police need to talk to him about Maggie’s confession. At the very least his ID needs to be changed, records amended. I doubt it makes much difference to his nationality in reality, but it might. They’ve asked Mildenhall to help – they don’t want to push it but they need to get Lyndon back before it becomes an issue, an incident.’

She turned with a smile on her face. ‘If you find him first, Mr Dryden, tell him to speak to me. Will you take that message to him? Tell him to ring the mobile.’ She touched her breast pocket to check the phone was still there.

Dryden walked back with her towards the classroom where a crescendo of babble indicated that Jonathan had lost control of his charges. ‘One question. Did Lyndon take the Land Rover?’

‘Yes, yes he did.’

Dryden spun on his heel, taking in the perfect circular horizon of the Black Fen. ‘That’s going to be difficult to hide. You can see for ever.’

She considered the view; a shimmering expanse of tumbling hot air. ‘Sometimes the truth’s a lot closer.’