The Funeral Owl (12 page)

Not for the first time since DI Friday had made it clear his prime suspects were members of organized crime, Dryden wondered if the police were taking the path of least resistance. There was a danger that in the rush to label the crime the product of a gang war they might overlook possibilities closer to home. He resolved to keep his own reporting rigidly objective until the police came up with hard evidence for their theories. There was nothing as unedifying as a newspaper trying to perform a three-point turn in a murder hunt just because the police had switched suspects.

He tried to wipe such anxieties from his mind. Letting his head flop back, he studied the sky. Despite the heat, the air was now very clear over the Isle of Ely, the stretched-blue of dusk, and he hoped he could spot the first pinprick of light which was the Evening Star.

Laura came up on deck with a glass of white wine. She put her mobile on the bulwark.

‘Still no word,' she said.

She had a crisis. Working for a TV company, thought Dryden, seemed to consist only of crises, as if the theory of creative tension had been elevated into a business plan. In the next episode of
Sky Farm
,
Laura
and the BBC scriptwriters had planned to show a demonstration against a land-based wind farm by local villagers trying to stop new giant turbines being added to the existing ones. The scene would show villagers tussling with security guards. The planned action scene, where the mob would tear down a fence and break in, occupying an old abandoned farmhouse close to one of the turbines, was due to be filmed the next day at a spot on the North Norfolk coast near Cromer.

But the company which ran the site, a Norwegian multi-national, had not cleared the issue with the trade unions covering its workforce and engineers. Industrial action had been called. The shoot was off, unless the dispute could be settled tonight. Otherwise the series storyline was in tatters. Laura would have to organise a new episode, and get it scripted, or she would have to find an alternative site, preferably one that was non-unionized, and a long way from Cromer.

The mobile buzzed and she grabbed it so fast she nearly dropped it in the river.

She walked to the pointed prow of
PK 122
, talking quickly, acknowledging only that she could hear her caller, and understood what was being said.

The call was brief. ‘Disaster,' she said, turning to face what was left of the sunlight. ‘Full industrial dispute, no prospect of a deal, so the shoot's off.'

‘What do you need?'

She took an inch off the wine in her glass. ‘I need a wind farm, in East Anglia, with a farmhouse inside the perimeter, so that we can film scenes with the house amongst the turbines. It took me six months to find this place.' She covered her eyes. Under stress the voice disability was worse, the sharpness of the consonants dulled, so that Dryden had to see her lips to be sure he'd heard her right.

An echo of his own day came back to him. As Humph had driven to Euximoor Drove they'd seen the wind turbines at Coldham's Farm in the distance. Coldham had seventeen turbines, most of them 100-foot plus. He'd driven past a few times – was there a house amongst the turbine shafts?

Dryden had his laptop under his seat and the boats had Wi-Fi. He went to Google and fed in Coldham's Farm. The turbines were run by a company in Cornwall. Their website had a picture gallery. He offered the laptop to Laura.

Fifteen of the turbines were clustered in a three-row ‘peloton' at one end of the common. At the edge of the site stood a farmhouse. It wasn't perfect, but even Dryden, who knew little about filming for TV, could see how cameras could be placed to shoot through the forest of turbines and catch the image of the farmhouse.

Laura's eyes bored into the picture on the screen. The outside film shoot had been her idea. If it collapsed it might cost her the job. She was on a six months' probation period which had been described as a ‘formality'.

Taking a telephone number off the site, she walked away with her mobile to the prow.

Dryden's laptop chimed to register an incoming email. Vincent Haig, the old sexton's grandson, had sent him an email earlier in the day saying his grandfather was happy for Dryden to take up his case with the Rev. Temple-Wright. So Dryden had sent the vicar an email containing several pertinent questions: principally, why did the church feel it was no longer obliged to keep the promise the former vicar had made: that Albe Haig could live out the last years of his life in the house he knew so well? Here was Temple-Wright's response:

Dryden,

Aren't there more important issues?

Albe Haig has paid a peppercorn rent of £10 A YEAR! Did his grandson mention that? There are plenty of pensioners in the parish paying that A DAY for rented accommodation. The sale of Sexton Cottage will go ahead by auction. I've given the Haig family the date. It's Friday, by the way, the evening land sale at Dacey's in Ely.

I'm not sure Haig's blindness alters much. I would have thought – and this is purely advice, I'm not an expert – that he might be more at home with others sharing his disability. I've attached links to relevant charities in my correspondence with his grandson. In many ways the fact that he's blind makes it all the more important that he moves from the cottage. Technically the insurance position is very disadvantageous for the church. Much better, surely, that he spends his last years in a secure environment.

I'm happy for you to use any of this in a story if you feel you must write one. I can't imagine anyone will be interested.

I've organized an action day for world peace on Sunday; there will be a service at the mobile church at Coldham's Cross at noon. I have no doubt you won't find space for THAT in the paper.

I don't think it's very helpful the press becoming involved in this. It will only raise false hopes. I will speak to Vincent Haig about his grandfather. I'm sure we can help him find the best place available. The church itself has almshouses in Whittlesea. But there is no possibility that I can stop the sale of Sexton Cottage.

Yours, etc.

‘I can't imagine anyone will be interested,' Dryden said out loud, shaking his head. He detected weakness in the email. The offer to help find Albe Haig an almshouse was veiled but significant. He'd need to talk to Vincent Haig first thing in the morning. He checked the address on his business card: The Old Forge, Barrowby Drove.

Laura was back. ‘Got it,' she said. Her face was a decade younger. ‘The company uses a spin-off for maintenance and they're non-union. There's a charge, a couple of grand, but that's birdseed for us. And the farmhouse is currently empty. It's been on the market for rental, has been for three years.' She looked at her glass. ‘Refills?'

He was alone when a new email landed. It was from his contact at Welney, the bird expert to whom he'd sent the picture of the Funeral Owl.

Hi. Rare? Very. My last reference for a sighting in UK is 2001. Last sighting in Cambridgeshire was 1903! Great pic. I know you'll ask derivation of the bird's name. Simple – the owl as omen of bad news, principally death. It's more commonly known as the Boreal Owl. If you find a location I'd love to know – obviously we won't alert the twitchers. They'd be down like a flock of starlings.

T
hey were a mile short of Brimstone Hill in Humph's Capri when Dryden finally got through to the West Cambridgeshire Police press office. CID had made thirteen arrests in King's Lynn overnight in connection with the murder of Sima Shuba in the graveyard of Christ Church. Charges were imminent. Dryden still had two days to go before
The Crow
was out, so he just listened to the details and rang off. He'd be able to pick up the story later from the news agencies online.

He tossed the mobile into the glove compartment of the cab.

‘That's that,' he said. ‘CID have arrested half of Chinatown, King's Lynn. They must have some decent forensic evidence from the scene. Blood, DNA, fingerprints. They'll have lifted something they can take to court. Charges expected later today. So that's a good story dead as a doornail for six months.'

The sun was high already, the day's heat building, despite the fact they had the Capri's windows down.

Dryden fished out Vincent Haig's business card from his wallet. The Rev. Temple-Wright's email had made the church's position on Albe Haig's tied cottage very clear: he needed to find a new home, fast, as the property was being sold by auction this week. Dryden knew he couldn't stop the sale, but he might be able to help swing Albe Haig a decent new home care of the Church of England. All he needed was a few more details off his grandson. And while he was about it he had a job for a picture framer. He rummaged in the door compartment of the cab, extracting half-a-dozen Ordnance Survey maps for the West Fens.

They drove past The
Jolly Farmers and turned down Barrowby Drove. A wooden sign for The Old Forge appeared after half a mile. Humph parked the Capri and settled down for a nap with his headphones clamped to his small, round head. Each year the cabbie chose a different, obscure European language to learn off CDs in the Capri. For Christmas he'd buy a cheap ticket to the country in question for a two-week escape from a family Christmas, without family. For that brief period he'd speak the language as best he could. Then he'd forget it and choose a new one. It was typical of him that he sought some measure of fluency in languages that he was hardly ever likely to speak again. This year it was Albanian.

Dryden trudged up the drove, an avenue of shadow thanks to a double wall of poplars which shared a constant stream of whispers. He heard a dog bark and felt his guts tighten. On the list of scenarios he feared this was in his personal top ten: a lonely fen farm, no fences, no gates, and the sound of a mastiff slobbering. He imagined the mouth open, wet and soft, like a red orchid with teeth.

The Old Forge, a wooden barn on stone footings, stood by a single tied cottage; mean, brick-built, with ugly modern PVC windows. Double doors stood open, emitting a chemical smell and the sound of air-pressure venting. The scene inside explained everything: Vincent Haig was using a blowtorch to lift paint off a heavy gilt frame. Not an industrial blowtorch, but a small, delicate hand-held model Dryden thought more suitable for putting a crisp sugar topping on a crème brulée.

But the noise was loud enough for Haig to wear ear protectors, so he hadn't heard Dryden approach. The barn was part workshop, part studio. At the far end stood the original forge, a massive iron range, set in brick, but long cold.

The whole barn was lit by neon, which made the pictures which covered one wall look stark. There was a vast swagger portrait of landed gentry showing a family, with two children cursed by the artist with the faces of adults. Three landscapes, a set perhaps, looked Dutch and were dominated by sky. And half a dozen portraits in heavy dark-wood frames, nineteenth-century Victorian patrons, founders, perhaps, of Cambridge colleges, or fenland workhouses.

The blowtorch died and Haig pushed the ear protectors back. But it wasn't quiet; Star Radio was playing, dominated by the morning-show frenzy of a fast-talking DJ.

Dryden scratched his shoe over the concrete floor and Haig swung round. He wore goggles, but they were up in his hair. There was something in the startled eyes that was close to fear, before it faded away.

He cut the radio. ‘Dryden.'

‘Sorry. I have a job I'd like you to look at.' He held up the clutch of Ordnance Survey maps. They had to clear the metal workbench to get all six open and spread out. Then Dryden manoeuvred them until they all matched at the edges. Together they made a single cartographic picture of the West Fens, with Brimstone Hill at the centre.

‘It's for the office,' said Dryden, but in truth it was for him, because he saw the world in spatial terms, as if he was sitting at the centre of a compass, in
The Crow
's office in Brimstone Hill, with the world spread out around him. It made him recall the Mappa Mundi, the ancient map of the known world. That was vaguely round as well, with the lairs of dragons at its edge.

They did a deal: a simple frame, the maps mounted on board, with a thin Perspex cover: thirty-five quid cash.

Haig took a note while a kettle boiled. He spread out the maps again, weighting the corners, and Dryden noticed again the missing fingertip.

‘How'd that happen?' he asked, holding up his own fingers.

‘Art school. I had an argument with a paper guillotine.'

Dryden winced in sympathy, then switched on his phone and paraphrased the email he'd got from Temple-Wright about Sexton Cottage. ‘She won't budge,' he said. ‘I'll run a story. I can't stop the sale but she might make an offer to rehouse your grandfather. It's the best I can do. Has she spoken to you?'

‘Sure. I think all this stuff about a place in an almshouse is a distraction. She can't promise that, it's not in her gift.' Haig's eyes flooded with what looked like tears. ‘Christ. It'll kill him, moving out. Not this year, maybe not next, but it'll kill him. Sure as poison.'

‘What're your options?'

‘The rich have options,' said Haig. ‘We rent this place and the lease controls the number of people we can have. I could try and get it changed. There's a spare room, but we are planning a family, and he knows that, so I don't think he'd come.'

Dryden tried to imagine a partner for Haig but the image wouldn't come.

‘There's a council home in Peterborough for the blind. I've got the paperwork in the house.' He looked Dryden in the eye. ‘It's down a back street near the ring road. There's a big waste-burning plant planned, that'll be opposite.' He laughed. ‘But that's OK – it's a home for the blind.' He shook his head. ‘We've looked at other places but he doesn't want to go too far away. There's St Dunstan's at Cromer – he went there for occupational therapy, and they take people on a residential basis.'