The Coldest Blood

by Jim Kelly

  He hit the dashboard with the flat of his hand. ‘Ely cop shop,’ he said. ‘Pronto!’

  Humph finished his reiteration of directions to the railway station in what sounded like a suspiciously Fen dialect of Estonian and then fired up the Capri. A cloud of fumes belched from the exhaust pipe with a bang as the cab swept out of the car park, charging a series of sleeping policemen which lay in its path.

  Ely police station was a local monument, a humourless glass and concrete block with a radio mast on top slightly too short to afford regular communication with the outer planets. It was a common prejudice in the town that this impressive outpost of the constabulary was almost constantly empty, local emergency calls being routed automatically to a helpful officer seventeen miles away in Cambridge. The skyscraper aerial was not, however, a complete waste of space as its impressive array of steel hawsers provided a roosting spot for several thousand starlings.

  Today the mast was decked in ice, which hung like decorations on a giant Christmas tree.

  The automatic doors opened as Dryden approached, revealing an empty counter, glassed in and meshed to meet terrorist attack. There were three seats for the public, across which lay The Crow’s ever-vigilant junior reporter Garry Pymoor.

  Dryden woke him up.

  ‘Right,’ said Garry, brushing aside the embarrassment which would have overtaken lesser men. He sat up, unfolding himself from the ubiquitous black leather coat and releasing a faint odour of Indian Pale Ale and bubblegum.

  ‘They phoned. Said they’d got some stuff for us on the cannabis peddling. I was gonna ring…’ he said, yawning so wide that his jaw cracked.

  Dryden pressed a button by a grille and waited for a disembodied voice to crackle into life, but there was silence.

  ‘Garry Pymoor and Philip Dryden from The Crow,’ he said. The reinforced door clicked open and Dryden pushed through into a long corridor which was slightly sticky underfoot and smelt of disinfectant.

  A man stood at the far end in the customary uniform of the plainclothed detective: grey suit, light blue shirt and dark tie, with polished black slip-on shoes. His hair was white and cropped and his shoulders were set at an angle that exactly matched his career prospects. He welcomed them, offering his hand to Dryden. ‘Thanks for coming. Jock Reade, DI Reade. I’m the drugs liaison officer for the force – along with a few other jobs. We’ve got some film for you…’ Dryden noticed the acrid hint of nicotine mixed with aftershave and the complete absence of a Scottish accent.

  ‘Great,’ said Dryden. ‘I’m actually here on another case – the man found dead in High Park Flats yesterday. I need to talk to someone; I’ve got some information I think you should have.’

  DI Reade buckled visibly at the prospect of extra work. ‘Er. OK. No one else here at present. But I can take a note – though I’ve got the CCTV set up for Mr Pymoor.’

  ‘Right. But who’s the investigating officer in the High Park Flats case?’

  DI Reade rubbed a finger at his temple: ‘Pretty sure there isn’t one. I mean, bloke had tried to top himself a coupla times – right? We’re stretched, you know, on manpower. But I can pass anything up the line.’

  Dryden held up his hands: ‘OK, OK. Let’s see the film.’

  Reade led the way through the deserted police station. Stairs led down to the cell block, where they were led into a room with two rows of seats before a console of twelve TV screens. Above them was one larger screen showing a magnified image of one of the dozen pictures below. At the moment a lorry was seen backing into the car park by the Market Square, as a single pedestrian, swaddled in a thermal jacket, crossed towards the town’s shopping precinct. Reade hit a switch changing the images. ‘This is High Street just opposite the Lamb Hotel. Trouble spot on a Saturday night, of course. Not much happening now.’

  Dryden nodded. ‘How long do you keep the film?’ He’d always suspected that the cameras were empty.

  ‘Usually 48 hours – then we reuse it. Otherwise we’d disappear under the video cartridges.’

  Reade sat on the console desktop, playing with a packet of Silk Cut. ‘As you know, we’ve been concerned about cannabis being sold to teenagers in Ely. It happened quite suddenly, about a month ago, and continued for nearly three weeks. There’s no fresh reports – but we’d like to nail this in case it’s just a brief pause in the supply.

  ‘We picked up a couple of kids out of their heads down by the bypass last Thursday. They’d done some glue, which is nothing new, but they reeked of dope. Let’s say we were sympathetic about their cases – and in return we got some information about the supplier. They said he sells out of a car after dark just here…’

  Reade got up and stabbed a finger into a large map of the town centre. ‘Just here. Very clever – it’s one of several blind spots not covered by the CCTV cameras. But he wasn’t as clever as he thought. Just overlooking this bit of car parking is the rear of Boots – they got broken into a couple of times in the summer so they’d put up a camera of their own. And they keep the film.’

  Reade played importantly with some buttons.

  The big screen showed a deserted car park at night, a halogen security light reflecting on frosty tarmac. A car was already parked in the shadows, side on, the number plates not visible.

  Dryden squinted, leaning forward. ‘Did we not see the car pull in?’

  Reade shook his head. ‘The camera is timed. It comes on at 6.30 and the car was already parked up.’

  A single figure in a knee-length hoodie moved in jerky spasms across the car park and miraculously appeared inside the car without having opened a door. A clock on the screen showed the time ticking by. A minute and thirty-two seconds later the figure was out, walking towards the camera, the coat’s hood pulled down low.

  ‘Customer number one,’ said Reade, freezing the frame. ‘Note the wedge-shaped badge on the jacket – it’s a designer label. Pretty rare, pretty expensive.’

  Garry fingered his spots. ‘Did you get the kid?’

  Reade nodded. ‘Well, we got a kid in an identical top. A week later in Market Square. He’d just had a hit and was trying to take his trousers off over his head.’

  They laughed without mirth.

  ‘His dad didn’t find it funny when we took him home,’ said Reade. ‘Nice middle-class semi on the Lynn Road.’

  Another figure appeared, moving across the tarmac like an animated clay character from children’s TV. Two others joined the first at the car window. This time the deal was over in twenty-five seconds.

  ‘It gets boring after that. Until 7.38pm precisely.’

  Reade accelerated the picture forward, a dozen or more customers coming and going in a few seconds. Then the driver’s door swung open, a man got out, locked the car, and slipped behind a ventilating unit. A dark liquid stain spread out from the shadows, trickling towards a gutter.

  ‘Charming,’ said Dryden, as the man reappeared and Reade froze the frame. He was medium height, thin shoulders under a dark overcoat, one hand in a pocket, the other, massive, hung low like a weapon. The face was split between light and dark, the contrast too great to allow any ID.

  ‘It’s not much,’ said Reade. ‘I’ve got a statement you can use,’ he added, handing Garry a Xeroxed sheet. ‘It’s got the car make and model etc. When he drove off, the plate stayed in shadow.’

  ‘And the CCTV stuff had been destroyed? No way of following him out of the town centre?’

  ‘Right,’ said Reade unhappily. Garry nodded, having lost the plot.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, standing and pointing at the rear of the car. It was a four-wheel drive. The rear windows, all the windows in fact, had become clouded with condensation. But in one side pane there was a small black irregular patch of clear glass. ‘Can you run the tape back?’

  Reade pressed the rewind. The drug seller retreated into the shadows, reappeared, and got into the car backwards. Suddenly the small black window in the misty pane was gone.

  ‘Someone
else?’ asked Garry.

  Dryden shook his head: ‘I think it’s why a lot of the kids didn’t get in the car. When the first punter got in you could just see a dividing mesh – between the back and the passenger seats. It’s a dog. Bit of security?’

  Reade let the film run forward again.

  ‘Could we have a still?’

  The detective rummaged in a file and produced a black and white ‘video-grab’ image. It was grainy and indistinct, but it caught some of the menace of the original footage.

  ‘Great,’ said Dryden, handing it to Garry. ‘We’ll give it a good run.’

  Back upstairs Dryden waited until Reade had given Garry more data on local drug-related crime to boost the story before bringing up Declan McIlroy’s case. ‘There was nothing on calls, but have there been any reports of a bogus caller in High Park Flats – or on the Jubilee? Someone posing as a health visitor perhaps, or doctor. There was something on a bogus plumber – but that was out of town.’

  Reade took them back to the deserted office. He rifled through some files on one of the desktops, then booted up a PC.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘As you said, we’ve got a joker pretending to be a plumber, but that’s just the older semis on the edge of town. He’s never touched a flat. That’s pretty rare, of course; there’s less to filch and it’s much more difficult to get away quickly in one of those blocks if the con fails and they get sussed. High Park is not a good place to upset the natives.’

  Dryden nodded. ‘Declan McIlroy had a visitor the night he died. I’m pretty sure it was a bogus doctor – he took in the old folks next door as well.’

  ‘Get away with anything?’ asked Reade, making a note.

  Dryden shook his head: ‘Perhaps the motive wasn’t theft.’

  Reade sat at the PC and keyed in some instructions. He read quickly, then gave Dryden a sympathetic look: ‘Not much suspicious about McIlroy’s death,’ he said. ‘Lonely guy, history of mental illness, neighbours heard nothing. Inquest was this morning.’

  Dryden felt a hot spate of anger. ‘Shit – that was quick. What’s the hurry?’

  Reade straightened. ‘It was today or wait a week – nobody objected. We like to expedite such matters.’ He blushed, knowing he’d tried to fob them off with a long word.

  ‘Verdict?’

  ‘Misadventure. Death by hypothermia, but he had enough booze in him to knock out a rugby team plus a dangerous level of painkillers.’

  ‘Any witnesses called?’

  Reade was shaking his head. ‘Oh. Yeah – there was. Social worker. Ed Bardolph, and a relation – sister.’

  Dryden’s spirits rose. He knew Bardolph, and he knew where he’d be.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll have a chat, I know Ed. Look, I know you’re stretched but I really think this case is worth a second look. There’s been an intruder at the flat as well – the dead man’s flat, today. The neighbour, Mr Timms, can fill you in. A visit would pay dividends.’

  Reade nodded vigorously. ‘That’s one of the problems with the Jubilee. Anything left empty gets stripped pretty quick. I’ll get the community man to pop in, no problem. I’d better take some details as well…’

  Dryden nodded, knowing he’d been brushed off. But for once it suited him. He’d done his duty and reported both incidents; if DI Reade didn’t want to take it seriously, that was fine by him. He’d ring on Monday to check any progress but as it stood he could legitimately write a story saying that police were investigating the bogus caller and any possible links with Declan McIlroy’s death.

  Reade made a note of the facts on the bogus caller and the intruder and got Dryden’s signature on both. They left the detective shuffling paper, searching for his coffee mug. The automatic doors at the front counter swished open, expelling them into the cold air, and above them the starlings rose as on a single wing.

  12

  Dryden walked down towards the river from Market Square. He wrapped his oversized black coat around him, the buttons and buttonholes overlapping across his narrow chest. Across the Fen a snow squall smudged the black horizon like an artist’s finger, while in the foreground skaters criss-crossed the frozen watermeadows watched by a scattered crowd lifted wholesale from a Brueghel landscape.

  At the foot of the hill lay the district of Waterside, a collection of warehouses and cottages which had grown up alongside the river’s wharves. Beyond that lay the frozen river. Dryden noted that the ice here was patchy and floated in rafts, unlike the solid white crust that had encircled PK 129 upriver. But even here, despite the tidal ebb and flow provided by the sluice gates downstream, thicker pack ice was creeping out from the banks. By dusk the ice would be solid from shore to shore.

  Dryden crossed the river by a steel footbridge as a single rower passed beneath, swaddled in jumpers, heading quickly for the sanctuary of a boathouse, the skiff’s hull nudging aside miniature icebergs. On the far bank lay Quanea Fen, a skaters’ paradise, lit by a low sun just now breaking through a bank of clouds. The temperature had fallen below minus 6 degrees centigrade for three consecutive nights – the official stipulation before a championship skating event could be held in safety. Sympathetic farmers had opened the field sluices to flood the Fen, preparing the vast arena for the event. Ice already covered the two-inch-deep man-made mere, creating the perfect venue for the championship – a solid steel-grey surface several times bigger than any Olympic rink.

  Wooden blocks with flags were being set out along the oval of a 400-metre speed-skating course. On the track itself volunteers worked with wide brushes to clear away the tiny stipples on the ice left by the flurries of hail and snow. Around the arena an ice fair clustered; a couple of burger bars and a tea and coffee stall were already doing brisk business. A small travelling fair, usually mothballed for the winter, had been hustled out of hibernation to make the most of the expected crowds. A coconut shy and a child’s roundabout were already up and running. Duckboards had been laid down for those not on skates and a troop of council workmen in fluorescent yellow jackets were stringing lights from posts sunk in the ground.

  It was a scene in silver, grey and black, except for a single blazing brazier set on wooden blocks, a glimmer of cold orange like a blackbird’s beak in a winter landscape. Then, suddenly, a half mile of multi-coloured lights flickered on between their posts, then flickered out after the test was judged a success.

  Ed Bardolph, the social worker who had been a witness at Declan McIlroy’s inquest, was chairman of the Fen Skating Committee, the official body which alone had the power to convene the championships and regulate the races. Dryden knew the FSC was due to meet here, on the ice, to make its final decision. In the distance he could see a knot of men clustered around the brazier beside a brace of Land Rovers and a skidoo. As Dryden approached, moving gingerly over the ice and wishing he’d brought his skates, the group formed a circle around a hole in the ice beside the fire, like Eskimo fishers.

  Dryden spotted Bardolph crouching, examining a plate of ice they’d levered up from the grass. Bardolph was also the local spokesman for the public-sector workers’ union Unison, as well as a self-confessed skating fanatic – two pastimes which had brought him into regular contact with the local press. He was heavily built, with navvy’s arms and a lumpy, bucolic face, and easy to underestimate.

  ‘Hi,’ he said as Dryden approached, standing and holding out an ungloved hand. He transmitted a smile which was not entirely cynical, for he enjoyed Dryden’s company and whenever they’d crossed paths in the courts he’d been impressed by the reporter’s work, which combined accuracy with an understated sensitivity.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dryden, turning to walk away from the group and secure some privacy. Bardolph left his companions cutting a second circular plate of ice from the ground fifty yards nearer the river.

  Dryden blew a theatrical plume of breath. ‘It’s about Declan McIlroy – I missed the inquest. It must have been slipped onto the list. We’re doing a feature on the dangers of the cold snap, I w
anted some background…’

  Bardolph nodded, clearly struggling to concentrate on anything but ice and the exhilarating probability of a race. They heard a mechanical screech of chains over gears and looked to the river where a crane down by the marina was lifting one of the white boats – a floating tourists’ gin palace – from the black water up onto a safe mooring.

  ‘So, misadventure?’ asked Dryden, turning back.

  Bardolph shrugged. ‘What else? There was no note and you know what they’re like these days – suicide’s a rare verdict; there’s too many legal pitfalls.’

  Dryden tried to imagine the scene in the small crowded coroner’s court. ‘The sister came, yeah?’ Bardolph nodded, clearly wary of Dryden’s questions. Irrationally wary, Dryden thought, but said instead, ‘Why were you a witness?’

  Bardolph examined his boots. ‘I can’t say, you know. He was a client, a client for many years, and our relationship is still confidental – even if he is dead.’

  ‘Sure. I just thought you might have said something in court. I’m just trying to catch up…’ Dryden was playing a practised game, inviting his source to merely confirm what was already in the public domain, while leading him towards its boundaries.

  ‘Declan had some severe social problems which stemmed from a very unhappy childhood. He was in care, an orphanage. He was actually very bright, which didn’t help, of course. I put him in touch with a therapist, and he had some treatment. There was a friend, Joe, who had a house out on the Fen, and he spent some time there – but it was a temporary respite. Declan painted too, and I think he was gifted in some ways, even if the work was self-indulgent. He took courses – correspondence courses – hundreds of them, in fact: electrical engineering, IT, computer maintenance, stuff like that, as well as history of art.

  ‘But as I say the problems were chronic. There were always unresolved frustrations which resulted in periodic outbursts of anger. Violence – sometimes against the nearest person to hand, often against himself.’