The Funeral Owl (19 page)

H
umph had the Capri bowling along the Fen Motorway beside the Forty Foot Drain heading for Brimstone Hill when they hit a traffic jam. The memory of Dryden driving the cab along the same terrifying stretch of road seemed to belong to another life. The cab came to a stop behind an HGV, brake lights flashing, at the tail-end of a line which seemed to stretch ahead unbroken towards the village of Ramsey Forty Foot; the water on one side, the open fen fields on the other. Dryden, keen to get back on his patch and check in with the police on the murder inquiry, was in no mood to sit and swelter on a back road for hours. Jumping out, he ran down the side of the lorry to the cab at the front.

The window was down, revealing the driver wreathed in cigarette smoke and tattoos.

‘What's up?' Dryden asked, realizing only then that he was talking to a woman.

‘Level crossing gates are down at Ramsey, have been for twenty minutes. So, no idea. If I could turn round I would.' She lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last, which she lobbed out the window.

Humph, anxious to spend an hour with Grace while Dryden worked, had a better idea than sitting tight in a line of traffic. They'd been stationary for seven or eight minutes and not a single vehicle had come past them the other way. So he pulled out on to the right-hand carriageway and hit sixty, then seventy, making the junction in a minute.

The road was now clear to Brimstone Hill, but across country, towards the western horizon, Dryden could see a goods train, a big one, standing still. He counted fifty wagons before he gave up.

His mobile buzzed with an incoming email. The sender was the Rev. Temple-Wright.

Dryden,

Busy week. Made busier by your unnecessary inquiry about Sexton Cottage to the press office at Church House, Lambeth. They simply passed it on to me. So back to square one. You know what I think.

So, can we move on?

A story. You'll hear gossip because the church is going to be locked, so you might as well know the facts.

Christ Church was named for two oil paintings which hung in the nave. Copies of originals by the Italian master Masaccio. One was taken down about fifteen years ago, by which time it was disfigured by damp. It sat in the vestry until Christmas this year when the church council agreed to destroy it, although we sold the frame. The remaining picture – The Crucifixion – is insured for £1,000. The insurance premiums are an annual drain on our meagre resources. And the damp is getting to it. I asked Conways, the auctioneers, to see if we could put the picture up for sale. They did some preparatory work, and someone came to have a look, and they now inform me that there is a small chance – well, a very small chance – that the picture is original. Clearly, this is the opinion of their local expert only. They are prepared to take on the costs of having the picture taken down for a proper examination in London in their laboratory. (I think this tells us all we need to know about what they think of their local expert!) Apparently they have an Italian agent and he's over next month. So they will rope him in as well. They'll also cover the short-term insurance cover to the tune of £100,000 as long as they can write it off against their fee if the picture is genuine and they sell it. I have taken the precaution of having the church locked at all times until the painting is taken away. Albe Haig at Sexton Cottage has a key in case anyone wants access for prayer. I haven't given this to anyone else. I'd be grateful if you could delay publication for a week. That way, by the time the paper is out the picture will be gone. Perhaps you could make that clear.

Can I pre-empt one question? This makes no difference to my decision on Sexton Cottage. The church estate must be rationalised. We can do so much of real VALUE in the community with the cash liberated from the sales.

Best, etc.

They were passing Christ Church. Dryden let his eyes play on the brickwork, baking in the sun, and thought of Christ on the Cross within. Opposite was Jock Donovan's snow-white house. The sun, low now in the sky, glinted off the rounded corner windows.

Humph hit the brakes and they executed an unnecessary skid, coming to rest at the tail of another line of cars going nowhere. Dryden got out and strolled forward. A goods train was stationary on the level crossing, blocking the road. A group of drivers had gathered by the lowered barrier. They seemed to agree that there had been a derailment.

The goods train had come through at just before four o'clock. One of the HGV drivers said he always counted the wagons through and that he'd got to sixty-three when there was a screeching noise from the wheels and the train's speed diminished rapidly: another ten wagons went past, but then the whole thing ground to a halt.

Dryden looked down the track and could see the line of trucks bending away from him so that the distant engine was out of sight. Each truck was identical – a hopper, emblazoned with the word HARDCORE. Paper stickers on the truck nearest to Dryden carried a series of numbers and the word FELIXSTOWE. The train had been stationary for an hour and was emitting heat, and that distinct aroma of baking metal and paint.

Dryden ducked under the barrier, climbed over the couplings between two trucks, and reached the far side. Now he could see the engine, a half-mile distant; the long curve of the stranded trucks revealed to the eye. In the mid-distance he could see three men in Day-Glo jackets beside a series of trucks which appeared to be tilting over, angled away, out of the curve, about to tip from the embankment, but held in place by the wagons coupled on either side.

Dryden jogged to join them, trying to keep his footing on the gravel.

‘Stop there,' said one of them, when he was fifty feet away. ‘It's dangerous. One of these goes over it could take the rest with it.'

‘Local paper,' said Dryden. ‘Just wondered what had happened? A word?'

One of the two men who hadn't shouted walked forward to meet him.

As he picked his way over the gravel Dryden saw the rail beneath the nearest truck had shifted about three feet out, so that the wheels were sunk in the stones.

‘Derailed?' asked Dryden.

‘My name's Henderson. You are?' He had a suit beneath the Day-Glo jacket.

‘Philip Dryden, editor of
The Crow
, Ely.'

‘Right. I'm chief engineer for Railtrack Peterborough. Nothing on the record – OK?'

‘Sure. I just need to know what's happening.'

‘Some oik's nicked the holding pins. Half a mile of 'em. Hundreds missing. Maybe a thousand.'

‘Metal pins? So thieves, then?'

‘Yes – metal thieves, again. Usually they target signal boxes, points and stations. But the holding pins are steel. Worth bugger all unless you go for bulk. You know what they say, if it's not nailed down … Well, this time they were nailed down, and they've nicked them anyway.'

‘Anyone hurt?'

‘Nope. But it's a mess.'

‘How long till the track's open, and the road?'

Henderson rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I'd be amazed if we're clear in a week.'

‘A
week?
'

Anger flashed in Henderson's eyes. ‘Well. You work the fucker out.' He spread his arms out to encompass the stranded train.

‘Fair point,' said Dryden, stepping back, trying to look sympathetic. He'd always found that just shutting up was as good a tactic as any when people were under stress.

Henderson actually gritted his teeth. ‘We can't just uncouple the train into three sections because then these trucks in the middle will spill over and then we'll have to drag them back up a ten-foot embankment. We'll need to get some heavy gear in to lift them off the rails. Problem is we're in the middle of a field of sodding cabbages …'

‘It's kohlrabi,' said Dryden.

Dryden never heard Henderson's reply.

He was looking directly west. Living in the Fens, surrounded by US airbases and military hardware, he'd often imagined the worst: a nuclear strike, perhaps, or an accident in a bomb bay. He'd see the sudden ripping light, a horizontal glare, like a crack in the sky, and then the mushroom cloud appearing like a watermark from hell. It would be the last thing he'd ever see. No time, even, to run to the crèche. So now his body reacted instantly: his pulse raced, his breath held.

Light travels faster than sound so he'd seen that first: a very bright yellow flame on the horizon, and it had a very precise shape, which stayed on his retina. It formed a narrow vertical bar, like the letter I. And then the yellow turned red, with just a flash of purple between, like some bizarre set of traffic lights from a nightmare.

Then the shock hit him. Not an explosion at all. Not even a proper sound, but simply the sound waves, hitting his eardrums. It was the noise that a pressure cylinder would make as the gauge hits DANGER, just a second before it blows. It was the sound of splitting, as if the fabric of something metallic had been torn in two.

The blast actually knocked him down, in a kind of slow-motion collapse. It wasn't so much the force of the explosion as the surprise of it. Everything was glacial for that few seconds. Everything seemed inevitable, and inescapable, as if they were all trapped in the moment.

When Dryden got to his feet he was deaf, which confused him as he'd heard no bang, and there was blood running from a gash in his cords. He started to walk towards one of the other men, but his knees went. Henderson had kept his feet and was shouting, his mouth distorted but producing no sound.

They were all looking back to where they'd seen the explosion. Henderson took out his mobile. One of the other men was taking pictures with an iPhone. The point of fire had gone. In the sky, over Barrowby Airfield, there was a single black cloud shaped like an exclamation mark. Dryden's ears switched back on and he heard alarms: car alarms, fire alarms, the school bell, and, intermittent, but distinctive, the bell of Christ Church itself, ringing out a ragged tocsin.

D
ryden ran because it was a kind of release, a way to turn the fear into movement, and dissipate the tension. The air was still ringing with bells and klaxons. On the horizon the strange, black, vertical cloud still hung over Barrowby Airfield.

Humph had brought the Capri forward to the level crossing barriers on the wrong side of the road, executing a swift U-turn, so that he was ready to escape the traffic. The passenger-side door was open.

‘What is it?' said the cabbie, already accelerating away.

‘No idea.' Voices still sounded odd, so Dryden tried to pop his ears, swallowing hard. ‘Something over on the old airfield, an explosion. Maybe fuel? Could that be it? A long-forgotten dump for aviation fuel? Or petrol stored in the unit that renovated cars?

‘I felt it through the tyres, the shock,' said Humph. ‘Barrowby's two miles away. That's one hell of a bang.'

As they took the sharp bend by Christ Church the random sound of the bell grew louder. Dryden looked up and saw it still swinging wildly in its small brick arch on the roof. Opposite, outside Brimstone House, Jock Donovan stood in the road, his hands pressed to his ears.

Somewhere they heard a fire engine siren, but it was behind them, beyond the level crossing, and Dryden realized they'd be trapped there and that they'd have to drive back, taking the long way round to Barrowby Airfield.

The cab took the T-junction by The
Jolly Farmers at fifty mph. The entrance barriers to Barrowby Airfield were up.

When Humph killed the engine there was total silence. Not a bird, not a grasshopper, not a bee. It was as if the landscape was in shock. The airfield itself, usually dotted with rabbits, was deserted. Not even a butterfly moved. Not even a brimstone.

There had been no sound, and now there was no smoke. It was as if the force of the blast had blown out the fire. But the location of the explosion was obvious. The roll-up door to Barrowby Oilseed's industrial unit was buckled but still in place; the roof, low-pitched corrugated iron, was twisted and blackened, revealing rafters of charred timber. Fifty yards away the large white van lay on its side, wheels towards the blast, but the paintwork untouched.

There was something moving on the ground, in front of the burnt-out lock-up.

Dryden ran to the spot and knelt by the head of a man who lay spreadeagled, face down, on the concrete. Most of his clothes had been blown off, leaving him with torn boxers, a sleeve of a shirt and a single shoe. An odd detail, the laces were undone. In one hand he still held a dog lead. The other, naked foot trembled slightly, and the man's hands were clawing at the concrete, but only slowly, as if in a dream. His white skin was dotted with tattoos.

Dryden turned him on to his back. It was Will Brinks, the man who'd photographed the Funeral Owl. Dryden had last seen him standing in the travellers' field at Third Drove with a dog on the lead. Now he kept shaking his head as if trying to dislodge something in an ear. Then he went to scream, his mouth stretching wide.

‘There's an ambulance coming,' said Dryden quickly, holding the young man's head in his hands, a palm to each cheek. Brinks watched his lips but didn't seem to understand. Dryden was horrified to see a thin trickle of bright red blood leave the corner of his mouth.

Humph arrived. ‘Ambulance is at Coldham's Cross. It'll be a minute, maybe five. The derailment's screwed up the roads.'

The cabbie held a plastic bottle of water but he didn't offer it because he was looking around Brinks' body, his mouth hanging open.

‘Jesus,' he said. There were fifty-pound notes everywhere. If the wind had been the slightest zephyr they'd have been gone. But they just lay there, as if pinned to the dry grass. Dryden thought then how odd it was, that the wind had gone, as if the blast had blown it out too, like a candle.

Dryden picked up one note: it was crisp, flat, new issue.

He took the bottle from Humph and pressed it to Brinks' lips but the water just brimmed over his chin.