The Funeral Owl (27 page)

The sun caught the object in the bag so that it glowed, as if emitting its own light.

‘Is that …?'

‘The bullet fired at Barrowby,' said Friday.

Dryden thought that this small, almost beautiful object had caused a great deal of grief. It had almost certainly sparked the explosion which snuffed out the lives of three men in a few devastating seconds.

‘It was embedded in the breeze blocks in the back wall,' continued Friday. ‘Soft enough to slow it down – didn't do a lot of damage to the bullet, did it? Forensics have just filed a report. It took a deflection off an iron girder before hitting the wall, so that's probably what ignited the gas vapour. Anyway, the metal around the hole in the door was rust-free. Totally. Apparently metal scratched like that will begin to alter, chemically, within twenty-four hours. But this was newly exposed metal, no sign of rust, so the bullet was fired that day. Given the explosion, we have to presume it triggered the blast.'

‘So it all fits,' said Dryden.

‘Not quite. This bullet didn't come out of the gun we found by Brinks. That gun had not been fired for some time, maybe years.'

All the images Dryden had in his head seemed to pixilate, like a dodgy DVD, gradually breaking apart.

‘This bullet was fired down a rifled barrel. Brinks had a handgun, no rifling. The bullet's got a ballistic signature, so we know, broadly, the type of gun used. A very classy model, apparently – probably military. Kind of weapon that starts its life in Eastern Europe.'

‘So Brinks is no longer your prime suspect. He's a victim too.'

Friday dug his hands in the raincoat pockets. ‘Indeed. What we need now is a new prime suspect. Let's say we're taking a keen interest in the events on Erebus Street yesterday. My spies tell me you were there?'

‘You think that was payback? That this is all gang warfare – killing the triad master was retribution for the deaths at Barrowby?'

Friday continued to stare at the river.

‘Arrests?'

‘Eight. No charges. The main triad organisation in Lynn, and indeed in the UK, is called 14K. The two Chinese men at Barrowby were members of a breakaway group. These new kids on the block are called Sun Yee On. It's got links with migrant Polish workers.'

‘They're Christians,' said Dryden.

‘Indeed. Well, they go to a Catholic church. Is that the same thing? Having just come from the autopsy on the victim found in the house on Erebus Street, I would doubt it very much. Let's just say the breakaway group likes to see itself as different on a point of religious belief. It's all part of the brand image – they're the future, not the stuffy old past. They believe in the religion of the West – not Taoism, or Buddhism.'

Friday accepted a mug of tea from Laura. ‘Sun Yee On tried to make the metal trade their own, apparently, and they'd clearly branched out into illicit booze too.'

‘And this turf war started with Sima Shuba's murder,' said Dryden.

‘Looks like it. But it's complicated, and we don't really know what happened that night at Christ Church. Sima Shuba used to be an enforcer for 14K. But we're told he'd changed sides and was working out at Barrowby. We think 14K sent someone up to put the frighteners on Sun Yee On. I reckon they followed them to Christ Church and then struck. Looks like they chose to make an example of Sima Shuba. Maybe he was the newest recruit. Anyway, he ended up on the cross. I think that was a message, don't you? This is where the Christians end up. Don't mess with us any more. This is what happens.'

Friday slurped tea. ‘So that's where we are,' he concluded. ‘All I need to do is find some forensics to link 14K to Barrowby. The gun would be nice. Am I going to find it? Not unless I am very lucky.'

Dryden stretched his legs out. ‘So what are we saying? That 14K turned up at Barrowby, took a pot shot, got lucky, and the place blew up? Doesn't sound very likely.'

Friday drained the nicotine from a fresh cigarette. ‘Nope. It isn't. What if they just got close and waited to pick someone off. Or waited to pick all of them off. So they take a shot at Brinks and hit the lock-up. Then the lot goes up. Maybe they didn't set out to wipe 'em out.'

‘But that would mean they missed Brinks, right? Do these guys miss?'

‘Always a first time.'

A swan went by on the river, its wings set like icing.

‘One thing,' said Dryden. ‘A few days before the blast, Brinks took a picture of a Funeral Owl. He's a twitcher, a bird nerd. But the Funeral Owl is rare, and it was a terrific picture. He sent it in for us to print, although when I went out to see him he was pretty terrified I'd print his name, or his picture. Anyway – my point is that outside his caravan was a table. There were sheets of paper covered in number grids, four-by-four grids, all the digits from nought to nine inclusive, plus two blanks. Those turbines at Coldham's, they have identical security keypads. If he got that shot of the owl he's got cameras, telephoto lenses, the lot. I think he watched the maintenance crews getting into the turbines with the field glasses and noted down the codes. He got some right, some wrong. I think he was on the inside, not the outside. I talked to his stepfather.'

Friday nodded. ‘I know. He's by the kid's bedside with one of my uniforms.'

‘He reckons he's terrified of breaking the law, all goes back to some traumatic night in the cells when he was a tearaway,' said Dryden.

‘He's got previous. We're on to that.'

‘But has he talked?'

‘Not yet.'

‘I think he got drawn in to the gang, then took fright and decided to do a runner. I'm just saying, I think he was more than an innocent bystander.'

Laura joined them with Eden, so they talked about the river, about the boats, about not having a house.

‘Thanks for coming by,' said Dryden.

‘A favour,' said Friday. ‘My one chance is the gun. I'll have the spec and a picture soon. Can you run it in
The Crow
? These gangs bring their guns in, but there's a chance it's local.'

‘OK, sure. Thanks for the update.'

‘I had to come down anyway; there's a body in the river, up at Ely. They'll have the details at control in the morning. Looks like the missing teenager, Julian Amhurst. He had chemical symbols in ink on his arm.'

Laura took Eden up in her arms. ‘God, how awful. Do the parents know?'

Friday looked at his shoes. ‘Not yet.'

D
ryden opened the gate into Christ Church graveyard. He paused in a splash of sunshine shaped like a star and looked up at the roof. The Rev. Temple-Wright had been as good as her word. The missing lead had been replaced with black plastic sheeting. It was as if the building had been wounded. Like many simple, beautiful objects, the blemish destroyed its symmetry, blurred its simple lines.

The sheep on the Clock Holt were crowded in one corner, in a patch of shade, and bleated as he walked towards Sexton Cottage. A white van was parked in the lane, artwork on the side in a decorative style.

Vincent Haig

Pictures framed and restored.

But it was Albe Haig who opened the door. His eyes were focused on a point over Dryden's left shoulder. ‘Come in,' he said, shuffling back. He looked at his feet, which were in slippers. ‘Vinnie's here,' he said. ‘You'll want to speak to him.'

There was music in the house: 1940s big band sounds. Vincent Haig appeared holding an iPhone, using the thumb to text. In his other hand he had a mug of tea. ‘Hi. Come through.'

They'd locked eyes and Dryden was struck again by the pink sclera, the cracked blood vessels around the irises.

They went into the cottage's front room. Miniature again, hardly ten foot square, with a small Victorian iron-grate fire, a pair of armchairs, a bookcase full of audio tapes, a sideboard too big for the house, let alone the room; and an easel holding a canvas half finished. It was a portrait of the house, in thick dollops of oil. The light from the window played across the surface of the painting so that Dryden could see the furrows and ridges of the brushwork.

Haig had propped Dryden's collage of OS maps up on one of the chairs, neatly framed, Perspex covered, showing the whole of the Brimstone Hill area in impeccable detail, the individual charts beautifully dovetailed to produce a single map.

‘This is perfect,' said Dryden. He gave him three ten-pound notes and a fiver.

Haig slipped them in his wallet. A tradesman's wallet – leather, worn, and thick with notes. ‘I was at Dacey's auction rooms on Friday,' said Dryden. ‘The police raided some of the stalls, looking for stolen metalwork mainly. That's what the crooks out at Barrowby Airfield were up to when they weren't distilling gut rot in bottles. Police and trade descriptions have been watching the sales for some time in case any stolen metal turned up. After the explosion at Barrowby they decided to cut their losses and swoop, to see what they could find. But you had other interests at Dacey's on Friday night …'

‘So?'

‘Congratulations on buying the house,' said Dryden. ‘Were you going to mention it, or was I supposed to run the story anyway? If I hadn't kept it for next week I'd look like a prize fool. I don't need help to achieve that status. Or was the idea just to put Temple-Wright under pressure, see if you could get it for nothing? And if that failed, which it did, you had the cash all the time.'

‘I didn't know.' It was the old man, talking from the doorway. He crossed the threshold, his eyes searching for Dryden's.

‘I didn't know,' he said again. ‘I don't approve.'

‘Not going to stop you living here, though, is it?' said his grandson. There was a cruel note in the voice and it made the old man cower. ‘Just leave it,' he told his grandfather. ‘We don't need to apologise to anyone.'

Vincent Haig squared his shoulders, forcing himself to meet Dryden's eyes. ‘I was going to tell you if we were successful at the auction. It was a public auction. We've done nothing wrong. The house is ours now. The fact we had to buy it to make sure Grandad can go on living here is still a scandal. He was promised. There was a bargain.'

The old man's hand moved to the doorjamb, finding it with just the slightest of spatial errors, so that it looked like he was grabbing it for support.

‘The question is, how did you buy it?' said Dryden. ‘Where did the money come from?'

‘That's none of your business, is it?'

‘Mortgaged his own home,' said the old man. ‘Went to the bank, too. I said he was a fool.' The old man had raised one hand as if he expected a blow. But then Dryden saw that he was trying to put his hand between his own, unseeing eyes, and those of his grandson, as if he didn't want a connection to exist between them.

‘I need to talk to Grandad,' said Haig to Dryden, as if the old man was a child.

And Dryden thought:
You might like to tell him the truth.
Because you told me that both the Old Forge, and the cottage you live in, were rented.

‘Zabrowka,' said Dryden. ‘The moonshine vodka. I know you're partial. But you told me, when I asked, that the bottle you had was a present. You've told me lots of lies, but do you know what, I
believed
that.'

‘That stuff you drink,' said the old man, almost spitting it out.

‘Christ, will you shut up, old man,' said Haig. The profanity, Dryden guessed, crossed a boundary which had perhaps been rarely crossed in this house. And a calculated insult, because of all the words he could have used, he'd chosen that one, in the shadow of the church which bore Christ's name.

‘Why did you deserve that particular present, a crate of hooch?' asked Dryden.

Haig's face was a picture now, one of his own pictures. Slabs of colour, the lines of the face inhuman, as if he'd been assembled by a committee.

‘What did you do for them?' asked Dryden. ‘Did you buy and sell, perhaps? It's your world, I think, auctions, fairs. You buy and sell frames – pictures too? Did they want you to link them up to the trade? Is that what they needed, Vinnie, a fence?'

‘Vinnie?' asked the old man. ‘Is this true?'

‘I'd like you to leave. This is family business.'

Dryden clicked his fingers. ‘Business. I'm really hoping you didn't do business with the men from Barrowby Oilseed.' He took a step closer to Haig and was delighted to see him back off in response. ‘You didn't do
that
? You didn't borrow the money from them, did you?'

Haig struggled to keep an impassive face.

‘That's a really stupid thing to do, Vinnie,' said Dryden. ‘I don't think they do tracker mortgages. We're talking triad gangs here. By the time you pay them back you'll have paid twice, three times. That's the good news. The bad news is what happens if you don't pay them back. Barrowby wasn't an accident, you know. It was murder. That's business, triad-style.'

‘Does Kathleen know?' asked the old man. He turned to where he'd last heard Dryden's voice. ‘That's my daughter-in-law. She's a wonderful girl. Works hard.'

The implication was clear.

‘Shut up,' said Vincent Haig, but something of his authority had gone. He sounded like what he was: a bully, losing ground.

‘I've always worked hard, too,' said Albe Haig. ‘So did your mother. We were a decent family. I don't need charity.'

Vincent Haig laughed. ‘Yes, you do. You've needed charity all your life. For the last ten years you've needed me. Want to know why I stuck by you all these years? It was for Grandma.'

The old man actually flinched at the word.

‘I promised her that I'd always be here for you. Always.'

He pulled at the loose shirt at his throat and Dryden saw where the loss of temper had blotched the skin.