Nightrise (15 page)

An oak had stood on the edge of the village on a small island of clay in the peat. Its dead branches still rose from the water in a delicate crown. It alone had survived the four winters, but perhaps not five. He cut the engine to idle and let the boat drift through its shadows, looking down into the water. Below he saw a rooftop – one of the village's outlying cottages, the original sharp lines blurred by a layer of weed and reeds. He'd noted the peculiar quality of mere water: both clear and dense, as if he was peering into solid green glass, into which the ruins of River Bank had been set, like a village in a paperweight.

Another image from
Beowulf
came to him – the monster swimming up from the depths, mud trailing from its webbed feet – and despite himself he had to look away, up through the branches of the oak at the sky. The first faux star, Venus, was just visible.

The boat drifted on, out of the shadows, into the light and towards the chapel. He tried again to recall some detail of this lost place from his childhood and remembered a small garage and petrol station, a lone attendant sat out on a seat, a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes. Opposite, on the empty corner, a patch of grass and a bench. He'd have been ten, cycling past, thinking he could be out on the Great Plains somewhere, a cowboy in search of a waterhole. The memory made him feel like a child again, a physical jolt, as if he was back in the younger body, living in the moment of an everyday adventure.

Only the remnants of River Bank broke the surface of the new mere. The chapel and its tower, the rotting crown of the great oak, the skeleton of a metal grain silo, the single chimney stack of the Victorian villa which had stood at the centre of the village. Dryden recalled the big house's owners, given a bench set aside in honour at the harvest festival in the chapel when he'd gone one year with his parents. Lords, even then, of a manor, now subterranean. A month before the sluice gates had been opened and the village drowned the local museum at Ely had asked permission to remove the Victorian stained glass from the villa's windows. They'd shown the chapel, the great oak and the apostles. Dryden had noticed them on a recent visit when he'd done a story about a new exhibition of local fossils. One of the panes had been emblazoned with the villa's name:
Fenlandia.
And there'd been a black-and-white turn-of-the-century picture of River Bank: the villa dominating even the chapel – four-square, rooted to the spot.

He let the boat drift on towards the chapel. He could see through the west window – the glass gone, just a cave-like opening into the body of the chapel, the water flowing through, constricted, so that the mere seemed to funnel into the body of the ruin. It made Dryden's blood cool – the thought he might be drawn in. He let the boat bump against the brickwork beside the gap.

He splashed his face with the water and the noise of it almost made him miss what he thought was a lone bark of a dog. His uncle had a dog, an obedient sheepdog called Bay
.
His aunt hadn't mentioned the dog but he hadn't seen him at the farm, or heard him. Dryden examined the silence. A minute passed, then a single bark again, echoing out from the gaping arch of the window.

He called out his uncle's name for the first time and the barking picked up a rhythmic beat – and with it an echo, which rounded the sound, as if the dog was beneath the water. Edging the boat inside the window, using the paddle, he had to duck his head under the pointed neo-Gothic arch. Inside, the watery aisle was lit from the empty narrow windows on either side – their arches just clear of the surface. The roof was wooden, a Victorian barrel design, with pin points of light showing where the lead had been stripped on the outside. As Dryden edged the boat forwards bats swung above his head. It was his imagination, he knew, but he felt he could hear their high-pitched sonar, and he wondered if the dog could hear too.

There was still no sign of Roger's twenty-foot eel boat.

He shouted the name again and the sound seemed to ricochet off the water. The dog barked in reply.

As the boat slipped forward he looked down and saw the gliding forms of eels in the shadows, intertwining. There appeared to be hundreds, thousands, as if there was no water at all, just the eels turning over each other, a living weave, their movement seeming to carry the boat forward. He caught sight of the font below – white stone, the bowl full of slim black eels turning in a circle.

He saw the dog on a set of high stone steps which led up to a door behind the pulpit. His thin paws skittered on the stone at the edge of the water.

‘Hi, boy,' said Dryden, bringing the boat in. He didn't like dogs, but they loved him, and Bay licked his hand and jumped aboard. ‘Where's Roger, eh, boy? Where's Roger?' The fact that the eel boat was missing too was a comfort because it meant that his uncle had gone somewhere else to lay his traps and would return. But why leave the dog?

Dryden stepped out, taking the rope. Inside the old chapel the temperature seemed almost icy. The little lancet door was on a latch and open. ‘One minute,' he said to the dog, which sat down and whimpered.

He climbed the corkscrew stairs. After three twists he passed a narrow doorway into an empty room. A rusted metal frame showed where a clock mechanism had been lodged. Turning away to continue the climb he heard a skittering and caught sight of a rat running at the foot of a wall at a supernatural speed. Breathing deeply he noted that despite its inundation the building retained that peculiar smell that is ‘old church' – dust and stone and candle wax.

The room above was the old ringing chamber. The wooden roof had just one hole for a rope. Dryden thought an echo of the bell hung in the air; a kind of audible tension, imprinted now in the walls and flaking plaster.

This, he could see, had been his uncle's refuge. Rather than sleeping on the boat above the eel traps he'd slunk away here. A packing crate table held a china mug; there was a sleeping bag on one of the four pews set against the walls, and a primus stove. On a shelf stood a line of Sunday school primers. On the next his uncle's books – surely; slightly arcane texts on soil science and farm management.

And a volume of
Beowulf
. Dryden picked it up, struck by the coincidence, and by the fact that he'd always felt an empathy with his uncle – one that seemed to go deeper than their blood link.

The chamber had a single window which looked north. From this height you could see the far shore – a low hill with a spire, and to the north the whale's back of the Isle of Ely and the cathedral. The liquid mercury surface of the water was disturbed in the mid-distance by wind, which created a wide oval print of dark grey wavelets and white horses. He couldn't see below the water because the sun was on the horizon now, in the east, and the light just bounced off the surface so that it became a mirror. To the east it was nightrise, the sky darkening like a bruise, the first stars flickering into life. The gathering darkness made him cold at heart.

Nearer at hand stood the lone chimney of the sunken
Fenlandia
. He leant out of the window and looked down into the old graveyard. The spot where his mother's grave must lie, below the silvered surface, was marked by water lilies, yellow and open.

Beside the window stood a single chair. Kneeling on it he put his head out through the arrow-slit arch and shouted Roger's name into the air. This time there was no echo.

At that moment the setting sun was eclipsed by a single cloud and the surface of the mere dissolved to reveal what lay beneath. And what he saw then he saw completely – not just an object, a story, a tragedy; he saw all of it encompassed in the one image.

The eel boat hung submerged in the green water, keel up, on the bottom of the mere, a rope rising not to the surface, but to the foot of Roger Stutton, who was motionless, a hand reaching for the surface just a few feet above his head. His mouth was open, in mid-gulp, and his eyes – dead and fishlike – caught the light.

The sun slid out from behind its cloud and wiped the image away – but not before he'd noticed a single detail: a series of three neat holes punched in the keel of the boat.

A
police diving unit recovered Roger Stutton's body from the waters at River Bank a few minutes after midnight. He'd been dead – according to the pathologist who attended from Cambridge – between twenty-four and thirty-six hours. Body gases had begun to fill the principal organs, causing the corpse to rise, its ascent restricted by the rope tied to the right foot. Cause of death would have to await the coroner's examination but a working hypothesis was that he drowned: his lungs had discharged fresh water and traces of weed. There were no signs of any external trauma except bruising and cuts to the ankle where the rope had bitten in – and that looked post-mortem. The boat had been lifted clear of the lake by a dredger and crane. The three holes in the starboard keel appeared to have been made with a hammer or blunt instrument – they were in a perfect line. Recovered from the lake bed were Roger's eel traps and gear, a torch and a boat hook.

The policeman who briefed Con on the flood bank had been circumspect. They were treating the death as suspicious. Clearly – a bizarre accident aside – someone had tied Roger Stutton to his boat and then sunk it. He was a plain-clothed DS, from Ely, and unknown to Dryden. He was very clean, as if he'd taken a shower before coming out to monitor the diving unit. He gave Con his card and said they'd talk in the morning, but now – right now – she should tell him if she could think of anyone who might do this. Any enemies, any arguments or violent clashes?

‘He was a quiet man,' she said, and they left it at that. It was the perfect description and Dryden considered how often he was drawn to the silent, and the insular. Roger's particular charm had been to combine that silent character with the enthusiasms of a boy. But he must have had an enemy, and that enemy had killed him in the coldest blood. A business partner? A creditor? Because that's what Roger had in his past – a long line of failed enterprises, half-baked attempts to keep the farm afloat.

The body had been taken to the morgue at Peterborough and an appointment made for an official identification at noon. Dryden had offered to make the ID but his aunt had insisted that she was able to do it, in fact, wanted to do it; to see him again. In shock, but unaware she was in shock, she had asked Dryden to take her to Flightpath Cottages; she didn't think she could sleep, or rest at Buskeybay. Then they'd made the call she was dreading – to Laurie in Manchester. He'd wanted to drive back immediately but she'd told him to wait. They needed to fix the funeral, get a date. She hadn't cried until she put the phone down.

Dryden had slept but only after an hour of lying awake. Roger's death, so soon after that of the man who called himself Jack Dryden, was profoundly unsettling. It made him anxious, and he considered getting his baby son from the child's room and setting the cot at the end of the bed where he could see it. The warmth of Laura's body was a comfort and he thought for the first time that was why warmth was so settling, so sleep-inducing. It was a token of life. A reassurance.

He found Con in the baby's room at six that morning, watching the wind generator turn its vanes. The child was asleep, so still it awakened familiar anxieties in Dryden that made him want to touch his skin, make him move.

‘Your father taught science at a big secondary modern – in Haringey,' she said, her voice a whisper but very clear. ‘That was a matter of principle, of course. He could have got a job in a private school. But he believed in the state system. That was his contribution.'

Dryden's arms seemed too heavy to hold up, so he let them drop by his sides. He hadn't been prepared for this and he didn't think he wanted to hear it here, in his son's room.

‘Look – not now. You're upset. You should rest.'

‘Now,' she said. He took her to the kitchen and made coffee and they took the cups outside and sat at a picnic table. Summer had become a constant that year and he was not surprised to see the blue sky and the freshness of the light at that early hour. There had been no rain overnight so for once the humid oppression had lifted.

‘It's called Kettlebury. He didn't talk about it much. It wasn't for long – two full academic years. Well, nearly two. It wasn't his choice to leave, Philip, but he felt he had to. Maybe – if it hadn't happened – they'd have taken the farm anyway, one day. But I doubt it. They went to Burnt Fen to get away from London – from the school. But he never really got away.'

‘Why?' Dryden's throat was dry. The coffee was lukewarm already because the air was cool, the sun only just clear of the horizon.

‘It was dropped – eventually. The whole thing. I don't know the details. It was a mess. The police were involved. Your father resigned.' She looked trapped, boxed in despite the fact they were under this huge sky.

‘Just tell me.'

‘Your father ran field trips. He organized one to the Scottish Highlands. A boy died. A young boy. Jack was blamed by the parents. The school suspended him. I think – talking to your mother – he blamed himself. Always.'

‘The police were involved?'

‘Yes. There was a chance there'd be charges – criminal negligence. As I say, I never knew the details. It was something your parents kept to themselves.'

There were, she insisted, no other details. All she knew she'd learned from Roger, who'd been told by Dryden's mother. How had the police been involved? Had his father been arrested? Held? How had the boy died?

‘You said he never managed to get away from it – what did you mean?'

‘It was nothing.' Con looked at him. It was just a fleeting moment but Dryden suddenly knew that if they weren't linked by family they had the capacity – between them – to really dislike each other.