Nightrise (11 page)

Humph came round the far corner, mopping his face theatrically with a white handkerchief. When he reached Dryden he took three deep breaths before speaking, then decided to say nothing.

Dryden walked up the path and opened the door with the Yale. Crossing the threshold he breathed in the smell of it, trying to find a trace of his childhood. When they'd moved to London after his father's death he'd noticed one day that their flat – in a block over shops on the Finchley Road – had somehow managed to develop exactly the same smell as the farmhouse at Burnt Fen. What was it? A subtle blend perhaps of diet, washing powder, beverages, furniture, clothes and books. And at the farm there had always been a stock pot gurgling on the range – something his mother contrived to somehow continue in the city. And wood – the aroma of resin, because they'd only ever had rugs at Burnt Fen, laid over the boards or the quarry tiles, and the flat had polished boards and rugs too. So no carpets, no soft furnishings and no air fresheners. But there was no hint of that here. The house smelt empty, neutral, inert. In fact, now that he thought about it, it smelt antiseptic.

The downstairs rooms were uniformly dull. The property had been rented and was a symphony in beige. Second-hand furniture, generic, tasteless art on the walls. And that was right too, because his father hadn't noticed when his mother had given away a print of Constable's
Hay Wain
which had hung over the fireplace for a decade. The state of repair – efficient, but not loving – suggested a maintenance contract. There were no books to see but a pile of newspapers – several different nationals plus the local evening paper from Cambridge. All of them were open at the puzzle page.

One oddity – there was an internal window between the kitchen and main room and it had been replaced with a stained-glass window. Dryden looked at it for some time trying to work out what was so strange. It was a grid – eight by eight, like a chess board. Each square was one of eight colours. Each line only contained one of each colour – however you ‘read' it – up or down, side to side. Clever, mildly disquieting, like a puzzle. Sudoku with colours.

And then there was the kitchen – fitted, a German company, quality. And it was crammed with gadgets, tin-openers, mixers, an iPod dock and a flat-screen TV.

‘Liked his toys,' said Humph.

A bottle of beer – Hoegaarden – stood empty on the table. Dryden's father had liked beer, and almost always had a bottle with his evening meal. And he was no Little Englander – so why not a Belgian beer? There were no family or personal pictures on the walls or mantelpiece. If he was indoors, and his father hated being indoors, he'd always had eyes only for the windows. So no curtains except heavy drapes for winter. And that was what was unusual about this house – no net curtains. Everyone on the Jubilee had net curtains.

In the hallway was a notice board with various cards and flyers and a calendar all held in place by red-topped drawing pins. Dryden felt something crunch under his foot and looking down saw two of the pins in the pile of the carpet, which was odd because everywhere else seemed freshly hovered. He moved his finger over some of the flyers: night classes at the college, The Peking's home delivery service, Live Music at The Red, White and Blue – an academic calendar for Ely College.

He eased one of the drawing pins out of a card. ‘They weren't looking very hard, were they – the plods.' Underneath the flyer was another, smaller, flyer which had been held up by the same pin.

Ely Singles Club: Divorced or Separated? Ring us, or join us, every Friday evening at The Red, White and Blue.  5 includes first drink and sandwiches.

He handed Humph the card. ‘You might need that.'

Humph popped the card in his back pocket, standing at the foot of the stairs and turning 360 degrees.

‘I'll check upstairs,' said Dryden. ‘You try the kitchen and the yard.'

There was a small hallway at the top of the flight of stairs and the doors to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Dryden stood for a second thinking it was incredible that someone could live somewhere for six years and leave so little of themselves behind.

He'd clearly slept in the box room. The bed was crumpled, like a nest, with a bedside table and a radio alarm. Dryden hit the PLAY button expecting to hear Radio Four – his parents had listened to nothing else, from
Farming Today
until the
Shipping Forecast
. But it was Star Radio – the local commercial station. Dryden killed the signal. That wasn't right.

The bathroom had more in it than Dryden would have expected – a shelf of men's cosmetics, including aftershave, some skincare creams and a packet of those little brushes dentists sell for cleaning between the teeth. The rest of the bathroom was spotless – there was no bath but a proper shower box, and it was clean, which is difficult to do even if you try hard. Not a single hair against the white tiles.

The main bedroom was in darkness. There were thick curtains, which didn't let any of the sunshine through, until he threw them back. Then he saw the books. Three bookcases, all slightly different sizes and woods, arranged to fill one wall.

He pulled a volume free at random.
The Earth Sciences: An introduction, by Prof J.H.L.Carr.

‘You done?' shouted Humph from downstairs.

‘Come up.'

Humph climbed up counting the steps out loud.

‘He never had these at the farm – but it's his subject. Natural sciences.'

Looking at the room Dryden could see it was set out for two people. One large chair by the computer screen, then a chair set to one side, as if for an interview. And the computer gear was all top of the range: a new iMac and an iPad on the desk, a wireless airport and a new laptop. Underneath the desk sat one of the latest printers and a scanner.

The doorbell rang.

It was a young girl – maybe fourteen – clutching books. She was halfway over the threshold and already easing one of her black school shoes off the left foot, using her right foot.

Humph, halfway down the stairs, recognized her as a neighbour's daughter on his street. She wore the uniform of the local comprehensive. Her hair had been allowed to grow long, and had been brushed to a sheen so that blonde highlights showed.

‘Where's Jack?' she said, then checked her watch.

Dryden touched his lips with the back of his hand and nodded. ‘How do you know Jack?'

‘He's my tutor. GCSE maths – I'm doing it early. Dad pays.' She looked to Humph and asked, ‘Who's he?'

‘My name's Dryden too,' said Dryden. ‘Philip.'

She went to close the door but left it open. ‘Was Jack your Dad?'

‘Why'd you say that?'

‘Just the name.'

‘I don't look like him?'

‘Maybe. What's wrong?'

Dryden produced a picture of his father from 1977. ‘That's him – thirty-five years ago. Had he changed?' He'd framed the question carefully, and watched her face.

She didn't look puzzled, just quizzical. ‘He got way fatter. He looks like you back then.'

‘So, just fatter. Otherwise, that's him?'

‘You said it was him. I didn't. I'm just saying he looks a bit like you back then. Jack – this Jack – never had a tan. I never saw him – like,
out
, at all. It might be him – but maybe not.' She nodded. ‘Maybe not.'

‘What's your name?' asked Dryden.

‘Cathy Symms,' said Humph when she didn't answer. She gave him a lethal look.

‘There's some bad news,' said Dryden quickly. ‘There was an accident and Jack was involved – out on the fen. I'm sorry, but Jack was killed.'

‘Oh, God,' she said, betraying more interest than grief. She looked at the books in her hand. She's thinking, thought Dryden, if they'll be able to find another tutor. That's the thing about the young, they move on, survive.

‘How often did you see him?'

‘Twice a week. All this year. He was all right – really good at maths. Like it was a language – right – and he could speak it. Crap at talking, otherwise. Shy. Bit weird.' She shifted her feet. ‘There's people like him at school.' She made a little rainbow shape with her index fingers. ‘Like on the spectrum.'

‘Autistic?'

She shrugged. ‘Not bad. Just a bit. Like I said.'

‘See any other students?'

‘One before me on Tuesday – a boy called O'Brien, from my school. He's A-Level – pure maths. We talked.' She smiled. ‘He's cute. There were others – he'd talk about others. Doing science mainly, but he said his special students did maths. So I was special.'

A cat came in from the kitchen calling for food.

‘That's Jack's. It's called
Lincoln
. He wouldn't say why. But it made him laugh – like every time he said it. That's like a private joke, right? 'Coz it isn't funny.'

The cat walked out of the front door having made a figure of eight around Dryden's feet. What was Lincoln famous for? he thought. Never telling a lie? Or was that Washington? His father wouldn't have animals in the house at Burnt Fen because in the end you had to kill animals: quickly, deftly, in the barn, with the tools hung from the wall.

‘Anyone else ever here with Jack? A woman, friends?'

‘No. He drank at The Red, White and Blue,' she said, nodding outside. The Jubilee's other estate pub was two streets away set on a corner. It made the average estate pub look like Café Rouge. ‘That's where Dad met him – he wasn't CRB cleared or anything, said he couldn't be bothered with the paperwork. Dad said that was why he was cheap.' She flushed, suddenly and deeply. ‘He didn't touch me or nothing.'

‘That's a plus,' said Dryden.

‘He had a son.'

‘Really? He said that, did he?'

‘Not straight out. He said his son was crap at maths but that that didn't mean he was stupid. He said he was bright – just not
academic.
That's what people always say when they mean you're thick.'

Dryden was good at maths, good with the abstract, so this mysterious ‘son' couldn't be him. His father had gone missing at the age of thirty-five, so there was no reason why he couldn't have had another son. He'd be Dryden's half-brother. The thought made him feel dizzy so that he had to put out a hand and lean on the wall.

The girl's chin came up. ‘I liked him.' She'd got her shoe back on and was backing out the door. ‘You police?'

‘No. Like I said, we were related,' said Dryden.

‘No, you didn't. You said you had the same name. That's different.'

‘Do you want to look at the picture again – make sure?'

But she'd gone.

T
he town clung to them for half a mile – a market-garden, a single row of old council houses, a water tower; and then they were down to the fen. This was when he felt most at sea, the first mile, because the landscape was so flat the horizon was very close – a mile, maybe two. It was one of the things people got wrong about the Fens – all that space, you can see for miles. You can't. It just feels like you can – the earth you can see is a small circle a few miles across with you at the centre. But if he wanted to see for miles he could – by looking up.

‘Nice clouds,' said Dryden. ‘Wonder what they're called.'

Humph pretended to ignore him.

Dryden put his head out of the passenger-side window, letting the wind created by the cab's speed cool his face. They were on their way to Buskeybay to see his aunt and uncle. Work was over for the week. He had some time now to delve back, find out more about his father, and the last year of his life, which meant that once Humph had dropped him at the farm the cabbie had nowhere to go until the clubs turned out at midnight.

‘Want to know what I think?' asked Dryden.

Humph just about managed to tilt his chin to indicate interest.

‘I think someone has cleaned that house from top to bottom and taken away anything which would allow us to see the man's face: pictures, documents. Question is why: did they want to hide the fact it was Jack Dryden, or hide the fact it wasn't? Second question: who took it all away? I'll check with Cherry but I'm pretty certain it's not forensics. He's happy for the DNA to decide it. But if it's not the police, who is it?'

‘Was it your Dad's house?'

It was so rare for Humph to ask a straightforward question Dryden took time out to structure his answer.

‘The house itself tells two stories: the books could be his, but not the kitchen, not the flat-screen TV, but maybe the garden, the food. The stuff about maths is odd – he loved maths, but not as much as the science. It didn't
feel
right. But then nothing does.'

‘Wait for the DNA then,' said Humph.

The cabbie searched his memory banks for some facts about DNA.

‘Which Cambridge pub did Crick and Watson celebrate in after their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA?' he asked.

‘The Eagle.'

Humph narrowed his eyes and began to whistle as if he hadn't asked the question.

‘Aunt Con might know something, or Roger,' said Dryden. ‘They knew Dad as well as anyone but Mum. Come in for tea if you like . . .'

Humph's head twitched by way of saying no.

‘Maybe there's something in the past,' said Dryden. He looked at Humph in profile. ‘Family secrets and all that. Don't they say every family has one?'

Humph shifted in his seat, happier with DNA trivia. ‘If you unwrap all the DNA in all your body cells it would stretch to the moon 6,000 times.'

‘Useful,' said Dryden.

Humph swung the cab out to overtake a tractor hauling a trailer of sugar beet. The Capri hit a sinuous dip in the road and momentarily took flight, landing with a clatter and a boom from the partly disengaged exhaust pipe. The fluffy dice which hung from the cabbie's rear-view mirror spiralled together like South American bolus, then unspun slowly, as Humph coaxed the engine up to fifty-five mph, employing an urgent posture.