The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The story flew from Dryden’s laptop with an audible ping! The moment was one of strange liberation. Unlike his former colleagues on Fleet Street, he didn’t have to worry about tomorrow’s story. His next paper was several days away. What he needed was to get ahead of the pack so that he had something to say in Tuesday’s paper. Something to say, or something to show. Within hours CID would interview Will Brinks. An arrest might follow. What Dryden and CID knew – that a gun had been found at the scene and there was a bullet-hole in the lock-up door – put Brinks firmly in the frame as prime suspect. If Dryden could track down a picture of him, it would be a scoop in itself. Which was why he asked Humph to drive him to Rick’s Tattoo Parlour.

  Rick’s stood at the heart of the village of Rings End – no apostrophe – two miles out of Brimstone Hill to the east. If you left Brimstone by any other direction you’d be heading for civilization: north, south or east. But west took you into the Great Soak, a silty fen wilderness which seemed to peter out into nothing. Once, a great mere had stretched over the land. Now, two hundred years after they’d drained the water, the roads still didn’t bother to reach across it to where the far shore had once stood. The dwindling country droves reminded Dryden of trickles of water, wandering into a saltpan, drying out under the sun.

  Rings End had a sign, but it wasn’t twinned with anywhere, so there was nothing fancy, just the name. An apostrophe wasn’t the only thing it lacked. Dryden had always sensed it had battled all its life to even be itself, to be a place at all. A road, a narrow carriageway of mind-numbing straights and sudden double-turns, cut through it, passing a single chapel, a row of farmers’ cottages disfigured by double-glazing, and Rick’s shabby lock-up.

  Humph pulled off the road into a lay-by. An HGV crashed its gears and swept past, back towards Brimstone Hill. The road was so narrow that the big wagons seemed to lean over with the camber as they threaded the turn by the chapel, a building almost obscured by a billboard offering DISCOUNT CARPETS. It was a typical fen village, devoid of thatched charm, more like a deserted castaway fragment of the city than the country at all. Or all that was left of a city, perhaps, after civilization had left.

  Humph slipped one of his language tapes into a CD player and clamped on his earphones.

  Dryden checked his mobile; a text from Vee informed him that The Crow had gone to press.

  Rick’s door was always open but the view was obscured by a flyscreen made of beaded string. A customer lay back in the reclining dentist’s chair: a woman, in trousers and a blouse, maybe thirteen stone, with a lot of pale skin showing at her neck and arms.

  Jazz played on a CD player – Brubeck or Parker.

  Rick looked up from under his green eyeshade. He was thirty, neat, an ex-jockey from Newmarket who’d run to fat after his teenage years. All that suppleness, and latent speed, seemed wasted in this box of a shop, with its single window. Dryden had done a feature on the tattoo parlour for The Crow five years ago. His own preconceptions of the ‘art’ had not been positive. But his interview with Rick had at least tackled the issues, and there was little doubt it had brought him some new customers. Dryden often dropped by for a cup of tea and to pick up gossip. That was the real magic of the tattoo parlour: the chair. It seemed to be a modern-day equivalent of the confessional box. Once seated, the customers needed little encouragement to tell Rick secrets they’d die to keep hidden at home.

  Rick took in Dryden with a sad smile. ‘Kettle’s just boiled.’ He’d been hoping, thought Dryden, for a paying customer. As he made tea Dryden thought, not for the first time, that he could never live a life like Rick’s, always waiting for his livelihood to walk in the door.

  The window of Rick’s was full of painted designs, and through it Dryden saw a car pull up. A smart family hatchback with a taxi sign on top, it disgorged two kids in neat grey uniforms from one of Ely’s private schools. That was where Rick’s money went, on school fees, school trips, extra tuition. The kids came in, took chairs, and immediately began homework. The car drove off. Mrs Rick – she’d never been introduced by name – ran a cab based on the station rank. Humph called her Union Jack, which was her radio call sign.

  Rick’s tattoo gun whirled and Dryden told himself it was an illusion that he could smell burning flesh. The gun buzzed for two minutes with all the excruciating edge of a dentist’s drill. In the sudden silence the customer asked if she could smoke and Rick said she could but she’d have to go outside. As she left, Dryden saw the blood on her neck, a thin dribble down her clavicle, as if her skin had split.

  There were design books on a low counter and Dryden was flicking through.

  ‘You after a tattoo at last?’ joked Rick. ‘If you can get Humph interested I do cheap rates for landscapes.’

  ‘I was looking for a flying swan, starts down here …’ Dryden touched his hip. ‘But reaches up to the back of the neck.’

  Rick found it instantly – £240 in black, white, yellow and that dash of red on the beak.

  ‘Handsome,’ said Rick.

  ‘Handsome when you’re twenty. Looks pretty weird when you’re sixty,’ said Dryden.

  Rick looked at his kids then and something darker crossed his face, a sadness, maybe even a regret, that he couldn’t give them what he thought was the best in life without them seeing where the money came from.

  ‘You heard about the explosion out at the airfield?’ asked Dryden. ‘I found the bodies. Not a pretty sight.’ He felt a lump in his throat. It didn’t seem to matter how often he tried to treat his discovery of the victims as a coldly journalistic coup; the personal reality of the moment refused to fade. ‘The survivor’s got one of these tattoos. Can I look at the wall?’

  The customer came back in, alternately hauling her thighs, like coal sacks.

  Rick said Dryden could go on through. At the back of the lock-up was a door and a corridor to a loo – spotless, clinical, because the council checked the place out, and controlled the licence. The corridor ran twenty feet and the whole of one side was pictures, snapshots of customers displaying tattoos.

  Dryden sipped his tea and began, methodically, to work his way along. He didn’t really have any hopes of finding Brinks but he thought he’d kick himself if he didn’t check. There were a dozen tattoo joints within twenty miles of Brimstone Hill, but Rick’s was the only one with a wall like this. It was like Facebook, in bricks and mortar. Or the News of the World. That had been the paper’s slogan: All Of Human Life Is Here. And it was: a naked woman covered in a vine, grapes in bunches on her breasts. A man in a suit, white shirt, and tie, holding his tongue out to reveal a dragon in green; a teenager with his eyelids closed but blue eyes drawn on the lids. Each tattoo seemed to be designed to unsettle, distract, shock.

  Even the humdrum made Dryden feel uneasy – the anchors on forearms, mythical birds on biceps, Union flags on shoulders, little miniature crowns and roses at the waistline. It wasn’t as if he had some hang-up about skin being unblemished, forever young. He liked the process of ageing, as he liked old wood, because it showed the passage of time. Old age could have dignity. It wasn’t the pictures that grew old, it was the canvas, and there was something unnatural about the contrast.

  Under a snap of a woman with tattooed toes, he saw the edge of another picture, just a fan of white feathers. He edged it out, then pulled the pin that held it in place. It was Will Brinks, naked but for briefs, the eyes bright with something, maybe 120 per cent proof hooch. With his back to the camera, he tried to look over his own shoulder at the tattoo. He looked exultant, as if he’d been able to outsmart, for once, a world that probably seemed, for most of his life, too complicated to understand.

  Back in the shop the customer was out for another smoke and the kids had moved on to their laptops.

  ‘That him?’ asked Rick, looking at the snap Dryden had in his hand.

  ‘Yeah. That’s him.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Will Brinks.’

  Rick
shrugged. ‘Tinker?’

  Dryden looked at the picture again: bad teeth, slightly swollen face, jet-black hair worn long and cut at home, pale blue eyes. He did look like a traveller out of central casting. Rick would have had him in the confessional chair for an hour; maybe three.

  ‘Site’s a mile from Brimstone Hill,’ said Dryden.

  Rick reached down behind the counter. ‘He dropped this off by way of thanks. He liked the work.’

  It was a bottle of vodka, identical to the one the coroner had produced at the inquest.

  The liquid inside was yellow. The label was the same as the others Dryden had seen, illustrated with the amber hay field.

  Dryden put his hand on Rick’s shoulder. ‘Just don’t drink it, OK?’

  Rick laughed. ‘Drink it? You crazy? I’ve been washing the needles in it; it’s one-hundred-and-twenty per cent proof.’

  ‘One bottle?’

  ‘A crate.’

  ‘What do you reckon on Brinks? A bit simple?’

  ‘Sure.’ He looked at his kids. ‘Damaged. I thought about saying no …’

  Dryden held up a hand. He wasn’t there to judge.

  ‘You know what those tinkers are up to?’ said Rick. ‘This is Third Drove we’re talking about? Rumour is they’re pulling together the cash to buy the land, then get planning permission for mobile homes. Maybe they saw moonshine as a useful source of cash to finance the purchase.’

  It was a trend in the Fens. A big travellers’ site at Smithy Fen, north of Cambridge, had become a national cause célèbre. They weren’t Romany – they were Irish, and in the winter they went home to the Republic, to a village outside Cork, where they had smallholdings. They’d bought the land in Cambridgeshire off the local farmer and were trying to get planning permission for homes, against the opposition of nearby villagers. Local house prices had plummeted.

  The idea of the Irish running the illicit still – and the scrap metal trade – upset DI Friday’s neat picture of inter-Chinese community warfare.

  ‘So what are we saying?’ asked Dryden. ‘That the Irish set up the still to generate the cash to buy land and put down roots? And they got the Chinese and the Pole to do the work. So this kid, Brinks, was like the overseer?’

  ‘Maybe. He might have been simple but he wasn’t stupid.’

  It was a thought that seemed to transform the story: the idea that Will Brinks might have been in control. In a perverse way it meant the dead men were victims too, exploited workers, not criminal entrepreneurs. But if he’d been in charge, why had he taken that shot? Had the travellers decided to pull out of the business after the murder of Sima Shuba in the graveyard at Christ Church? Was Brinks leaving the site with his investment reclaimed in fifty-pound notes?

  Dryden held the picture of Will Brinks out at arm’s length. He realized then that the yellow in the vodka bottle was a perfect match for the light he’d seen when the still had blown up. Electric yellow, like the hottest part of a flame, the eye of the storm which had knocked Brinks down so hard he might never get up. Whatever Brinks was doing that day at Barrowby Airfield, he held the key to the mystery of the triple killing. If he died in Wisbech General, they might never know the truth.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was a journalistic ritual that Dryden found hypnotic. A kind of newspaperman’s tai chi. He’d buy a beer from the Fenman bar behind the Lamb Hotel and then wander out into the old coaching inn’s yard. They’d put out dusty picnic tables on the cobbles, which had been colonised by smokers. He could see the cathedral’s West Tower, and The Crow, across Market Street, and there would always be a small queue at this time: four p.m. Not waiting to get into the newspaper offices, but lined up on the pavement, apparently going nowhere. Then the van would arrive from the printers and the driver would throw open the back doors to reveal the piles of papers, and heave one on to the pavement, then two, then go.

  Jean, The Crow’s resident receptionist, would come out and clip the plastic bindings with scissors. It was ‘right money’ only, and everyone knew, so she just had a box for the coins.

  Dryden would leave his pint, saunter over, and Jean would give him two papers off the top of the pile and take no money. The rest of the punters would give him a curious, mildly antagonistic glare.

  Back at the table he’d stand up, put one of the papers on the seat, and judge the front page.

  BULLET HOLE RIDDLE AS

  THREE DIE IN FEN BLAST

  POLICE PROBE LINK TO CHURCHYARD MURDER

  DETECTIVES WAIT TO SPEAK TO SURVIVOR

  By Philip Dryden

  Dryden felt his world tilt just a few degrees. The ritual was supposed to make him feel centred, secure. During the long months of Laura’s coma after their car accident he’d needed something to hold on to, a career, a purpose. But this headline made him see again the petrified bodies of the dead and he drained an inch off his pint, struggling to keep the horror of the scene at a safe distance. And there was a sliver of guilt too, in that he always felt the frisson of excitement in seeing his byline, even attached to such bleak news.

  Now there was a new satisfaction: as editor he could admire the whole paper, and feel that it was in some way all his work. It looked good: newsy, and the gunshot scoop put them one step ahead of the morning papers and TV and radio. He’d let the story tell itself, and it proved to be a powerful narrative. The gun at the scene, the bullet hole being tested, Will Brinks guarded in hospital, the police keen to interview the survivor. The wire services were already running the story, with The Crow getting an upfront credit.

  Page three carried the shots he’d snapped at Euximoor Fen as the storm had blown through, plus the cross-reference to the story on page seven. He ran a finger over the table top and picked up a smudge of peat dust.

  Humph pulled up in the cab, finding a space in the Lamb’s rank of reserved guest spots, so that if he sat with the door open he could chat. Dryden went and got him his usual, a pint of Electric Pig cider at eight-point-five per cent.

  ‘How’s Grace?’ asked Dryden, after ten minutes of silence.

  ‘I’ve just dropped her in town. She wants to shop.’ He shook his head and extended his upper lip to the edge of the pint pot. ‘She’s up to something.’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble?’ suggested Dryden.

  ‘Christ.’ Humph spilt cider on his Ipswich Town top. ‘She’s fifteen. Last time I took her out she wanted to see the latest Walt Disney. She ran away with a cuddly toy. I don’t think so …’

  Dryden’s phone buzzed on the picnic table top with an incoming text. It was Vee Hilgay. Dacey auction rooms – police raid. Now.

  Dacey’s stood beside Ely’s old cattle yard at the back of Market Square. There was a single Victorian wrought-iron and glass structure, effectively an ornate shed, which could have easily accommodated a small zeppelin. The cattle yard was now a car park. Friday evening was viewing time ahead of the main sale on a Saturday morning. Everything from bicycles and furniture to tools and antiques. With the pubs open, and the working week at an end, the auction rooms always drew a big, high-spirited crowd.

  The police and trading standards kept an eye on the goods for sale. What intrigued Dryden was why the West Cambridgeshire Constabulary would divert scarce resources to raiding the auction rooms on a day when they were still struggling with what might be an outbreak of violent gang warfare in the Fens.

  There were four police vans parked in front of the auction hall, which was surrounded by a crowd. Dryden spotted one of the local trading standards officers pushing his way in.

  An unmarked police squad car arrived and DI Friday got out.

  Dryden gave him a copy of The Crow.

  ‘Thanks. I can’t talk,’ said Friday. ‘Go away.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with the explosion?’ asked Dryden, tracking the detective as he walked.

  But Friday had said all he was saying.

  Dacey’s main hall was packed, flooded with light through the frosted glass panels in the walls a
nd roof. It was like a miniature Crystal Palace. There was a café in one corner, a cash office in another. All the goods for the main Saturday auction were on show like a modern-day Aladdin’s Cave. Except it was mostly tat, not gold. There was a crowd around one pen reserved for ironware: ornamental garden objects, a fountain, a sundial, gnomes. Each item was being listed, bagged up, taken away by uniformed constables.

  A hand touched his shoulder and he turned to find Vee, notebook open.

  ‘They’ve taken a load of stuff from outside too, metal castings, cabling, some railings. Looks like they’re trying to find out how the Chinese fenced the stuff once they’d nicked it.’

  ‘What do the auctioneers say?’

  ‘They say the stuff’s all come from legit sources. I can’t get to the boss; he’s doing a property auction in the hall at the back. That’s on now.’

  The auction hall had been founded by a local estate agency, which occupied a 1920s building tacked on to the main shed, and still ran occasional property auctions on a Friday evening.

  ‘There’s not much we can do here tonight,’ said Dryden. ‘Pics?’

  Vee pointed to a raised platform by the auctioneer’s dais. Josie Evans was perched on one of the iron girders taking snaps of the crowd below. She was being held securely in place by a young man Dryden recognized as the Fulham supporter she’d brought to the office summer party. Dryden doubted she needed quite that much support.

  ‘I’ll hang about,’ said Dryden. ‘I’d knock off if I was you. Paper’s terrific, by the way. Well done.’

  Dryden got a coffee and sat watching the milling crowd. The police had caused a stir but they hadn’t diverted the regulars from their Friday night entertainment, checking out the lots. The sellers swelled the crowd, keeping an eagle eye on their goods. He saw Grace Humphries, Humph’s daughter, wandering with the rest, until she came to a display of framed old maps of the Isle of Ely. She studied one, a map of the new waterways built in the seventeenth century, a network of straight drains and cuts, drawn together at the centre by Denver Sluice, the beating heart of the whole, living, watery system. She seemed drawn to it, and stood staring for several minutes. Then a clutch of girls her own age surrounded her, hugging, holding hands, whispering. There was something subdued about the group, with not a giggle heard. They moved off towards the café, towing Grace along.