The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  Dryden lifted his right leg to start running again when he heard the shot: a single percussion, which might, to bystanders, have been something else – a metal bed frame collapsing, perhaps, or a door slamming. A nurse, moving quickly but not in panic, went through the same door as Muriel, and then came out, back-pedalling, a hand to her mouth.

  When Dryden got to the open door the scene inside was perfectly framed. The pot plant was on the floor, the earth spilt out. Muriel Calder had taken a chair as if she was a visitor. On the far side of the bed a woman PC sat looking back at Dryden, a very fine spray of blood across her face. She was in shock, and her mouth hung open like an old cutlery drawer. Most of the blood was on the pillow, a halo, around Will Brinks’ shattered, bandaged face. The bullet had entered his skull almost exactly through his left eye. The wound had redefined his face, pulling it all in, as if he’d been nailed to the pillow with a red spike.

  FORTY-FOUR

  If Muriel Calder wasn’t in shock, Dryden was. The sound was the first clue – a kind of deadened, underwater effect, through which everything was filtered and rebroadcast. A scream, shouting, an alarm over the tannoy. And he could hear his heart, lumbering, as if his body was somewhere else doing something draining, struggling uphill under a great weight. But he couldn’t actually feel anything. It was as if his skin had stopped sending signals to his brain.

  He stood by the bedside seat holding Muriel’s hand. They couldn’t see Will Brinks’ body now, because some nurses were in their way, and then a pair of doctors, and then a machine. Someone gave Muriel a glass of water and Dryden saw that she held the glass with a steady hand and that rather than gulping it down she took a little, then considered the level she’d left, as if she’d have to make it last.

  Then everyone left and they could see the body. There was a lot more blood now, so that the colour was impossible to cut out, as if Dryden’s own eyeballs were tinted red. And there was a new sound, that of trickling, quite distinct, which might have been coming from under the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dryden, for a reason which must have existed but which escaped him immediately.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’ve waited ten years to do that to one of them. Any one of them. I suppose I am sorry it was him, but only after the fact. That’s what they say, isn’t it? After the fact.’

  The nurses slid a screen between them and the fact. The door was shut and a policeman stood guard. They were all alone with the young man’s body behind the screen.

  ‘I didn’t know that it was him until you told me. And the picture confirmed it. Once I knew, I had to do something. Thank you for that.’

  Not a trace of irony, thought Dryden.

  He wondered how long they’d be left like this, just inches away from the corpse. It felt like hours already, but might be minutes, or seconds.

  ‘Brinks’ stepfather said he fell in with a gang when he was a teenager,’ said Dryden, feeling he had to tell Will’s story, because he was no longer able to defend himself. ‘Then, one day, he just came home to Third Drove and stayed there. He told the family that he’d spent a night in the cells and that it had terrified him. That he couldn’t live with the feeling of being locked up. He needed to be outside, under the sky. I think that was all true, as far as it went, but the real reason he came home was what happened in your kitchen that day. Fangor was there too. The difference was that Will’s nerve didn’t hold. It broke. So he hid himself away from the world. He was probably the best of them.’

  She laughed through her nose. ‘I’ve saved him from a life in a cell.’

  Dryden let her hand slip out of his.

  ‘I suppose he thought he was safe at Third Drove,’ she said. ‘He didn’t know, did he, that I’d remember. So he would have felt no anxiety. My life’s been unbearable.’

  There was a sound from behind the screen, like a sigh. The body breathing, in its own after-life way, in death.

  She laughed then and Dryden knew that it was time which had done this to her: time in that house, time in that kitchen, time around that table. A hollow, empty wilderness of a life she’d filled up with anger, and bitterness, but only silently, sharing it with no one.

  ‘So I went into Ronald’s room this morning,’ she said. ‘Not a bedroom, an office, where he did the farm accounts. I haven’t been in that room for months. There was a red dust over everything. The windows are never open in that room but the dust still gets in. Over all his papers, and over the framed pictures of us. The happy couple on the beach, in the Lakes, our wedding. So I cleaned each one and put them back and then I took the pistol out of his top drawer, and a box of bullets, and I drove here. Then I sat in the car and filled the chamber. I thought then: I can do this. I hid the gun in the pot plant. It’s a hibiscus. I’d like to keep it.’

  She looked at Dryden. ‘When you shouted it was too late already. I’d done it really, a thousand times. This …’ She gestured at the screen. ‘This was inevitable.’

  The door opened and DI Friday stood there.

  ‘I’m looking forward to going home now,’ she said. ‘I really am.’

  The detective’s mobile trilled.

  ‘You shouldn’t have that on in here,’ said Muriel Calder, standing, as if that was the crime that had brought them all to this, not a young man’s blood draining away.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Shock held Dryden’s mind imprisoned for an hour. He sat in an office he’d never remember looking out over the car park, watching the vehicles shuttle and crawl, executing devious U-turns, like counters on a game board. DI Friday came in, asked questions, and went out. Dryden was given water and coffee and a plate of biscuits. Another detective took a statement which he signed, the pen moving smoothly over the paper, but curiously without making any noise. Progressively he became aware of sound again, including a soft strain of music, and the ticking of an institutional clock, which he couldn’t locate with his eyes. Then he saw a black four by four, with a BBC TV logo on the side, edge under the barrier and park beside a police squad car. Laura got out and talked to a policeman. After a moment she looked up at the facade of the hospital but she didn’t see Dryden because the sight of her had broken the spell that held him, and he was already walking down that long, processional corridor towards the lifts.

  In the car he held Eden and told Laura what had happened, listening to his own voice, as if it was on the radio. She told him that they’d been invited for food at Meg Humphries. Or they could go home, back to the boat. She’d brought a picnic too, so that was a third option. They could find somewhere green and cool and enjoy the last dry hours of summer. But they’d have to be quick. The police had broadcast warnings of dust storms, then rain, at dusk. So it might be best to go home? She concentrated on the road but flicked her eyes sideways to watch his profile, which was expressionless. They drove east, the red setting sun in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he said eventually. ‘A picnic, at Christ Church.’ He turned to her, making a great effort to move the muscles of his face, to mimic a smile.

  ‘You’ve had a shock. I wouldn’t work if I was you.’

  ‘It’s OK. I need to talk to George Friday as well. I couldn’t face it back there, and in a strange way it isn’t really that urgent. But it must be said. I’ll ring later, when we’re home.’

  The centre of Brimstone Hill was deserted. The sky, a strange watery blue-green, looked sick. The horizon, in all directions, was slightly fuzzy, as if the line had been drawn in charcoal and then smudged with a finger. There was very little wind, although the smell of rain was pungent.

  He stood by the car as Laura unpacked Eden from the child seat and grabbed a picnic blanket, and the child’s new ball.

  ‘We’ll be fine over there.’ She pointed to the grass in the lee of the church. Laura poured red wine into tumblers and Dryden sat, his back against a tree bole. Eden lay on his front.

  In the still air they heard a gate hinge. Looking through the trees, Dryden saw Jock Donovan
walking quickly along the gravel path that led to the Clock Holt. For the old man it was the appointed hour.

  Laura was setting out the food. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ said Dryden, forcing himself up on to his feet. He circled the church and saw two figures in the distance: the soldier in stone, his cape wide and stiff, billowed out; and before him Jock Donovan, leaning forward, slightly bent at the ankles.

  Dryden had been walking on the grass but he switched to the gravel path to give the old man warning of his approach.

  Donovan’s shoulders stiffened but he didn’t turn round.

  They stood together, side by side.

  Dryden’s eye jumped to the words on the memorial, seeking the familiar dedication to the Davenport brothers. Brothers in Arms. And when he found the words, and the letters that made them up, he knew why Donovan had become a killer. Why he’d picked up his gun and gone back into battle one more time. There had to be a spark, an emotional jolt, which had set him on that path, on that day. And here it was. Exquisite, heart-breaking and cruel.

  The memorial stone was as it had been the first day Dryden had seen it. But the lead letters, the words which stood as a testament to the comrades Donovan had lost that night in Korea, had been prized out of the stone. A few were scattered amongst the flowers at the base. Dryden bent down and picked one up: a Capital P. ‘The metal thieves,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the price of lead,’ said Donovan.

  Donovan let some of the letters fall from his hand. They reminded Dryden of ‘jacks’ – a toy from his childhood – and they made the same soft lead sound when they fell on stone.

  Dryden knelt down and picked them up. ‘I wondered why,’ he said. ‘There had to be a trigger.’ He left it at that because it was the perfect metaphor.

  ‘I’ve got a friend in the financial press,’ he said. ‘He traced ORIENTO for me. An import-export business, privately owned, slightly shadowy. Operating in the Far East, especially South Korea. It was guns, of course. High-performance rifles. And gun-sights, all the optics needed to see a target from several miles away. I traced the details on one model supplied to the British Army. It holds the record for the longest kill. You’ll know the numbers, but it is about three thousand yards. And that’s a tiny target, of course, under battle conditions.’

  Donovan rearranged his feet.

  ‘In 2005 ORIENTO’s export and import licences were revoked. There were two police inquiries – one in Singapore, one in Pretoria – into allegations that the company had been bribing government officials. Neither resulted in charges. You were struck off as a director here in the UK in 2007. I guess that explains the retirement to the Fens?’

  ‘You can’t do business in the Far East without paying bribes. Our crime was we didn’t pay enough.’

  ‘I presume you have one of the high-velocity rifles. And the house, of course, has a flat roof.’

  One of the old man’s knees gave way and Dryden thought he was going to fall over.

  ‘I’ll have to tell the police,’ said Dryden.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about it. Not again. They can do what they want.’

  Dryden looked at Donovan’s profile. ‘So you decided to kill in revenge, for this, for a handful of lead letters?’

  Donovan shook his head, his chin down. ‘I saw their van the night they stole the lead off the roof, the night they killed that man and hung him on the cross, the night they did this.’ He let a few more letters drop from his hand. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I’d gone up on the roof to see if I could see any muntjac or foxes with the night glasses. It was early morning, about three a.m., and as I came out on the roof I heard the van coming along the road, maybe twenty mph, less. And it stopped right opposite the house and a figure came out of the shadows opposite; he must have been there all the time, standing lookout. The driver got out of the van to open the tailgate. I saw them both clearly because they’d stopped under one of the street lights. One was ethnic Chinese. Then they were off. Just a white van, like all the rest.

  ‘By the time I heard what they’d done at the church it was the next night. It was on the radio, and they said the police thought it was gangs fighting over territory. So I thought, I don’t want any part of that, and what do I know anyway? I saw a white van. Big deal. So I kept quiet. Last thing I want is the police in my life again. They said arrests were being made, so what difference would it make? Then I went out to Barrowby Airfield with you to see the kites. The van went past and there he was, the Chinese driver. I recognized him. The police hadn’t got him at all. That shook me. I thought then I should speak up, but I’d have to tell them why I didn’t report it on the day. So I just waited.

  ‘Thursday morning I came here to visit the memorial. The first time since the murder in the graveyard. I found this – that they’d torn the letters out – and I couldn’t walk away, could I? It was personal, as if I’d been singled out. I told myself I hadn’t. That they were just thieves. But I couldn’t find the peace I always get here. It broke the spell. The magic of the place.’

  He leaned forward and touched the stone.

  ‘They never knew what they’d done,’ he said. ‘What they’d unleashed. I told you it was the explosion which unlocked the memory of that night in the trench in Korea. But it was this. Just a few metal letters in stone.’ He heaved some air into old lungs. ‘It’s always been important to me, this place, because it meant I didn’t have to remember. Didn’t have to feel anything. All I had to do was touch the stone. Bear witness. Keep the rest of it inside here …’

  Donovan put both hands to his head.

  ‘When I saw this, it was over,’ he said, swaying slightly. A sudden gust of wind cracked like a sheet. The pine trees began to sizzle. ‘I saw everything again. And I can’t stop seeing it.’

  ‘We should get in the church, Jock. There’s a dust storm brewing. Then rain. You could sit down. You need to sit down.’

  ‘Everything was unlocked. The fear came out, and the guilt, and the loss – and then, what came out last but overshadowed everything, was the anger. I had to do something with the anger. I had to hit back. I nearly died of the tension, the bottled-up feeling that I had to hurt someone else. And then I knew. I knew who to blame. The people I’d never blamed. The enemy. All those years I hadn’t hated. But that morning, standing here, it crowded around me, like these dust storms, blocking out the light.’

  Dryden could taste dust on the wind now, on his lips.

  Donovan stepped back. ‘I’m not mad. I was for a while in the years after I got back. But I’ve been better. And I thought I could keep the good feeling …’ He shrugged, struggling to put what he felt into words. ‘Keep the absence of the bad feeling. I just wanted to feel nothing, as I’ve always felt nothing. I thought if I punished them I could have that back, my old life. Punished them the way that Peter and Paul would have done. So I took the rifle and went up on the roof. I saw someone in the telescopic sight but he had his back to me. He had that dark, black hair. Glossy. I thought, I’ll kill one. One shot. Then the others will come out. And maybe, if I still feel the anger, I’ll kill them as they come out, one by one. I pulled the trigger and in the same moment he bent down, touched his shoes. I’d have probably missed him anyway. My arms shake now I’m old.’

  He rubbed a hand over his rough skin and stubble and Dryden saw he was crying.

  ‘Life’s a comedy sometimes.’

  He stepped away from the edge of the memorial.

  ‘The blast terrified me. I thought, it’s God. It’s His judgement.’ Donovan raised his voice. ‘When I got myself up on my feet there was this silence, and even if I screamed there was still silence. I just went outside and tried to find a noise, any noise. I saw you go by in the cab. Then I heard a siren. And that bell.’ He twisted at the waist, looking back at Christ Church. ‘It rang out of time.’

  The old soldier stood to attention. ‘I’m sorry now for what I did. I just wish they hadn’t taken the letters. Because then I’d have died never havi
ng remembered, and that would have been a mercy. Now I’ve got to live with what I’ve done – I’ve killed three men. But most of all I’ve got to live with what I didn’t do that night in 1953. I didn’t die with my friends. Did I? I didn’t even fight alongside them.’

  FORTY-SIX

  He took Donovan’s arm, a bone in a sleeve, as if his muscles had dissolved, and tried to lead him away from the memorial.

  The churchyard around them was suddenly churning with leaves. Looking across the Clock Holt, Dryden could see the edge of the dust storm blotting out a line of poplars. Daylight was bleeding out of the sky.

  And then he saw a ball rolling along one of the churchyard paths, blown by the wind. It was Donovan’s present to Eden: small, multi-coloured, with the Korean script blurred as it spun.

  And then he saw Eden, walking, with strange, staggering steps, in pursuit of the ball.

  ‘Eden! Philip!’ Laura’s voice was clear above the sound of the wind. She came into sight around the apse of Christ Church, calling for her child.

  ‘He’s here!’ Dryden ran towards the child. Eden was looking at the ball, not at his feet, which were set at odd angles with each step. The wind and the dust and the whirl of things made the child scream with joy. He stamped his feet as the ball rolled away.

  Dryden made himself stop a few feet short of his son, holding out his arms. Laura arrived, doubled over. ‘I left him playing with the ball on the blanket,’ she said. ‘I just looked away and he was gone.’ She was half laughing, half crying.

  Eden walked into Dryden’s arms. He picked up the child and turned him round so that he could see the ball, which was being blown towards the church porch.

  The coming storm reached the pine trees round the vicarage and somewhere a door banged, wood splintering. A single car alarm began to pulse a warning.