The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  ‘We’ll go back now,’ she said.

  THIRTY

  At first they formed a convoy: Humph leading in the Capri, Brinks’ four by four and caravan behind. But once they hit the main road Brinks went past at eighty-five mph on a straight stretch. The Capri got to Wisbech forty-five minutes later.

  ‘What we doing?’ asked Humph. ‘Hospital or home?’

  As the cabbie waited for a reply, the Capri circled what was now officially known as rabbit roundabout. Several years previously residents had noticed rabbits appearing amongst the civic greenery on the central island. They responded by chucking any spare salad on to the grass as they drove past. It’s not difficult to find spare salad in the Fens: sixty per cent of all carrots eaten in England are grown within twenty miles of rabbit roundabout. The rabbits thrived. They did what rabbits do. The council dug them a brick warren, copying the practice of the Romans of a millennium earlier, although they didn’t go on to harvest the animals for food. The council put up a sign that said Rabbit Roundabout, and then everyone lost interest. Everyone except Humph, who liked to try and count the rabbits whenever he drove past, and always allowed himself three circuits to complete the census.

  ‘Forty-two,’ he said, as they swung round for the third time. He offered Dryden a biro so that he could add the number to a list inscribed on the dashboard. It was the kind of meaningless ritual that made them both happy.

  The record, of seventy-three, was circled.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Dryden. He saw little point in hanging around the hospital. The Brinkses would be by Will’s bedside, as would the police. What was Dryden going to do? Best to go home and wait for news. He had enough background from John Brinks to use for a feature if his stepson turned out to be Friday’s prime suspect. Plus, he’d surreptitiously taken a few pictures of the family home and the raptors while the Brinkses had packed up.

  Dryden yawned, his jawbone cracking. ‘Home,’ he said again. And closed his eyes. The sleepless night of his nightmare was beginning to affect his nervous system. A micro-muscle ticked under his left eye. The broken bucket seat of the Capri felt ridiculously comfortable. He needed to blank out the world behind his eyelids, which was odd, because usually Wisbech perked him up. It was an oddity, Cambridgeshire’s secret seaport, just six miles from the coast of the Wash along its muddy tidal estuary. It was a place which had gone on a strange journey in the last ten years, from being voted the ‘typical’ English town to the place in Britain with the highest percentage of migrant workers. Wisbechistan to the locals, a red rag to the BNP, a melting pot which could boil over any Saturday night.

  Humph’s radio crackled. Hardly crystal clear when the cab was fifty yards from the control room in Ely, the reception here, thirty-five miles north, sounded like fifty full English breakfasts cooking at once.

  A thin, reedy voice could just be heard through the static: the cab controller announcing that all West Norfolk mobile police units had been called to Erebus Street, King’s Lynn. Cause: civil disturbance. Fire and ambulance alerted.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Dryden. Erebus Street was home to the two Chinese workers who’d died in the lock-up unit at Barrowby Airfield. He didn’t believe in coincidences. Whatever was going on down Erebus Street – and civil disturbance covered a multitude of crimes from domestic doorstep tiff to a full-scale riot – it had to be linked to the Barrowby Airfield explosion.

  They took the Lynn road across the Fens. The journey promised mile after mile of flat farmland stretching away from the road on its high bank, the only break in this horizontal world the occasional medieval churches which marked the line of the old coast. Dryden drifted into sleep, lulled by the onward motion of the cab, following the Roman road east. Humph tuned into KLFM to pick up the latest news, as if he had to fill the silence as Dryden slept, although it was no different from the silence when he was awake.

  Dryden opened his eyes as the cab reached town, troubled by a series of zigzag turns, as it threaded its way through the grey overspill suburbs. Erebus Street was in the town’s docklands, down near the giant grain silo which towered over the fishing wharf. The street was short, terraced, a cul-de-sac, running down to a dock, with the view ahead open-ended, but for the locked gates. The rusting hulk of a container ship stood twice as high as the houses.

  The street looked like a set for a disaster movie. There were barriers across it at the junction with the main road, plus two police cars swathed with bulletproof padded shields. A crowd of about a hundred and fifty people stood watching a house burn. Gouts of flame roared from the two windows in the upper storey, like jet engine flares. Water played into the flames from three fire engines. The windows on the lower floors were burnt out, smouldering. Dryden caught the sad smell of soaked bedding through the cab’s open window.

  Up close Dryden realized this was no ordinary street. Lynn’s local economy was as tough as Wisbech’s, powered by a volatile mix of ex-Londoners who had moved north for cheap council housing, and migrant workers, both legal and illegal. The sign reading Erebus Street had been painted over with Chinese characters. There were three Chinese restaurants: one on each corner and one in the distance at the bottom of the street by the wharf. A church on the corner boasted MARTIAL ARTS on a banner strung across its stained-glass window. One of the terraced houses had a pub-style sign which read MASSAGE. A Chinese lantern hung from a lamppost.

  Dryden approached a uniformed PC he didn’t recognize on the barrier and showed his press card and ID for The Crow.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re a bit far from home,’ said the copper. He was young, slight, with a poor attempt at a moustache under his nose.

  ‘Can I go through?’

  ‘No, you can’t. It’s not a ride at the fair. You can talk to him, though, if you’re desperate.’ He pointed along the barrier to a man decked in cameras. ‘He’s from the local rag.’

  Gary Merton introduced himself. He was with the Lynn Herald, the town’s own weekly. He was the chief photographer. They didn’t have a reporter on the scene because it was a Saturday, and the editorial staff was all on leave, or off shift.

  ‘So it’s all down to me, not for the last time.’ He smelt of applewood, quite distinctly, and of carbolic. His skin looked incredibly clean, as if it was about to be featured in an advert for cosmetics. ‘I was in the club.’ He nodded at the MASSAGE sign, and his eyes widened. ‘It’s good. The girls know their stuff. By the time I’d got me kit on the place was alight. There’d been a fight in the street, apparently, loads of ’em. That’s the story. A “pitched battle” – that’s the quote. Soldier on soldier.’

  He’d used the words deliberately, but when Dryden didn’t bite, he explained himself: ‘That’s what they call ’em. It’s a Triad thing. Soldiers. Everyone’s got a number in the gang; soldiers are forty-nine. Every one of them. They’re the muscle. Whereas, say, four-one-five is White Paper Fan; that’s the moneyman – finance and advice. You’d be surprised what you need to know to stay safe in this town.’

  He hitched up a badly fitting pair of jeans.

  ‘So I asked one of the women what was up, and she says the soldiers that were fighting each other are from the same gang, that the gang that runs the street is breaking up, like in a civil war. Some of the soldiers have set up a rival gang; they’ve joined up with some Poles. That’s what she said. This breakaway lot are Christians. I told her that was crap, that there aren’t any Chinky Christians, but she says it’s the big thing now. What d’you reckon?’

  ‘Where do these Christians worship?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘Church of the Nativity, that’s on the other side of the docks. That’s where the Poles go, and she’s right there, because I’ve done some weddings and they’ve been Poles.’

  Dryden thought of Sima Shuba’s dead body draped over the crucifix in the graveyard of Christ Church, surrounded by the shattered wooden body of Christ. Had that been a deliberate defilement of the Christian religion? Had Sima Shu
ba been a member of the breakaway gang? And had his ‘crucifixion’ been a message to them to fall back in line, or at least keep off disputed turf?

  Merton stopped talking long enough to take some shots as the fire gutted the top storey, then began to billow smoke, as a roof beam snapped and cartwheeled out into the street.

  ‘Hey up,’ he said. A plain-clothed CID man was walking towards them up Erebus Street. He carried a megaphone and a radio. ‘Gary.’ He nodded at Merton. ‘Someone said you wanted to get closer. I’m taking it we get prints, as usual?’

  Merton nodded. ‘You will indeed, Mr Talbot.’

  ‘Come on then. But stay with me. This is turning out to be a bit more serious than we first thought. Can’t have you trampling all over the place in your size tens.’ He lifted the tape of the barrier.

  Gary gave Dryden a kitbag of camera gear and a tripod and told him to follow.

  They walked past a small group of women and children talking to two women PCs. One of the women, tall, with a Western haircut, was crying, held upright by the rest, her hands pressed against her face, which was flushed and shiny with tears.

  A second barrier had been set up opposite the house. The fire was almost out now, white smoke drifting from the upper windows. The fire brigade had a video camera on a tripod set up and running on automatic. Scene-of-crime officers were entering the house.

  ‘You can take some snaps from here – no closer,’ said Talbot. The CID man was short, muscular, with the slightly knuckled face of a rugby player. His suit jacket was tight across his shoulders.

  They could hear the sizzle of steam and foam now from the gutted house. A forensic officer came out of the ground floor with a plastic evidence bag, which he gave to Talbot.

  Dryden noted that the number 426 had been painted on the wall of the burnt-out house, four foot high, in red.

  ‘What does that number mean?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked Talbot, but not unkindly.

  Dryden gave him his card. As he read it, flicking it over, Dryden tried to work out what Talbot had in the forensic bag. It looked like a piece of metal plumbing.

  ‘The four-two-six denotes Red Pole,’ said Talbot. ‘That’s the master. The head of the gang. It’s all bollocks. They’re crooks, small-time hoods; it’s just all dressed up as something else. Underneath all the shite it’s still drugs, vice, protection.’ He pointed across the street. ‘And massage parlours.’

  ‘Where is he, this master?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘He’s dead. In that front room,’ said Talbot.

  Dryden stopped breathing because the moment took him back to Barrowby Airfield, and the three incinerated victims in the ash of the lock-up. There was smoke here, and flame, and blackened timbers; and now there was another body, this time unseen. But that didn’t make it any easier. He wanted to turn away, maybe run away, and find clean air to fill his lungs.

  Merton’s camera whirred as he took picture after picture, zooming in through the downstairs window. They could see a mirror, bare walls with old wallpaper, white-suited forensic officers reflected in the silvered glass.

  Dryden took a deep, calming, breath. ‘Dead? How?’ The questions came out as a whisper.

  ‘There’ll be a statement later from headquarters. Use that. We’ve never spoken. Got it?’

  Dryden nodded, both hands held out in compliance.

  Talbot held up the evidence bag. ‘Murder weapon,’ he said. ‘One of them, anyway. The cans are scattered around. Looks like there were three of them, each armed with one of these.’

  And then Dryden saw what it was: the head and nozzle of a hand-held blowtorch, the kind you can use for DIY, peeling paint off woodwork.

  ‘They used them on his face,’ said Talbot. ‘Let’s just say that we’re not going to be able to get a visual ID on the victim. Get the picture?’

  The detective pressed the back of his hand against his mouth as if overcome by the moment. The hard-bitten copper seemed momentarily unable to carry on. ‘Come to think of it, we’re not going to be able to use his teeth either.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Sunday

  Dryden hoped that with the dusk would come some respite from the drama on Erebus Street. The fire, and the fate of the unseen victim within the burnt-out house, had added a fresh circle to the hell he’d first glimpsed in the ash of the lock-up at Barrowby Airfield. Entangled in this tale of fire and flesh, he was struggling to maintain his role as the natural outsider, watching, and then reporting, on the lives of others.

  It was very quiet on board PK 122. The winds always died at sunset. This summer the phenomenon had been striking because it was the only time the blades of the turbine were at rest. The old boat appeared at its most haunted in this daily silence. The wooden plaque that read Dunkirk 1940 seemed to radiate its own soundtrack; very faintly, the voices of men, calling from the water. Dryden’s imagination provided the pictures: the boat nosing its way forward in the surf off the Normandy Beaches, ack-ack clouds above, the dead in the water, survivors struggling towards PK 122.

  Normally such echoes were a comfort to him. Today they seemed to mingle with the images he was trying to suppress. He tried to keep himself busy, fixing one of the pumps on Lunigiana, making tea for Humph, joining Laura on a walk by the river, Eden in the papoose. It was the kind of Sunday he loved in many ways: domestic, but without the deadening central weight of a house. But still a black cloud hovered, dampening his mood. He wondered if the shock for which he’d been treated at Barrowby might have an echo, returning at intervals, creating that strange sense of separation from the real world.

  DI Friday’s black Ford purred down the drove road from Barham’s Farm. Dryden had seen him on Sundays before, but always up in the town park, watching his sons play football. The detective parked his car on the narrow wharf beside the boats. As he got out he lit a cigarette and the effort of inhaling raised his shoulders.

  ‘Social call?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Dryden realized with a shock that, despite his natural antipathy to authority, he liked George Friday.

  The detective’s damaged foot was hardly noticeable in the mornings, but by the close of the day he always seemed tired, wrapped in a raincoat despite the heat of the day, halting with the limp.

  ‘Can we talk?’ asked Friday, without enthusiasm.

  The car had woken Laura from an afternoon sleep. She appeared on deck with Eden. The day of filming at Coldham’s Farm had been a triumph for her, and ever since her eyes had held a visible spark. ‘I’ll make tea,’ she said, disappearing below deck.

  Friday came aboard and took a seat in the stern of PK 122. Dryden wondered if he’d been home since getting the call to Barrowby Airfield three days earlier. He seemed to radiate a profound exhaustion. Producing a small plastic envelope from his pocket, he held it up to the light. There was a bullet inside.‘I thought you should know sooner rather than later.’

  The sun caught the object in the bag so that it glowed, as if emitting its own light.

  ‘Is that …?’

  ‘The bullet fired at Barrowby,’ said Friday.

  Dryden thought that this small, almost beautiful object had caused a great deal of grief. It had almost certainly sparked the explosion which snuffed out the lives of three men in a few devastating seconds.

  ‘It was embedded in the breeze blocks in the back wall,’ continued Friday. ‘Soft enough to slow it down – didn’t do a lot of damage to the bullet, did it? Forensics have just filed a report. It took a deflection off an iron girder before hitting the wall, so that’s probably what ignited the gas vapour. Anyway, the metal around the hole in the door was rust-free. Totally. Apparently metal scratched like that will begin to alter, chemically, within twenty-four hours. But this was newly exposed metal, no sign of rust, so the bullet was fired that day. Given the explosion, we have to presume it triggered the blast.’

  ‘So it all fits,’ said Dryden.

  ‘Not quite.
This bullet didn’t come out of the gun we found by Brinks. That gun had not been fired for some time, maybe years.’

  All the images Dryden had in his head seemed to pixilate, like a dodgy DVD, gradually breaking apart.

  ‘This bullet was fired down a rifled barrel. Brinks had a handgun, no rifling. The bullet’s got a ballistic signature, so we know, broadly, the type of gun used. A very classy model, apparently – probably military. Kind of weapon that starts its life in Eastern Europe.’

  ‘So Brinks is no longer your prime suspect. He’s a victim too.’

  Friday dug his hands in the raincoat pockets. ‘Indeed. What we need now is a new prime suspect. Let’s say we’re taking a keen interest in the events on Erebus Street yesterday. My spies tell me you were there?’

  ‘You think that was payback? That this is all gang warfare – killing the triad master was retribution for the deaths at Barrowby?’

  Friday continued to stare at the river.

  ‘Arrests?’

  ‘Eight. No charges. The main triad organisation in Lynn, and indeed in the UK, is called 14K. The two Chinese men at Barrowby were members of a breakaway group. These new kids on the block are called Sun Yee On. It’s got links with migrant Polish workers.’

  ‘They’re Christians,’ said Dryden.

  ‘Indeed. Well, they go to a Catholic church. Is that the same thing? Having just come from the autopsy on the victim found in the house on Erebus Street, I would doubt it very much. Let’s just say the breakaway group likes to see itself as different on a point of religious belief. It’s all part of the brand image – they’re the future, not the stuffy old past. They believe in the religion of the West – not Taoism, or Buddhism.’

  Friday accepted a mug of tea from Laura. ‘Sun Yee On tried to make the metal trade their own, apparently, and they’d clearly branched out into illicit booze too.’

  ‘And this turf war started with Sima Shuba’s murder,’ said Dryden.

  ‘Looks like it. But it’s complicated, and we don’t really know what happened that night at Christ Church. Sima Shuba used to be an enforcer for 14K. But we’re told he’d changed sides and was working out at Barrowby. We think 14K sent someone up to put the frighteners on Sun Yee On. I reckon they followed them to Christ Church and then struck. Looks like they chose to make an example of Sima Shuba. Maybe he was the newest recruit. Anyway, he ended up on the cross. I think that was a message, don’t you? This is where the Christians end up. Don’t mess with us any more. This is what happens.’