The Coldest Blood

15

An eggshell-blue squad car swung in off the drove road, its headlamps sweeping the landscape like a lighthouse beam. Dryden, having fetched Humph from the road, watched from the fusty interior of the Capri, now parked beside the 4x4. He’d been shivering, not because of the ice which had begun to encroach on all the cab’s windows, but because death left him cold, disheartened and afraid of the future. He’d applied an antidote to depression: three miniature malts, but the inner glow only flickered, then died. Sley had rung for the police but it seemed they were in little hurry. Dryden dozed fitfully in the Capri while Humph grumbled intermittently about lost suppers.

Sley had sat more comfortably in the heated four-wheel drive: punching numbers into a mobile and, presumably, breaking bad news. Dryden expected others would arrive the next morning, a caravan of condolence.

The police car parked beside the 4x4. The uniformed PC was young, perhaps twenty-five, enveloped in an overcoat which touched the ground. They met him on the gravel. ‘John,’ he said to Sley, shaking hands. They’d met before and Dryden felt suddenly excluded.

He slipped off a glove and shook Dryden’s hand, replacing it immediately. ‘Richard Ware. I’m the community officer for the Fen out to Shippea Hill. The station rang. They’d have sent from Ely but they’ve closed the drove at the city end ’cos of black ice. So I’d better secure the scene – can you show me, John?’ He buttoned up the overcoat to his throat, shuddering with the cold. ‘It’s a record – the temperature. Minus 18 – and that’s without a wind. We should be inside…’

‘He’s round at the front of the house, on the step, the door’s locked,’ said Sley.

Ware nodded. ‘OK.’ His eyes slipped over the house, checking windows. ‘You’ve both been round the front?’

They nodded.

‘Right. Enough footprints then already. Let’s try to get to him through the house from the back. Chances are he’s locked himself out by accident, but I need to check from the inside, secure the scene. Let’s play it by the book.’

They went to the kitchen door and the policeman expertly forced the Yale, sliding a plastic card down the door jamb. Dryden felt the heat hit his skin. Inside the smell of meat was overpowering. Ware flipped down the oven door and retrieved a chicken, the breastbone protruding through the overcooked flesh, while the vegetables stood peeled and immersed in water, but unheated.

‘Last supper,’ said Ware, moving through to the living room, his eyes dancing over what seemed familiar territory. In the hall, on the high wall which skirted the stairwell, hung a kite in the shape of a kestrel, its tail feathers tacked up in swirls. Dryden lingered in the kitchen, where a cork notice-board was dotted with memoranda, secured with drawing pins: a hospital appointment card, bus timetables, a few postcards and several newspaper cuttings – he noted one from The Crow by the paper’s gardening correspondent about the cold snap, and something from the Lynn News on Fen house prices. In the middle of the board was an open patch, oddly at variance with the rest of the crowded surface. Two drawing pins, with red heads, had been pressed neatly together in the middle.

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…’