The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  Friday slurped tea. ‘So that’s where we are,’ he concluded. ‘All I need to do is find some forensics to link 14K to Barrowby. The gun would be nice. Am I going to find it? Not unless I am very lucky.’

  Dryden stretched his legs out. ‘So what are we saying? That 14K turned up at Barrowby, took a pot shot, got lucky, and the place blew up? Doesn’t sound very likely.’

  Friday drained the nicotine from a fresh cigarette. ‘Nope. It isn’t. What if they just got close and waited to pick someone off. Or waited to pick all of them off. So they take a shot at Brinks and hit the lock-up. Then the lot goes up. Maybe they didn’t set out to wipe ’em out.’

  ‘But that would mean they missed Brinks, right? Do these guys miss?’

  ‘Always a first time.’

  A swan went by on the river, its wings set like icing.

  ‘One thing,’ said Dryden. ‘A few days before the blast, Brinks took a picture of a Funeral Owl. He’s a twitcher, a bird nerd. But the Funeral Owl is rare, and it was a terrific picture. He sent it in for us to print, although when I went out to see him he was pretty terrified I’d print his name, or his picture. Anyway – my point is that outside his caravan was a table. There were sheets of paper covered in number grids, four-by-four grids, all the digits from nought to nine inclusive, plus two blanks. Those turbines at Coldham’s, they have identical security keypads. If he got that shot of the owl he’s got cameras, telephoto lenses, the lot. I think he watched the maintenance crews getting into the turbines with the field glasses and noted down the codes. He got some right, some wrong. I think he was on the inside, not the outside. I talked to his stepfather.’

  Friday nodded. ‘I know. He’s by the kid’s bedside with one of my uniforms.’

  ‘He reckons he’s terrified of breaking the law, all goes back to some traumatic night in the cells when he was a tearaway,’ said Dryden.

  ‘He’s got previous. We’re on to that.’

  ‘But has he talked?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I think he got drawn in to the gang, then took fright and decided to do a runner. I’m just saying, I think he was more than an innocent bystander.’

  Laura joined them with Eden, so they talked about the river, about the boats, about not having a house.

  ‘Thanks for coming by,’ said Dryden.

  ‘A favour,’ said Friday. ‘My one chance is the gun. I’ll have the spec and a picture soon. Can you run it in The Crow? These gangs bring their guns in, but there’s a chance it’s local.’

  ‘OK, sure. Thanks for the update.’

  ‘I had to come down anyway; there’s a body in the river, up at Ely. They’ll have the details at control in the morning. Looks like the missing teenager, Julian Amhurst. He had chemical symbols in ink on his arm.’

  Laura took Eden up in her arms. ‘God, how awful. Do the parents know?’

  Friday looked at his shoes. ‘Not yet.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Monday

  Dryden opened the gate into Christ Church graveyard. He paused in a splash of sunshine shaped like a star and looked up at the roof. The Rev. Temple-Wright had been as good as her word. The missing lead had been replaced with black plastic sheeting. It was as if the building had been wounded. Like many simple, beautiful objects, the blemish destroyed its symmetry, blurred its simple lines.

  The sheep on the Clock Holt were crowded in one corner, in a patch of shade, and bleated as he walked towards Sexton Cottage. A white van was parked in the lane, artwork on the side in a decorative style.

  Vincent Haig

  Pictures framed and restored.

  But it was Albe Haig who opened the door. His eyes were focused on a point over Dryden’s left shoulder. ‘Come in,’ he said, shuffling back. He looked at his feet, which were in slippers. ‘Vinnie’s here,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to speak to him.’

  There was music in the house: 1940s big band sounds. Vincent Haig appeared holding an iPhone, using the thumb to text. In his other hand he had a mug of tea. ‘Hi. Come through.’

  They’d locked eyes and Dryden was struck again by the pink sclera, the cracked blood vessels around the irises.

  They went into the cottage’s front room. Miniature again, hardly ten foot square, with a small Victorian iron-grate fire, a pair of armchairs, a bookcase full of audio tapes, a sideboard too big for the house, let alone the room; and an easel holding a canvas half finished. It was a portrait of the house, in thick dollops of oil. The light from the window played across the surface of the painting so that Dryden could see the furrows and ridges of the brushwork.

  Haig had propped Dryden’s collage of OS maps up on one of the chairs, neatly framed, Perspex covered, showing the whole of the Brimstone Hill area in impeccable detail, the individual charts beautifully dovetailed to produce a single map.

  ‘This is perfect,’ said Dryden. He gave him three ten-pound notes and a fiver.

  Haig slipped them in his wallet. A tradesman’s wallet – leather, worn, and thick with notes. ‘I was at Dacey’s auction rooms on Friday,’ said Dryden. ‘The police raided some of the stalls, looking for stolen metalwork mainly. That’s what the crooks out at Barrowby Airfield were up to when they weren’t distilling gut rot in bottles. Police and trade descriptions have been watching the sales for some time in case any stolen metal turned up. After the explosion at Barrowby they decided to cut their losses and swoop, to see what they could find. But you had other interests at Dacey’s on Friday night …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Congratulations on buying the house,’ said Dryden. ‘Were you going to mention it, or was I supposed to run the story anyway? If I hadn’t kept it for next week I’d look like a prize fool. I don’t need help to achieve that status. Or was the idea just to put Temple-Wright under pressure, see if you could get it for nothing? And if that failed, which it did, you had the cash all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ It was the old man, talking from the doorway. He crossed the threshold, his eyes searching for Dryden’s.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said again. ‘I don’t approve.’

  ‘Not going to stop you living here, though, is it?’ said his grandson. There was a cruel note in the voice and it made the old man cower. ‘Just leave it,’ he told his grandfather. ‘We don’t need to apologise to anyone.’

  Vincent Haig squared his shoulders, forcing himself to meet Dryden’s eyes. ‘I was going to tell you if we were successful at the auction. It was a public auction. We’ve done nothing wrong. The house is ours now. The fact we had to buy it to make sure Grandad can go on living here is still a scandal. He was promised. There was a bargain.’

  The old man’s hand moved to the doorjamb, finding it with just the slightest of spatial errors, so that it looked like he was grabbing it for support.

  ‘The question is, how did you buy it?’ said Dryden. ‘Where did the money come from?’

  ‘That’s none of your business, is it?’

  ‘Mortgaged his own home,’ said the old man. ‘Went to the bank, too. I said he was a fool.’ The old man had raised one hand as if he expected a blow. But then Dryden saw that he was trying to put his hand between his own, unseeing eyes, and those of his grandson, as if he didn’t want a connection to exist between them.

  ‘I need to talk to Grandad,’ said Haig to Dryden, as if the old man was a child.

  And Dryden thought: You might like to tell him the truth. Because you told me that both the Old Forge, and the cottage you live in, were rented.

  ‘Zabrowka,’ said Dryden. ‘The moonshine vodka. I know you’re partial. But you told me, when I asked, that the bottle you had was a present. You’ve told me lots of lies, but do you know what, I believed that.’

  ‘That stuff you drink,’ said the old man, almost spitting it out.

  ‘Christ, will you shut up, old man,’ said Haig. The profanity, Dryden guessed, crossed a boundary which had perhaps been rarely crossed in this house. And a calculated insult, because of all the words h
e could have used, he’d chosen that one, in the shadow of the church which bore Christ’s name.

  ‘Why did you deserve that particular present, a crate of hooch?’ asked Dryden.

  Haig’s face was a picture now, one of his own pictures. Slabs of colour, the lines of the face inhuman, as if he’d been assembled by a committee.

  ‘What did you do for them?’ asked Dryden. ‘Did you buy and sell, perhaps? It’s your world, I think, auctions, fairs. You buy and sell frames – pictures too? Did they want you to link them up to the trade? Is that what they needed, Vinnie, a fence?’

  ‘Vinnie?’ asked the old man. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘I’d like you to leave. This is family business.’

  Dryden clicked his fingers. ‘Business. I’m really hoping you didn’t do business with the men from Barrowby Oilseed.’ He took a step closer to Haig and was delighted to see him back off in response. ‘You didn’t do that? You didn’t borrow the money from them, did you?’

  Haig struggled to keep an impassive face.

  ‘That’s a really stupid thing to do, Vinnie,’ said Dryden. ‘I don’t think they do tracker mortgages. We’re talking triad gangs here. By the time you pay them back you’ll have paid twice, three times. That’s the good news. The bad news is what happens if you don’t pay them back. Barrowby wasn’t an accident, you know. It was murder. That’s business, triad-style.’

  ‘Does Kathleen know?’ asked the old man. He turned to where he’d last heard Dryden’s voice. ‘That’s my daughter-in-law. She’s a wonderful girl. Works hard.’

  The implication was clear.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Vincent Haig, but something of his authority had gone. He sounded like what he was: a bully, losing ground.

  ‘I’ve always worked hard, too,’ said Albe Haig. ‘So did your mother. We were a decent family. I don’t need charity.’

  Vincent Haig laughed. ‘Yes, you do. You’ve needed charity all your life. For the last ten years you’ve needed me. Want to know why I stuck by you all these years? It was for Grandma.’

  The old man actually flinched at the word.

  ‘I promised her that I’d always be here for you. Always.’

  He pulled at the loose shirt at his throat and Dryden saw where the loss of temper had blotched the skin.

  ‘And, yes, Kath does know. Nice of you to ask, for once. And it is Kath, by the way. She hates Kathleen; she hates anyone calling her Kathleen. She just can’t face telling you not to do it. Ten years of not telling you to shut up and call her by her real name. Do you know what that is? It’s pity.’

  Dryden couldn’t look at the old man’s face. His grandson’s was flushed, the eyes full of tears. Dryden took the map and let himself out.

  The sheep on Clock Holt had fanned out over the field to munch at the grass, but his arrival sent them all off into the shadowy corner again, where they bleated in a huddle.

  Jock Donovan was at the gate out of Christ Church graveyard. Dryden was immediately aware that the old soldier had been waiting for him.

  ‘I saw you arrive,’ said Donovan. Beyond him, on the far side of the road, was Brimstone House, the old man’s home. In the morning sunshine the Artex-white facade was almost painfully bright. ‘I wanted to thank you for sorting out the kites. I’ve been sleeping. It’s made a real difference to my life. This is for your son. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten his name?’ Donovan had a plastic bag and from it he took a ball.

  ‘Eden,’ said Dryden.

  ‘He’ll walk when he wants to, of course,’ said Donovan. ‘But I thought this might help. He can hold it, but if it rolls away he’ll have to go after it, and it’s too big to swallow.’

  Dryden accepted the ball. It felt like leather, but with a textured surface, and was about twenty centimetres across. The colours were very bright, reds and blues and whites, and there was a circular script in a language which looked to Dryden’s eye like Japanese.

  ‘It’s a jokgu ball. The South Koreans invented it in the sixties to keep the army conscripts fit. It’s like volleyball, but you use your feet, and the net’s low, like tennis. Great to watch.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s a really good idea,’ said Dryden. ‘Thank you. I’ll run a story on the kites when they’ve finished the tests. Local man’s super hearing solves mystery of singing kites. That kind of thing. I might need a picture.’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine, that’s what we agreed. Good luck with the ball.’ With that Donovan turned on his heels, still holding the empty plastic bag, and walked stiffly back towards the house.

  That left Dryden holding the ball. If he bounced it he’d scuff it, and it was brand new, so he just balanced it on one hand. Presents always took him aback, especially unexpected ones. He knew what he ought to feel: gratitude, a link with the giver, especially when so much thought had gone into the choice of the gift. Instead, he was left with a sense of unease, and he had to admit – if only to himself – that he often mistrusted the good intentions of others.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Brimstone Café’s All-Day Super Breakfast came on its own oval plate. Dryden had ordered one for Humph, but only a cup of tea with toast for himself. Grace said she wasn’t hungry. They sat outside at the café’s only table, under the shade of the London plane tree. Dryden thought Grace looked ill: pale, her face puffy, her narrow fingers clutching at her hair. She’d asked for coke when pushed. Humph sat opposite his daughter, trying to get her to talk. Grace was spending her time trying not to cry.

  Then the all-day breakfast arrived and Humph concentrated on that.

  Dryden had his laptop open and was looking at a digital image of the proposed page layouts for the next day’s edition of the Ely Express. The front was reserved for the latest on the Barrowby Airfield killings, with the exclusive picture of Will Brinks taken from Rick’s Tattoo Parlour. Brinks had switched from the CID’s prime suspect to the last remaining victim of the Barrowby explosion, but the photograph was still worth its place on the front.

  Page three featured the sad story of Julian Amhurst.

  STAR PUPIL’S BODY FOUND IN RIVER AT ELY

  The news had been running on the local radio bulletins since dawn. He read all the copy on the front and page three and then sent Vee Hilgay a text at The Crow telling her it all looked good. Any late news could be added in the morning. The advertisers liked the free-sheet to be out early, and on time, to be delivered to households and businesses in the town. Dryden didn’t like the free newspaper business, but by putting his own version out on the streets, he had effectively stopped a competitor muscling in on his patch.

  Humph had his knife and fork in his small hands, both pointing skywards, when he finally seemed to summon the energy to stop eating and talk. ‘I spoke to Mum on the mobile,’ he said to Grace.

  His daughter drained her coke, then looked away.

  Dryden examined the ball Donovan had given him, trying to see order in the chaos of the Korean hieroglyphs.

  ‘She said a policeman called at the house,’ said Humph. ‘From Ely. She said he wanted to talk to you. Why’s that?’

  Humph was aware that every time he spoke to Grace he was somehow adding to that centrifugal force, the one that was throwing her out, away from the centre, away from him; but he couldn’t stop himself.

  There was a magazine on the table and Grace had found a page with a puzzle on it, a grid. She toyed with it, trying out numbers in each square with a pencil on a length of string attached to the table leg, keeping her eyes down.

  ‘Grace,’ said Humph. ‘I don’t care what you’ve done. Just tell me. I can help. We can all help.’

  She pressed down with the pencil until the lead broke.

  Humph chased a button mushroom round his plate with his knife. ‘Mum told the copper you were staying with Grandma. So they’ll be round.’ Immediately he regretted the threat, realizing he’d given his daughter a watertight reason to run away again. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said, waving a fork with which he had previously
skewered a kidney. Two drops of watery blood fell on the plastic white tabletop.

  ‘I’m getting more tea,’ said Dryden. ‘Anyone?’

  He left them to it for a minute. Grace’s crimes were likely to be trivial. Dryden imagined a spectrum of possibilities, from mindless shoplifting at Boots to some elegant graffiti in one of the ring-road subways.

  He ordered tea and turned down a third attempt by the woman behind the counter to sell him an all-day breakfast. She was ethnic Chinese, married to a Fenman who sweltered in the kitchen. The Brimstone Café had once been a butcher’s shop and the walls were still tiled. A little frieze of glazed farm animals ran round the room at eye level – cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and hares. He never ate in the Brimstone because there was a strange echo even now of its past: the iron smell of blood, the coldness of the metal hooks, a raw saltiness.

  Outside the Humphries family had lapsed into silence.

  Dryden dunked his tea bag in his mug – ‘mashing’ his father would have called it, a northern word, from the factory floor. It was a comforting ritual that reminded him of what had been a happy family.

  Since his confrontation with Vincent Haig, his mind had been circling Christ Church. He couldn’t shift the idea that the key to the explosion at Barrowby Oilseed didn’t lie in the vicious underworld of Wisbech’s triads, at least not entirely. He felt it lay here, in Brimstone Hill. Had Vincent Haig borrowed money off the triads? Dryden thought of the fifty-pound notes lying around Will Brinks’ body. Had there been more cash? Had Haig, perhaps, decided to solve his problems with a single bullet? And then there was Jock Donovan. He’d been miles away from Barrowby at the moment the illicit still exploded. Dryden had seen him just after the blast in the street outside Christ Church. But images of the old man’s forgotten war seemed to echo still. It hadn’t been North Koreans, at least not North Koreans alone, who had sent those thousands of five-inch shells into Jock Donovan’s crescent-shaped trench. It had been the Chinese, the People’s Army. Had that eaten away at Donovan’s soul? Was he really the forgiving man he seemed to be, free, until the moment of the Barrowby Oilseed blast, of the memory of blood and water?