Nightrise (10 page)

Dryden nodded, aware he'd been fooled by this man at their first meeting. The sense of pity he felt for him now seemed misplaced. He'd once had power, great power, and wealth of a sort. He guessed that in Niger an office, any office, let alone one with telephone lines, was a rare asset.

‘I wrote a story about our country's one great treasure – aluminium. The details do not matter. There are two mines – vast, owned by French companies. This story is about how these assets are sold cheaply to foreigners who pay bad wages and then export their profits tax-free. Not a new story in Africa, but an important story in my country.'

Yoruba paused and Dryden had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on his story. The single word ‘aluminium' had taken him back to the morgue and he was struggling to dismiss the images that created.

‘As I say, I wrote this story but I did not publish it. I waited for documents, certain documents, which would underpin the story. In the meantime, the government heard of my inquiries and they decided to act against me. This is not a pleasant prospect, you see – the knock on the door in the early hours, the ticking of the waiting engines. I was one step ahead of them. I fled. In the night, across the desert to the north, by car. Algeria, then France, then England.'

Yoruba had a rucksack. He pulled the ties and retrieved a single CD disk.

‘This story – and those documents for which I waited – are on this disc. If I fail in my appeal and am flown home I wish you to try and print this story where you can – preferably one of the London papers with a website. It will be read in my country if it appears in
The Times
, the
Guardian
, the
Daily Telegraph
– but also the
Financial Times
. That would be best because it would hurt them the most. Also – AP has an office in London. They'll pick it up and run it in Paris. Does this make sense?'

‘Yes,' said Dryden. ‘They'll have questions.'

‘Yes. The documents should contain all the answers. I understand that they won't want the story I wrote – not in that form. You – or perhaps a journalist in London – will have to build the story again from the documents. That's good – that's how it should be.

‘I cannot help once I am on a flight back to Niamey. I will go from the airport to the police station – I know this police station and the cells under the street. If I stay there all is well. If I am transferred it has not gone well. I may not be seen again.'

He smiled, sipping his lemon tea, and Dryden had the very strong sense that he'd trained himself to do this – to enjoy this moment, despite what might lie ahead.

‘How will I know about the appeal?' asked Dryden.

‘Gill will ring.' He licked his lips and Dryden was aware he was contemplating a lie. ‘There is one other option. If things look bleak we may disappear rather than return to Yarl's Wood. Again, I would wish to see this story published. In which case, I will send you a postcard – like this.'

From the rucksack he took a leather document case and retrieved a set of postcards. Gaudy Technicolor showed an African city – a few downtown high-rise banks and a hotel, surrounded by single-storey shanty towns. A flourish of blue handwriting was printed on the picture and read: Niamey.

‘It will say nothing but if it is this card then please try to get the story into print as quickly as you can.'

‘What do you mean,
disappear
?'

Yoruba placed the cup down and edged closer. ‘This is Gill's idea. She thinks I should become a non-person. Take up a new identity.' He shook his head. ‘But this is not cheap.' The thought seemed to break a spell so that he pushed his tea away. ‘A terrible prospect anyway – to lose yourself. Your culture. Your homeland. I do not think I can do this.'

‘You've tried to do this – to buy yourself a new identity?'

Yoruba licked his lower lip. ‘Not yet. Maybe never. Gill wants this. For us, I know, but it is her dream. As I said – it is not cheap, and we are not rich. And I would never see my country again. My street, my family.'

He gave Dryden a new address – a council block for problem families on the edge of town – a temporary flat while his appeal was considered. Dryden said he would visit the cemetery at Manea the next day to interview the cemetery warden about their daughter, then he'd get a message to him via Gill Yoruba's mobile.

They went back to reception and out into the street. As they stood on the pavement a crocodile of children from the local private school walked past.

‘You know,' said Yoruba, ‘at school, a good school, I learnt history. Always – in Russia, in France – the ultimate sentence for the powerful is exile, isn't it? I never did understand that. You're allowed to leave. Just go. You have your liberty still. But people say they would rather die. Rather languish in a cell. Rather face torture than exile. I begin to understand this now.'

He looked up at the cathedral's West Tower, the east side in full sunlight.

‘Exile kills you alive.'

T
he Peking House stood on a corner in the Jubilee Estate. Not just a right-angled corner, an acute-angled corner, like New York's Flatiron building, like a ship's prow. The restaurant had plate-glass windows which had been curved to accommodate the narrow angle and had miraculously survived a decade of Saturday night drunks leaving The Merry Monk next door – the Jubilee's alternative to the Red, White and Blue. Dryden always took a table in the apex of the prow: with views back down two streets, and ahead down one which led out of the estate to the water meadows by the river, where wild horses grazed.

He looked at his plate: a celebration meal, marking publication of
The Crow
, and the end of the working week – usually sesame prawn toast, spring rolls, crispy duck, pancakes, plum sauce. But not today. The visit to the morgue had left an indelible image. He'd ordered egg fried rice, vegetable spring rolls, crackers. And beer: Chinese beer in iced cans. No crispy duck.

The restaurant had been Dryden's oasis since those first few weeks after Laura's crash. Humph had never been inside The Peking. He would eat his food
takeaway
in the car – even if it was only six feet from the door. The cabbie had quickly set himself the task of eating his way through the menu by number – irrespective of the food described. He'd had some very unusual meals as a result, and was on his second run through because they'd changed the menu last Christmas, or at least the numbers.

Dryden drained the can and noted that as he lowered it from his lips Sia Cheong Yew, the owner of the Peking, crossed over from the counter and put a fresh one in its place. Sia had become friends with Dryden in the same period – the weeks, months, and eventually years of Laura's coma. They had recognized in each other a determined lack of self-pity and the natural instincts of outsiders.

He pushed aside his plate and flipped up his iMac laptop, Googling the name of the Eau Fen victim – Rory Setchey.

Setchey's name got him two links to a website called FenFishing
.

As a journalist he spent half his life trawling websites and he knew a professional job when he saw one: this had video, hyper-links, the full www-works. Most of all it had webcams – a selection of six, on fen rivers. The business pitch was straightforward. Rory Setchey could guarantee you a fine day's fishing in one of England's few remaining wildernesses: carp, zander, pike, sea trout. Setchey – or one of the group of dedicated fishermen behind FenFishing – would take you to the secret places and you'd go home with a nice digital-sharp image for the mantelpiece, holding a scales-topping prize.

He flicked through the webcam options and chose a spot on the Little Ouse north of Isleham, not far from Flightpath Cottages
.
The image pixilated and re-set to give a clear view of the river between reeds, the water surface oily and disturbed by little whirlpools. A duck landed, water-skiing, before coming to rest like a flying boat. There was a houseboat in the distance, with permanent wooden boards set to link it with the riverbank, and a wind-generator turning in a blur. He thought he recognized the precise spot, a mile south of the inn at Brandon Creek.

Dryden considered how much money you'd have to earn from such a website to be able to afford to keep it running, updated, virus-free. Finally he togged through a series of pictures of Setchey at work – fly-fishing, gutting a fish for an open-air BBQ. The image of his face: outdoor-healthy, a wide smile, mocked the vision Dryden couldn't wash from his memory, with the single gunshot wound to the face.

He sent the website an email, identifying himself and the paper, saying he'd like to talk to someone.

Sia sat down and pulled the rings on two fresh cans. Dryden snapped shut the laptop. Not because he had any secrets from Sia but because his friend was a busy man – cooking, ordering, cleaning – and if he had time to sit down Dryden could make the time to talk.

‘Radio says a murder – out on the fen,' said Sia.

‘That's the splash,' said Dryden. ‘Nasty.'

‘And Humph said there was something else that I should ask,' said Sia, holding the ice-cold can to his lips, nodding out the window to the cab parked just a few feet away. Humph was eating, ferrying noodles to his mouth with chopsticks. ‘Something about your father? He said you wouldn't say anything unless I asked. He was right, wasn't he?'

‘Sorry,' said Dryden. ‘It's just been a shock. It was good not talking about it. But he's right, I should. We thought Dad died in 'seventy-seven – the floods. Then I got this call.' He told him about the road accident, the burnt-out car, the body on the mortuary slab. ‘They say it isn't him – that someone stole his name, documents, his life. I have this fear – this premonition – that it
is
him.' He looked out the window. ‘He lived here, on the Jubilee.'

Someone came in for food so Sia went to serve them. In his carefully cultivated broken English he chatted to the woman, asking about her children, whose names he knew. His English was first class but he'd developed the pidgin version to make his customers feel at home.

‘I don't know, like, how it works here,' said Sia, sitting down again, running a finger along a slim white scar that ran from his eyebrow to his chin. Dryden was pretty sure he hadn't picked up that wound in a kitchen. It gave his friend an edge of suppressed violence which was a considerable asset on the Jubilee Estate.

From the kitchen came the sound of his wife cooking.

‘At home this couldn't happen – in Singapore,' said Sia. ‘If you're dead they write it down. Everyone knows. You don't get to keep stuff – medical card, driving licence, passport. You need papers for a job – for a pension. You'd be a non-person without them. And it's not like they don't ask. Police, on the street, they ask; you try and leave the country, they ask. Everyone asks. It's like a national hobby. And they take all that away when you're dead. They send people round to collect it.' He laughed, draining the can. ‘No exceptions.' He crushed the can.

‘Yeah – same here, sort of,' said Dryden. ‘You have to register a death. You get a certificate. But to do that if someone's died in an accident, or suddenly, you need the coroner to say it's OK. And how can he do that if there's no body? I guess this time he didn't say it was OK. So Dad was left . . .' He drained the can. ‘In limbo.'

The beer was freeing up his memory. ‘We did try. We went to some office out at Swaffham Prior. The registrar saw us – a man called Trelaw. I'll never forget the name. It was on his door, and he made us wait, in this cold office with a cold grate. That winter was icy. And then, when we did get in, he said no, we couldn't have the death certificate – we needed the body. I think Mum just gave up.'

Now that he'd unpacked the memory there was more of it than he'd expected. ‘I can see him now. Trelaw. A big man, one of those men whose bones seem to show through they're so big, like an elephant, with the skin hung between. He had this big black fountain pen, and he held it like a child holds a crayon.' He shook his head, amazed he'd been able to reach back for the image.

‘And when we went he stood up and he shook her hand, and then he shook mine, and he said: “I'm sorry for your loss”. Nobody else had included me until then. I think that's why I remember him. Mum didn't speak – afterwards, on the way home. I think it was a blow. If she'd got the certificate she could have moved on, got on with her life, my life, but it was like we were caught – like one of those fossil flies petrified in amber.'

He hadn't noticed the squad car pulling up outside behind Humph's cab. A uniformed PC, short with glasses, appeared by Dryden's table, weighed down by a Hi-Vis jacket.

‘Mr Dryden?'

He placed a single golden Yale key on the tablecloth. It was bright and new and appeared to emit its own light.

‘Compliments of Sergeant Cherry,' he added.

T
he Jubilee Estate smelt of burnt tyres and newly mown grass. Late afternoon; the sun pressing down, driving the shadows under parked cars and around the trunks of the cherry trees, planted with military precision along the freshly cut verges. The flag of St George hung from a bedroom window; an Action Man hanging from a tangled parachute which had caught in the overhead phone lines.

He made Humph walk, leaving the cab outside his own house. Leopold Street looked just like all the others they'd just strolled down. When Dryden got to the front gate Humph wasn't in sight behind him so he waited, studying the house. Sweat broke out on his skin. What was it about housing estates that seemed to make them radiate their own heat? It was all that concrete, tarmac and brick. The house was mid-terrace, sixties, with asymmetrical windows of differing sizes which made its ugliness almost heroic. The garden was lawn, neat but perfunctory. The houses on either side were even uglier thanks to various Homebase affectations: a carriage lamp over the door on the right, a pair of giant plastic butterflies over the other.