The Coldest Blood

3

At the foot of the stairwell of High Park Flats a puddle of urine had frozen solid. There was another puddle in the lift, frozen too, but the colour of no known bodily fluid.

Dryden pressed the button marked 12 but the lift didn’t move. The doors did a shimmy, closed once, and then retreated. Out on the tarmac he could see Humph in the Capri, smirking.

Dryden trudged up the first flight of stairs, the walls a maze of graffiti except for a Day-Glo yellow poster offering help for the aged during the cold snap. Twenty-four flights of stairs later Dryden arrived on Frobisher, the level where Declan McIlroy had lived until the early hours of that day. There was a wind up here, and it took another five degrees off the temperature. Dryden’s breath billowed, and the air made his throat ache. The cold snap had lasted a week now, a dry blast of Arctic air bringing clear skies and showers of oversized snowflakes.

Dryden wrapped his greatcoat around himself and felt the ice in his hair.

On the drive into town he’d rung the station at Ely for the bare details: a neighbour had come onto the landing to rescue his wailing cat, stranded outside by a frozen flap. He’d noticed that the landing window of McIlroy’s flat was open, unusual itself at 2 in the morning, but alarming given the freezer-like conditions. The neighbour found the door unlocked and entered to find McIlroy dead in an armchair in the living room, the TV on, a cup of coffee frozen in the mug beside him. All the room’s windows were open. Death by hypothermia had been the doctor’s call. There’d be an inquest, but McIlroy had a long history of mental illness, and had attempted suicide twice before: both times using a knife.

Dryden peered over the edge of the lift-shaft wall down at the car park as a seagull flew below him. High Park Flats had been built in the 1960s and was the centrepiece of the Jubilee Estate. Fifteen storeys high it tussled, controversially, with the cathedral’s West Tower to dominate the horizon. Each floor had an external walkway linking the front doors of each flat. McIlroy’s was No. 126, a corner flat, the last on the gangway.

Dryden walked to the door and tried the handle: locked. He was surprised to find the police and emergency services had already left the scene. There was no sign anyone had died here, let alone lived. He knocked once, twice, and waited, looking south towards the city centre and beyond. The rush hour had begun and headlights in a long necklace stretched out east across the Fen towards Newmarket.

Dryden looked through the window but could see little in the gloom – the dull glint of unpolished taps, orange Formica kitchen units and a rusted gas-fired boiler.

‘He’s not there,’ said a voice.

Dryden turned to find an elderly man, perhaps seventy years of age, wrapped in a tartan dressing gown over a jumper and jogging pants, and clutching a mug of tea.

‘I heard – about what happened,’ said Dryden, taking a step back. ‘My name’s Dryden, from The Crow.’

‘Tell him to fuck off,’ said a woman’s voice from the halfopen doorway behind the neighbour.

Dryden nodded towards the flat. ‘Duchess of Kent visiting, is she?’

The neighbour grinned, nodding. ‘Don’t mind her. Her eyes are bad – shingles,’ he said, holding out his hand ‘Buster. Buster Timms. I’m the one what found him.’ He nodded at No. 126, and continued to nod. ‘Wanna look?’ he asked.

‘The police?’ said Dryden, but Buster was already unlocking the door.

‘They ain’t bothered. I’ve been in and out all night with tea. They’ve gone now – told me to keep an eye on the place…’ He clicked his dental plate with practised ease.

‘What was he like – McIlroy?’ asked Dryden, as Buster led the way down a short corridor into the living room. It had two picture windows, one looking out east, the other north. There was a small balcony beyond a french window on which stood a single wooden chair, an ashtray beneath was full of ice. The sun up, the room was flooded with light.

Buster ignored his question. ‘I found him there – in the chair. Stiff as a board – honest.’ Buster beamed. ‘Tragic. He wasn’t forty.’

‘Right – but what was he like?’

‘Declan? Mad, I guess. You know. Mental – problems all along really. We’re just neighbours you know, there’s no point getting involved.’

Dryden nodded. ‘There’s no doors,’ he said.

Buster looked round, running his finger down a door jamb to where the hinges had been. ‘He took ’em off. They’re in the spare. Don’t ask me – but I can guess.’ He winked, clicking the plate of his false teeth up to reveal a sudden glimpse of cherry-red gum. Dryden’s stomach flipped the egg sandwich. ‘Reckon he’d been inside, you know. But he never said.’

Dryden walked into the kitchen. On a Formica-topped table a bunch of carrots lay, the roots still entangled with clay. On the draining board some newspaper was spread under a cauliflower.

‘Liked his veg then,’ said Dryden, opening the fridge, which was switched off and empty.

‘Eats nothing else. He had an allotment – down there.’

They looked out of the greasy window, away from town towards the distant gash of the railway line. Sheds and huts dotted a landscape of bean poles and serried frostbitten greens, a far-flung shanty town of rotting wood and plastic sheeting.

Dryden opened the cupboard over the sink. This was where he’d kept his tea – Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Peppermint, Camomile.

‘Blimey,’ said Dryden, examining one of the packets, which was almost empty.

Buster leered, and Dryden felt a rare emotion stirring: acute dislike.

‘What’s funny?’ he said, making Buster take a step back.

‘He drank,’ said Buster. ‘Booze. The tea kept him going when he was outta cash.’

Dryden picked up a single glass tumbler on the draining board and wafted it under his nose: it had been rinsed but the aroma of whisky clung to it like the scent of apples.

Buster’s teeth were beginning to rattle.

They went into the hall. There was an electricity meter and Dryden noted that the black enamel dial showed it was nearly full: £22.50.

The first door off the corridor was a single bedroom, a sleeping bag on top of a mattress, no carpet. Next was the spare, or rather it had been used as the spare, but had been intended as the master bedroom. Tea crates held an assortment of wiring and electrical circuitry. By the wall were two old TV sets and a video recorder. There was a sturdy wooden table – the only decent furniture in the flat – set out as a workbench and covered in newspaper. Four of the flat’s five internal doors stood against the far wall.

‘He could fix anything,’ volunteered Buster, crowding in by Dryden’s shoulder. ‘Mostly for thems that lives in the flats. He was cheap.’

‘And this?’ Dryden pulled an easel from the wall, below it a sheet spattered with several colours of paint.

Buster shrugged. Back in the hall, Dryden filled his lungs with the damp air. There was a storage cupboard, but when Dryden tried the handle it was locked.

‘Key?’

Buster shook his head: ‘I only had the front. We swapped the spares. The police didn’t seem bothered.’

‘Short of money a lot, was he?’ Dryden asked, heading back into the living room.

‘Yeah. But he got benefit – for the illness.’

‘Sick?’

‘Coughing. TB, he said. That’s when I knew something was wrong last night – I listened, but there was no coughing. He always coughs in his sleep. Drives her mad,’ he added, nodding towards the partition wall.

‘But you didn’t check?’

Buster clutched the dressing-gown cord. ‘He liked his privacy.’

Over the tiled fireplace hung a framed picture, two men on a bench by a magnolia tree. The wide Fen stretched behind them, a pond in the foreground. Dryden touched the frame.

‘That’s his mate – Joe,’ said Buster. ‘Haven’t seen him much. Declan said he had throat cancer, that he couldn’t travel no more. He’s got a place out there…’ He nodded to the window that faced north towards the open Fen.

Dryden studied the faces: Joe, white close-cropped hair, expensive, quality shirt and shoes, a cigarette trailing smoke in the summer air. And Declan, slight by comparison, shoulders turned forward, chest sunken, wrists narrow and frail.

Despite the friendship Dryden could sense the loneliness in the flat. ‘Any other friends? Christmas, whenever?’

Buster shook his head, but Dryden was pretty sure he’d missed the question, so he asked again.

‘A sister. Marcie. She brings him some food, checks on him. She came yesterday.’

There was a cheap pine sideboard in the lounge. On it was a bowl of nuts, the only festive touch in the flat. Inside, Dryden found glasses: odd wine goblets, dimpled pint mugs and a single cracked Champagne flute. Each one sat upside-down, precisely over a dust-free circle. All except one: a whisky tumbler.