The Coldest Blood

18

Saturday, 31 December

Humph had dropped him by the boat in the early hours and he’d climbed aboard, made coffee, and brought it up on deck to try to fend off sleep. That’s when he saw them, the measured footprints which had come out of town during the night, and then appeared to return. Footprints: heel and toe, paced out along the riverbank in the peppered snow. He checked the boat, the painter, the tarpaulin. Nothing. In winter few walked the footpath, and his post was left up at the farm. He’d gulped the coffee, trying not to think, telling himself that paranoia was an illness.

Then he’d gone below, making another pot of coffee, and seen what wasn’t there. Against the forward bulwark he’d tacked up Declan McIlroy’s canvas. The two men waist deep in blood. It was gone. Until then the cold of the night had not made him shiver. He checked the boat out, the deck and forward through the cabins. Nothing else was gone. So he poured himself a malt and returned to the deck.

He could see only one image: the intruder’s face glimpsed through the frosted striped window of the serving hatch in Declan McIlroy’s flat. The fear returned and he switched on PK 129’s floodlight, illuminating the river and the banks. A pair of black swans, startled, took to the air.

He went below but hadn’t slept, the silent landscape beyond the porthole peopled by shadows which seemed to hover on the edge of vision. By dawn the lack of sleep buzzed in his blood like adrenaline and when, a few hours later, he heard Humph hoot the Capri’s horn he felt a flood of relief not to be alone.

Over the weekend the cabbie transferred his services to better-paying customers, mostly bar and club workers who needed ferrying at ungodly hours. Dryden didn’t resent the desertion but it didn’t make Saturdays any easier to live through. But Humph always made it for breakfast, complete with fried egg sandwiches. Dryden ferried out the coffees, trying hard to let the comfort of routine obscure the rawness and fear of the sleepless night.

‘Someone’s been on the boat,’ he said, unable to remove the edge of anxiety from his voice. ‘Last night, before you dropped me off. Look.’ They walked along the riverbank, the footsteps still clear despite a smattering of newly fallen snow. ‘They took the canvas, the one from Declan McIlroy’s flat.’

‘I told you,’ said the cabbie, pausing briefly before attacking his sandwich. Humph had a low view of life on water and had advised Dryden to get a flat in town. ‘Water gypsies,’ he said. ‘Change the locks.’ Humph believed that the river’s small population of New Age narrow-boat dwellers was responsible for almost all recorded crime.

Dryden shook his head. ‘Nah. Why take the painting and nothing else?’

Humph thought about it. ‘Stay at mine – there’s room.’ This was an understatement. Since divorce had separated Humph from a wife and two daughters his semi echoed like a giant oil drum.

‘I’m fine,’ said Dryden, collecting up the mugs and plates. ‘They won’t come back.’ He looked to the horizon and found the box-like outline of High Park Flats, hoping he was right.

But twenty minutes later, as he watched the cab disappear, a final backfire marking its arrival on the main road, the sense of insecurity made him sick. He liked his own company, and loneliness was not an emotion he normally recognized, but suddenly he needed the distractions of work.

He used his mobile to make a round of calls – fire, ambulance, police, coastguard and the press office number for the county council’s social services department which was coordinating help for the old and infirm during the cold snap. The police had nothing fresh on the death of Joe Petulengo. His age was given as forty-one, a widower, with no children. Cause of death was confirmed as hypothermia, and an initial examination of the clothes in which he was found confirmed they had been soaked in water. There were also traces of pond weed and clay on his clothes, and several fibres of cannabis. Police were treating the incident as a tragic accident. An inquest would be held that Tuesday.

The news from the cold-weather helpline had been equally bleak. Today’s top temperature at sea level was likely to be minus 8 degrees centigrade, falling to minus 14 at dusk. The night would break records, with ground temperatures touching minus 20 in some exposed areas. The short-term forecast was still dry, almost parched, with little threat of any significant snowfall. But the medium-range forecast was ominous. A layer of warm air from the south was insinuating itself northwards. It would lie between the snowclouds above and the supercooled earth below. Storms were gathering and if snow did fall it would melt as it fell, passing through the warm layer, and then reach the ground as iced water, freezing on impact with buildings, cars, roads – almost anything that got in its way. Freezing showers were forecast, with the prospect of a full-blown ice storm at any time in the following ten days. He took a note, but knew it wasn’t enough. So he drank more coffee, put on another layer of clothing and rummaged in the forward store for his ice skates, then he hung his shoes by their laces around his neck and skated into town, the exhilaration of the open sky and luminous river lifting his spirits.

The Crow’s offices were deserted, like the rest of town. He began to put together a package of information on the weather – a painstaking process of ringing charities, utilities and the emergency services which would save him time come Monday morning when the pressure would be on to find some decent news stories for the Express. He found one good line almost immediately: the water board predicted that freezing ground temperatures could threaten the mains supply. Plans were being made for a fleet of water tankers to provide outlying districts, and a list of locations had already been posted online.

The risk of an ice storm, rare in the UK, was worth a standalone story. He needed some background material to paint the picture for The Crow’s readers, so he went online and Googled up some facts and figures from a lethal storm which had hit Ottawa and Quebec in 1998. The headline numbers were suitably alarming – 100,000 people had fled to special shelters, nearly 2 million had lost all power at home, hundreds had either died in accidents or been poisoned by fumes at home using faulty heaters after electricity supplies had failed. Transport had been almost entirely halted, the freezing rain making car door locks almost impossible to open. Millions of trees had died, cracked open by the freezing rain which had seeped into the wood only to expand into wedges of ice. The sea had frozen in several spots on the eastern seaboard, and pack-ice had crowded the Great Lakes.

‘It’s a disaster movie,’ said Dryden to himself, his mood lightening further.

He walked to the office bay window and looked out onto Market Street, past the etched motif of The Crow, where snow still fell for now in picturebook flakes. He abandoned work and walked out into town, buying tea from the mobile canteen in Market Square. Then he went to the police station and dutifully reported the theft of the canvas from his floating home, the uniformed PC on duty not bothering to reassure him that the culprits would be swiftly and professionally tracked down. He left with a reference number in case he had to make an insurance claim, although a second search by daylight had revealed that nothing else was missing from PK 129.

Back in town a few shoppers moved briskly between the Saturday market stalls, but already some traders were packing away, and a lorry had backed in to load up unsold vegetables. A wind was rising and the awnings and plastic sheeting strung up to protect the stalls snapped like whips. The town Christmas tree, surrounded by security fencing in the middle of the market, swayed. Dryden sought cover in the lee of a mobile fishmonger’s counter, and stood sipping the tea. He considered the lives of Joe Petulengo and Declan McIlroy, and he considered their deaths, weighing again the balance between conspiracy, suicide and accident. A large conger eel lay on one of the fishmonger’s white plastic trays, its eye flat and sightless. And he thought of the footsteps again, crisp on the towpath. He made a decision then, finished the tea, and headed back to the office.

Using The Crow’s online archive he’d checked for references to Petulengo. In May 1994 an article had been published to mark the tenth anniversary of the foundation of a company – JSK – a one-man business dedicated to designing and manufacturing high-performance kites for use on farms. Most models mimicked the shape, colour and flight patterns of birds of prey, the kestrel being the most popular. The flying scarecrows were endorsed, in the article, by a farmer who had used a prototype on his land for more than five seasons. A grainy picture showed Petulengo flying one from what looked like a rooftop, the spiky miniature pinnacles of the cathedral’s Lady Chapel just visible in the distant background. A spokesman from the National Farmers’ Union lauded the idea, and praised its environmental credentials. The paper described Petulengo as a ‘young entrepreneur’, and in a less-PC age as coming from a ‘well-known gypsy family’. Dryden recalled the lovingly arranged tails of the kite hung in the hallway of the farmhouse at Letter M Farm. He bent an Anglepoise lamp down over the cutting. The picture was good enough to see the face clearly – the statuesque head, the short white hair, the powerful, squat frame. He found JSK in the telephone book and noted down the address.

Twenty minutes later Dryden stood, dizzy now from lack of sleep, outside the factory wire, the view fractured into neat diamonds, gripping the metallic grid with bare fingers. He rested his forehead on the wire, wishing he’d tried to sleep.

The old jam factory had been the site of one of the town’s few large-scale industries, founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Fruit had been delivered via a spur of the railway, grubbed up in the 1960s. It was three storeys high, with large lattice windows for light and a set of iron folding doors across the ground-floor loading bays: a windswept spot, a solitary industrial landmark. From the flat roof a single thread of string rose into the air, a long low-slung loop like a washing line, disappearing into the slate grey sky. It swung precariously, as if the wind were fighting to keep it aloft.

Dryden lifted his hands free from the freezing wire, wincing at the slight tearing sensation which came from the skin at his fingertips. He breathed out, the cloud of steam almost fog-like. It was colder, much colder. He looked up at the pendant string. ‘Kites,’ he said, calling up the memory of one dipping over the sea.

Cars crammed a small car park, none of them aspiring to the adjective executive. To the east was a plot reclaimed from the peat on which stood a large mobile home, immaculately painted in white with green trimmings, with a brace of carriage lamps and a double garage; a tiny bit of kitsch suburbia, set adrift.

Up a set of stone steps and through a reinforced glass door a watchman slept in an overheated cubicle reeking of tea bags. A board on the wall indicated that the building was let to a range of small businesses, had been opened by the local MEP and sponsored by the regional development agency. Dryden slipped past the sleeping sentry, found JSK on the board and climbed to the top floor.

As he trod the cold concrete steps he listened to an echo climbing with him, and something made him stop, one foot raised. For a step the echo was ahead of him, then silence. Climbing on he tried again, but this time the echo, perfectly matched, had no life of its own. In the cold of the stairwell he stood, considering the dangers of paranoia. Around him he could hear the sounds of small-scale engineering: a saw screamed, a mechanical punch produced a rhythmic bass note, Radio 1 crackled.

Dryden shivered and pressed on. The stairs ended at a set of double see-through plastic doors stencilled with the letters JSK. The shop floor within was open-plan, cluttered with work benches over which were draped swathes of the materials used to make kites: wooden canes, aluminium rods, sheets of PVC and lightweight plastics. What looked like an impromptu staff meeting was taking place at one end, with a dozen overalled men clutching mugs, drawn up in a semicircle. They were being addressed by John Sley, small-time drug peddler and allotment brewer. Beside him was Marcie Sley, who turned her head towards Dryden, the only one to hear his entrance.

Dryden waited, considering the cat’s-cradle of ties which seemed to bind together the lives of the two dead men.

A notice board was sprinkled with pictures: a works outing at what looked like Hunstanton, some colour advertising shots of kites being flown, and a PR shot of Joe Petulengo, up close, with a CBI award for exports. And another cutting, from what looked like the Cambridge Evening News, of him holding the same award but with an arm thrown around a woman in a smart dark suit. Dryden recognized the face as that in the portrait over the mantelpiece at the Letter M farm.

Suddenly a snaking, crackling sound, like fire running across petrol came from the roof above Dryden’s head. Then something heavy and brittle struck directly, the vibration of the impact briefly releasing a shower of dust from the beams. John Sley was first to a metal staircase which ran up from the shop floor. Quickly, everyone followed, Dryden being the last to climb out under the grey sky, almost close enough – it seemed – to touch. Around them lay the open Fen, the city to the north, dominated by the cathedral. There was a low parapet but Dryden, restricted by his fear of heights, moved cautiously to a point equidistant from all the edges. A tangle of splintered wood, mangled metal and plastic lay in a contorted heap on one edge of the creosoted flat surface: whilst across most of it a nylon cord zigzagged and lay in spools. Sprinkled over everything were icicles, a drift of miniature stalactites, although some were more than a foot long – daggers of frozen water.

Dryden was next to Marcie Sley, her eyes tracking the movement around her. Again he was struck by the luxurious black hair and the weathered skin, which he felt the urge to touch but, confused by the emotion, blurted out a question instead.

‘What is it?’

She turned towards him, and he could tell she’d recognized the voice. ‘One of Joe’s kites,’ she said, smiling. ‘He flew them off the roof – they’re super-lightweight. They have to be – farmers need to be able to put them up once, then forget them. He used to sit up here for hours watching, designing. If you can get them high enough they stay up for days in the right conditions. It isn’t the right conditions.’

They laughed.

Dryden could see the problem. The superstructure of the box kite was coated in a thick layer of black ice.

‘I went back to Declan’s flat,’ he said. ‘The neighbour let me in. He said you’d been working hard, clearing his stuff out. I’m sorry – I took one of your brother’s paintings.’

She nodded, sightless eyes searching the pale light in the sky. ‘I’m going to bin the rest,’ she said. ‘It was the act of painting which was important. Over the years he’d thrown hundreds away – or just painted over them. He’d have been flattered…’

Dryden cut in. ‘Only the canvas has been stolen. I live out on the river, a boat. They got on board and took it, just that.’

She nodded. ‘Which one? He used to describe them to me, the colours and the texture of the oil.’

Dryden laughed. ‘Two men, their arms mutilated by wounds, standing in blood. Not uplifting, I’m afraid.’

She looked away so that Dryden couldn’t see her eyes.

He looked around at the men trying to clear the debris of the fallen kite and bundle it down the staircase onto the shop floor.

‘Do they know the boss is dead?’ he asked.

‘They do now – John’s just told them, he’s the foreman, has been since the start almost. We don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a private company so it keeps trading until the estate is sorted out. Who knows then?’

‘Foreman?’ said Dryden licking ice from his upper lip. ‘Must be nice – secure job, decent pay…’

Marcie turned her head towards him and Dryden felt something stir in his memory, but saw only a kite flying over a distant beach. ‘Look. We both thank you for what you’ve done. He won’t do it again. Money is a problem. It was a temptation, and he’s sorry, believe me.’

Sley joined them. ‘Dryden. News?’ He seemed less menacing in a pair of blue overalls, the powerful hands winding in the kite cord like wool.

Dryden wondered what he was expecting. ‘I wanted to know more about Joe. You didn’t mention the factory…’

Sley held up a hand by way of truce. ‘I’ll get coffee.’

They sat in the main stairwell, away from prying ears, perched on the ice-cold concrete steps. Marcie Sley reached out her hand and her husband took it, holding it in his on his lap, where a wedding ring with a Celtic pattern caught the light. It was an intimate gesture and Dryden looked away.

Marcie’s green eyes were on him when he finally looked back. ‘John didn’t mention JSK because he’s still ashamed of the past. A distant past, Dryden. He got the job here because Declan vouched for him – and he knew him because they’d shared a prison cell.’

‘And…’ said Dryden.

‘It’s past,’ said Marcie quickly, holding her husband’s hand tightly. ‘He’s not proud of it, but it was nearly twenty years ago. OK? Joe gave him a chance – a big chance. Getting a decent job straight out of prison is almost impossible.’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Fine. Why didn’t he give Declan a job?’

‘He’d never have stood it – inside, with all these people. My brother was the loner’s loner. It was all we could do to get him to come down to the allotments. Or to stay in the flat. We’ve had to trawl the streets to find him before now.’

From the factory unit they heard a mechanical saw and the swish of an industrial cutter across a metal tube.

‘Why was Declan in jail?’ asked Dryden.

Marcie’s eyes swung round. ‘He attacked a man who stole a bottle from him – while he slept. He caught him doing it – so he smashed the bottle and put it into his face.’ She left the statement hanging there, while they imagined the trickling blood, and the serrated slice of the glass through skin.

‘I’m interested in them,’ said Dryden, deciding for now not to ask how John Sley had ended up in a prison cell. ‘They were both at St Vincent’s. Victims together. They’d agreed to give evidence in the action against the diocese, right?’

Marcie Sley nodded and her husband leant forward. ‘You think someone killed them to stop them getting to court?’

That was exactly what Dryden had thought. ‘No. Just interested. Could it have driven both of them to suicide?’

John Sley looked to his wife, then took up the lead. ‘Declan was under a lot of pressure. The case brought back memories, things he’d never really dealt with. Issues.’ It was what Ed Bardolph, Declan’s social worker, had said too. ‘Issues’ was one of those words Dryden disliked: a euphemism, an Americanism, a screen.

Marcie shifted on the step and Dryden caught a glance from her husband. ‘Isn’t it all a bit, I don’t know, archaic – orphanages? It sounds Dickensian, what about foster homes, adoption?’ asked Dryden.

He noticed their hands tightening. ‘It was difficult,’ said Marcie. ‘Mum was still alive. A psychiatric hospital in London, Claybury. Even back then Declan could be violent. But they tried, I was fostered for a while. But we all ended up back where we started… always.’

There was a note of anger in the voice, the first he’d heard from this strangely serence woman. Anger and something else. They talked more about Declan, with John Sley taking the lead, but Dryden watched his wife’s face and saw playing across it another story, as yet untold.

They left him eventually and he stood for a second looking at the stencilled letters on the door to the workshop as it flapped closed: JSK. He knew now he’d forgotten to ask the obvious question: surely it should be JPK. What did the S stand for?