Nightrise

by Jim Kelly

  There wasn’t a trace of alcohol in the air but Trelaw’s eyes told a different story – the whites distinctly yellow, the baby-like distended skin of his cheeks showing cracked and broken miniature capillaries, like old China.

  ‘I showed Detective Inspector Friday,’ said Trelaw. He swung his eyes back to the screens without moving his head. In Dryden’s memory he only had a still image of this man behind his desk in that damp, fire-lit office in Swaffham Prior. Now he realized it wasn’t a still image at all – it was just that the man maintained an inherent stillness. A hand came up to touch his lips as if rising from under water.

  ‘I know,’ said Dryden, taking a seat without an invitation. ‘He just thought I might be able to see something. You know – the way someone walks. A habit – a gait – it’s one of my special subjects.’

  The truth was he’d asked Friday if he could see the film. He wanted to meet Trelaw on a professional basis. Then judge the right moment to look into his past. But most of all he wanted to hear him speak, to see him move, make a judgement on his character.

  On the desk was a picture in one of those frames people use for family groups – but this one showed a classic Rover in grey and cream. Dryden recalled the article from the cuttings on the club Trelaw had set up for owners of the Rover P4.

  ‘Nice car,’ said Dryden.

  Trelaw readjusted the position of the frame but said nothing, returning his eyes to the screens, each of which showed part of Ely town centre bathed in sunshine.

  ‘Here . . .’ said Trelaw, his fingers playing with surprising dexterity over a console. His eyes rose to the central screen and stayed there.

  Dryden noticed three things: Trelaw had a lunchbox open on the desk top beside him, and a small flask, and his shirt – once white – was grey with repeated washing. Middle-class poverty. Dryden imagined net curtains and threadbare carpets.

  An image flickered on the main screen – not a video flicker, but a pixelated digital film.

  It was Ely Market Place on Saturday morning. Dryden’s flesh cooled rapidly. He hated these images, everyday images, but tainted by the knowledge that something was about to happen, something which meant the day would be remembered for ever. Jamie Bulger’s killers in a shopping precinct. The London Tube bombers coming through the ticket barriers. Evil, lethal, but only in retrospect.

  ‘There,’ said Trelaw.

  A figure crossed over from Fore Hill into the market place carrying a car seat cradle. Relaxed, long-limbed, in shorts, the cot swung confidently, but moving fast. Shorts, showing thick, muscled legs which looked tanned. A T-shirt but the face obscured by a long-peaked US-style cap pulled down. He walked fast, looking at his own feet. The digital time read-out on the screen read 9.08 a.m. Some men look odd in shorts, self-conscious, but this man looked as if he lived in them. They came just below his knees and he slipped a mobile out of one pocket with his free hand and checked it as he walked.

  ‘There’s a motif on the cap?’ said Dryden.

  The image juddered, the magnification jumping once, twice. The cap filled the screen: blurred, but they could read the motif: FedEx.

  ‘Millions of them,’ said Trelaw.

  The man walked across the screen and into the cathedral grounds through the arched door in the wall of the Almonry Café.

  They watched the screen blank out.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Trelaw. ‘I told ’em not to bother you.’

  ‘It wasn’t why I came anyway,’ said Dryden.

  Dryden took out the death certificate he’d found in the hayloft at Buskeybay and slid it along the desk. Issued January 18, 1978.

  ‘That’s the original,’ said Dryden. ‘Your signature.’

  Trelaw studied it. ‘Yes. It is.’ He held it an inch from his eyes, which were large and watery. ‘I’m in front of these screens all day. I can read but it takes time to find my range.’ He smiled weakly.

  ‘When we met, I was with Mum; we went to your office at Swaffham Prior. You said we couldn’t have one of these because there wasn’t a body.’

  ‘No. That’s right.’

  ‘Except here it is. How did that work?’

  ‘You can apply – the coroner can apply to the Home Office. I think it’s the MOJ now – Ministry of Justice. If they’re happy to presume the death has taken place they can issue an exemption – that’s DDM 67 – it should have been attached.’ He pressed a thumb on the double dot of the staple in the corner. ‘Here.’ He held it up to the light.

  Dryden had removed the exemption. He wanted Trelaw to talk him through the process.

  ‘The coroner’s verdict is usually left open – that will be on the files. Sometimes, if the circumstances are obvious, they’ll go for accidental, or misadventure. Then we sign.’

  ‘It was accidental death,’ said Dryden. The inquest, held in the schoolroom at Reach, was as pin-sharp a fragment of memory as he had. It might as well have been framed.

  ‘There were witnesses to the moment of death?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dryden, considering the oddly phrased question. ‘But there is a problem. This death – Jack Dryden’s death – isn’t registered. There’s a certificate, fine. But it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. A man claiming to be my father was alive, not far from here, until just a few weeks ago. You see his life had carried on – my father’s life – complete with his driving licence, medical card, pension – everything. So I’m going to check but I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened – The General Register Office – the GRO, was never informed of the death. As far as the state is concerned he was alive and well for thirty-five years after his death. So someone issued this certificate and then didn’t inform the GRO. Do you see?’

  ‘And you think that’s me – that I did that?’

  ‘No. But I thought you were the first person I should ask. It’s a simple question: if you made out this certificate, how is it possible a copy did not get to the GRO?’

  The blood in Trelaw’s face was blotchy now. ‘Why would I do that?’

  Trelaw seemed determined to cross-examine himself. But if he was prepared to ask himself the question Dryden was perfectly willing to give him an answer.

  ‘You lost your job because of your drinking problem. It must have been tough. You must have been short of money.’ Dryden knew the accusation was implied, and unfair, given he had no idea how the coroner’s office worked: who made out the paperwork, who was responsible for the secretarial duties.

  ‘I didn’t lose my job. I was transferred to the council offices.’

  Dryden hated people who danced along the line between truth and lies and Trelaw’s retreat into such detail made him feel better about effectively calling him a fraudster. ‘OK. But the registrar’s position is a good one – isn’t it? You have a certain independence. I would have thought it was better paid than the job you went to Ely for – that was just clerical? But you took it because you needed to be near the hospital. For dialysis.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And they wouldn’t consider a transplant because of the heavy drinking. The cost too in those days – the cost to the NHS. There’d be a waiting list and you’d be the last person they’d put on it. A middle-aged alcoholic.’

  Trelaw’s eyes had filled with water. ‘It was a complex decision. My decision. A private decision.’

  Trelaw was shaking – Dryden could see that now – very slightly, but at a very high frequency. Buzzing.

  Dryden didn’t back off. ‘So – what I think is – if we’re looking for a motive as to why in 1977 you saw fit to sell my father’s identity I’d suggest that you had to buy a kidney transplant on the open market. And that’s what you did – because I don’t think you’re teetotal now – are you?

  ‘What did it cost – 10,000? Maybe more if you had to travel. So – for the sake of it – let’s say that happened. You sold the ID for 20,000 and got yourself a new kidney. Is that wrong?’

  ‘Yes. I borrowed the money for the operation
– 17,000, actually. Although of course it’s cost me much more – much, much more. Five times that – six, because I wanted the job back. So I did something very stupid. I went to a loan company. I’m still paying. I’ll always still be paying because I didn’t read the small print. I have a job but I live the life of a pauper. I pay back every week of my life. If I’d sold your father’s identity my life would be very different.’

  He straightened his cuffs.

  Dryden thought he’d chosen his words carefully. ‘I hope you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Trelaw, as if he was speaking to a child.

  ‘Because you’re going to have to tell it all again – to the police. I think they’ll check the details.’

  Trelaw looked at his watch. ‘I’ve already spoken to the police. In fact, it was Detective Inspector Friday I told.’ Another weak smile. ‘You see, it wasn’t my duty to inform the central authorities – the GRO. I was a district registrar for the East Fens. We took all our paperwork by hand into Chatteris once a week. That’s HQ for the service – has been since the mid-seventies. The office there dealt with London. If the notification failed to get through it was because someone didn’t do their job at Chatteris, or in London, or in Southport. I think that’s where Detective Inspector Friday has taken his questions. It’s where you should have taken yours.’

  Dryden felt like a fool, which made him angry, and being angry made his brain buzz, and so – with a kind of desperate relief – he saw there was a flaw in Trelaw’s logic.

  ‘Right. But what if you didn’t send them the paperwork? What if you kept the documents? It was months after my dad’s death anyway – I don’t expect the office at Chatteris could track all the deaths in the district.’

  ‘There will be records. When we take the certificates in they take a note. Keep a diary.’ An emotion finally fought its way on to Trelaw’s face: a hint of something devious in his small dark eyes. ‘Mind you, back then it was paper records, of course. I’ve no idea what’s been kept.’

  Trelaw struggled to his feet. His spine wasn’t straight but he still stood six feet tall. ‘There’s a new system now – I was talking to someone in the department the other week. Digital images – all by computer. But then it was paper, of course. I try to keep up with things. I always read The Crow – the death notices, carefully. Roger Stutton – at Buskeybay. His sister was Elizabeth Dryden, at Burnt Fen – that’s what it said.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dryden. He couldn’t shake off the thought that he’d somehow been threatened in a kind of devious, circular, fashion.

  Trelaw held out a hand. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  THIRTY

  A UK Border Agency bus stood outside the small block of flats on Gas Holder Lane. The block was three storeys high, in concrete, with balconies in primary colours which had lost their battle with the fen sun: blazing from dawn to dusk, peeling it back to the wood. The street lay in a small district by the railway station beyond Back Hill. Very few knew about the block, which was used for problem families and short-term accommodation for council tenants. The Yorubas had been given a flat while the Home Office considered David Yoruba’s appeal against deportation to his native Niger.

  The TEXT from Gill Yoruba’s mobile had been short and direct.

  HELP, PLEASE.

  The bus had barred windows, tinted grey, and was about half full. Dryden could see two faces, one black, one white, but both had exactly the same expression: a combination of exhaustion and resignation. The driver and two men he could only class as guards wore Day-Glo jackets and insignia which read CERTIO. Dryden thought it was a private-sector security company.

  Three flights of exterior stairs got him up to the Yorubas’ flat. He took them two at a time. Two guards, in the same livery as the men on the bus, were trying to get David Yoruba out through the front door. Dryden didn’t like this moment, the one just before violence becomes clear-cut. The security men had him by the arms but in a kind of fake-assistance stance, as if he had trouble walking. And he was resisting, using every muscle in his body to prevent them moving him forward, but controlling his temper, directing all that anger inwards, not outwards. It was the moment just before something snaps.

  Behind them, standing in the corridor, was Gill Yoruba, trying not to hold on to her husband, but pawing at his back nonetheless.

  ‘Do you have the right to do that?’ asked Dryden. He took out his mobile phone and started pretending to take pictures with it. ‘I’m press. I said – do you have the right to do that?’

  A third man appeared in the corridor carrying a holdall.

  ‘Can you stand aside, sir.’ He flashed an ID wallet at Dryden. ‘I have explained to Mr and Mrs Yoruba. Mr Yoruba is required to attend at Yarl’s Wood detention centre for the final tribunal into his case. He had twenty-one days’ notice of the date. We do have the documentation.’

  Dryden didn’t see the punch but he saw David Yoruba’s head flip back and a sudden flash of red blood. He lost his footing for a second and they had him out on the balcony, and down on his face, in a few seconds. Handcuffs were on swiftly and then they pulled him up again. He looked murderous, and Dryden thought he probably feared that this was it, a bitter goodbye to Britain, to his wife. Through his mind must be running every avenue still open, like a map of hell. Run for it. Head butt one of the security guards. Get back in the flat. Or let them put him on that bus. If he did that, then within a minute, his facial expression would be exactly the same as the bus’s other two passengers.

  ‘Go, David,’ she said. ‘Go. There is still a chance. I’ll talk to Mr Dryden. Just trust us, David.’

  One of the security guards was nodding and Dryden noticed he had blood on his lip too, but when he cleaned it away there was no cut. ‘Yeah. That’s it. We might even overlook the assault.’

  ‘I’m a witness,’ said Dryden. ‘And I’ll turn up at court.’

  The guards exchanged glances, trying to judge the moment.

  They bundled him away and down the stairs. Yoruba looked back at his wife. ‘I will call this evening – stay by the phone,’ he said, then turned to Dryden. ‘If the appeal fails do as we discussed. You will do this?’

  ‘Yes. I will,’ said Dryden.

  Gill came to the edge of the balcony and she and Dryden watched the bus pull away. She said the lawyer had advised them that if the tribunal did not allow the appeal David would be deported within seventy-two hours.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll go to Yarl’s Wood,’ said Gill. ‘I can’t just stay here.’

  They went inside and she made him tea. He said he’d contact the UK Border Agency and try and get a statement. If it helped he’d run the story of their missing daughter in the Ely Express – but that might be too late. He’d try the local MP, the MEP too. If they could apply any pressure directly on the Home Office it might help.

  When he stopped talking they both listened to the silence in the flat.

  ‘I’m sorry – do you remember if Aque was given a death certificate?’ asked Dryden. ‘You sent the council the birth certificate – a copy. But was there a death certificate?’

  Aque’s story had been in his mind since he’d spoken to Rory Setchey’s widow, the mother of Samuel, whose identity had been stolen after just six months of life. A child, dead tragically young, buried at Manea. If they stole Jack Dryden’s identity in 1977, and Samuel Setchey’s in 1986, were they still in business?

  Gill Yoruba’s eyes seemed to brim with tears. ‘Yes. I have it. We were going to buy a stone and have it put in the cemetery – not the pauper’s graves, with the rest. A memorial stone. They said we could not do this without Aque’s body. Instead we can place a plaque in the memorial garden. It’s not the same of course, because she’s not there. She’ll never be there.’ She looked to the window which framed a view of a patch of allotments. ‘I had to send them the death certificate for that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s painful. But I need to see it.’

  ‘I have
a copy.’

  Dryden sat alone, thinking of the memorial plaque for Aque: a brass plate, like the ones you find outside a solicitors’ office. A brief comfort to her parents, but little else. They’d always think of her as missing. Placeless. Lost.

  Then he remembered a story he’d covered back on his first paper. It had been the 1980s and an IRA bomb had blown up a patrol in Irish border country. One of the soldiers had been local so they’d planned to give the funeral the full treatment: running copy, on press day. He’d been given the job of filing running copy from a spot in the graveyard.

  The day before the funeral the news editor read in one of the nationals that the soldier’s body had never been found after the blast. Nothing. So what was in the coffin? Dryden, junior reporter, was delegated to find out. He rang the undertaker and learnt a key lesson – that if he was professional in the way he did his job, he’d get answers from other professionals. So he was honest and upfront: if there was no body, what were they going to bury? The answer was common sense: any ‘remains’ from the scene of the blast would be included in the coffin – scraps of clothing, bloodstained, perhaps, splinters of metal and wood and possibly bone. There were several victims of the blast – so the debris from the scene would be divided between them. Then they’d weight the coffin to match the weight of the deceased. They’d start with his uniform, his medals, his gun, and anything else the family wished to place inside. If it came up light they’d add a lead weight.

  They’d covered the funeral service, with its flags and addresses. But he’d kept his distance in the graveyard. Telephoto lenses were lined up beyond a wall to take discreet shots; the Fleet Street boys smoking, not trying too hard to keep their voices down. He’d stood apart, partly shielded by a large Victorian monument to the Boer War. But he’d been struck by the sense in which the burying of the coffin was a cathartic act. Even the widow smiled, clutching her children, leading them away from the grave. And the dead man’s comrades, huddled, lighting up once it was over, their voices gaining power after the family had gone, after an hour of whispers.