by Jim Kelly
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.
‘Belly up,’ said Buster from the doorway.
Dryden noted the slight sheen of ice on a family snapshot which stood framed on the window ledge.
Back in the front room Vee ran through the couple’s shopping list with Buster, trying to see if she could slip them on to the council’s meals-on-wheels service. That could save them enough cash to run the heating for longer, and stock up the cupboard with some soups, fresh vegetables and fruit. She did some sums on a pocket calculator, expertly summarizing their pension position and eligibility for winter fuel payments and the cold-weather bonus.
‘We might be able to get you a grant, Mr Timms – on top of the payments. It’s worth £2,500 – you could get double-glazing. And you know the hospital does sessions as well?’ she asked. ‘They do some very light physiotherapy – hot drinks. Just going would be good for you.’
Buster looked stoically unimpressed. ‘Your man did that already,’ he said.
Vee paused, sipping tea, thinking she’d misheard.
‘The doc. Called the other day with your flier. Did miracles with her shoulders, checked her temperature, pulse, the lot.’
‘And you?’ asked Dryden, catching Vee’s good eye.
Buster tucked the tartan dressing gown more securely around his waist: ‘He scarpered when I got home, I’d been down the bowls club. He was off then. Didn’t believe she was seventy-one, she said. Said she could run a marathon.’ Buster nodded, looking at them both. ‘Bit of a tosser, really.’
‘Did he visit Declan too? Next door?’
Buster’s eyes were wary now, sensing that something was wrong but unable to guess what to hide. ‘After us. I heard him knock anyway and he didn’t walk back past the door for an hour – maybe more.’
‘This was the night he died, wasn’t it?’ said Dryden.
‘I didn’t tell the police,’ said Buster
, one step ahead now. He raised a hand to his forehead. ‘I just didn’t think.’
‘Don’t worry. I can pass it on if you like…’ offered Dryden. Buster pushed his teeth forward in a smile. ‘What was he like – the doctor? Not your own GP then?’
‘I only saw him for a minute, like – he’d done with her, and he said he had to finish his appointments. Bit odd, really. No tie or anything. But smart. About fifty, perhaps not. My age, everyone looks young. She said he had very strong ’ands, when he massaged her neck and that. Medium height – pretty solid. Don’t expect that, do you? Our one’s a streak of piss.’
‘How about his face?’ asked Dryden, knowing the police would press for more, even if they had already filed Declan McIlroy’s death firmly under suicide.
Buster pursed his lips. ‘Sorry, she had the TV on by then – Countdown, we never miss. Mousy hair? Dunno. Short, I think; shortish, anyway.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘She said he had lovely blue eyes, silly cow. He had a black bag too, and a clipboard.’
‘And he just knocked, Mr Timms?’ asked Vee, aware that the purpose of their visit had shifted. ‘No preparatory call? We insist on that,’ she added, looking to Dryden.
‘Nah. She heard this noise from the landing, someone going past… Bastard was halfway to Declan’s flat so she got him back, said we were needy. He said he’d planned to do us next but she told him we didn’t answer the door after dark.’
‘So this was what? Five, six?’
‘Yeah. We watch the repeat of Countdown – so that’s got to be after 5.15 yup?’ Suddenly Buster looked less sure. ‘Or did we give it a miss that day?’
Dryden struggled to contain his frustration. Why was it that in the real world witnesses could hardly confirm their own names, let alone recall telling details about someone else?
‘Perhaps your wife would remember more about this doctor?’
Buster laughed. ‘Doubt it, mate. Eyes,’ he said, tapping his temples with both index fingers. ‘Can’t see a thing up close – she saw his when he had a look in hers with one of those light things.’
He slurped the rest of his tea. ‘There was one thing,’ he added, pushing his hands out to catch the feeble warmth from the fire. ‘He went to the loo just before he left so I peeked in the bag. Guess what?’
Vee and Dryden shook their heads, shocked by Buster’s casual dishonesty.
‘I only had a sec. There was pills and stuff, and the kit – like for blood pressure. But there was a bottle too. Whisky. Unopened.’
10
Buster made a second pot of tea when Vee left, and they refilled their mugs before going out on to the balcony. The cat made figures-of-eight around Buster’s ankles as he fished the keys out of his dressing-gown pocket and let himself into Declan’s flat. There were several tea-crates in the front room, one of them full of crockery and glasses shrouded in old newspapers, and the taint of rancid grease had been scoured from the kitchen.
‘The sister did all this?’ asked Dryden.
‘I helped. Missus made her a hot drink. You got to help, but it’s amazin’ how she gets about.’
‘You mean even though she’s blind?’
‘Right. Makes you realize how lucky we are,’ said Buster, and Dryden could see that it hadn’t, not until now. The old man looked around the flat. ‘We should have helped more. But like I said, he wanted his privacy.’
Dryden put his head in the bedroom. The mattress and sleeping bag were gone, the single bed up on one edge. ‘Did she find anything, anything she didn’t expect?’
Buster shook his head. He was standing by the locked cupboard in the hall with the keys. He turned the Yale silently and stood back: ‘She said I could have one of these, but I’m not bothered.’
The lower half of the cupboard contained canvases, tacked on stretchers and stacked on edge. The smell of turpentine was pungent. Dryden flipped them forward, craning his neck to see each composition – some vivid landscapes, a field of Fen rape, a view from the lounge down onto the allotments, a still life of a table top with a single apple. And there were nudes, female, the skin colour dominated by angry reds, the faces indistinct.
But the top half of the cupboard held a canvas on a stretcher which had been pegged to a cross-wire to dry.
‘Jesus,’ said Dryden, taking one edge of it in his hand.
It was of two men, naked, standing waist deep in a pool. The colours were dark, soiled and crude, but the brush work adept. One of them had white hair and Dryden recognized the same box-like features as in the painting that hung above McIlroy’s fireplace: the elusive Joe. Was the other man Declan? Dryden found it difficult to tell, the features here were smudged and chaotic. But the picture’s real impact was not in the composition but the colour of the pool. It wasn’t blue, grey or white but a startling arterial red, and from each man a trickle of blood ran down from wounds on the arms to replenish the pool beneath.
‘That’s Joe, I guess?’ said Dryden, pointing. Buster nodded. ‘Don’t know where he lives, do you – or his surname?’
‘Just Joe. Lives on the Fen, that’s all I know. He didn’t come much; they met down at the allotments. He just called when Declan was sick, ’cept this time of course.’
‘Did you know Declan painted?’
‘No idea. I asked Marcie – that’s the sister – and she said it was therapy. No – therapeutic, that’s what she said. But she didn’t want the pictures, coz he’d given her one with loads of paint on she could feel – a landscape, she said; reeds and stuff. And he’d always said to burn ’em anyway. Said I could have one of ’em for being neighbourly, to remember him by.’ Buster laughed: ‘Must be fuckin’ jokin’.’
‘It’s blood,’ said Dryden, leaning forward to look more closely. ‘Can I take this one?’
Buster was shivering. ‘Be my guest. She’s gonna pick up the others tomorrow for the tip.’ He watched as Dryden took down the canvas and rolled it.
‘What do you think it means, then?’ asked Buster, backing off.
‘Looks like a nightmare to me,’ said Dryden.
They went back into the lounge. ‘Bloke from the council said they’d have someone new in by the end of the month,’ said Buster, picking up his tea mug from the table. ‘Missus says it’ll be a bunch of darkies with loud music. I hope it is, give her something to fuckin’ moan about ’cept me.’
Dryden felt the cool wind from the north blowing through the gaps around Declan McIlroy’s picture windows. ‘I don’t think Declan did kill himself, Buster. What do you think?’
Buster held his dressing gown to his throat. ‘If the police are happy, I’m happy. Why make trouble, eh?’
He was watching Buster’s face when it froze, the eyes looking over Dryden’s right shoulder. He wheeled and saw what he’d seen: through the frosted glass of the hatch to the kitchen, a face, the parallel opaque lines distorting the features.
The intruder sensed that the sudden silence signalled discovery and bolted for the door, heavy boots thudding on the cheap lino.
Dryden was ten feet behind him as he made it to the balcony in time to see him take the steps down by the landing. As Dryden followed he heard the lift wheezing, the doors clattering on the floor below, then the lift again.
Heart creaking, Dryden vaulted the concrete stairs two, three and four at a time until he reached the ground floor where, doubled up, he waited for the lift to arrive. It thudded finally to rest, and the doors clattered open to reveal Buster’s cat.
Looking up, Dryden saw a head jerk back from a balcony a few floors above, then running footsteps receded, muffled as they turned a corner and were gone, heading for another exit.
From the top balcony Buster waved lamely: ‘Tea?’ he shouted.
11
Dryden threw himself into the Capri’s passenger seat and slammed the door, tossing Declan McIlroy’s canvas on to the back seat beside the dog. The cab swayed, crying out on its geriatric springs. Humph, oblivious, had his earphones on and was repeating with painstakin
g care the directions to the railway station in Kohtla-Jarve. Dryden wiped the sweat from his forehead and, trying his pockets, uncovered a comforting cocktail sausage and munched it, regardless of the fluff. His diet, outside the egg sandwich for breakfast and the occasional full English, was satisfied by a kind of trouser-pocket smorgasbord, featuring pork pies, raw mushrooms and anything else acquired on his travels. In the other pocket he found a packet of wine gums and took two for pudding.
He considered the brutal façade of High Park Flats. He’d rung Vee Hilgay on his mobile from Buster’s flat and she was still adamant that the unannounced doctor’s visit had nothing to do with the Hypothermia Action Trust. She’d checked with the local NHS Trust to be sure and there was no record whatsoever of such an initiative in the Ely area. Dryden asked her to contact local GPs as well.
Were they dealing with a conman? Dryden recalled the news item in The Crow warning of bogus plumbers fleecing the elderly. Or had this conman been heading for Declan McIlroy’s flat all along? And had he just made a return visit? If it had been his intention to visit Declan, had he oiled the wheels of depression with the whisky, and then left him to commit suicide – or had he enticed him into unconsciousness and then thrown open the windows himself?
Or was Dryden indulging in newspaper fantasy? Perhaps it had been a low-life conman all along and the return visit was just a bit of unrelated daylight looting by one of High Park’s gifted thieves.
Dryden placed a palm on his forehead and felt a fresh layer of icy sweat. Either way he needed to tell the police what he’d learned, while at the same time delaying, if possible, any public statements on the news for the Express’s deadline on Tuesday. If he could raise enough questions over McIlroy’s sudden suicide he could at least run a story saying the police were – finally – investigating. He was inclined to sit on the information for twenty-four hours – but knew the possibility the bogus doctor would call again raised the stakes too high for journalistic games. He needed to get the information on the record fast.
