The Coldest Blood

by Jim Kelly

‘There were panic attacks, crises of anxiety which just swept over him for no apparent reason. We’d find he was gone, and we’d search the camp – which was embarrassing in season – and then they’d find him, usually in the dunes, as far away from the crowds as he could get. It wasn’t just the people – it was the unpredictability, the not knowing if he’d have to meet someone new.

  ‘Anyway. We carried on, hoping it would get better. He still enjoyed the pool work – I think that was because he was in control, and he was with the children. And he was very good at some things – in fact he’d got better at some things. He had an amazing recall for names, which is a real plus in this work. And we put him in charge of the beach huts because it was mainly paperwork, and he was meticulous, really. But I didn’t know what to do… he was still very afraid of the world.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to leave prison,’ said Dryden, sensing at last some real emotion. ‘Why try to get him out?’

  ‘I’ve said. There’s a difference between innocence and freedom. I’d like to see the record straight – and so would he.’

  ‘Mrs Connor, if your husband didn’t kill Paul Gedney, who did? You must have thought about that.’

  Outside they heard a coach returning, the babble of corporate voices heading towards them. She shuffled the glasses and collected the mats. Then she stopped and looked Dryden in the eyes. ‘If you’d met Paul, I don’t think you would have asked that question, Mr Dryden.’ She’d raised her voice, and Dryden detected the edge of suppressed anger beneath. ‘He collected enemies for a hobby, he had a level of natural arrogance which most people found repellent, and he’d do anything to get what he wanted. It’s a volatile cocktail,’ she said, draining her glass.

  ‘He’d fallen in with some dangerous people. It’s obvious that he ended up hiding in the marshes, in the Curlew. Clearly, someone found him.’ She stood. ‘I’m sorry. Russell will need a hand. This time of night we’re short of staff – and there’s some illness about, flu and suchlike. We’re a bit stretched.’

  Dryden stood too. One more question. ‘I understand the Dolphin paid most of the cost of having the children from St Vincent’s for the holiday. Kids like Joe Petulengo and Declan McIlroy. That was very generous.’

  ‘Yes. It was. Anything else?’

  ‘Chips wrote this…’ said Dryden.

  He put the piece of paper on the table, spreading it out.

  I DIDN’T KNOW.

  ‘Didn’t know what, do you think?’

  She shook her head, but she didn’t move. Dryden watched the estate agents heading in for nightcaps. ‘What do you think Chips would think if he walked through that door right now?’ asked Dryden.

  It was a random question, but Dryden could see it had hit home. She couldn’t stop herself looking across the dance floor. ‘I think he’d be angry, angry that he’d lost thirty years of his life, and I think this room would remind him of that. Angry, Mr Dryden, very, very angry.’

  31

  He held Laura’s head to his chest and, propped up on the pillows in bed beside her, looked out to sea. The moon was high now and the sea an unruffled field of silver. On the beach towards Lighthouse Cottage a figure Dryden couldn’t recognize stood, pitching stones. The dune grass where Humph’s cab was parked up was dark except for a hint of the Capri’s vanity light amongst the reeds. Dryden felt his wife’s breath on his neck, and, leaning back, allowed her head to drop to his shoulder, her lips to edge closer to his skin.

  ‘What do I know?’ he asked.

  The ritual pause.

  ‘I know that Ruth Connor is one tough customer. But then it’s been a tough life. She marries golden boy Chips Connor, the rippling lifeguard, and within two years he’s suffered an accident which has left him with brain damage – not enough damage, to be cynical, to consign him to a hospital or a home, but enough to turn him into an emotional iceberg. There she is, the blushing bride, with a life ahead spent with a selfish child.’

  Dryden looked at Laura, her head turned from his, the COMPASS switch held lightly, and realized it was too late to change the subject.

  ‘But murder? It’s bizarre – to pick off Paul Gedney as a victim just to get Chips out of her life. There were so many better ways. Divorce, desertion, subterfuge. She’d given him half the business by then, but even in the best of health Chips wasn’t a mover and shaker. She was still in control, she didn’t have to do anything stupid.’

  Dryden shook his head. ‘It’s much more likely Paul Gedney was killed by someone from his past, someone involved in his sordid little racket, stealing drugs from the hospital dispensary. I need to know more about Gedney if I’m going to find out who killed him. The hospital’s at Whittlesea – it’s a run – but I’ve got Humph. I’d be away a few hours, no more.’

  A seagull, ghostly white, fluttered against the window, confused by the reflection.

  ‘All that presumes Gedney is dead, of course, but the forensic evidence was, is, overwhelming – he’d lost enough blood to satisfy a Halal butcher and even Chips Connor’s defence lawyers in the trial didn’t try to argue that no murder had been committed.

  ‘And the night he fled to the Dolphin he told both Chips and Ruth Connor someone was after him – and the someone he had in mind didn’t wear a blue uniform. I think whoever it was caught up with him – tracked him down to that boat in the marshes and beat him to death. Perhaps he ran, and they caught him on the beach. Who knows?’

  Dryden threw his head back in frustration. ‘More to the point, how the hell do I find out? I’m thirty years too late and I’m running out of time.’

  He knelt beside Laura’s chair and rested his head on her knee. ‘Perhaps I’m worried about the wrong crime. Smith and Dex didn’t die thirty years ago – ten days ago they were both alive. Did Paul Gedney’s murderer kill them? Or is someone else desperate to keep Chips Connor in jail?’

  Dryden watched the sea crease as a wave came in from the north, and he stretched out, sensing Laura had slipped into sleep.

  The day had multiplied the questions, but provided few answers. He knew more, but understood less. So there was only one thing left to do. Slipping from under the duvet he dressed quickly and grabbed his overcoat and mobile, edging out the door to the verandah. The air was totally still, but cold enough to instantly freeze the hair on his hands as he fumbled with the phone. Looking down he could see that the receding tide was freezing on the sands, ridges of ice forming in waves.

  He rang directory inquiries and got George Holme’s office number. He waited a full minute when he got through until the answer phone clicked in: ‘This is the office of G. W. Holme & Sons, solicitors. Our office hours are 9.00am to 5.15pm Monday to Friday. If your call is urgent, please leave a message.’

  ‘Hi. This is a message for George Holme. My name’s Dryden, from The Crow. It’s the Chips Connor case. I wanted to let you know that I can help. There were four witnesses that night the children found Paul Gedney in the Curlew. Joe Petulengo, Declan McIlroy, Marcie Sley, and a boy called Philip. They never saw Philip again, and there were no records left to trace him when the appeal got under way. Joe and Declan are dead, Marcie can never be a credible witness. But I know where you can find Philip. I’m at the Dolphin now – but you can ring me on this mobile: 07965 4545445. Goodbye.’ He checked in his notebook and found the office number for JSK, the company founded by Joe Petulengo. He left a similar message for John and Marcie Sley. ‘If you’re back, and feeling up to it, I’d really like to talk again.’

  Then he buttoned the trench coat up to his neck and looked eastwards to the lighthouse. The single figure on the beach was no longer alone. A couple stood, their arms locked, watching the falling tide.

  The Dolphin Holiday Camp

  Saturday, 31 August 1974

  With the light of dawn Philip slept, to be woken by a voice opposite. ‘Just get dressed quickly, boys.’ Philip looked at his Timex: 7.35am. He crept to the window. On the stoop stood Grace Elliot’s husband, his back to the open door,
with one of the Blue Coats and a security guard. They said nothing, avoiding each other’s eyes.

  The Blue Coat stayed behind. He had one of the poolside swimming poles and he sank to his knees and worked it under the wooden chalet, in the sandy shadows, pulling something out of the cool dark space: a canvas bag, knotted with the blue rope the fishermen used. He should have taken it away then, Philip had sensed that, but instead he’d tugged the neck loose and pulled out a box. He could see it was of dark wood, polished, with a brass plate where a key had once gone. The Blue Coat had opened it and Philip could still hear the tiny, metallic tune: ‘Greensleeves’.

  They were missing at breakfast. An empty table by the window where the family had always sat. He ate quickly with his uncle and aunt and returned to the chalet. His aunt said she’d pack and he could have half an hour: a last half hour, but that he couldn’t go on the beach because of his shoes, his jelly-moulds already swapped for school brogues.

  He’d run then, down towards the sluice, hoping they’d be there. He wanted to know what the man had found, and why he’d found it, and what they’d seen the night before and if they’d been seen, but most of all he wanted to say goodbye. He’d rehearsed this last morning many times: an only child struggling with the manners of friendship. Would they come again next year? Would it be the same two weeks? In a schizophrenic, oddly adult way he knew that it would probably never happen, that hoped-for repeat of the summer, but he was young enough to crave, desperately, the possibility that it might. Fuel enough for a year of dreams.

  But the marshes were empty. He ran to the poolside, deserted on changeover day despite the sunshine. In the distant car park families were loading up, cases being strapped to roof racks. By reception the first newcomer had arrived, a small child in shorts running ahead of a man with two suitcases. Just inside the doors there was an amusement arcade, they’d come here once with Smith, bringing coins they’d found on the beach. Philip slipped in and stood alone on the plush blue carpet, the machines winking silently, unplayed.

  He heard Smith’s voice first, oddly muted. ‘Don’t push.’

  Philip stepped between the machines and stood behind a cabinet where a mechanical crane fished for prizes. Through the glass he saw the children outside in a single line led by Grace Elliot: Sis, Dex and Smith, with one of the camp’s security guards, a different one this time, at the back. Philip padded behind, aware that the rigid formation was part of some wider punishment. They’d been seen the night before, recognized. But had the man who’d seen them seen him? There’d been no early knock at his chalet. But what had the children said? Had they betrayed him now?

  Philip inched out into the sunshine of the car park, skirting a line of cars, mostly black and already humming with heat. The three children stood by a Morris Minor Traveller. Grace Elliot talked with the security guard, shaking his hand, crying, her face red and wet. Inside the car her husband sat at the wheel, a map spread out concertina-style.

  Philip edged closer, seeing them through the windows of a VW camper. He caught Sis’s eye, but she shook her head: just once, but he could see the plea, the urgency of the signal to keep away. Dex clung to her, Smith stood apart, his shoulders rigid with the fear he was hiding.

  Then, released by a command he did not hear, the children bundled into the back seat of the car. Windows down, they joined a queue at the gates. Dryden watched them go, willing them to acknowledge he was there, afraid they would. But their heads never turned, not once, to look back at the sea, or to look back at him.

  32

  Monday, 9 January

  The façade of Whittlesea District Hospital boasted a brace of Palladian pillars and a portico complete with a carved heraldic shield. But if the front hinted at grand ambitions the rear shouted poverty. Steam gushed from a vent, rising up the blackened brickwork and melting the snow in the guttering above. A skip marked ‘clinical waste’ tumbled soiled paper onto the tarmac and a gang of seagulls launched sporadic raids on a tumbled rubbish bin. By a pair of plastic swing doors a male medical orderly sat swaddled in a shell suit smoking a cigarette like an addict. The insistent hum of extractor fans provided a constant soundtrack to complement the crackle of the radio from beyond the steamed windows of a laundry.

  A pair of female nurses stood arm-in-arm on the doorstep engaged on separate mobile phone calls. Dryden, extracting one of his Greek cigarettes, stood close to the orderly and lit up.

  It took five seconds for the orderly to speak. ‘Visiting?’ He was in his twenties, unshaven, his eyes haunted by lack of sleep and overindulgence in something liquid.

  Dryden shook his head. ‘Looking for the union rep – Unison. Any idea?’

  ‘Not on site. This place is closing – not enough patients to justify the staff, not enough staff to justify the funding. Lynn’s got the nearest full-time rep.’

  ‘I was after a bit of history, actually – someone who used to work here as a nurse. Anyone still around?’

  ‘Yeah. Loads – that’s the problem. Nurse, you said?’

  ‘Yeah – male, a trainee. With access to the dispensary. This would be ’74, perhaps a bit earlier.’

  He whistled, as if Dryden had asked to speak to Queen Victoria. ‘That’s going back a bit.’ He ground the stub of the cigarette out on the tarmac. ‘Come on.’

  The change in temperature was astonishing: the heated fug of the hospital interior settling instantly on Dryden’s frosted skin. The smell turned his stomach, the memory of custard weaving round that of urine and floor scourer. They picked their way through a hallway strewn with dirty linen and out into one of the hospital’s main corridors. Sixty yards ahead of them an overweight nurse pushed a patient into the distance on a trolley: otherwise the long vista was empty, the dully polished floor reflecting noise from the wards at each side. A TV buzzed a sports commentary, while somewhere a tap gushed into a bath, the plumbing banging as it dealt with the rush of hot water.

  At the far end they descended damp brick steps under a sign marked DISPENSARY. At the bottom was a windowless room with some plastic seats and a matching pot plant. A counter behind meshed glass took up one side of the room, the service hatch was open and deserted except for a single tea cup and saucer. It was even hotter here and Dryden could feel through the soles of his feet the hum of a boiler somewhere in the basement.

  Dryden’s guide smacked the counter with the palm of his hand: ‘Shop! Marina, shop!’

  His guide retreated, leaving Dryden to wait alone. He paced the room, reading posters on the walls, many of which looked like they’d been printed up for the launch of the NHS in the forties – a diagram of a dissected eye, a list of do’s and don’ts for diabetics and a gruesome set of pictures showing the progress of malignant melanomas. He checked his watch: Laura was in the pool at the camp doing hydrotherapy, but he felt the gentle tug of guilt.

  ‘Yes?’ The woman was black, a kind of red-mahogany colour, and Dryden guessed the genes were Cameroonian. There was something imperious about the long, graceful neck and the precise angle at which she held her elegant head, the hair cut short and grey. Dryden estimated she was sixty.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you – you must be busy. I was looking for someone who might remember a nurse who worked here in the seventies. My name’s Dryden – Philip Dryden. I am a journalist, with a local paper in Ely.’ He let that sink in and, when she didn’t throw him out, carried on. ‘It’s about a nurse called Paul Gedney. The police were after him – something to do with stealing drugs? He was here then – in the summer of ’74.’

  She picked up the tea and came round the counter, sitting elegantly on one of the plastic chairs, expertly balancing the cup in its saucer. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘But you remember him?’

  She shook her head as if trying to dislodge a persistent image. ‘What’s this about?’ she asked, fiddling with a long amber earring.

  Dryden told her about Chips Connor’s case, and the hunt for witnesses to free the convicted man. H
e said he didn’t have much time, and he checked his watch to prove it. But it seemed she’d decided to talk anyway, because she cut in before Dryden had finished his pitch.

  ‘Paul – I remember Paul, yes. I’d just qualified, so I was a few years older, but we got on well. There was something very odd about him, you see.’

  She paused, waiting for Dryden to invite the disclosure. ‘Which was?’

  ‘Unlike the rest of the population, he was not a racist.’

  Dryden didn’t need this, and he suppressed an urge to pick up the point. He wondered if she’d mixed up racial discrimination with the innate Fen antipathy to newcomers of all colours. In the mid-1970s they probably hanged people with ginger hair in Whittlesea.

  ‘Right. But what was he like?’

  ‘An outsider, like me. He would have been eighteen or nineteen years old, I think, when he first came here. Very self-contained, you know, almost arrogant really. He always made it plain that he’d chosen to be a nurse, that it wasn’t second best to being a doctor, which was a bit disingenuous because while he was certainly smart he’d missed out on a formal education. He was that type: a kind of undisciplined intelligence. I think he resented that lost opportunity.’

  ‘Did he resent anything else?’

  She sipped the tea. ‘People who got in his way. There was something slightly malevolent about him, you see. I got the feeling he’d do anything, you know, if he’d judged the outcome as correct. He was one of those people with their own moral compass – he decided what was right and wrong.’

  ‘And he stole drugs? He’d decided that was right, had he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, tilting her chin. ‘Yes he had. He was very close to his family – his mother, actually. She was ill, and had been for many years – diabetes, I think, but I could be wrong. Anyway, she needed support and help at home. He tried to manipulate the bureaucracy, the red tape, to get her extra cash and visits. But it didn’t work. I think he stole to finance a carer, the medical treatment. She had private care at a clinic, I think, which didn’t come cheap.’