Nightrise

by Jim Kelly

  ‘It will say nothing but if it is this card then please try to get the story into print as quickly as you can.’

  ‘What do you mean, disappear?’

  Yoruba placed the cup down and edged closer. ‘This is Gill’s idea. She thinks I should become a non-person. Take up a new identity.’ He shook his head. ‘But this is not cheap.’ The thought seemed to break a spell so that he pushed his tea away. ‘A terrible prospect anyway – to lose yourself. Your culture. Your homeland. I do not think I can do this.’

  ‘You’ve tried to do this – to buy yourself a new identity?’

  Yoruba licked his lower lip. ‘Not yet. Maybe never. Gill wants this. For us, I know, but it is her dream. As I said – it is not cheap, and we are not rich. And I would never see my country again. My street, my family.’

  He gave Dryden a new address – a council block for problem families on the edge of town – a temporary flat while his appeal was considered. Dryden said he would visit the cemetery at Manea the next day to interview the cemetery warden about their daughter, then he’d get a message to him via Gill Yoruba’s mobile.

  They went back to reception and out into the street. As they stood on the pavement a crocodile of children from the local private school walked past.

  ‘You know,’ said Yoruba, ‘at school, a good school, I learnt history. Always – in Russia, in France – the ultimate sentence for the powerful is exile, isn’t it? I never did understand that. You’re allowed to leave. Just go. You have your liberty still. But people say they would rather die. Rather languish in a cell. Rather face torture than exile. I begin to understand this now.’

  He looked up at the cathedral’s West Tower, the east side in full sunlight.

  ‘Exile kills you alive.’

  TWELVE

  The Peking House stood on a corner in the Jubilee Estate. Not just a right-angled corner, an acute-angled corner, like New York’s Flatiron building, like a ship’s prow. The restaurant had plate-glass windows which had been curved to accommodate the narrow angle and had miraculously survived a decade of Saturday night drunks leaving The Merry Monk next door – the Jubilee’s alternative to the Red, White and Blue. Dryden always took a table in the apex of the prow: with views back down two streets, and ahead down one which led out of the estate to the water meadows by the river, where wild horses grazed.

  He looked at his plate: a celebration meal, marking publication of The Crow, and the end of the working week – usually sesame prawn toast, spring rolls, crispy duck, pancakes, plum sauce. But not today. The visit to the morgue had left an indelible image. He’d ordered egg fried rice, vegetable spring rolls, crackers. And beer: Chinese beer in iced cans. No crispy duck.

  The restaurant had been Dryden’s oasis since those first few weeks after Laura’s crash. Humph had never been inside The Peking. He would eat his food takeaway in the car – even if it was only six feet from the door. The cabbie had quickly set himself the task of eating his way through the menu by number – irrespective of the food described. He’d had some very unusual meals as a result, and was on his second run through because they’d changed the menu last Christmas, or at least the numbers.

  Dryden drained the can and noted that as he lowered it from his lips Sia Cheong Yew, the owner of the Peking, crossed over from the counter and put a fresh one in its place. Sia had become friends with Dryden in the same period – the weeks, months, and eventually years of Laura’s coma. They had recognized in each other a determined lack of self-pity and the natural instincts of outsiders.

  He pushed aside his plate and flipped up his iMac laptop, Googling the name of the Eau Fen victim – Rory Setchey.

  Setchey’s name got him two links to a website called FenFishing.

  As a journalist he spent half his life trawling websites and he knew a professional job when he saw one: this had video, hyper-links, the full www-works. Most of all it had webcams – a selection of six, on fen rivers. The business pitch was straightforward. Rory Setchey could guarantee you a fine day’s fishing in one of England’s few remaining wildernesses: carp, zander, pike, sea trout. Setchey – or one of the group of dedicated fishermen behind FenFishing – would take you to the secret places and you’d go home with a nice digital-sharp image for the mantelpiece, holding a scales-topping prize.

  He flicked through the webcam options and chose a spot on the Little Ouse north of Isleham, not far from Flightpath Cottages. The image pixilated and re-set to give a clear view of the river between reeds, the water surface oily and disturbed by little whirlpools. A duck landed, water-skiing, before coming to rest like a flying boat. There was a houseboat in the distance, with permanent wooden boards set to link it with the riverbank, and a wind-generator turning in a blur. He thought he recognized the precise spot, a mile south of the inn at Brandon Creek.

  Dryden considered how much money you’d have to earn from such a website to be able to afford to keep it running, updated, virus-free. Finally he togged through a series of pictures of Setchey at work – fly-fishing, gutting a fish for an open-air BBQ. The image of his face: outdoor-healthy, a wide smile, mocked the vision Dryden couldn’t wash from his memory, with the single gunshot wound to the face.

  He sent the website an email, identifying himself and the paper, saying he’d like to talk to someone.

  Sia sat down and pulled the rings on two fresh cans. Dryden snapped shut the laptop. Not because he had any secrets from Sia but because his friend was a busy man – cooking, ordering, cleaning – and if he had time to sit down Dryden could make the time to talk.

  ‘Radio says a murder – out on the fen,’ said Sia.

  ‘That’s the splash,’ said Dryden. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘And Humph said there was something else that I should ask,’ said Sia, holding the ice-cold can to his lips, nodding out the window to the cab parked just a few feet away. Humph was eating, ferrying noodles to his mouth with chopsticks. ‘Something about your father? He said you wouldn’t say anything unless I asked. He was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s just been a shock. It was good not talking about it. But he’s right, I should. We thought Dad died in ’seventy-seven – the floods. Then I got this call.’ He told him about the road accident, the burnt-out car, the body on the mortuary slab. ‘They say it isn’t him – that someone stole his name, documents, his life. I have this fear – this premonition – that it is him.’ He looked out the window. ‘He lived here, on the Jubilee.’

  Someone came in for food so Sia went to serve them. In his carefully cultivated broken English he chatted to the woman, asking about her children, whose names he knew. His English was first class but he’d developed the pidgin version to make his customers feel at home.

  ‘I don’t know, like, how it works here,’ said Sia, sitting down again, running a finger along a slim white scar that ran from his eyebrow to his chin. Dryden was pretty sure he hadn’t picked up that wound in a kitchen. It gave his friend an edge of suppressed violence which was a considerable asset on the Jubilee Estate.

  From the kitchen came the sound of his wife cooking.

  ‘At home this couldn’t happen – in Singapore,’ said Sia. ‘If you’re dead they write it down. Everyone knows. You don’t get to keep stuff – medical card, driving licence, passport. You need papers for a job – for a pension. You’d be a non-person without them. And it’s not like they don’t ask. Police, on the street, they ask; you try and leave the country, they ask. Everyone asks. It’s like a national hobby. And they take all that away when you’re dead. They send people round to collect it.’ He laughed, draining the can. ‘No exceptions.’ He crushed the can.

  ‘Yeah – same here, sort of,’ said Dryden. ‘You have to register a death. You get a certificate. But to do that if someone’s died in an accident, or suddenly, you need the coroner to say it’s OK. And how can he do that if there’s no body? I guess this time he didn’t say it was OK. So Dad was left . . .’ He drained the can. ‘In limbo.’

/>   The beer was freeing up his memory. ‘We did try. We went to some office out at Swaffham Prior. The registrar saw us – a man called Trelaw. I’ll never forget the name. It was on his door, and he made us wait, in this cold office with a cold grate. That winter was icy. And then, when we did get in, he said no, we couldn’t have the death certificate – we needed the body. I think Mum just gave up.’

  Now that he’d unpacked the memory there was more of it than he’d expected. ‘I can see him now. Trelaw. A big man, one of those men whose bones seem to show through they’re so big, like an elephant, with the skin hung between. He had this big black fountain pen, and he held it like a child holds a crayon.’ He shook his head, amazed he’d been able to reach back for the image.

  ‘And when we went he stood up and he shook her hand, and then he shook mine, and he said: “I’m sorry for your loss”. Nobody else had included me until then. I think that’s why I remember him. Mum didn’t speak – afterwards, on the way home. I think it was a blow. If she’d got the certificate she could have moved on, got on with her life, my life, but it was like we were caught – like one of those fossil flies petrified in amber.’

  He hadn’t noticed the squad car pulling up outside behind Humph’s cab. A uniformed PC, short with glasses, appeared by Dryden’s table, weighed down by a Hi-Vis jacket.

  ‘Mr Dryden?’

  He placed a single golden Yale key on the tablecloth. It was bright and new and appeared to emit its own light.

  ‘Compliments of Sergeant Cherry,’ he added.

  THIRTEEN

  The Jubilee Estate smelt of burnt tyres and newly mown grass. Late afternoon; the sun pressing down, driving the shadows under parked cars and around the trunks of the cherry trees, planted with military precision along the freshly cut verges. The flag of St George hung from a bedroom window; an Action Man hanging from a tangled parachute which had caught in the overhead phone lines.

  He made Humph walk, leaving the cab outside his own house. Leopold Street looked just like all the others they’d just strolled down. When Dryden got to the front gate Humph wasn’t in sight behind him so he waited, studying the house. Sweat broke out on his skin. What was it about housing estates that seemed to make them radiate their own heat? It was all that concrete, tarmac and brick. The house was mid-terrace, sixties, with asymmetrical windows of differing sizes which made its ugliness almost heroic. The garden was lawn, neat but perfunctory. The houses on either side were even uglier thanks to various Homebase affectations: a carriage lamp over the door on the right, a pair of giant plastic butterflies over the other.

  Humph came round the far corner, mopping his face theatrically with a white handkerchief. When he reached Dryden he took three deep breaths before speaking, then decided to say nothing.

  Dryden walked up the path and opened the door with the Yale. Crossing the threshold he breathed in the smell of it, trying to find a trace of his childhood. When they’d moved to London after his father’s death he’d noticed one day that their flat – in a block over shops on the Finchley Road – had somehow managed to develop exactly the same smell as the farmhouse at Burnt Fen. What was it? A subtle blend perhaps of diet, washing powder, beverages, furniture, clothes and books. And at the farm there had always been a stock pot gurgling on the range – something his mother contrived to somehow continue in the city. And wood – the aroma of resin, because they’d only ever had rugs at Burnt Fen, laid over the boards or the quarry tiles, and the flat had polished boards and rugs too. So no carpets, no soft furnishings and no air fresheners. But there was no hint of that here. The house smelt empty, neutral, inert. In fact, now that he thought about it, it smelt antiseptic.

  The downstairs rooms were uniformly dull. The property had been rented and was a symphony in beige. Second-hand furniture, generic, tasteless art on the walls. And that was right too, because his father hadn’t noticed when his mother had given away a print of Constable’s Hay Wain which had hung over the fireplace for a decade. The state of repair – efficient, but not loving – suggested a maintenance contract. There were no books to see but a pile of newspapers – several different nationals plus the local evening paper from Cambridge. All of them were open at the puzzle page.

  One oddity – there was an internal window between the kitchen and main room and it had been replaced with a stained-glass window. Dryden looked at it for some time trying to work out what was so strange. It was a grid – eight by eight, like a chess board. Each square was one of eight colours. Each line only contained one of each colour – however you ‘read’ it – up or down, side to side. Clever, mildly disquieting, like a puzzle. Sudoku with colours.

  And then there was the kitchen – fitted, a German company, quality. And it was crammed with gadgets, tin-openers, mixers, an iPod dock and a flat-screen TV.

  ‘Liked his toys,’ said Humph.

  A bottle of beer – Hoegaarden – stood empty on the table. Dryden’s father had liked beer, and almost always had a bottle with his evening meal. And he was no Little Englander – so why not a Belgian beer? There were no family or personal pictures on the walls or mantelpiece. If he was indoors, and his father hated being indoors, he’d always had eyes only for the windows. So no curtains except heavy drapes for winter. And that was what was unusual about this house – no net curtains. Everyone on the Jubilee had net curtains.

  In the hallway was a notice board with various cards and flyers and a calendar all held in place by red-topped drawing pins. Dryden felt something crunch under his foot and looking down saw two of the pins in the pile of the carpet, which was odd because everywhere else seemed freshly hovered. He moved his finger over some of the flyers: night classes at the college, The Peking’s home delivery service, Live Music at The Red, White and Blue – an academic calendar for Ely College.

  He eased one of the drawing pins out of a card. ‘They weren’t looking very hard, were they – the plods.’ Underneath the flyer was another, smaller, flyer which had been held up by the same pin.

  Ely Singles Club: Divorced or Separated? Ring us, or join us, every Friday evening at The Red, White and Blue. 5 includes first drink and sandwiches.

  He handed Humph the card. ‘You might need that.’

  Humph popped the card in his back pocket, standing at the foot of the stairs and turning 360 degrees.

  ‘I’ll check upstairs,’ said Dryden. ‘You try the kitchen and the yard.’

  There was a small hallway at the top of the flight of stairs and the doors to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Dryden stood for a second thinking it was incredible that someone could live somewhere for six years and leave so little of themselves behind.

  He’d clearly slept in the box room. The bed was crumpled, like a nest, with a bedside table and a radio alarm. Dryden hit the PLAY button expecting to hear Radio Four – his parents had listened to nothing else, from Farming Today until the Shipping Forecast. But it was Star Radio – the local commercial station. Dryden killed the signal. That wasn’t right.

  The bathroom had more in it than Dryden would have expected – a shelf of men’s cosmetics, including aftershave, some skincare creams and a packet of those little brushes dentists sell for cleaning between the teeth. The rest of the bathroom was spotless – there was no bath but a proper shower box, and it was clean, which is difficult to do even if you try hard. Not a single hair against the white tiles.

  The main bedroom was in darkness. There were thick curtains, which didn’t let any of the sunshine through, until he threw them back. Then he saw the books. Three bookcases, all slightly different sizes and woods, arranged to fill one wall.

  He pulled a volume free at random. The Earth Sciences: An introduction, by Prof J.H.L.Carr.

  ‘You done?’ shouted Humph from downstairs.

  ‘Come up.’

  Humph climbed up counting the steps out loud.

  ‘He never had these at the farm – but it’s his subject. Natural sciences.’

  Looking at the room Dryden could see
it was set out for two people. One large chair by the computer screen, then a chair set to one side, as if for an interview. And the computer gear was all top of the range: a new iMac and an iPad on the desk, a wireless airport and a new laptop. Underneath the desk sat one of the latest printers and a scanner.

  The doorbell rang.

  It was a young girl – maybe fourteen – clutching books. She was halfway over the threshold and already easing one of her black school shoes off the left foot, using her right foot.

  Humph, halfway down the stairs, recognized her as a neighbour’s daughter on his street. She wore the uniform of the local comprehensive. Her hair had been allowed to grow long, and had been brushed to a sheen so that blonde highlights showed.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ she said, then checked her watch.

  Dryden touched his lips with the back of his hand and nodded. ‘How do you know Jack?’

  ‘He’s my tutor. GCSE maths – I’m doing it early. Dad pays.’ She looked to Humph and asked, ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘My name’s Dryden too,’ said Dryden. ‘Philip.’

  She went to close the door but left it open. ‘Was Jack your Dad?’

  ‘Why’d you say that?’

  ‘Just the name.’

  ‘I don’t look like him?’

  ‘Maybe. What’s wrong?’

  Dryden produced a picture of his father from 1977. ‘That’s him – thirty-five years ago. Had he changed?’ He’d framed the question carefully, and watched her face.

  She didn’t look puzzled, just quizzical. ‘He got way fatter. He looks like you back then.’

  ‘So, just fatter. Otherwise, that’s him?’

  ‘You said it was him. I didn’t. I’m just saying he looks a bit like you back then. Jack – this Jack – never had a tan. I never saw him – like, out, at all. It might be him – but maybe not.’ She nodded. ‘Maybe not.’