The Funeral Owl (25 page)

Haig appeared about twenty minutes later and worked his way around the large shed towards the pen reserved for a special sale of antique pictures. Dryden followed at a distance, deciding to watch rather than seek an immediate confrontation. A rope was slung across the entrance to the stall to keep idle punters back from the canvases. Haig slipped easily underneath it and chatted with one of Dacey's officials, a man with white hair, in one of those overalls that's exactly the same colour as a brown envelope. There was a third man, who looked like the stall-holder, in a suit. As they talked Haig ran a finger around an ornate gilt frame which held an English landscape in oils. He smiled, touching the carved wood, caressing the gold.

D
ryden woke at dawn with a single word echoing in his head: ‘Raptor.' Perhaps it had surfaced from a nightmare, because the last time he'd heard it had been at Third Drove, talking to Will Brinks, the travellers' guard dog straining on its rope leash. They'd talked about the kites farmers flew to keep birds off the crops, and how they'd once used real birds of prey. Brinks had reminded him that the proper word for them was raptors.
It's what my dad's business is called: Raptors
.

Dryden always slept on the outside of the double bunk in the narrowboat, so he was able to slide his left leg over until the knee could bend, allowing his foot to fall silently to the boards. Laura turned away at the movement with practised ease. Eden lay in his cot, on his back, limbs loose, as if in parachute freefall.

He went out on deck and stepped across to
PK 122
, into the wheelhouse. The sun was a pale circle in a thin mist and devoid of all heat. But the laptop glowed and made him feel warmer. He put ‘raptor' and ‘Brinks' into Google while the kettle boiled, thinking that nothing was ever that simple; but there, ridiculously, was what he was after.

It was the third item down, under English Hen Harriers Right On The Brink and About Us: Raptor Research Association. It read: Raptors to Star in Village Fête. From the
Lincoln Echo
. RAPTORS – a travelling display of birds of prey
,
was to provide the finale to the festivities at the village of Seawall, twenty miles south of Lincoln. The village lay in the heart of the Lincolnshire Fens, the distant flatlands which stretched south from the chalk hills on which stood Lincoln Cathedral. Flatlands which would blend, seamlessly, into the Great Soak, and then on – as if the world was indeed flat – to the Black Fens, and to Ely Cathedral on its low hill.

According to the
Echo
, Seawall's annual fête was today. The finale was at two. It was eight o'clock in the morning. Normally he'd spend a Saturday with Laura and Eden. The weekend beckoned, with maybe a trip to one of north Norfolk's deserted golden beaches. But Will Brinks held the key to what had really happened out at Barrowby Airfield. Dryden knew nothing about his life, his family, his background. The explosion was a big story:
The Crow
's lead had been followed up widely on TV and radio, and surfing now on his laptop he found it in all the nationals, tabloids and broadsheets. The vast majority cited
The Crow
as the source.

All of which would enhance Dryden's Fleet Street reputation, and make it much more likely that in the future he could sell stories, and in the long term attract talented youngsters, looking for a good start to a career in newspapers, to sign up as a trainee in Ely. So this wasn't just any old story. It could begin to make
The Crow
's reputation. Dryden had given up a Fleet Street career after the accident to be at Laura's side. It was a decision he had never regretted. But he still had ambitions, and one of them was to build something in Ely that would mark his editorship of
The
Crow
as a turning point in the paper's history.

So he wrote Laura a note, cut himself some bread and cheese from the galley, and rang Humph, telling him to wait up by the farm, and to be ready for a long trip, starting at nine.

The Capri arrived ten minutes early, with a full tank. It was an extraordinary journey: 124 miles in two dimensions. But for the slight eighty-foot rise of the Isle of Ely, the rest of the route was either at, or below, sea level. After fifteen miles he lost sight of the cathedral's West Tower in the rear window. From the top of the embankment on the Fosse Way he glimpsed distant waves out in the Wash. Turning north, they hugged the coast past Skegness and then turned inland through wide, empty farmland. It was flat, but there the parallels with the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk fens came to an end: this was a different world, of old farmsteads, lonely but mighty trees, wealthy houses, hedgerows, the patterns of the past set down on a living map, not the brutal mathematical grids of the drained south fens.

The village of Seawall was fifteen miles inland, behind its eponymous bank, built to keep the distant sea from overwhelming the land in the eighteenth century. There was a church, a few cottages in a red northern brick, and a redundant railway halt. From the top of the sea defences Dryden could see Boston Stump, the tower of the parish church, the highest in England, fifteen miles to the north. The fête was out on a field, the stalls set in a rough circle round the cricket pitch. There was a car park for the day on grass, and Dryden left Humph parked beside a vast barbecue grid, upon which sausages sizzled.

The raptors were displayed on wooden tree stumps. Owls, hawks and falcons, each masked, all with leather straps. One of the owls was huge – the size of a child, with a head that moved like a turret on a gun. There was something dusty and sad about the birds; tethered, robbed of the beauty they held in flight. Behind the raptors was a cloth backdrop, and behind that a mobile home, beside which a man sat chopping raw meat on a breadboard. He had blond hair, in long locks, and was smoking, a roll-up stuck to his bottom lip. A peregrine falcon perched on the edge of the table, the bird's gyres wrapped round the sturdy wooden table leg.

‘Sorry to bother you,' said Dryden. ‘I know you're busy. I've driven up from Ely. It's about Will Brinks. He'd be family?' He put the snapshot he'd taken from Rick's Tattoo parlour on the table.

The falcon blinked, looking at Dryden with one eye.

The traveller studied the photograph. There was dried blood under his nails, which were long and neatly trimmed. Dryden thought that there was an indefinable stillness about people who spent most of their lives in the open air. This man had that: as if he had a right just to be here, in his own skin, under the sky.

The man looked at him then. Blue eyes, as piercing as the falcon's beak.

‘I'm sorry,' said Dryden quickly. ‘But there's been an accident and I don't think the police have been able to make contact?' Dryden held up both hands. ‘Will's in hospital – injured. He's clearly very ill but he's got the best care. I thought you should know. I talked to him a few days ago about a picture he took of an owl and he mentioned the name of your business so I tracked you down.'

The traveller stood, letting the plastic chair fall back on the grass. ‘Let's walk,' he said, plunging the knife into the chopping board. The voice was much higher than Dryden had expected, almost singsong, suggesting an ability to hit a note at will.

There was a beer tent and the man bought two halves of cider and set them on a table in the sun and wind.

‘How did this happen?' he asked, draining half the glass.

‘You hadn't heard? It's been in the papers, radio, TV.'

‘We keep apart. That's why we live like this. And I try not to read the papers. They don't really seem that concerned with our world.'

‘There was an explosion, on Barrowby Airfield,' said Dryden. ‘Three men, two of them Chinese, were brewing illicit alcohol. The still exploded. Will was standing outside; the blast knocked him down. He's suffered some burns, internal injuries. The other men were killed.'

For the first time Dryden had been able to describe what had happened at the old airfield as if he hadn't been there. He let his shoulders relax, tension bleeding out of his neck muscles.

The traveller's face was immobile, but Dryden noted a sudden dilation of the blue eyes.

‘I'm sorry to bring such bad news. Another man, Chinese too, died earlier in the week at Christ Church in Brimstone Hill. He'd been shot. Thieves had taken lead off the roof. The police think it's a war between gangs, or within a gang. Will may have been holding a gun at the time of the blast. The detective leading the investigation believes Will might be responsible, for the explosion, and the murder at Christ Church.'

‘They think
Will
did all this?'

Dryden didn't see any reason why he should lie. ‘Yes. They need to interview him. But I think they'll charge him whatever he says if the forensics fit. So maybe murder, on three counts.'

The man looked back at the mobile home and the raptor stall.

‘You're his father?' asked Dryden.

‘Stepfather. I'm John Brinks. His mother, Mary, she's in the caravan. She'll want to go to the hospital. I'll go too. After the show.'

‘I found him, your stepson, after the blast. I was the first on the scene. It's a mystery why he was there at all. The police can't find his car, or any documents in the caravan at Third Drove, and his dog's missing. When I found him there were fifty-pound notes lying scattered around him. He had a holdall full of cash, as if he'd been carrying the money when the blast knocked him down.'

‘He did security for Barrowby Oilseed,' said John Brinks. ‘That was his job, to keep an eye on the place, day and night. They paid well. It all looked above board. Will wouldn't have done anything he knew to be illegal. I know you won't believe that. We're travellers. We break the law. Flout it. That's a word I hear a lot. Flout.'

‘Maybe he didn't know it was illegal, at least at the start,' offered Dryden.

‘I said. He's afraid of the law. Of breaking rules. When he was a teenager he fell in with a bad crowd. Not travellers; foreigners, field-workers. Once, he was held overnight in a cell at Wisbech. He'd have been fifteen. They'd all got pissed up and in a fight. He couldn't take that, the cell. It wasn't just a fear of it, it was a phobia. They had to let him out during the night because he was harming himself, hitting his head against the wall. Summers he won't even sleep in the caravan. So he never broke the law, absolutely never, because he couldn't take the thought of gaol. That was part of him, the way he was.'

‘I don't doubt you,' said Dryden. ‘What if he found out what they were doing? That it wasn't just rapeseed they were bottling. Perhaps they wanted him to help, to work with the still. And they stole metal as well. They could have tried to use him to flog it, to find a fence. Then he'd be in a tight corner. Trapped. So maybe that's why he planned to run away.'

Brinks gave him a despairing look. For the first time there was doubt in his eyes.

Dryden always got the impression, talking to travellers, that he was seeing into the past when he looked in their eyes. As if there were several lifetimes' worth of experience inside, behind the oddly colourless eyes. A strange, troubled depth. He thought that most cultures carried the past in books. These people seemed to carry it within themselves.

‘I think he was leaving Barrowby,' said Dryden. ‘For good.'

‘The airfield?'

‘No. Brimstone. The Fens. The site. That's what it looks like, doesn't it? The cash, the car, the paperwork, even the dog. He was clearing out.'

Brinks drained the cider and Dryden got refills.

The bar was full, voices raised; a few glanced sideways at the traveller in the leather jerkin, the scars on his hands, of claws and beaks.

Dryden ferried ciders to the table. ‘Why was Will left behind at Third Drove?'

‘He was a loner. He used to come with us when he was younger, he was part of the show, he's good with the birds. Better than me. But we don't need him. So he stayed. He's reliable. Always. He has his problems, but he likes to fight them alone. I'm proud of him.'

There was a sudden glare of the eyes, daring Dryden to suggest Will Brinks had done anything to sully that pride.

A woman appeared at John Brinks' elbow. Thin, petite, with auburn hair, in a suede jacket and smart green corduroy trousers and leather boots, she could have been County Set – a solicitor's wife, or an accountant's.

Her eyes searched Dryden's face.

John Brinks stood. ‘It's Will. There's been an accident; we need to go back after the show.'

‘Is he alive?' The voice was perfectly under control.

‘Yes,' said Dryden. ‘But he's ill. There was an explosion on the old airfield, at the unit he guarded. They were running an illicit still; it exploded. He's in Wisbech General in intensive care. The police are at his bedside.'

Her lips buckled. ‘Is he dying?'

‘Everyone hopes he'll pull through.' Dryden had tried to be honest in his reply and she was smart enough to pick up the inference: sometimes, hope wasn't enough.

‘We'll go back now,' she said.

A
t first they formed a convoy: Humph leading in the Capri, Brinks' four by four and caravan behind. But once they hit the main road Brinks went past at eighty-five mph on a straight stretch. The Capri got to Wisbech forty-five minutes later.

‘What we doing?' asked Humph. ‘Hospital or home?'

As the cabbie waited for a reply, the Capri circled what was now officially known as rabbit roundabout. Several years previously residents had noticed rabbits appearing amongst the civic greenery on the central island. They responded by chucking any spare salad on to the grass as they drove past. It's not difficult to find spare salad in the Fens: sixty per cent of all carrots eaten in England are grown within twenty miles of rabbit roundabout. The rabbits thrived. They did what rabbits do. The council dug them a brick warren, copying the practice of the Romans of a millennium earlier, although they didn't go on to harvest the animals for food. The council put up a sign that said Rabbit Roundabout, and then everyone lost interest. Everyone except Humph, who liked to try and count the rabbits whenever he drove past, and always allowed himself three circuits to complete the census.