The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  Donovan strode ahead until they got close to the old airfield. The water tower was still standing, and the ruin of the control tower. Access to the site was by an old road which ran off the airfield, crossing the Twenty-Foot Drain by a low humped bridge. At the junction with the road there was a set of automated barriers.

  The old runway was just close-cropped grass until you got to the concrete apron where they’d built the industrial units, six of them, each with a roll-up door, single storey, with a long aluminium roof which radiated heat, so that the air above buckled as if gently simmering.

  The kite maker’s was the first unit, marked by an outline of a hawk on the roll-up door. Outside the next were parked four old grey Rovers, one of them up on blocks. At the far end from Silent Hawk there was a unit with a butter-yellow painted door and a large white van parked alongside. The noise of machinery running came from inside, and a complex sound of glass tinkling, like a milk float.

  The roll-up door of Silent Hawk rose to the sound of an electric motor. Inside they could see steel racking, kits packed into shelves, spools of guideline on the wall.

  A man Dryden presumed to be Dr James Barnard came out to meet them. He didn’t look like a scientist, or more accurately, he didn’t look like the scientist who’d spoken to Dryden on the phone. He was in his twenties, wearing designer shorts and a T-shirt which said ‘CAPTURE THE WIND’ and featured a picture of a kite which looked like a cross between a zeppelin and a giant jet engine.

  Barnard did the small talk well, thanking Donovan for his time, Dryden for making contact. ‘A lot of journalists wouldn’t have bothered. I appreciate it.’

  Which was bullshit, thought Dryden, because he’d never met a journalist who wouldn’t have rung the company to get their side of the story. They might not have printed their side of the story, but they’d have rung.

  ‘OK. A quick test, Mr Donovan,’ said Barnard. ‘If you’re ready.’

  Donovan hadn’t said a word but he gave Barnard his Scottish eyebrow. ‘They make a noise, your kites. Like a squeaky trolley wheel. I can hear it now.’

  Barnard held up both hands as if for silence. ‘I’m not saying you don’t hear something. But we need to do the science. So I’ve set up an experiment. There are eight kites flying in the far field, do you see? The field by the road.’ He turned on his heel and pointed along the access road, over the bridge, towards the B-road which ran between Brimstone Hill and Wisbech. ‘I’ve lowered all the rest we’re testing today. One of these eight kites emits an intermittent high-pitched ultrasound note inaudible to humans.’ He smiled at Donovan. ‘The field is dry and there’s no crop on it at the moment, so it’s OK to wander around. If you can hear this noise, try and identify which kite is responsible, and count the interval between the pulses of sound. None of them have crackling tails – so there should be no confusion.’ He smiled again, even more broadly this time.

  ‘The noise is excruciating,’ said Donovan. ‘It’s not a joke. I made a complaint to you, by phone, and email. I got nothing back. I’ve been in business most of my life. Treating the public like that isn’t very smart. Or very nice.’

  Barnard had the decency to blush slightly under his academic tan. ‘Yes. Sorry about that. You’re right, we haven’t covered ourselves in glory, have we? We do get complaints about the fluttering noise with the tail models. Our people in Cambridge must have assumed it was that which was making the noise. I’m sorry.’ Barnard made himself stand up straight. ‘We’re all sorry.’

  ‘Let’s do this,’ said Donovan, setting off.

  They walked with him to the bridge. Dryden was surprised by the size of the Twenty-Foot Drain beneath. Sunk between banks, it held a large, flat-bottomed Dutch barge, moored to one bank. The boat looked abandoned, but Dryden noticed a fresh oil stain on the water surface seeping from the engine cowling, and in the half-open wheelhouse a bright red plastic thermos flask. The bridge gave them ten feet of height in a flat landscape, so that suddenly they could see for miles.

  Barnard looked east towards Coldham’s Farm. ‘Quite a show earlier on the wind farm, flames and everything.’

  ‘I know. I was there.’ Dryden gave him a quick run-down on the story. Barnard said he’d have to get security checked on the lock-up.

  ‘Who’s in the other units?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘Number two’s a garage. Owner specializes in Rovers, as you can see, but he’s only open weekends, rest of the time he works for one of the petrol companies on a forecourt. Number three is storage – I think. But I never see anyone. Number four’s empty. So is number five. Number six is Barrowby Oilseed; they make oil from rapeseed. It’s the new olive oil.’

  Barnard laughed, shaking his head, as if it couldn’t happen. But there were several rapeseed oil producers on the Fens, Dryden knew, including one near Ely which had carved itself a niche in the ‘extra virgin’ market.

  They heard a door slam, and looking back saw two men come out of the back of the Barrowby Oilseed unit and get in the white van. A minute later they swept past, taking the bridge at speed, both driver and passenger looking the other way.

  ‘Friendly,’ said Dryden.

  ‘They’re OK. I guess they’re trying to make a living like everyone else.’

  Donovan watched the van pull out and drive away, as focused as a hawk himself. Then he completed one more round of the field under the kites and marched back to the bridge.

  He brought his shoes together as if coming to attention. ‘Eight kites,’ he said. ‘From your left – one, two, three and four along the road, then five, six, seven and eight. It’s number three.’ He pointed back. ‘Hawk shape, black and brown. Pulses are every three seconds.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Barnard, visibly shocked.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Dryden.

  Barnard’s shoulders slumped. ‘That’s the one, the experimental model. It emits a note every three and a half seconds. No one should be able to hear it.’

  ‘I can,’ said Donovan.

  Barnard looked at his shoes. ‘Yes. Sorry. It appears that you can, Mr Donovan.’ He wiped a hand across his lips. ‘We’ll have to do more tests. There’s a chance you got it right by accident, a fluke, a coincidence. It would be bad science not to check. But there’s not much doubt, is there? The real question is, how rare are you? We need to know why you can hear it.’

  ‘The real question, if you don’t mind me saying, is when can I get some peace?’ said Donovan.

  They talked it through inside the unit. Barnard set up an electric fan and gave them coffee and biscuits, then made Donovan an offer on behalf of Silent Hawk. They’d pay him to do a series of tests once they’d modified the sonics on the kite. Fifty pounds an hour was the lab rate for volunteers. They’d pay for an audiologist from Addenbrooke’s Hospital at Cambridge to test Donovan’s ears. In the meantime, they’d take the kite down.

  And there was a deal for Dryden, too. If he’d hold off on the story until they had the test results, he could have all the details on an exclusive basis. Given the logjam with news on The Crow, this was, for Dryden, the perfect outcome. He swapped business cards with Barnard and said he’d call in a week.

  Dryden said he’d walk Donovan back to his house. As they passed the industrial units they saw a man outside Barrowby Oilseed smoking a cigarette: central casting east European, with a full stubble set, a shaved head, and at his feet a small fighting dog, one of that breed which seems muscle-bound to the point of being unable to walk. Inside they could hear the machinery running, a bottling plant, presumably, for the Fens’ answer to olive oil. The man chain-lit a new cigarette and looked at Dryden, not at him at all, but through him: a genuine thousand-yard stare.

  EIGHTEEN

  Humph picked Dryden up at The Crow’s office in Brimstone Hill at five. The reporter had collected his son from the crèche and installed him now in the child seat in the back of the Capri. Then he got in the front and asked the question he was determined to keep asking until he got a sati
sfactory answer: ‘How’s Grace?’

  ‘Fine.’ Humph pretended to monitor a car behind them in the rear-view mirror as they swung past Christ Church and up the Ely Road towards The Jolly Farmers.

  ‘Seen her today then?’

  ‘Sure. We played draughts out on the lawn. Three games. Her mum’s agreed to a couple more days at her nan’s. She’ll have to go to school, but I can ferry her in and out. And she can go back at weekends if she wants.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Stuff. The dog mainly. She’s smitten.’

  Dryden checked Eden. The child was already asleep, his lips creating a perfect rosebud.

  ‘You could just ask her why she ran away from home,’ he said. ‘Tell her you don’t believe it’s just about the stepfather, or the stepsisters and stepbrothers. That she can tell you anything she likes and that you’ll still love her.’

  Humph nodded. ‘Eden walking yet?’

  ‘No, not yet. If the crèche thought there was a problem they’d say something, right?’

  They’d reached the T-junction by the pub. Humph swung the cab left towards Ely, the distant silhouette of the cathedral appearing on the horizon dead ahead.

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Dryden. ‘Laura’s not worried. He’ll walk when he’s ready.’

  Dryden opened up his laptop bag and pulled out the black-and-white print of the Funeral Owl which had been sent in by an anonymous reader. The Boreal Owl had been haunting him: it was an omen of death, but he’d been sent the picture after he’d found the body of Sima Shuba hanging from the cross in Christ Church graveyard. He couldn’t dislodge the anxiety that this owl presaged another death.

  If he could publish the picture perhaps he could exorcise the omen.

  The OS maps were still in the door compartment and it took him just a few seconds to find his destination.

  ‘Detour,’ he announced. ‘Next left down Second Drove.’

  The black-and-white print clearly showed a hedgerow beyond the owl, and set amongst the hawthorn a road sign reading THIRD DROVE. This area was known locally as ‘the Droves’; a mathematical network of dirt lanes numbered one to six from east to west, seven to ten from north to south. They found the sign six hundred yards from a junction by a telephone box.

  Humph didn’t say a word once he’d brought the cab to a stop. He just closed his eyes and pitched his seat back into the reclining position. Dryden wondered, fleetingly, if the cabbie was missing Boudicca. Leaving the dog with Grace had been a kindness she would probably never appreciate.

  Dryden winched himself out of the Capri, wincing at the familiar screech of the rusted hinges of the passenger-side door. Beside the sign for Third Drove was the entrance to a field, left to rough pasture, scattered with the burnt marks of old fires, scrap metal hauled into one corner, with a set of Portaloos in another. A sign on the gate said it was the Euximoor Fen Travellers’ Site.

  It was midsummer, so most of the travellers were out on the road, leaving just one caravan. Dryden knew the routine: this would be home to a single family left behind to keep the plot for the rest. And not so much a caravan as a silver and white mobile home, nestling in the lee of a hedge, curtains drawn, a small awning over the door, with three steps up made of loose bricks.

  Had he imagined a single dog bark? It released a flood of adrenaline into his bloodstream. That was the problem with travellers’ sites: the absence of dog leads.

  He thought about the picture he’d been sent of the owl: it was a fine piece of camera work, sharp, of stunning quality. He could do with it in the paper – not this week perhaps, but next. But it needed a proper caption. It was hardly professional to use it with the limp addition of ‘photo by a local reader’. If it was that rare a sighting, one of the national papers would demand more words, and if his reply was that he hadn’t spoken to the photographer they’d think he was a hack from the sticks. Which was the last thing he was, or wanted to become.

  So he squared his shoulders and walked across the field towards the mobile home, trying not to think about dogs. There was still no sight of the standard travellers’ Alsatian, but he’d never been on a site without one. So where was it? Its absence was infinitely more terrifying than its presence. He had time to imagine what it would look like. There was one variation to the Alsatian norm; a sleek Doberman, perhaps, with fur like a slug’s skin.

  Within the mobile home he could see a high shelf, china on display, and a spotless stainless-steel galley. There was a large bookcase but no novels; just textbooks and pamphlets. He could read two spines: Frozen Planet and A History of the Crusades.

  To one side of the caravan was a brick barbecue, the ashes of a fire and a table upon which had been left a single dirty plate, smeared with ketchup. Beside it were some sheets of paper covered in numbers, split into four-digit groups.

  ‘Who are you?’

  He swung round and would have looked at the face of the young man if he hadn’t been holding a dog lead.

  ‘Where’s the dog?’ asked Dryden.

  The man nodded across the field to a gap in the hedge. The dog was on a long rope attached to a fence post. A Doberman, with canines visible, and a lolling tongue.

  ‘Who are you?’ The question was repeated in exactly the same tone of voice. Dryden got the fleeting impression that the young man didn’t know he’d asked already, and that he might just go on asking in the same monotone voice until he got an answer.

  ‘Philip Dryden. With The Crow, the local newspaper.’

  ‘Corvus Corvidae.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The crow. That’s the family, the genus. A lot of crows are a murder.’

  ‘Someone sent me a wonderful picture of an owl. That was you, then?’

  Dryden realized that he’d subconsciously altered his speech pattern and vocabulary to match that of a child. The man before him was at least twenty-five, maybe thirty. Cheap jeans, an old checked shirt, binoculars around his neck that must be worth around £1,000. Dark hair, almost handsome, with full lips. He had one of those home-made haircuts that looks as though it’s been stolen from someone else’s head.

  ‘I don’t want my name in the paper.’

  ‘That’s OK. I just wanted to ask when you took the picture, and have you seen the bird again?’

  ‘Promise about the name?’

  ‘I promise.’

  The young man waited.

  ‘I promise not to put your name in the paper,’ said Dryden. ‘We can just say a local ornithologist, how’s that? But perhaps I can give your name to the bird experts at Welney? And a number. They’re keen to try and see the owl. And I need a few details about the sighting.’

  ‘The eighth of August, seventeen-thirty hours. By the fence. No. Not again. I’ve looked, all night once, but no. Is that it?’

  ‘Just your name to pass to Welney, not for the paper.’

  ‘Brinks is the name.’ He ran a hand back through his hair. ‘Will.’ He had a strangely immobile face, but Dryden got the very strong impression that his mind was racing, computing, trying to solve some arcane puzzle. He glanced down once at the numbers written on the sheets of paper. ‘Just Will Brinks.’

  ‘The experts are very excited. They said the last time one had been seen in this region was a century ago. So well done.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Brinks. I talk to other people who like birds. On this.’ He slipped a mobile out of his pocket: an iPhone, in a green case. He gave Dryden the number.

  Everyone? Dryden looked round the empty field.

  ‘In winter there’s twenty units,’ said Brinks. ‘They’re on the road now. My stepdad, he keeps birds of prey. Raptors.’

  ‘That’s the word, is it? For birds of prey?’

  ‘Yes. But that isn’t why I said it. It’s what my dad’s business is called: Raptors. They do a show. My half-brothers, my sister, they all help. They hire the birds out too. But I don’t do that. I stay here, because it’s my job to stay here.’

  ‘Di
d he teach you about birds, your dad?’

  ‘Stepdad. Yes. I haven’t been to school. I can’t read. Not because it’s difficult, but because I can’t.’

  Dryden turned to go.

  ‘They leave me here to look after the field.’

  ‘You said.’

  Nobody moved.

  ‘Have you seen the new kites?’ said Dryden. ‘They’re shaped like raptors too.’

  ‘I can tell the difference very easily between the fake ones and the real ones,’ said Brinks. ‘A hundred yards away, five hundred even. No problem. They move too much, they don’t feather their wings, so they don’t hold their hunting position. It’s a giveaway. That’s what Dad says, and he’s right.’

  Dryden went to speak but his question had somehow unleashed Brinks’ voice.

  ‘They’re getting better, the kites. In the old days we used to do it, scare birds, with our hawks. It was well paid, and in cash, no banks or cheques or nothing. That’s where the business started. Now, we can’t compete. But we’re better, just ask a farmer. It’s that people won’t pay for quality any more, will they?’

  The last sentence was delivered with a different cadence and Dryden guessed he was copying his absent stepfather.

  ‘I should go now, let you get on. But I need to get past the dog,’ added Dryden. ‘That rope is very long.’

  Brinks looked at the dog and smiled. There was something innocent in the man’s face, but something cruel as well; which was, after all, a childlike combination. Brinks walked over and pulled the dog in on the rope.

  ‘What’s his name?’ called Dryden.

  ‘Lolly. It’s our word for money.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ said Dryden.

  Dryden was going to try for another quote about birds but he could see that Brinks’ anxiety levels had risen sharply. He was visibly shaking, the loose hand not holding the lead turning back and forth on the wrist.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dryden said. ‘Picture should be in next Friday’s paper. Not this week. I could drop one by.’