Dryden had removed his ear bandage. A plaster hung like a cheap earring. He took her hand. It was an oddly parental reaction and he felt she looked sadder as a result.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. ‘Just don’t let me anywhere near that tosspot of a lord mayor.’
There was a loud bang and a cheer as the display moved towards its climax. Kathy jerked in her seat and shouted out with the pain. A St John’s Ambulance volunteer appeared out of the dark. He was two sizes too small for a uniform that was three sizes too big. He had to roll his sleeves up to take Kathy’s pulse, an operation hampered by a sudden explosion of firecrackers.
Dryden let the echoes die away over the park. The crowd ‘ahhhhhhhed’ as a rocket showered them with golden snow-flakes.
‘And what did the worshipful mayor do?’
‘It was the first sodding firework. All he had to do was light the blue touch paper and retire. Retire! Too bloody right. Let’s have a whip-round now’
Dryden brushed his hand across her cheek. A sign of intimacy a minute too late.
‘He got his chain tangled up with the rocket, pulled it over when he walked off. Next thing I knew it was headed straight for me. It hit me here.’ She pointed to her eye.
‘I was wondering.’
Kathy started to laugh, which brought on tears.
Two orderlies arrived to lift her into the ambulance. Dryden promised to come and see her later. Then he collared a medic who appeared to be in charge. ‘She gonna be OK?’
‘Eyesight should be fine. Luckily the rocket was so large it couldn’t penetrate the socket. But the bruising is nasty and the force of the rocket may have cracked her skull. The eye filled up with mucus from the impact and the fumes. She’ll just need to rest and let it clear, then we’ll know for sure. And she’s going to go into shock soon.’
Dryden caught up with Roy Barnett in the VIPs’ enclosure with a large whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His Bobby Charlton hairstyle had flopped badly over his left ear. He had been released from the Tower on Saturday and advised to rest and avoid alcohol. He was due back for a check-up in forty-eight hours. Dryden felt the appointment might be immaterial, he could be dead by then.
As Dryden approached he was just finishing an anecdote. ‘… So I said to the headmistress: Can I come too!’ There was a dutiful peal of laughter. Then he spotted Dryden advancing across the grass and tried to make a break for the civic Daimler.
The reporter expertly cut him off, flipping open his notebook as he did so.
Barnett rearranged the offending chain. ‘Nasty business, Dryden, very nasty.’
‘She’s going to be fine by the way, so are the kids. Thought you’d want to know.’
‘Oh. Yes. Good. Wonderful work by the emergency services. You can quote me.’
‘Thanks. Perhaps you can tell me what happened.’
Over the mayor’s shoulder Dryden could see some of his Labour Party colleagues. Most were smirking. Barnett had got to the ceremonial top in local politics thanks to his money. He’d made a £50,000 donation to the party in the mid-1960s – a bribe that secured three terms in the Mansion House and a nameplate on the party’s town centre HQ which read ‘Barnett House’. He was well aware he had no friends. He was even aware he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, a level of self-knowledge that made him easy to underestimate. Dryden noticed, not for the first time, his eyes. The rest of his face was crowded with a bigger person’s features. But the eyes were doll-like, black, and oddly threatening.
‘Simple accident. I bent down to light the fireworks and the chain of office slipped round the rocket. The fuse was very bright so I jumped back and the rocket fell over. Frankly – and this is off the record – I blame the organizers. It wasn’t very secure.’
‘Then what?’
‘I ran.’
‘And then what?’
‘It went off. Straight at the crowd. Pure fluke. Total accident. One in a million, etcetera.’
Dryden closed his notebook and Barnett breathed easier. He considered offering Dryden a drink but thought better of it.
‘A word about Tommy Shepherd.’
The rest of the guests had moved off to see the climax of the display outside. Dryden attacked the drinks table. He mixed some vodka, blackcurrant, Pernod and lemonade. The resulting drink glowed with a sickly incandescence like an indoor firework.
Barnett watched uneasily. He considered his answer as he looked out at the last of the fireworks breaking over the cathedral. They fell, lighting his face alternatively green, gold, red, and blue.