The Coldest Blood (7 page)

‘Anyway. Police have it down to suicide. Bloke had a history: depression, self-harm, the usual gloomy litany. But there’s something more there – perhaps he did do it, but I still don’t understand. He had plenty of cash, and he’d been drinking – and not alone. He’s got this mate called Joe, so perhaps they hit the bottle together.

‘I took Garry down to the allotments by the flats where the dead guy used to hang out in the summer. There’s this kind of little club there, and they meet in this shed with a stove. There was something really… exclusive about it. It wasn’t the Garrick or anything, but it was odd, like they were all there for some other reason… They wouldn’t tell me where Joe was, either, even though it was obvious they all knew him; said they’d pass on a message, but I bet they don’t. People never do.’

Dryden laughed at himself and shook his head, holding the funnel so that he could let Laura sip the wine.

‘Then I went out to Lane End again – to St Vincent’s.’ Laura was the daughter of a north London Italian Catholic family who’d run a small café. He’d shared the whole long-running saga of the orphanage with her, knowing she understood his deep-seated reservations about such institutions, and the imposition of fear and guilt which held them together.

‘The priest in charge – Father Martin – took me round the place. He’s the only one left of all the priests there in the eighties. He actually made me feel sorry for him, which is a bit of a bloody miracle in itself. Anyway, two more kids have been found so the inquiry has enough evidence to move to court. His head will roll – but I doubt he cares now; he may not even live that long. Social services will probably get the real drubbing, and the police.’

He brushed her hair then, having slipped a CD into the player attached to the COMPASS –
II Trovatore
.

Outside he could see grainy snow falling in the super-cooled air. The drop in temperature with nightfall reduced the flakes to pellets of lightweight hail, blown with the wind.

‘It’s too cold to snow properly,’ he said. ‘But the water-meadows have got plenty of ice on them so they may race this weekend – or sooner. Remember when we skated at Burnt Fen?’

He always paused for an answer, keeping alive the hope that one day there would be one.

‘I’ll dig the skates out just in case. I could run into town on the river – give Humph a day off. God knows what he’d do with it, mind. Probably drive round in circles.’

He switched the brush to his left hand, trying not to think, trying to concentrate on the details of his day that didn’t matter, but the central faultline of his life was inescapable. After Laura’s accident he had been able to hope that one day they would be as they had been before that winter’s night. That he would go back to his job on Fleet Street, that she could return to her career as an actress – at that point a very promising career. Childishly he had held on to this dream longer than his wife. By contrast her hopes were a compromise, a deliberate attempt to lower expectations, to hope only for the next improvement, the tiny,
almost unnoticeable triumphs which made her life worth living.

Triumphs he had begun to despise. He suspected now that ‘recovery’ was a relative term, that he would never have his life back, never have his wife back, that the best they could hope for was an extended convalescence, a lifetime spent waiting beside a wheelchair or a hospital bed. And he despised himself for finding that that was not enough.

She had sensed the change as well, despite being immersed in her battle to make her brain re-establish contact with her body. He could only imagine the hours she spent dwelling on her predicament, and on theirs. One evening earlier that winter he had found a message on the COMPASS screen. He wondered how long it had taken her to compose, for it was free of the literals and errors which marked her usual attempts to operate the machine.

I CAN’T ASK YOU TO STAY FOREVER. THIS IS MY LIFE NOW. GO IF IT’S BEST. I’LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS.

He’d held her that night, crying freely at the thought she had doubted him, promising that he would always be there. And she’d been honest about her life, admitting that the long periods of silence, sometimes stretching out over days, were not always lost in a dreamlike coma. Depression, as debilitating as the coma itself, sometimes made it impossible to think, or write.

She’d asked him, then, about the life she often found unbearable:

IF I WANT YOU TO END IT PROMISE THAT YOU WILL.

He’d promised too quickly, as if to a child.

One day, when the black depression had been with her for a week, she’d told him something else.

I DONT WANT TO DIE HERE.

Which begged the question, where did she want to die?

The Dolphin Holiday Camp

Friday, 30 August 1974

Tonight, the last they would play the game, Philip lay still, willing his pulse to slow. Around him, in the other chalets, he knew the children slept. Soon he’d hear the footsteps on the wooden walkway that ran between the huts. Then the face would appear at the window, the quick professional look sliding over his bed, before the Bluecoat moved on to complete the round.

Then it would be time.

He listened to the sounds of the adult night: a jukebox in the bar played ‘When Will I See You Again’ for the third time and a wave of laughter rolled out from the camp’s club, down the long avenue between the chalets, and broke with a whisper no louder than the swish of the sea beyond the dunes. A klaxon sounded at the funfair and screams marked the descent of the big dipper.

Philip gripped the sheet at his chin and pressed his eyes shut, willing the game to begin.

An amplified voice, distorted beyond coherence, interrupted the music as the floorshow began. He’d seen them often in his head: his uncle and aunt, in the darkened audience now, their heads thrown back with the rest, cigarette smoke trailing like clouds at sea. Through the door to the next room, in the half-light, he saw their beds, waiting, crisply made.

Outside, through the gap he’d had made in the curtains, the stretchedblue sky of a summer’s day had already turned to mauve. A seagull called, dashing across his field of vision, and a bell tolled twice from the floating buoy which marked the deep-cut channel through the sands.

And then he did hear the footsteps. The pattern familiar: the crunch of sand and the gritty shuffle of deck shoes on wood, the metallic stutter of the master keys clanking against the brass dolphin. Then the window, left just open, creaked wider, and the curtain rings clicked.

A second passed, lengthened impossibly by the tension of the moment, and then the Bluecoat was gone, whistling tunelessly with the Three Degrees.

Philip swung his legs down onto the bare boards, pulled on shorts and T-shirt, and bundled his pyjamas, a beach bag and ball under the sheet. He walked soundlessly to the door and turned the handle and the Yale key simultaneously. Clicking up the catch, he looked out at the chalet opposite, the one with the metal numerals screwed to its blue painted door: 10.

Dex was there, standing too, scared by the secret they shared, twisting a length of kite string in his hands. Philip felt the now familiar sense of belonging, an only child suddenly enveloped in the wordless rituals of a family. The game was about to begin for the last time. But for a second they paused, holding a look across the twilight of a summer’s evening neither would ever forget.

9

Friday, 30 December

Humph pulled the trigger on the tennis machine and sent another ball skittering along the frozen river bank. Dawn was still some way off but a little light was creeping out from the east under a sky the colour of wire-wool. Dryden watched Boudicca’s thrilling run, and then fetched coffee from the galley below.

Friday. A tombstone of a day for Dryden; with
The Crow
now behind him he had four days to kill before publication of its sister paper – the
Ely Express
. Time was something Dryden feared, possibly even more than dogs and heights. It offered an opportunity for introspection which was wholly unwelcome.

He set the coffee cups on the Capri’s roof and considered the distant skyline, expertly locating the brutal shadow which was High Park Flats. He visualized Declan McIlroy, freezing gently to death in his own armchair.
The Crow
wanted him to write a feature for its sister paper on the cold snap, while Dryden was keen to find out more about Declan’s untimely death. He decided to combine both tasks.

As Humph bundled the greyhound back into the rear seat of the Capri, Dryden used his cell phone to ring Vee Hilgay at the Hypothermia Action Trust. It was still just 7.00am but he knew she’d probably be at her desk. She answered on the first ring, a slight sibilance signalling that she was already sipping tea. Did she have a volunteer on the Jubilee
Estate? Not in the flats, she said, but certainly on the estate. Could Dryden meet them, perhaps visit some of those most vulnerable? They fixed a meeting spot for 8.00am. The trust had put posters up at the flats a week ago asking that anyone who needed help combating the cold ring a freephone number. The flats had then been leafleted two days previously and the trust had a list of twenty residents who had agreed to a visit from an expert who could offer professional advice on insulation, diet, and state benefits.

They had an hour to kill. Humph massaged his tummy under the nylon embrace of his Ipswich Town FC replica shirt. ‘Brunch?’

‘You mean another breakfast,’ said Dryden, slipping on the seat-belt by way of affirmation.

The Box Café – known more popularly as Salmonella Sid’s – was a greasy spoon hidden behind the riverside’s newly renovated façades. Humph stayed in the cab, to which an indulgent staff ferried his mug and plate while Dryden demolished a full English and completed a quick run through the downmarket tabloids.

He was at the bottom of the stairwell leading to Declan McIlroy’s flat at precisely 8.00am, his lips still stinging slightly from the heat of microwaved sausages.

Vee trudged towards him across the deserted car park. She wore Doc Martens with red laces and a tattered donkey-jacket with lapels to die for: badges included CND and Troops Out of Iraq Now. She brandished a printed list. ‘These are the residents who responded to the flier,’ she said.

Dryden read down, trying to remember if he’d seen a leaflet in Declan McIlroy’s flat. ‘Perfect,’ he said, stabbing a finger on the name Buster Timms. ‘Great hook: a man who lives next door to the latest victim of the killer winter.’

Vee nodded, her eyes hinting at disappointment. She liked Dryden, loathed his trade. ‘I’ll come with you; the field worker here doesn’t want the publicity. Pictures?’

‘Yeah – I’ll ring the ’toggy once it’s in the bag,’ said Dryden, jiggling his mobile by his ear.

The lift had been cleaned and was working, despite a dent in the aluminium back wall the size of a dustbin lid. A wind was blowing on the twelfth floor and the air was so keen that when Dryden put his hand on the safety barrier of the walkway his skin momentarily froze to the metal. He knocked on Buster’s door, then stepped back for Vee to make the pitch. Dryden turned his back on the door to look down on to the car park below: it held three vehicles, two cars which were necessarily stationary owing to a 100 per cent deficiency in the wheels department and a small white van which Dryden could not see clearly from above. It trundled to the exit and out of sight around the flats.

The door rattled open on a chain. Buster was still in his tartan dressing gown, with several layers of padding beneath.

‘What?’ he said, leering at Dryden.

Vee held up the Day-Glo yellow flier: ‘Hypothermia Trust, Mr Timms. You rang our number. We might be able to help warm you up. This is Mr Dryden – from
The Crow
– he’s going to put some of the advice in the paper for those we can’t visit. Would you mind?’

Dryden admired Vee’s doorstep technique, which he couldn’t have bettered.

Buster shrugged. ‘She’s just gone out – clinic for her eyes. Why not? I’ve met chummy before…’ he added, nodding at Dryden. Buster walked off towards his front room, the bow of the legs beneath the dressing gown suggesting childhood rickets. There was a hatch between the front room and the kitchenette and Buster was already
making tea, a cloud of steam around him like dry ice.

Dryden knelt down before a five-bar fire. ‘What’s wrong with the central heating?’

Buster appeared with a tray. ‘We save that for the evenings. Keeps the bills down – that’s why she’s out, really; after the clinic she’ll go to that drop-in centre off the town square. Then there’s a new centre in the cathedral as well. Coffee, biscuits, she’ll be hours.’ He shrugged with unconcealed happiness.

‘The sister called,’ said Buster, nodding at the partition wall to Declan’s flat. ‘She’s taken a lot of stuff. Boxed the rest up. Left me his keys – all of them. Even the cupboard.’ Buster winked at Dryden. ‘It’s worth a look.’

Vee sat, taking out a fat Manila file from her satchel.

‘This isn’t gonna cost, is it?’ said Buster, eyeing the file and forgetting Declan’s flat.

Vee shook her head, taking the tea and turning aside the sugar bowl. ‘No. Not a penny. I need to do a heat audit on the flat. This electric fire, for example – it’s really very inefficient. You’d be better running the radiators for an hour in the morning… Can I have a look?’

Buster showed her the immersion heater and the gas boiler in a hall cupboard. She checked the windows, letting the cool air which slipped through the ill-fitting metal frames play on her lips.

Dryden wandered round, making an effort to collect the kind of detail that would bring the feature alive. The plastic Christmas tree with fairy lights unlit, the three cards on the mantelpiece, the puckered wallpaper in one corner of the ceiling where the damp had got through. A goldfish bowl stood on the bedside table, complete with underwater castle apparently without a resident. He flicked the bowl with his finger.