by Jim Kelly
The side door was open and led directly into the hall. It had been a very small cinema, even in its heyday. A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty. The chairs had been ripped out but there was still a stage and some of the original Art Deco plasterwork was in place, and a single circular chandelier flush with the ceiling. It had high windows with chequered green and red glass, and internal shutters.
‘Wait,’ said Friday.
No heads turned. There were thirty people in the room at desks. Most had laptops open, iPhones sparkled. On the wall were scene-of-crime pictures from Eau Fen. Several officers in one corner were dressed in the green overalls Dryden had seen at Hythe House. At one desk a man in a suit was interviewing Sgt Cherry, the coroner’s officer. As Dryden watched the suit tossed a file across the desk so that Cherry had to scramble to stop it falling on the floor. There was something calculated in the action, as if it was designed to humiliate.
Friday was back. ‘OK. Into the breach.’
He led the way to a desk in an alcove by the side of the stage. On the far side of it sat two men who didn’t get up: one was in a dark suit and tie with short grey hair, cut with the help of a slide rule. He introduced himself as Commander Daniel Mahon of New Scotland Yard, responsible for the Met’s liaison with Interpol. The right lapel of his dark suit was scattered with cigarette ash like dandruff.
The other man Dryden had seen at Hythe House. Mahon introduced him as – and Dryden was able to check this with the business card he was handed at the same time – Kapten Jaan Kross of the Central Criminal Police Department of Estonia, based in Tallinn. Kross had an open-necked white shirt showing a gold chain. His hair was almost white, as – presumably – were his eyebrows, which Dryden couldn’t really see against his very pale skin. He was a human being almost entirely devoid of colour. Even his blue eyes looked diluted.
Mahon apologized for the ‘little drama’ on the train. He said they were trying to keep their investigations as low-key as possible and that they had an ‘issue’ with the railway station at Ely which he said – smoothly – it would be ‘tiresome’ to explain.
‘So – just a few questions,’ he said. ‘Do you recognize this boat?’ It was a colour shot taken at sea of a container ship approaching docks. Dryden didn’t think it was possible to identify a container ship due to the fact they were all identical.
‘No – but that’s Felixstowe, if you’re bothered.’
Kross leant forward and seemed to examine his shoes. He had the easy, loose-limbed swagger of a thug.
‘In the last few days did your uncle – Roger Stutton – give you anything?’ asked Mahon. ‘A parcel, a bag, perhaps – for safe keeping?’
Dryden felt his blood pressure alter, a feeling of sudden pressure behind his eyes and nose. ‘Why?’
Now Mahon smiled. ‘Just answer the question, please.’
‘You’re not getting any answers until you tell me what’s going on. Is Roger’s death linked to that . . .’ He pointed at one of the scene-of-crime pictures from Eau Fen – the victim’s body hung from the irrigator. The shot had been blown up to poster size.
‘Yes,’ said Mahon. ‘We think it is – but we can’t say anything else at this stage and anything you do take from this conversation is – I’m afraid – covered by the DA-Notice.’
‘No. He didn’t give me a package or a bag.’
Another picture, this time of two men standing smoking together on the deck of a white boat, a river cruiser. It was one of the modern pleasure craft that Dryden hated, what the locals called a ‘white boat’, with patio doors.
‘And them?’ asked Mahon.
Dryden took his time. He knew he didn’t recognize them but he wanted to clear his head. What they were showing him seemed to imply a narrative thread: a sea voyage by container ship, Felixstowe on the East Anglican coast, then the white boat. And a mysterious package that his uncle appeared to have obtained.
‘Did they bring this package for Roger?’ he asked. ‘Or for him . . .’ He pointed at the hanging man, the dripping corpse. ‘From Estonia?’
Mahon’s hand drifted towards the pocket of his dark suit and Dryden guessed that’s where he kept his cigarettes. He sensed a real addict. So the longer this went on the less comfortable he’d be. Mahon took another brown envelope from the file on the desk and slid out a picture.
The smile was stillborn on Dryden’s face. It was a white van, the front half a write-off, the interior burnt out. The landscape was flat but there was a one-carriage train approaching from a distance. Dryden’s throat went dry. ‘Is this the van . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mahon. ‘You won’t have seen this. Yes, this is the van in which Jack Dryden died. Whoever Jack Dryden is.’
Dryden could hear his blood beating now in his left ear. Had it occurred to him there might be a link between Jack Dryden’s death and Roger Stutton’s? It should have. And now both were connected to the victim of Eau Fen.
‘There’s a DNA test . . .’
Mahon sat back. ‘Yes. We’ve fast-tracked that so we should know very soon. The case has now been taken forward with the urgency it deserved. A slight hiccough. That has been remedied.’
Dryden glanced at Sgt Cherry who was alone now, with a cup of tea, his head down but his eyes looking round the room.
Kross leant forward and looked past Dryden – or more accurately through him. ‘This does not matter to you – I am sure of this. I think this is not your father, this man who dies in the fire. Really – not. I think this man who died took your father’s name, and gave himself a new name. This is a valuable . . .’ He searched for the word. ‘Commodity. A life. Many people will pay for this – perhaps 50,000. So please answer our questions.’
Dryden had thought about someone stealing his father’s identity, but he hadn’t thought of that – that someone might have sold it.
He looked again at the picture of the burnt-out van. ‘Was this an accident?’
The Estonian was nodding and Mahon failed to keep the irritation from registering on his face.
‘Yes. An accident. But this begins everything,’ said Kross. ‘And now it must end. But how?’
Mahon cut in: ‘When did you last see your uncle?’
‘Sunday – for lunch, at the farm.’
‘Not since?’
‘I understood the question.’
A smile creased Kross’s thin pale lips.
‘Why did you take Hythe House apart – was it to find this parcel, this package?’ asked Dryden.
‘You must be careful, please,’ said Kross. ‘There are people who want this package we mention very much. If you know anything – at any time – phone us.’ He put a finger on his business card. ‘The mobile is here. Always.’
‘Is that why he died?’ asked Dryden, pointing at the picture of the hanging body of Rory Setchey. ‘They shot him, why? Because he had this parcel?’
Kross licked his lips, shrugged. ‘They shoot this man after he is dead.’
Mahon put a hand over his eyes.
‘So how’d he die?’ asked Dryden.
Kross touched a hand to his heart.
‘He had a heart attack – then they shot him?’
Kross rocked his head from side to side. ‘We think maybe one shot – to the knee. First. Perhaps they want an answer to a question. But then the stress . . .’ He touched his heart again. ‘The pressure. If these men ask you a question they expect an answer very quickly. Silence makes them angry.’
He got up and walked away. Mahon packed up the file.
‘Is that it?’ asked Dryden.
‘Looks like it.’
‘How does that work, then? Does an Estonian Kapten outrank a Met Commander these days?’
‘I’m doing my bit for EU relations,’ said Mahon. Standing, his width seemed to outrank his height. He gathered his thoughts. ‘Thanks for coming in. If we can tell you anything we will. I’m afraid all that’s covered by the DA-Notice. Sorry.’
He already had the cigaret
tes out of his pocket, tapping the filter end on the packet.
‘And more bad news. Your aunt, Constance Stutton. She stayed with you last night, I understand. You should go to her farm now. There’s been a burglary. Or – what do our American cousins call it – a house invasion. Thank Christ she wasn’t there. They did the place over. If you think that house we took apart was bad . . . The farm’s a wreck. I think it’s pretty clear they thought your uncle had what we’re looking for. What we’re all looking for.’
TWENTY-TWO
The farmyard at Buskeybay held two police cars, a black Volvo estate and the forensic unit van from Ely. Con was waiting for them, stoic, her hands thrust into an apron. When the car stopped she went to Laura’s side and took the child, holding him under her chin, the head cupped.
‘You OK?’ asked Laura, the nasal tones urgent, frustrated.
She tried to say she was fine but the words wouldn’t come so Laura hugged her.
The farmhouse looked like it had been hit by a twister. The curtains in the upstairs bedrooms hung out of open windows. Bedspreads, blankets and duvets were tumbled out in the yard or hanging from sills. Large pieces of old furniture had been dragged out or thrown from upstairs – wood shattered across the yard. The front door was off its hinges and Dryden could see that some of the floorboards were missing from the hall. A safe that his uncle kept in the back office was on the path, split open, the ragged edges scorched by what looked like a welding rod.
The police and forensics officers picked their way amongst the mess.
‘You came back to this?’ said Laura, rubbing Con’s arm.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, but tears spilt from her eyes. ‘But why?’
‘Inside?’ asked Dryden.
‘Ransacked. But I can’t find anything gone. Broken, ruined, but not gone.’
Her shoulders turned in slightly, as if her chest was hollow, and Dryden realized she’d aged. Not overnight, because he’d seen her at breakfast, but here – now, within a few hours, as if the sight of the house had consolidated all the anguish of what had gone before. Made it real, made it physical.
‘I’ll make tea,’ she said, walking briskly to the side of the house and in through the old conservatory door, with Laura following. The baby cried and the sound, the noise amplified by the glass house, sounded oddly feral.
‘I’ve made a start in here because they said they’d finished,’ said Con. The kitchen was Dryden’s favourite room. His parents had modernized the one at Burnt Fen but this was still the original. The stone floor was uneven, chilly on the hottest day. The pantry room was still in use, the door open, the floor scattered with tins and jars.
‘The burglars looked everywhere?’ asked Dryden.
‘No.’ Con stopped, her back to them, the kettle poised under the tap. ‘They didn’t. I’ve been checking – they threw things about, but if they bothered to open something it was this size.’ She turned her hands held a foot apart. ‘Maybe more.’
‘What do they say they’re looking for?’ asked Laura. Above them they heard something heavy being dragged over the boards.
‘They don’t. But why – why here, Philip?’ It was almost an accusation.
‘They think that someone killed Roger to get something – a package, a parcel.’ Then, in his memory, he saw something he’d missed out in the yard when Humph had parked the cab: one of the forensic officers working his way along a line of rain butts. He’d called out for someone to help him tip one up. ‘Something waterproof,’ he said.
‘They went up into the attic first,’ said Con. ‘Cut the water off.’
Dryden nodded. ‘Maybe he found it – this package – out on the mere. In his nets?’
The kitchen door edged open and Con looked up and Dryden knew she expected to see Roger and the disappointment, when she saw the white-suited forensic officer, was impossible to hide. They were cutting off the water again, he said, to look in the spare tank.
They discussed the details for Roger’s funeral. The inquest, said Con, was scheduled for the Wednesday but they’d told her it would be adjourned. It might be some time before they could issue the paperwork for the death certificate. But they could see the undertakers, start arrangements, and Dryden told them about the burial plot he’d found under the Cedar of Lebanon and how he’d like to buy a bench for the spot.
‘Good. I can start on the paperwork,’ said Con. ‘It’ll keep me busy. We’ll need his birth certificate – papers. They’re in the barn.’ She looked at Dryden. ‘Would you? They’re up in the hayloft with everything else. They had a look out there – the police; they’ll search it later, but they said they were pretty sure it hadn’t been touched.’
Dryden was going to object, point out that this wasn’t the time for paperwork, but she held both hands out, palms down, fingertips up, as if warding away the thought. ‘I need to do something Philip, please.’
The old barn wasn’t by the yard but separate, about half a mile away, along a narrow causeway raised above the peat. Roger had a theory that the original farm had been out there, on a narrow spit of clay, but that they’d moved to a new clay bank to build the present farmhouse in the 1880s. The old was pitch-black wood, a Dutch gable. Outside Roger had stowed the gear for his market gardening business – polytunnels, propagators, and a small-scale irrigation hose. Everything was neat, in its place. Beyond the barn was the field he’d used for the car-wrecking business. Chasses piled two or three deep and the metal cruncher in the far corner. Dryden didn’t like the place because you could always hear the rats. Roger said they bred in the upholstery of the cars.
In the sudden shadows inside the barn Dryden let his eyes piece the familiar images together. In the Second World War Italian PoWs had been billeted at Buskeybay and they’d built a theatre here in the barn – you could still see the remnants of a painted Proscenium Arch under the hayloft. On the far wall was the sketchy outline of a Tuscan landscape – single dark green firs, olive trees and a domed church. Dryden had played here as a boy. The place had held a kind of stage magic, as if all the drama played out within it lingered in the wood. Sadness too – the most enduring kind of sadness – homesickness. It made him shiver even now in the heat of the day, the thought of the Italians huddled in here on a misty fen winter’s night.
After Dryden’s mother had died and New Farm had been sold, Roger had agreed to store the family’s stuff that Dryden couldn’t use on the boat – he didn’t have much space, so he took a few pictures, an old corkscrew of his father’s, his mother’s secateurs from the window ledge by the kitchen door. They’d got rid of almost all the rest at auction. The dregs – furniture, books, the papers – they’d put up in the hayloft. Only a week before Roger had said he should come by, see if there was anything they’d like for the new house.
The boards of the half-loft had been swept and two long rolls of roofing material piled along the back wall. But in one corner stood five objects Dryden recognized: a set of golf clubs, a weathered cardboard box that he knew contained a Hornby 00 train set, a kite, a Spanish guitar and a trunk he’d used as a toy box as a child. Opening it now he smelled old paper – it was full of documents and files. He sat back on his heels. It was nearly twenty years since he’d last had a cigarette but he felt the need now, quite urgently, because if he had one he could prolong the moment.
The deeds for Burnt Fen – at least copies – lay on top. He picked up a bundle of papers and they fell from his hands, slewed across the boards.
He saw the edge of a newspaper cutting and pulled it out. It was from the Barnet Times.
TEACHER SUSPENDED OVER DEATH OF BOY ON SCIENCE FIELD TRIP
A teacher blamed by parents for the death of their eleven-year-old boy on a field trip to Scotland has been suspended and faces questioning by the Metropolitan Police.
Toby Michaels, of Arkley, Barnet, is understood to have drowned in a lake in the Highlands watched by classmates from Kettlebury Secondary Modern who were unable to save him.
A spokesman for the county council said teacher John Dryden, who organized the trip, was not able to swim.
Strathclyde police confirmed Mr Dryden was airlifted from the scene and is in Blair Athol hospital. A spokesman confirmed he is suffering from shock. The rest of the school party was unharmed and returned home by coach.
It is understood Toby was a keen swimmer but got into difficulties after diving into the lake from rocks. His body was finally recovered by a Search and Rescue diving unit.
Mr Arthur Michaels, Toby’s father, said in a statement issued by the family’s solicitor: ‘We demand an inquiry into the tragic death of our wonderful son.
‘In particular we must be told why the boys were left in the care of Mr Dryden – who the school have confirmed was a non-swimmer. He just stood there and watched my son die.’
The accident happened at Black Top Tarn below the summit of Ben Cracken, near Fort William. It is an area visited by school trips studying glaciation. On the day in question a heavy mist had descended on the mountain until late afternoon, when the weather cleared.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: ‘We will be interviewing everyone concerned with this tragic accident on their return to London. Our thoughts are with the family of Toby Michaels.
‘Following interviews we will assess the case and consider whether a file should be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.’
It is understood the family of the dead boy are pressing for a prosecution for criminal negligence. Mr Michaels is managing director of Barkley Homes, the building firm based in Barnet which employs nearly 150 people.
Dryden’s legs had gone to sleep so he stood up, holding the cutting. It was the phrase ‘watched my son die’ which made him wonder how his father had dealt with the stress, the blame. But the dark heart of the story – the moment when the boy drowned – was still within a black box. Why had Toby Michaels drowned if he was a good swimmer? Why had his father agreed to lead the trip if he couldn’t swim?
The newspaper cutting at least gave him a precise date. He was confident he could track down other articles, get a fuller picture; he owed his father that, whether he was the man who died in the floodwaters of 1977 or the man who died in the white van at Manea only last week.