The Coldest Blood (12 page)

Ware came back down the hall. ‘There was this,’ said Dryden, giving him a copy of
The Crow
and three editions of the
Lynn News
– the local evening paper. ‘I took a walk. These were in the post box down by the road.’ Dryden had noted the name stencilled on the US-style mail box: Joe Petulengo.

Ware nodded. ‘That means he hadn’t been down to the road since, what – Tuesday afternoon – late afternoon.’ He looked around again, staring briefly into the dead ashes of the fire and along the mantelpiece.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Dryden.

Ware shrugged. ‘Nope. Something missing… perhaps.’ He knocked his knuckles together: ‘So – where is he?’

Sley went out into the hall and pointed to the door. Ware examined the locks – a Yale, and a Chubb below it. The Chubb was open, but the Yale firmly engaged. He turned the locking handle and swung the door in.

The victim lay still, rimed with frost.

‘God,’ said Ware, kneeling and inching an ungloved finger towards the marble-white jugular. Dryden saw that at the neck was a gold chain, a hanging crucifix. Ware slipped a hand under the outer waterproof coat and within, to a jumper below. The sound of ice breaking made Dryden wince.

The constable stood, regloved his hand and looked out across the moonlit field towards the distant magnolia.

‘All his clothes are frozen, they’re heavy with ice. He’s been drenched.’

Ware stepped out but stopped them following.

‘Go back through and come round.’

By the time they’d circled the house Ware had taped off the scene. ‘That was his place – down by the water,’ he said. ‘Every time I went by on the road he seemed to be out
there. I tried to tell him it was too cold… you too, John,’ he said, catching Sley’s eye.

Ware produced a heavy-duty police-issue torch and lit a circle around his boots. Across the gravel was the clear trail of the victim’s body, the central furrow of the torso, the intermittent scuffs where the elbows had levered his weight forward.

They left the path and walked on the grass towards the mirrored surface of the pond, shattered now by the hole at its edge. Sharp shards were thrust up from the impact, refracting the moonlight into a jagged spectrum of cold rainbows.

The hole had frozen over but the star was clear to see.

Ware stood, his arms crossed over his chest, his hands in his armpits. ‘Looks like he fell in. He used to sit here.’ He touched the iron seat. ‘You can see the slip marks along the edge.’

It was true, Dryden acknowledged it with a nod. ‘Suicide?’

‘He’d talked about it,’ said Sley. ‘I asked Richard to keep an eye on the place – but you know, if he’d decided, what could we do? He might have tried, changed his mind, crawled back to the house.’

A single flashing blue light caught everyone’s attention at the same moment. It was a mile distant, slipping easily across the night like a ship’s light at sea.

‘I’ll meet them,’ said Ware, setting off quickly back towards the house. ‘Keep off the gravel and don’t touch anything.’

Sley didn’t move and Dryden knew why. They watched in silence as a satellite crossed the sky, horizon to horizon in an elegant curve.

‘How much of the dope have you got left?’ asked Dryden.

‘Not much. Joe’s supply until the first harvest of spring, I guess.’

‘Why did you need the money?’

Sley didn’t answer.

‘Destroy it. Strikes me you’ve got a bumper surplus now your friend’s dead. Just burn it. The police are giving us updates. Any stuff appears on the street I’ll go straight to the station – OK?’

Sley turned to the house where the ambulance had parked by the front porch.

‘And I want a lift back into town – we need to talk some more,’ said Dryden, troubled now by a double coincidence he didn’t trust: two deaths by ice, two regulars from the Gardeners’ Arms.

He told Humph to go home and went round to the kitchen door. Ware was in the living room, overcoat off, perched on a double radiator. A phone stood on the window ledge and the PC pressed PLAY for messages.

‘Message timed 11.15am Thursday, 29th of December.’

‘Joe? It’s Marcie. We hope you’re feeling better. They said at work you’d taken a few days. Look, it’s really important you ring me, Joe; there’s some news. Some bad news. I can’t just leave a message. Ring please.’

There were two messages and he hit PLAY again.

‘Message timed 6.45pm, Friday, 30th of December.’

‘Joe. Marcie. John’s coming out tonight to see you, OK? But if you get this and are feeling well enough, ring me – the mobile’s on.’

‘Did he ring?’

Sley shook his head.

‘So. That fits. There’s every chance he was dead by the time the messages were left,’ said Ware.

Dryden went back to the kitchen and began picking his way through the paper in the recycling bin: bills, junk mail, some typed business letters from the bank.

The kitchen units were modern, the oven hi-tech. But like the rest of the house the room felt unused, a showcase. A single plate and mug stood on the draining board, a black recycling bin full of paper by the back door.

Ware came through. ‘I should lock up.’

Dryden stood, kicking the bin with his shoe. ‘Odd. When does the council pick up recycled paper round here?’

Ware joined him by the bin. ‘Today.’

‘A week’s worth of rubbish but no newspapers,’ said Dryden.

Ware nodded: ‘And there
is
something missing,’ he said, turning back to the living room. ‘I’m sure there was another picture on the mantle. He’d picked himself out once when I asked – a faded snapshot from the seaside. This bunch of kids, smiling…’

16

A sky like an army blanket hid the stars. In High Park Flats a single bathroom light shone coldly out, joined only by a solitary string of Christmas lights trailing from a window ledge. Sley parked the 4x4 by the entrance to the allotments and killed the engine, checking his watch.

‘Two minutes past closing time precisely,’ he said. ‘I need a drink.’

Beyond the fluorescent lights of the car park the darkness lingered amongst the bean posts and frost-bitten furrows and Dryden stumbled several times as they picked their way towards the dull gleam of the stove pipe. Once, looking back, he saw a pair of car headlights swing into the shadow of the flats, then die.

Sley, playing a torch at his feet, found a log pile and collected an armful of kindling and wood, balancing it expertly with a splayed hand while inserting a key in the door of the Gardeners’ Arms.

Inside, the smell of drying fruit was intoxicating, the sweetness of apples mingling with the fusty aroma of yeast from the home brew. Sley stooped by the stove and quickly lit a fire, leaving the glazed door open to light the room. Something rustled in the corner, like an autumn leaf.

Dryden sat on some sacking piled on an old garden stool, aware that the hessian was crisp with frost. He imagined the ghosts of Joe Petulengo and Declan McIlroy just beyond the light, cradling mugs of the tangy double-strength alcohol. The Gardeners’ Arms was a refuge, Dryden could
see that now, a hidden corner of the world reserved for outcasts, and those who had chosen to join them.

The fire began to draw and Sley added the logs. He lit a cigarette and rubbed at his scalp with the heel of his hand.

‘How well did they know each other – Joe and Declan?’ asked Dryden, taking an earthenware cup from Sley. The beer was icy, the thud of the alcohol palpable.

Sley held his own full glass but didn’t drink. ‘It’s history. I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove…’

It was an odd word to choose. Dryden set the mug down and retrieved a Greek cigarette from a packet in his overcoat and lit it with a piece of kindling from the fire. He watched Sley’s hatchet face, half lit in the firelight, and wondered if he’d regret not going straight to the police with what he knew.

‘I’m not trying to prove anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to write a feature about those in danger from the cold – if they were friends, that helps. This is information I need. But just a reminder – if I don’t get it, I’ll get something else off the police in return for tipping them off as to the identity of the elusive drugs peddler. How does that sound?’

Dryden realized he didn’t fear Sley any more. It was an eloquent admission that he sensed a common decency beneath the brutal exterior.

Sley drew in two lungfuls of nicotine. ‘So. How well did they know each other?’ repeated Dryden.

‘The allotments were a meeting place. For all of us.’

‘But before. How long had they been friends?’ Dryden could sense the boundary he was pushing at, sure now that just beyond it lay the link he sought. He watched Sley through the drifting smoke from the cigarette, and sensed he was calculating a reply.

Sley stood, drinking savagely, the liquid slopping in the
glass. ‘They grew up together, in care. Brothers really, but for the accident of blood.’

Dryden nodded. ‘So what’s the big secret?’ But his thoughts raced: if Joe had been at St Vincent’s was he too embroiled in the action against the orphanage?

‘There’s no secret. It’s just private, isn’t it? They were orphans. Joe’s parents were travellers, Romany. Gyppos – take your choice. Petulengo – a name he was proud of, eventually. But that was the nightmare for him – being in care, being inside, being locked up.’

‘And you?’

Sley ignored the question, refilling his glass. ‘Joe lived in a caravan, a mobile home really – plush. You’d be surprised. Snug as a peg.’ He laughed again, and Dryden sensed a longheld prejudice, finally liberated by death.

‘Until…?’

‘Last year. He was diagnosed with the cancer, throat. He said he’d always promised himself he’d die in a house. Die in his own home. Crazy. So he bought the Letter M and then spent most of his time on that seat by the water, just looking at it.’

‘He had the money then?’

‘Oh yeah. He was never short, Joe.’ He laughed without a sound. ‘And when Mary died he’d nothing left to spend the money on.’

‘A wife – I saw the picture,’ said Dryden.

‘Yeah. She was older, MS. Pretty nasty really. He never really got over it, although most of us thought she was pretty aloof, focused on the money. She’d married it, after all.’

Dryden let the slight pass. ‘And the allotment?’

‘Outside again. He spent hours here. It was Declan who’d started first. The council gave him that flat but he couldn’t stand it. Claustrophobia – much worse than Joe – even when
he was out on the balcony. He’d slept rough for years – that’s where he really wanted to be. He just used to shrivel up indoors.’

Dryden nodded as if he understood. ‘Is that why he drank?’

Sley shrugged. ‘Life he’d had, you don’t need an excuse.’

‘And the cannabis. Anyone else smoke the stuff? Declan?’

Sley shook his head.

Dryden stood. ‘You said orphanage. He was a Catholic, Joe – yes? I noticed a cross, a crucifix on a chain at his neck.’

‘Sure. St Vincent’s, with Declan. It’s closed now.’

Dryden smiled, enjoying the inevitability of fate.

‘Declan was a victim of abuse in the case against St Vincent’s. Was Joe another?’

Sley shrugged. ‘Sure. I doubt any kid who went through that place escaped, do you?’

Dryden accepted a second mug of beer. The glow from the stove was more substantial, and he stretched out his legs in the heat. He saw them differently now, these two men whose damaged lives had ended so savagely; saw them at a dormitory window, two pale faces, held close, dreaming of an end to childhood.

17

Dryden set out across town, the stunning canopy of the night sky an antidote to sleep. Wisps of mist trailed from the cathedral’s great West Tower like medieval pennants in the moonlight. On Palace Green a single muntjac stood chewing at what looked like a refuse bag. As Dryden crossed the grass the deer looked up and then sprang into flight, its white underside flashing as it headed for the cathedral park. The cold of the night was at its deepest and each shop window glittered with rocket bursts of crystal ice.

As he trudged towards the distant landmark of The Tower Hospital Dryden considered the extent to which he had succumbed to a dubious conspiracy theory. If Declan’s death was suspicious, what about Joe’s? Had someone really murdered them both? They were both witnesses in the case against St Vincent’s – but was that really a motive for murder? A more mundane explanation looked plausible: that a lonely, damaged alcoholic had taken his own life when the bitter winter had offered him the opportunity; and that a benign accident had sped Joe Petulengo to a quick death, where a lingering one had seemed a certain fate.

But what of John Sley? Could the sale of drugs be linked to either death? Was the production of marijuana, so efficiently organized, really just to ease the passing of a friend?

The gravel on The Tower’s drive was frozen solid, each stone to its neighbour. The great clock was still lit in its mock-Florentine tower, but had frozen at 11.45, a disc of
ice smudging the normally crisp outlines of the Roman numerals of the face. The automatic doors of the foyer swished open and he lingered in the caress of the hot air within, letting his shoulders slump, easing the exquisite pain in his joints. The nurse behind the desk was a regular and looked up only to check the electric clock: 1.02am.

‘For Laura Dryden,’ he said. The nurse nodded. Dryden’s late-night visits were not uncommon. Laura’s sleep pattern was erratic enough for it to make little difference to her when he called, as long as he did.

Her room was tropical. As he closed the door the COMPASS clattered into life and he analysed his reaction: was he pleased that his wife was conscious? He walked to the bed and felt the familiar thrill of seeing her face, her brown eyes wide and, briefly, locked on his. He leant in low, and lifted her in an embrace.

He took the tickertape from the COMPASS.

A LETTER.

He searched the screen of the PC and found a new file marked HOLIDAY.

He opened the document, and lay beside her on the pillows to read. Laura’s consultant had suggested that she could leave the hospital for a brief break. They’d had to put the request in writing, and this was his formal reply. For more than six months now she had been free of the complications which had once confined her to her room: bouts of pneumonia and a series of blood infections had demanded constant observation. But now her health was stable, the lingering physical symptoms of her illness the only bar to a wider freedom – and even here there had been improvements.