The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  They sat together in the garden of Sexton Cottage, across the sheep field from the graveyard of Christ Church, Brimstone Hill. The house had been built in the same style as Christ Church, the rectory and the school – a playful Victorian confection of lancet windows and carved whitewashed guttering; further evidence that Brimstone Hill had a brick heart. It was early evening and the white light from the scene-of-crime lamps in the stand of pine trees around ‘Golgotha’ was growing brighter by the minute. The body of the victim had been taken down, but not yet taken away. Through the pine trees Dryden could see the neon shape of a forensic tent on the summit of the small hill. He’d been told the pathologist wished to see the body in situ. Dryden imagined it laid out beneath the brightly lit plastic, the bruises and bloody wounds stark on the white skin. He felt his mouth go dry each time the memory came back, reliving the first sight of the slumped and bloodied flesh. The simple charm of the English country garden around them seemed to make the reality of what lay amongst those pine trees all the more macabre. Sexton Cottage had been requisitioned as a murder incident room for the duration. A forensic unit was based in the kitchen, uniformed branch in the front room.

  PC Powell had taken Dryden’s statement several hours ago. A printed version lay in front of him now on a wooden table. Dryden had one hand spread out over it to keep it in place. Sudden gusts of wind, remnants of the earlier dust storm, still disturbed the evening air. The constable had a penchant for bling and wore a Rolex with a gold strap. He had a wrap-around set of Gucci reflective sunglasses in his shirt pocket and a gold chain round his neck, which Dryden could see because he had his first two shirt buttons open. And the panda car, parked in the narrow lane which led to the cottage from the road, was strictly for the job only. Powell’s own car – a low-slung sports car – made occasional appearances when he was off duty but checking his patch.

  Since Dryden had opened the Brimstone Hill office he’d seen Powell every few days. The policeman would bring snippets of local news to the office. Dryden, in return, had agreed to let The Crow back some of Powell’s local projects: a new telephone-based neighbourhood watch scheme, an anti-vandalism campaign aimed at kids, and an amnesty on guns and knives. Dryden thought they had a good working relationship, because they both got something valuable out of talking to each other.

  ‘So – to summarize,’ said Powell, ‘we need to be clear on three points: the lancet door to the roof was back on its hinges when you found it open just after thirteen-thirty hours today, the wooden sign was nailed to the outside of the door, and you believe the victim was dead when you found him?’

  ‘Right on all counts,’ said Dryden. Powell was a fan of logic and Dryden always enjoyed their conversations. ‘Now. Can I make that call?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Powell, pushing the statement over for Dryden to sign.

  They’d taken Dryden’s mobile away and asked him to stay at the scene in order to give his statement and answer any questions when CID arrived from Ely. A message had been relayed to Laura that she had to come out and pick up Eden from the crèche. Beyond the church Dryden could see a line of vehicles – an ambulance, two squad cars, several pool cars for CID, and now a van from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Parked in the distance he could see Humph’s Capri.

  Powell gave him his phone back in a plastic evidence bag. ‘All yours. Mind you, I’m not promising there’s any signal. That’s why half of CID is inside using the landline …’ He nodded at the kitchen window of Sexton Cottage. All the windows showed lights and they could hear the constant hum of conversation and the clatter of a digital printer.

  Dryden stood on one of the garden tables to get a single reception bar on the phone. He called Vee Hilgay at The Crow’s office, knowing she’d have heard news on the radio and presumed he was on the case. With Powell in earshot he kept it short and to the point. He had the story; he’d write it overnight for the Ely Express. He had a few pictures on his phone of the police and scene-of-crime forensic officers with the church in the background. But Vee should get The Crow’s photographer, Josie Evans, to run out in case there were any better picture opportunities later.

  ‘She left half an hour ago,’ said Vee, sounding irritated. It was one of Dryden’s failings, he knew: reminding his staff to do things before he knew they’d forgotten to do them. He struggled to believe anyone might be better at this job than he was.

  ‘Great. Well done.’ But the line was dead, the single signal bar flickering out of life.

  A woman PC brought out a tray of tea and biscuits, followed by DI George Friday, the doyen of Ely CID. Dryden had known him for five years. They had one of those sparring, tetchy relationships which can come very close to friendship. Friday sank his hands deep in his raincoat pockets. He was thirty-five but acted fifty and never complained of an injury which made him limp slightly with his left leg. He had three sons and spent Saturdays on windswept fields watching them play football, sipping coffee from a battered flask.

  Friday was one of those smokers who appear to get no pleasure from their habit. He lit up now and threw the match away in disgust. ‘Good job you found him,’ he said. ‘Mind you, this weather, we’d have got a whiff before long.’

  Dryden felt something rise in his throat. The shock of finding the corpse might have receded but the sense of violation was still tangible. He felt that the world, certainly his world, had been despoiled. His first urge, kneeling there in front of the crucifix, had been to run to the village school and make sure Eden was safe. As he sipped his tea, the image of the figure draped on the cross flashed across his eye, reprinting itself on his retina when he blinked.‘I’ve got a story to write,’ he said, trying to snap back to the present. ‘Any theories? Arrests?’

  Friday mimicked a laugh.

  ‘Gang of Chinese migrants nick lead off a church roof then fall out, but over what?’ asked Dryden. ‘Who’s set to get the most cash? Or did someone lose their nerve? But then there’s the ritual element – the cross, the wooden sign nailed to the church door. You must have some idea?’

  ‘Must I?’ asked Friday, letting cigarette smoke seep out of his mouth through his teeth. ‘That all sounds good, but it didn’t come from me. You found the victim, you know he was Chinese. You can go from there. That’s where we’re starting, too – Chinatown in Lynn.’

  King’s Lynn was eighteen miles north, an old seaport with a big migrant Chinese population who’d arrived in the town to meet local demand for cockle-pickers out in the Wash. They’d settled down by the docks in an area loosely known to the locals as Chinatown.

  ‘And that’s why we’re not saying anything much today,’ said Friday. ‘Because, as far as is possible, I don’t want them to know we’re coming. Well, not all of them anyway. The ones who did this will be ready for it. Or they may have just gone to ground. Anyway, I’m not putting out any details until forensics have done their job. Not even a name – if we had one, which we don’t. So it’s all yours for twenty-four hours. I presume you aren’t flogging this?’

  Friday knew that Dryden made money as a stringer for Fleet Street, selling on news when it fell between his own newspaper deadlines. He also knew that he was fiercely proud of his own newspapers and would fight to keep a story a scoop.

  ‘I’ll put out a paragraph for the wire services, the bare details, but nothing that I can keep for the paper. That’ll hit the streets tomorrow afternoon.’

  Friday handed Dryden a piece of paper. ‘That’s the statement we’re putting out.’

  The body of a man was discovered in woodland near Christ Church, Brimstone Hill, at 1.30 p.m. today. Earlier, thieves had stolen lead from the roof of the church. Ely CID is treating the death as suspicious. The victim has not been identified. Anyone with information which might help the police in their inquiries should ring Ely 886345.

  ‘So nobody heard a shot last night? You’ve done door-to-door; I’ve been watching.’

  Friday’s face glazed over. ‘Like I said, just the statement. You know what you know
; I can’t do anything about that. Otherwise this investigation releases information when I’m ready for it to release information. Got it?’

  On the road outside Christ Church a line of cars had now formed into a convoy, engines running. The buzz of police radios was like a distant swarm of bees.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Friday. ‘Chinatown calls. The scene’s all yours, Powell. Forensics are just finishing up. When the body’s gone you’ve got a uniform from Wisbech to help keep the nosy parkers out.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘It was a warning, of course,’ said Dryden. ‘Why leave the wooden sign nailed up if they didn’t want us to find the victim quickly? Takes some doing, getting a body up on a cross like that. Two people, at least, maybe three or four. Why go to all that trouble? Why not just hang him off a tree in the churchyard if you want to make a point?’

  But Friday was gone, so he didn’t get an answer.

  SEVEN

  They took the body away after the sun had set. Rigor mortis had passed, because the black body bag was sinuous, buckling as two forensics officers in white brought it out of the trees and laid it on a stretcher. A small crowd of villagers had gathered by the church, hemmed in by a long stretch of police tape. As the body was carried through the headstones a flashlight went off. When Dryden’s eyes recovered he saw The Crow’s photographer, Josie Evans, up on top of one of the box tombs, weighed down with camera gear.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said PC Powell. ‘If you remember anything I need to know, ring the mobile, you’ve got the number.’

  Dryden watched Powell walk across the field that led up to the edge of the graveyard and he thought he heard him whistling. Dryden recognized the melody – Bach, he thought, expertly tuneful. It occurred to him that, given the circumstances, Powell, a lowly PC, seemed particularly unfazed by a murder inquiry on his patch.

  Dryden had his laptop on his knee and he began to knock out the news story he’d have to file overnight. He thought that if he wrote it here and now, its principal virtue – that it was in part an eyewitness account – would shine through. The front page of the paper had to be designed and laid out in the morning, the presses would roll by noon, and the story would be out on the streets by teatime. The piece needed to read as if it had been written in the moment of discovery. That was the secret to reportage. Only tell the reader what you saw, heard, smelled and touched.

  ‘Laptop’s smart,’ said a voice which made him jump.

  It was the young man PC Powell had described as the grandson of the householder of Sexton Cottage. He’d been about all afternoon. He wore a grubby white T-shirt, splashed with paint and what looked like turps. His hair was fair and unruly, his frame spindly, and there was a tattoo on his right arm of an intricate Celtic design.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dryden. ‘Do you mind if I do this here? I’ve got a deadline.’

  ‘Make yourself at home. Everyone else has.’

  ‘Sorry. You’re the owner’s grandson?’

  ‘He’s upstairs resting. Yeah – Grandad was the sexton, best part of thirty years. House comes with the job, least it did. The last vicar said he could stay for life. That’s the point of being sexton; you’re the keeper of sacred things. It’s a vocation. Not just a job.’

  Dryden stood and offered his hand. ‘I’m Philip Dryden, from The Crow.’

  ‘Vincent Haig. People call me Vinnie.’

  Dryden felt rings in the handshake – two, maybe three. Looking into Haig’s eyes, he reassessed his age as being somewhere in the late thirties, maybe slightly older. The middle-aged trying to look young are never attractive.

  ‘You spotted the lead missing off the roof?’ asked Dryden, recalling his earlier conversation with the Rev. Temple-Wright.

  ‘No. Grandad spotted it. Well, he heard them in the night. Not much he could do – he’s blind, has been for five years now. Cataracts. He rang the nick at Wisbech and Powell’s number; this was three o’clock in the morning. Left messages. They did fuck all.’

  ‘I guess no one thought it was going to end in murder, did they? Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,’ said Dryden.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Haig. ‘Grandad phoned me first thing to say he’d heard something in the night and I came over to check it out. I saw the lead had gone so I made it secure and rang the vicar. She rang Powell; he came round and bunged some tape over the doorway, said he’d report it, give us a crime number for the insurance claim. That should have been it, done and dusted. Like you said, none of us knew that poor sod was up in the trees on the cross.’

  They heard a cat flap bang and a trail of three kittens ran out across the yard. Then the back door opened and an old man came out. Eighty years old, perhaps even more, with thin grey hair, outdoor skin and a wind tan, common in the Fens, which gave the face a leathery appearance. Both his eyes were clearly sightless, flat and dull, focused on a point out in the field. Dryden was troubled by the blind because he couldn’t read character in their eyes. They could hide so much.

  ‘I can hear your language inside. You might respect the dead,’ he said, his eyes searching for his grandson.

  A sneer disfigured Vincent Haig’s face. Dryden disliked him immediately because he knew the calculation that lay behind it; that the old man couldn’t see it, but that Dryden could.

  The old man held a hand out into thin air. ‘I’m Albe Haig,’ he said, the first name pronounced to rhyme with bumblebee. Dryden introduced himself. Haig said he could stay as long as he liked and that he was making more tea and would bring the pot out.

  Dryden sat with the grandson in silence. On the roof of Christ Church they could see lights moving in the dusk as the forensic team finished their work. A single PC stood at the entrance into the pine trees where they’d brought out the victim’s body.

  Haig licked his lips. ‘See this field – the one between us and the church?’

  Dryden counted twenty sheep still on the rough pasture.

  ‘It’s called the Clock Holt in the village, although there’s nothing on the map. Story is that when they built the church, one of the local gentry gave this field to the parish on the understanding that any rents or income would go to the vicar to pay for the upkeep of the church clock. Back then a clock would have been rare in a place like this. Everything would have run by the bell: the working day, services, shops. That’s the Victorians for you – they ran on clockwork.’

  ‘I’ve never heard chimes,’ said Dryden. In the dusk he could see a small exterior bell arch on the roof.

  Haig leaned forward and looked into Dryden’s face. ‘That’s because they decided it was more important to use the money for this cottage, a home for the sexton. So the rent covers all the costs. They promised Grandad, the last vicar did, that he could have it for life. Now she wants him out. She’s gonna sell it, and the rent from the Clock Field’s going to help meet costs. That’s what she said to his face: help meet costs. Nice woman.’

  There was something wheedling about Vincent Haig that set Dryden’s nerves on edge. When he spoke his shoulders moved as if he was trying to flex an arthritic neck. His manner annoyed Dryden; he was like one of those charity workers who insist on shaking their collecting tin in your face.

  ‘Was the promise made in writing?’ asked Dryden.

  Vincent Haig looked sideways. ‘That’s not how these things work. For Grandad’s generation your word was good enough.’

  Dryden’s sympathies were with Albe, but he wondered what they would find if they could spool back to the moment the promise was made. What would they really hear? A cast-iron promise, or just a form of words? It was only human nature, after all, to hear what you wish to hear, and to miss the get-out-clause.

  But there was a story here. Hard-hearted vicar evicts blind man from his home of thirty years. What made Dryden uncomfortable was the feeling that Vincent Haig had fed him the information, like bait on a hook. It was also an oddly calculating thing to do as they sat surveying a murder scene. Was this really the right time to disc
uss a row over who paid the rent on Sexton Cottage?

  The old man came back with a pot of tea on a tray with three mugs. His movements in the small garden were perfectly calibrated, shuffling between chairs and plant pots without error. As he set the mugs down, his free hand checked the flat surface.

  Then he stood looking across the Clock Holt to the church. Dryden wondered what he could see in his mind: a jigsaw of memories, perhaps, in black and white.

  ‘So you heard the thieves in the night?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘But I didn’t hear a gunshot,’ said Albe. He shook his head. ‘That’s not right, is it? I hear everything.’

  Vincent Haig stiffened in his seat and set his hand on the table edge, the fingers splayed. Dryden saw that the top of his right index finger was missing – just a half-inch.

  ‘What did you hear?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘They were good; I said to that copper they were professionals. I didn’t hear a van, nothing on the road at all. But to get the lead off they needed to lever it off the rafters, where it’s been pinned down. I heard that.’ He pulled the lobe on his right ear.

  ‘Did you look?’

  It was the wrong thing to say but the old man was nodding. ‘I went to the bedroom window. They were up and down in ten minutes. They tried to keep quiet, but there were a few words.’

  ‘English?’

  Albe Haig shook his head. ‘Foreigners. People want easy lives now,’ he added, and Dryden thought he was searching for his grandson’s face. ‘As if God owes them that. ’Specially foreigners.’

  Dryden stiffened, hoping that this man who he liked – admired, even – wasn’t going to reveal a bitter prejudice.

  ‘You don’t know that, Grandad,’ said Haig, an easy, mocking swagger in his voice. ‘Just because the one that died was ethnic Chinese, doesn’t mean they all were.’ Dryden noted Vincent Haig’s careful political correctness.