Nightrise (20 page)

He flipped up the envelope lip and slid out the contents on the desk top:

One British passport.

One UK driving licence with no points.

One medical card complete with full National Insurance number.

A debit card issued by NatWest Bank.

A cheque book for the same account.

A Barclaycard.

A birth certificate. September 8, 1986.

All were in the same name: Samuel James Setchey. The picture in the passport showed a middle-aged man with very dark hair and a stubbly beard. Age – working forward from the birth – was twenty-five. Rory Setchey had died aged forty-four.

He put the documents back in the envelope and neatly returned it to the package. There was a life here, a life in paper. An
identity.
He knew it was part of the reason Rory Setchey had ended up as roadkill.

Holding the package he tried to work out what it might be worth. What did a new identity cost? Kross had said  50,000. But this was much more than a new identity; it was everything that went with it. How much would that be worth – times twenty-five?

He recalled the Estonian word for million.
Milte.

But how? Who were these people? Why didn't they need their lives any more? Were they, had they been real people? Real people like his father. This made him think that he wasn't going to get what he'd always secretly wanted – another thirty years of his father's life. Surely Jack Dryden's life had been stolen too. Did he really need a DNA test to prove it?

There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, the doorknob rattled. Humph's outline was clear through the misted glass panel. Dryden had left the cabbie with his wife and child at a coffee shop off Fore Hill.

He unlocked the door and was shocked by the cabbie's face, which seemed to have succumbed to a greater force of gravity so that his chin and fleshy neck appeared to fall to his chest. Humph was good on his feet, nimble even, but as he stood there he staggered to one side as if the floor had tilted.

‘Someone's taken the baby,' he said.

T
he baby had been in his pushchair on Three Cups Alley while Laura and Humph had coffee in the open-air seating area of the little café. Only a low wall and a set of railings stood between them. They could see him, or at least the pushchair, from where they sat. They could almost – Humph had said – touch him; already, Dryden thought, subconsciously starting to prepare a defence. It was a Saturday market day and the path had been crowded with shoppers, strolling between them and the child, breaking the line of vision. They didn't discover he was gone until they'd paid and left: not only the baby was gone, but also the cradle inside the pushchair, the shawl, and a soft toy – a black cat.

‘How long?' he asked, standing on the pavement outside
The Crow
.

Humph made a huge effort not to shrug. ‘We were there twenty minutes – so that's the worst case. But it might have been seconds. Laura's checking the car parks and the riverside.'

‘OK. Go to the taxi rank,' said Dryden, stepping close to Humph. ‘Tell them what's happened. See if you can get it out on the radio. Then try the market. I'll do the cathedral grounds – the park. And ring the police – give them my mobile.' They looked at each other and Humph went to speak. ‘Go,' said Dryden.

Dryden crossed the road to the Oxfam shop, slipping past the rows of freshly laundered second-hand clothes and up a stair to an office: The Hypothermia Trust. Vee Hilgay was at her desk filling in forms. He told her what had happened and even he could tell his voice was cold, unstressed, almost brutally matter-of-fact.

‘Sit down, Philip,' she said.

He didn't even hear her. Vee got up and put on her jacket and said she'd check the bus stops, the bigger shops – Tesco, Waitrose, Wilkinsons, Iceland.

She took Dryden's hands. ‘It'll be OK. You're in shock.'

‘No, I'm not,' he said, turning away and walking down the carpet-less stairs. But there was something wrong with his hearing because it was a bit like being underwater. Everything was just slightly further away, as if behind glass.

He felt a profound urge to find Laura, as if touching her would close the circle and they'd be all right again. But that wasn't right.

He walked out into the cathedral close and felt his knees give so that he had to sit down on a bench. Tears filled his eyes until he blinked them away. It wasn't grief, or anger – it was frustration. They had a chance, still had a chance, if his son was still in the town, not bundled into a car and gone.

He sent a text to Humph, his fingers vibrating.

RAILWAY STATION RANK. TELL THEM.

If he could find him everything would be all right. Not just today, but forever. It was as if his life, all their lives, hung on these few seconds he was living through. He forced himself to move before the effort became too much.

There was a family on a picnic rug by the Lady chapel, in the pinnacle-shadow. Trying not to sound desperate he asked them if they'd seen a baby in a cradle – one of those modern ones from a pushchair – in green plastic. He'd have been carried by a man, he guessed, but just possibly a woman.

Saying it all out loud made it more real.

The woman looked shocked and covered her mouth but the man was smiling and couldn't stop. ‘You're kidding,' he said.

Dryden walked away. He tried everyone on the benches. A group of teenage girls, two pensioners, a young boy struggling with two dogs. Nothing. He followed the path round the apse and found a man examining the gargoyles above with binoculars: a scaly fish, a dragon, and the modern additions – a skinhead, a builder picking his nose. Dryden was about to ask him if he'd seen anything when the mobile buzzed and his body began to celebrate – adrenalin flooded out, making his vision blur.

NOTHING YET. It was from Laura. He sent back a single X. Then Humph: STATION RANK UP TO SPEED. POLICE ON IT.

He turned to go.

‘Did you want to ask a question?' said the man with the binoculars.

Another text. POLICE AT THE CAFÉ. From Vee.

‘Sorry,' said Dryden, feeling trapped. He thought he had spoken, but clearly not. ‘Time's important,' he added. And it was: he knew the statistics even though he was trying to blot them out. Every minute that passed made it less likely they'd find him alive. Less likely they'd find him ever. ‘I'm looking for a child in a cradle – someone's taken him.'

‘I saw a bloke with a car seat cradle,' he said. ‘He went in there.' The man pointed at the South Door of the cathedral.

‘You saw him go in?' asked Dryden, distracted by the thought that it didn't sound likely, that you'd watch someone for that long, until they disappeared.

‘I was coming out – it's a newborn, right? I've got one too, so I looked.'

Ten seconds later Dryden pushed open the oak portal set in the great door. Inside was part of the old cloister – cool and silent. He walked slowly because he thought quite consciously that this was it – he'd have one chance, one opportunity to avoid a tragedy that would ruin his life. Laura's life.

He wrote a text as he walked: CATHEDRAL, QUICK, then sent it to Humph and Laura.

The second door stood beneath a series of Norman arches, richly decorated, and lit by a spotlight. He pushed it open and stepped over a wooden and iron threshold into the body of the church. He was struck by the contrast: he was searching for a small child in a vast space, echoing and full of light. A group of visitors stood at the West Door by the candles waiting for a tour to begin. But the nave was empty – even the chairs were gone. Under the lantern a stage had been built for a concert. He listened very carefully to the silence, examining it for a cry. Despair washed over him so that he couldn't move his legs.

Then a child's voice, and a toddler suddenly appearing under the lantern and pointing up at the Octagon above. That seemed to unlock Dryden's legs. He walked towards the high altar and the choir. Tombs here, gaudy, Tudor and Georgian, with painted figures of the deceased reclining in stone. A skull, memento mori.

Running now he rounded the end of the chancel, past the chapels to the dead, checking each, searching amongst the stonework. Then on to the altar itself, the tomb of St Etheldreda roped off, between four lit candles. The choir stalls reeking of polish. They were empty too, the misericords up, the wooden animals and demons catching the light.

A woman with a mop and bucket was working on the marble floor. She'd seen nothing. Defeated, he stood still and saw Humph coming down the nave.

Dryden held out both hands, each empty, so the cabbie turned away beneath the Octagon along the transept which led to the Lady Chapel – the only public place left they hadn't searched. Dryden cut through a corridor and got there first; the great cold space was empty, white light glaring, the glass all clear, the walls scarred by iconoclasts. It was like a swimming pool without water.

Humph burst in, almost falling over the threshold.

Dryden's eyes scanned the empty stone chairs of the chapter house. Nothing. Then the medieval altar, restored in gold-and-red-painted stone, and above it the modern Virgin in blue, her hands held up as if she'd held a child which had ascended into heaven. For a second it was an image which threatened to tell the future.

Then Dryden looked down and on the steps leading up to the altar was a cradle, in the open, where it could not be missed. He could feel his pulse in every limb, as if his whole body was his heart. He walked towards the cradle and within two steps saw that there was a child there. But time had stopped, so the baby didn't move. He stood above him and still he didn't move. Dryden unclipped the belt and held him up, the body supple and warm, looking into his son's eyes.

Those eyes blinked; time started again.

There was the sound of someone crying and he realized it was Humph, his face blank but one of his shoulders slumped with the effort of breathing. Laura appeared at the door. Her legs must have folded under her because she just knelt down on the cold stone and held out her hands.

K
apten Jaan Kross' hotel room was full of steam, billowing out of the en suite bathroom, misting up the Georgian sash windows of The Lamb Hotel. Dryden stood and created a circle of clear glass so that he could look down into High Street. Early Saturday night – a few couples strolling, a man striding past holding a can of Special Brew. The window was directly above the hanging inn sign: a lamb shouldering a crusader's banner above the text:

Agnus Dei – The Lamb of God.

Dryden could see Humph's Capri parked on the edge of Palace Green, Laura in the back with the boy, the dog's face up against the passenger-side window, a police marked squad car behind. Physically he could feel the child, even now, held in his hands, the weight of bone and flesh. The urge to keep him safe was like a colour, tainting everything he saw.

‘I'm sorry,' said Kross, coming out in a bathrobe, white and fluffy. Despite the heat of the shower his pale skin was unflushed, his white hair wet and flat to his skull, which was slightly ridged like a bird's. The almost invisible white eyebrows, the white eyelashes, the white goatee (which he hadn't seen first time) gave a false sense of immobility to the detective's face.

There was an empty brown paper package on the bed. When Dryden had gone back to
The Crow
to get the parcel sent by Roger Stutton he'd found only the wrapping. Everything else had gone. Then he'd rung Kapten Kross' mobile, surprised that the policeman had answered in the shower. He told Kross about his son – although he knew already – and that he had something for him.

Kross stood in his robe looking at the wrapping of the package. He examined it, turning it in his long fingers, trying to reconstruct in his mind the shape of the original parcel, reading the sender's address.

‘There were cellophane envelopes inside,' said Dryden. ‘I could see documents – a passport, driving licence. I didn't get a chance to look at them before I heard my son had been taken. This was all that was left when I got back.'

Kross was very still for twenty seconds, maybe a little more. Dryden wondered if in some way he was able to detect the lie he'd been told.

‘You must forget you have seen these things.'

Kross locked the door and rang reception, telling them he didn't wish to be disturbed and that they were on no account to give out his room number to any callers – either by phone or in person. His English was good but he said neither please nor thank you. Then he made another call and talked rapidly – presumably in Estonian – and without pause.

Dryden listened to the stream of guttural syllables and recalled that Estonian – along with Hungarian and, he thought, Finnish – formed a special group of languages unlike any other in Europe. A kind of dinosaur language which had survived meteoric impact to live on in the modern world. Which made him ask himself why he found Kross so unsettling. It was the idea, surely, that he was a foreigner in a foreign land who didn't seemed too interested in following anyone else's rules. And that gave him an aura of easy danger. As if he felt unbound by
any
rules.

Ending the call, Kross sat in an armchair with the mobile on his bare knee.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘You have done the right thing. Have you told me everything, please?' Dryden could tell he was struggling to keep a peremptory note out of his voice. Which was a warning in itself, perhaps, that this man's natural instincts were constantly under wraps.

Dryden did not answer. He didn't tell lies – rarely found the need to – but as a journalist he'd learnt to mislead. If he did have to lie he always tried to do it by omission, by not telling the whole truth.

‘I've told you what happened,' he said.

‘This makes sense,' said Kross, running the brown paper through his fingers. ‘Now –
my
job begins. Thank you.' His hands moved to the arms of his chair as if to stand, as if indicating that the interview was over. And that made Dryden briefly angry, like a flame guttering. How dare this man dismiss him? He knew now why he'd not told him the whole truth. Knowledge was power. And this wasn't just another crime statistic. This was the murder of his uncle, and in some way, in all probability, the
theft
of his father's name, of what his father had been. And now, finally, the kidnapping of his son. An elaborate warning, surely, that he should stop asking awkward questions.