The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  He leaned his head back in the chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘I said in the letter there’d been no pain. I said they’d died like heroes, and that’s what their memorial should read. And it does.’

  He opened his eyes at that, suddenly. He wasn’t in the past any more, it seemed, because his eyes were focused, but Dryden thought he was living through something even more terrible than that blood-filled trench.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The smell of death clung to Dryden. More than twelve hours after the moment he’d stepped into the burnt-out lock-up it was still there when he got home to the boat. He arrived at dawn; the mist gone, a wide barge carrying gravel slipping past on the river towards Cambridge. Laura made him shower in the narrowboat and bagged his clothes for the laundrette. She pushed her face into his black hair and said he smelt of lemon, and strawberries. But something lingered in his nose and throat, that sweetness, a ripeness. He drank orange juice and black coffee, ate toast with marmite; tasted the malty meatiness, then left the rest.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked. They were sitting on deck. He’d been looking out over the fen for twenty minutes without saying a word. ‘They said three dead on the radio?’

  ‘I found them,’ he said. ‘It was as if they’d been in a furnace.’

  ‘Take a day off. Sleep, you’re out on your feet, Philip.’ She had a script on her knee and she flicked through the pages, pretending not to care if he took her advice. Eden lay on a blanket on the deck, trying to close his fist round a wooden eel suspended over him on an arch. He said a word which might have been fish.

  ‘It’s press day,’ said Dryden.

  He was so tired he forgot that Eden’s failure to walk had become a taboo subject. ‘Why do you think he doesn’t want to walk? He doesn’t even want to crawl, does he?’

  ‘I think he’s happy. And he’s like you, he looks at the world, weighs it up. He doesn’t need to walk yet so he’s not bothered. He can talk. He thinks the world will just pass him by, like a parade, and he’s happy with that.’

  ‘You’re not worried?’

  She gave Dryden a cool look. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He filled an awkward moment by checking his phone.

  His powers of simple concentration had abandoned him. Cotton wool seemed to be crammed into his skull. Humph, who’d slept in the Capri up by Barham’s Farm after running him home, rolled up at quarter to eight. They went straight to the railway station because it had a decent coffee bar. Dryden got takeaway cappuccinos and a sausage sandwich for Humph.

  Jean, The Crow’s long-serving receptionist, was just opening the front office as Humph parked outside. She adjusted one of her hearing aids, eager for gossip. ‘Eden?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s fine, thanks,’ said Dryden, remembering to look at her, and to let her see his lips. ‘Anyone here?’

  ‘Vee’s in. Does she sleep?’ Jean’s speech was slightly dulled by her hearing disability. The syrupy consonants reminded Dryden of Laura.

  This was the best time to work with Vee. She was a morning person, and so was Dryden. Getting up, getting ahead of the world, was important to them both. She had the papers spread over the news desk and the radio on – BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Dryden switched on another radio by the coffee machine which was always set to KLFM in Lynn.

  Over the newsdesk a flat-screen TV showed BBC 24 News. Dryden turned the sound up so that they had three voices speaking at once. It was like a real newsroom.

  ‘How’s the blast story running?’ asked Dryden. Splash, the office cat, came and sat on his lap.

  ‘Top item on all local broadcasts, third on Radio Four. Three dead, one still critical, after illicit still explodes. Two ethnic Chinese, one Pole. Everyone is drawing the obvious conclusion, that it’s linked to the Christ Church murder, although the police are playing it straight for now. They’re waiting for forensic reports and autopsies.’

  Dryden told her what had been found at the scene: the bullet hole in the lock-up door, and a gun, on the grass near Will Brinks. ‘It means we’ve got a scoop as long as CID don’t blow it in the next six hours. Friday wants to wait until he’s got forensic back-up on the gunshot, so there’s a chance we’ll make it. Even if they release it we’ll be the first out with a paper. If anything, a bullet makes it more likely there’s a link to Christ Church. It also means the traveller – Brinks – is the prime suspect. Gun crime’s pretty rare in the Fens. And lightning never strikes twice, especially in a backwater like Brimstone Hill. There has to be a link. So we’ll print an extra thousand, get digital copies of the front page to TV and radio.’

  Drinking his coffee, Dryden felt a wave of nausea. He closed his eyes and the turning, falling sensation continued.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Vee.

  ‘Not really. But I might as well be here as anywhere.’

  Vee gave him a bottle of mineral water which he drank in one go.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s better. So – we’ll lead with the story in Ely and Brimstone Hill. All editions. There’s a press conference this morning at Christ Church; if there’s anything to add I’ll send a few paragraphs. If not, go with the story I’ve filed. When’s Miriam in?’

  ‘Due any minute. She’s doing police calls, touching base at the magistrates’ court.’

  ‘Get her to do a feature for the page-three slot about migrant workers and illicit trade. Vodka, dope, tainted food, the lot. I want the words black market and gang in the headline. Then she can do the website. But don’t let her put anything live until I say so. Let’s sell plenty of papers first.’

  A cab beeped its horn outside and Dryden went to the bay window, the glass emblazoned with The Crow’s motto: Never Weary Of Doing Good. Outside the Capri was at the kerb, engine running.

  ‘I better go,’ he told Vee. The Crow’s deadline was eleven. On the streets by two. ‘If you’ve heard nothing from me by ten forty-five, go with the story as it stands.’ He began to close down his laptop. ‘Of course the big story of the week will just make a picture caption,’ said Dryden. ‘Dust storm near Brimstone Hill. Now we’ll have to run it inside.’

  That was the plan: an eight-column pic of the broiling fen blow on page three with a cross-reference to a page later in the run where they could carry the full story. In an ideal world he’d have slipped the story and pictures into his top drawer and used it the following week, but there was no way it could keep. That was the trouble with real news.

  Vee smiled. This was the sort of moment when she enjoyed Dryden’s company. ‘You’re the editor. You can do what you like. How would you make the fen blow the lead story, given it’s up against a triple violent killing? Possibly five violent killings in time, if they prove a link to the church and the survivor doesn’t make it.’

  ‘I talked to the NFU yesterday, Vee – farmer over to the east lost an inch of soil. An inch. In one go. A square mile of it, straight up in the air. OK, some of it comes down, but most of it is lost for good. Out to sea, into the rivers.’

  He pulled a report out of the pile on his desk. ‘Cranfield University study, came out this week. It estimates the average soil loss across the Fens is two centimetres a year.’ He got a ruler off the subs bench and showed her what two centimetres looked like. ‘And that’s the average. It’ll be far worse where the fen blows run. There’s corridors for them, like tornado alley in the US. The land’s too dry, and it costs money to irrigate. We’ve grubbed up trees, orchards, the few hedgerows there were left on the land. And there’s no spring rain to hold the soil down. People want to know what global warming looks like. This is what it looks like …’

  He used Vee’s computer to scroll to the pictures he’d taken of the cloud approaching Euximoor Drove.

  ‘It’s like the Dust Bowl, 1933. Remember The Wizard of Oz, or The Grapes of Wrath? A fifth of the agricultural land in this county is officially classed as desert. Every winter’s drier, every summer’s winds are stronger.’

  ‘Pictures are good,
too,’ said Vee, daring him to put it on the front of the paper.

  ‘Nah. Can’t do it. Hard news is hard news. We’re a weekly newspaper, not a quarterly academic review. We want people to read, not study. Three dead in fen blast, you can’t beat that. Plus murder, gangs, illicit booze. There’s enough news here for a year’s worth of papers.’

  ‘Picture for the front?’ asked Vee.

  They skipped through the pictures he’d downloaded from his mobile phone, taken out at Barrowby Airfield the night before.

  They showed the burnt-out lock-up, the buckled roll-up door, a police guard behind a scene-of-crime tape. One showed the three body bags being removed by paramedics. ‘Black bag’ was one of those euphemisms which seemed to be worse than the reality they sought to obscure. There was an echo here of the shot taken at Christ Church, of Sima Shuba’s body being taken away. Four victims, four black bags. Dryden hoped the death toll would stop there.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Christ Church, packed for the press conference on the Barrowby Airfield deaths, was full of the earthy stench of over-brewed tea. A uniformed female PC was behind a trestle table doling out beverages in paper cups, suggesting that the West Cambridgeshire constabulary was no further ahead on women’s issues than it was on twenty-first-century catering. Several plates of biscuits had been reduced to crumbs. The cream of the East Anglian press corps was in attendance, plus a camera team from Anglia, and a BBC radio unit.

  DI Friday was sitting up at the altar behind a heavy table, the wood almost black, the legs carved with the heads of Biblical figures. He had a digital projector and laptop set up on the table, currently displaying the West Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s crest on a whitewashed wall above the arch of the chancel.

  Dryden checked his watch: he could get copy into the paper after eleven but it meant they had to stop the presses. Each interruption in the print run cost about £200. Given The Crow’s narrow profit margins, any such decision had to be carefully offset against the benefits of keeping the paper up with its competition: the Cambridge News, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, the BBC website. Dryden had the splash he’d written on his laptop ready to edit if anything needed changing. He could send it digitally with a single push of a button. He’d also sent Vee some headline suggestions from the cab en route to Brimstone Hill. His favourite:

  BULLET HOLE RIDDLE AS

  THREE DIE IN FEN BLAST

  He wanted two ‘strap’ secondary headlines to run under the splash headline:

  POLICE PROBE LINK TO CHURCHYARD MURDER

  DETECTIVES WAIT TO QUESTION SURVIVOR

  Dryden strolled down the aisle, trying to look relaxed, pausing by the picture of Christ’s passion in its gilt frame. The figure of Christ had been depicted in agony, the ugly angles of the elbows and knees reminding Dryden of the horrific scene he’d stumbled on in the lock-up at Barrowby Airfield.

  His eye found a cottage in the background he hadn’t noticed before, washing on a line, crisp white linen against the green fields of the Roman countryside. The scene raised his spirits. And there was always the joyful figure of the peasant Stefano, chasing his hat.

  Dryden took a pew beside Alf Roberts from the Press Association. Alf was neat, in his sixties, teetotal. He had the most beautiful shorthand Dryden had ever seen: an elegant, sinuous text which could easily accommodate 150 words a minute. That took up the right-hand side of each page. On the left-hand side were small sketches. Usually he concentrated on local wildlife and fauna, birds, butterflies, flowers. This morning he’d chosen the carved leg of the altar table, focusing on a detail of Noah’s Ark, pairs of lions, with pairs of gazelle, tripping up the gangplank.

  ‘Film show then?’ asked Dryden, nodding up at the laptop projection.

  ‘It’s Rocky Five,’ said Alf.

  DI Friday called order and outlined the facts of the case. The three dead were Jia Jun and Cai Xiaogang of Erebus Street, King’s Lynn, and Daniel Fangor of London Road, Wisbech. The first two were ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, the third was a Pole; all immigration documents were in order.

  Evidence at the scene suggested the dead men had operated an illicit still producing vodka. The still was unlicensed. An explosion was the immediate cause of death. One survivor, still unconscious, was at Wisbech General Hospital. Friday said he would be unable to answer questions until an interview had been completed with this man, whom he could now name as Will Brinks, a member of the traveller community of Third Drove, Euximoor Fen, Brimstone Hill. Meanwhile inquiries would continue within the Chinese community in King’s Lynn.

  ‘These three aren’t the only victims in this story,’ said Friday. ‘Some of you will know that this week the Ely coroner highlighted the case of two men from this very parish who had clearly been imbibing tainted alcohol from an illicit still over a long period of time. It’s all part of the same bigger picture. All I would add at this stage is that while drinking this stuff can kill you, the tragic events of the last twenty-four hours illustrate that trying to distil it can kill you too. One-hundred-and-twenty per cent alcohol is as dangerous as nitroglycerine.’

  Dryden leaned over to Alf. ‘But twice as much fun at parties.’

  ‘What I did want to share with you was some pictures of what we found earlier this morning when the key holder was able to open up the industrial units at Barrowby Airfield. The estate is managed by Artoro Real Estate of Croydon, although the owner is the MOD. Barrowby Oilseed is based in unit six, the site of the explosion, which contained the still and a bottling plant. A connecting door led into unit five, where we found what I’m reliably informed is a rapeseed oil press.’

  He put a bottle of Barrowby rapeseed oil on the altar: an elegant, slim-necked bottle with an artisan black-and-white label showing a farmer.

  ‘So – two products, rapeseed oil and vodka. One bottling plant. This is what is referred to in Dragon’s Den as a business plan.’

  He let the laughter die away.

  ‘It wasn’t their only business. This is unit four, access to which was via another internal door.’

  The digital slides showed the interior of the next unit. It was crammed with scrap metal.

  ‘Just here,’ said Friday, using a light ‘arrow’ to indicate a pile of dull grey metal. ‘You can see roof lead. It’s Victorian, and almost certainly came from above our very heads. We’re confident the rest of the metal in the lock-up is stolen goods.’

  Several reporters looked up, and the BBC swung a camera round to pan across the rafters.

  ‘Clearly we have a potential link between the explosion at Barrowby Airfield and the murder earlier this week of Sima Shuba, whose body was found here in the churchyard at Christ Church, following the overnight theft of lead from the roof. We have to consider the possibility that the explosion at Barrowby Airfield was not an accident and might be related to the illegal trade in stolen metal. Was the survivor, Will Brinks, involved? Before we can begin to answer these questions we need to complete and consider forensic evidence collected at both scenes, and autopsies on the dead. And we need to speak to Brinks when we get the all-clear from medical staff at Wisbech.’

  Friday’s reluctance to speculate further in public on gang warfare was admirable, thought Dryden. But in private Friday’s views had been clear: this was an underworld spat between vicious ethnic gangs, or a civil war within one of them. Was this view based on the evidence, or a series of presumptions – even prejudices? It was certainly a neat solution. Dryden reminded himself that the truth might be less obvious. Perhaps the odd mix of ethnic backgrounds, Chinese, Polish and Irish traveller, hid a more subtle story.

  A few hands went up amongst the pews.

  ‘I’m sorry. No questions today,’ said Friday. ‘I’m sure we’ll have plenty to say soon enough. For the record, we have also recovered from unit four several hundred yards of electrical cabling which we believe was taken from Coldham’s Farm wind turbine facility, Brimstone Hill, and nearly two-hundred-and-eighty steel bolts lifted from th
e goods railway line here the night before last – the immediate cause, I believe, of a goods train derailment. The line is still closed. Industrious bunch, and reckless too, because these thefts put innocent lives at risk. In the case of the railway line, hundreds of innocent lives.’

  A new shot showed various pieces of ornamental ironware taken from gardens and houses, and several items of graveyard sculpture, including a small angel with one foot raised, and a figure of death in a shroud, which hid the face.

  ‘This is now a major criminal inquiry involving three police authorities,’ said Friday.

  He put up pictures of the two Chinese men and the Pole.

  ‘We need to link these men into the wider criminal community. If anyone has information which could be of assistance to the police there are email addresses, telephone numbers and website addresses on the press release. We’d appreciate it if the media circulated this information. Also, the injured man owned a vehicle, a silver Ford Fiesta.’ He flashed up the registration number on the screen. ‘We need to find this vehicle.’

  There were no pictures of the survivor, said Friday. Will Brinks was a member of a travellers’ community which was out on the road. There were no documents in his caravan at Third Drove – no passport, medical card or driving licence. The police were keen to track down the family. Brinks himself had suffered second-degree burns to his face, which was heavily bandaged. When he regained consciousness he would be interviewed.

  The screen held the three pictures of the dead men. Why did they always look like this? thought Dryden. Haunted, hunted, desperate. The blank passport stare. These shots always seemed to suck any virtue out of a face, and leave it swollen with vice. Then he recalled the faces he’d seen on the incinerated corpses in the Barrowby Oilseed lock-up and thought that even this ugly, brutal flesh was better than those black ghosts.

  Dryden walked out into the churchyard, leaving Friday to stonewall questions, and perched himself on a toppled tomb. Flipping open his laptop, he reread the splash, made a few changes, then hit the SEND button. It was pretty much the perfect story – but for one, annoying omission – a picture of the chief suspect, Will Brinks.