by Jim Kelly
‘How cold is it?’ said Dryden.
‘Search me,’ said Humph, enjoying the dog’s careering run along the floodbank.
Dryden considered his friend’s planetary girth. ‘We don’t have the manpower,’ he said.
Boudicca returned and indecently nuzzled Dryden’s testicles.
‘Another death,’ said the cabbie, nodding towards the Capri. ‘On the radio.’
‘The cold?’
The cabbie nodded. ‘Some poor bastard on the Jubilee. Dead in his flat.’
The Jubilee was Ely’s sink estate, a warren of brick terraced streets enlivened by the occasional outbreak of ill-judged stone-cladding. Humph had a house there, his home since an acrimonious divorce, which he contrived hardly ever to visit, sleeping instead in the cab in a series of convenient lay-bys.
‘What time?’ said Dryden, pulling open the Capri’s passenger door and bracing himself for the familiar screech of rust from its hinges.
Humph let Boudicca into the back seat and then lowered himself into the driver’s seat by holding on to the door and the roof. The Capri listed alarmingly, the suspension twanging underneath.
‘Neighbour found him late last night when he saw the windows open,’ said Humph.
Dryden tried to imagine it. The flat, up in the sky, with frozen air blowing through it.
He checked his watch again. The Crow’s deadline was still hours away, but it was press day and the journalist in him needed a decent tale.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, and their moods lifted, buoyed up by the mutual relief that they had somewhere to go.
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. The
re 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.
4
Dryden sat at his desk, looking down into Market Street through the motif of The Crow etched in the frosted glass of the newsroom window. Below the strutting bird ran the paper’s motto since its foundation in 1882: Bene agendo nunquam defessus (Never weary of doing good).
‘That’s me,’ said Dryden, searching under the desktop clutter for his mug.
He retrieved a 1 euro coin from the plastic tub under the coffee machine and let it drop through the slot. The machine hissed, the steam puffing out into the nipped air. The cathedral’s bell tolled 9.00am and the radiators began to reverberate as the near-freezing water ran to the shuddering boiler.
Cradling the cup, Dryden looked out again into the street. Sunshine cut down the pavements from the east, and the rooftops opposite steamed. Icicles hung from The Crow’s gutters, but none of them dripped, while a single snowflake, an inch wide, fell like a feather.
He sat and booted up his PC. This is how he liked offices: empty.
But it wouldn’t be empty for long. It was press day and, though The Crow rarely buzzed, it was nevertheless likely to hum by lunchtime. Each of the three journalists’ desks was obscured by creeping glaciers of paper through which punched the occasional metal spike. A subs’ bench ran along one wall complete with two cumbersome layout computers which predated the flat-screen era and were three feet thick. Two ashtrays sat between the PCs and were on the same scale, being slightly too small to double up as hubcaps. The room held little of the romantic appeal of newspapers which had made Dryden choose his trade more than a decade before. That had been on Fleet Street, and the office had shuddered every time the presses ran in the basement. But now the smell of printer’s ink was just a memory, like yesterday’s headlines.
On Dryden’s lap the office cat, Splash, slept on its back, its pink paw pads extended. He stroked her, envying the independence as much as the fur coat.
His phone rang, making them both jump.
‘Got five?’ He knew the voice, feminine and forceful, and could almost smell the acrid scent of the builder’s tea in the big no-nonsense mug.
‘Vee?’
‘Pop over,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something you’d like.’
He slipped out the back of The Crow’s offices into the old print yard and around into Market Street, then down a treacherously iced alleyway to High Street. Vee’s office was over one of the town centre’s myriad charity shops, this one by the Sacrist’s Gate, the Norman gateway into the cathedral grounds. A Gothic shadow had left this darkened archway in permafrost since the cold snap had brought even the noontime temperatures below freezing. Beneath the cobbles here Dryden recalled that builders in the sixties had found the skulls of the cathedral’s monastic community, stacked in a charnel house. He shivered, wrapping his great black trench coat more closely to his thin frame.
In the charity shop a pensioner was trying on hats. A two-bar electric fire provided the shop assistant, who was asleep, with some warmth. Before her on the counter lay an offertory plate sprinkled with silver and copper coins. Up a spiral stone staircase Dryden found Vee’s office. Even here, amongst the damp cardboard boxes and the unstripped floorboards, Vee was patently top-drawer, a real-life living remnant of old money and radical liberal politics. She was a pocket battleship amongst pensioners: compact, with sinewy hands and an outdoor tan. One of her eyes had been blinded in youth, and the pupil was now a single white moon, which watered slightly. She rented the office, headquarters of the Hypothermia Action Trust, which she had founded, and a single bedroom above. That, and a £1m bank balance, was all anyone needed to know about Vee Hilgay.
‘Another one this morning,’ she said as Dryden came in, folding himself into a wobbly captain’s chair.
‘I know. I’ve been out – to High Park.’
She nodded. ‘That’s the eighth in a week,’ she said, setting down a pint mug of tea decorated with a picture of Tony Benn. She poured Dryden a cup from the brown pot on her desk. Then she went to a narrow lancet window set in the stone wall, opened it and retrieved a thermometer.
‘Minus 3 degrees centigrade. The average for the month is minus 2 – that’s the lowest since ’47. Last night it fell to minus 10 out at Mildenhall. This could be a disaster; someone else will die today, and tomorrow…’
Dryden made a small indecipherable mark in his notebook to help him remember the quote. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Look at this one,’ she said, dropping a file on the table. Dryden opened it, bracing himself for emotional blackmail. There was a picture of an elderly woman, white hair recently set in a geriatric helmet, the skull just showing through.
‘Millie Thompson. Eighty-six. Found dead in bed at Manea three days ago,’ said Vee. ‘On the mat three cheques from the social security and her pension. She was too cold to go out and she had a fault in the gas boiler – she’d rung the board but told them not to bother to rush out. She went to bed instead – that was ten days ago. Ten days without hot food, or heat. The cottage was damp. When they found her she was frozen between the blankets.’
Dryden took the head and shoulders picture. ‘I can do something – wrap it up with this morning’s.’
Vee smiled, knowing that Dryden’s career as a journalist had been severely hampered by a conscience. She checked her notes. ‘Declan McIlroy. Psychiatric patient – so, confused, or desperate?’
Dryden slurped his tea. ‘I guess…’ He held Vee’s good eye for just a moment too long.
She caressed the To
ny Benn mug. ‘You don’t think the cold did it?’
‘Didn’t say that, Vee. Just think the police are a bit quick to tie up the paperwork on deaths like this… I mean, if I was a murderer I’d grab my chance. You’d never get spotted. It’s like the Blitz. You can’t tell me a few scores didn’t get settled on the bomb sites…’
‘And Millie too?’ she said, tapping the file.
‘I didn’t say that. It’s McIlroy I’m talking about – just McIlroy.’
Vee let the silence stretch. Dryden looked out the window, the West Tower of the cathedral dominated the view, frozen water glistening like slug trails down the Norman stonework. Another giant snowflake fell.
‘Neighbour says he’s broke most of the time. He does part-time electrical work – but it’s smalltime stuff. He’s on sickness benefit. But the meter’s jammed with coins – more than twenty quid’s worth. Most people wait till the coin drops and the lights go out…’
‘But he’s confused…’
‘I guess. And he drinks. So perhaps he stuffed his benefit in the meter to make sure it didn’t get spent at the offy. And…’
‘Would you like it to be murder?’ asked Vee astutely.
Dryden bridled. ‘No. Not really.’ He stood. ‘I’ll run something – with the usual advice and emergency numbers. It’s all I can do…’ Dryden was less than enthused by the cold-snap story, partly because the whole of eastern England was hit so there was little unusual in the situation in the Fens, and partly because The Crow’s readership shared a deep-rooted, immoral disregard for anyone who wasn’t a star in Neighbours.
Back at The Crow the A team had arrived. The editor, Septimus Henry Kew, was installed behind his glass partition checking the proofs. The news editor, Charlie Bracken, was at his desk, sweating into a blue shirt he’d had on all week. There was an aroma of stale alcohol in the air, which emanated from Charlie’s skin and the half-open deep drawer in his desk where he kept an emergency bottle of Bell’s.
