The Funeral Owl (20 page)

Brinks seemed to pass out then, laying his head back on the concrete, his eyes shut. The blast had revealed parts of his skin that were usually covered up, and turning him over Dryden had noted bird tattoos: owls, eagles, hawks. But the most daring had been the long-necked swan in flight on his back, which stretched from his left hip up until the outstretched bill reached his hairline, the only inch of design that would have shown if he'd been clothed.

Dryden left Humph pressing the bottle to Brinks' lips and walked away to the Barrowby Oilseed lock-up.

Ten feet from the metal roll-up door he could feel the heat and smell ash. He had to lift the side door to the lock-up off its buckled hinges to get it open a few inches. If there was someone inside could they have survived? He pulled the door out with his full weight and it fell down, so that he had to stand quickly aside. Waiting a moment for the ash to settle, he stepped into a strange, viscous darkness like velvet. Something kept brushing his skin and he dabbed at it, realizing it was ash in the air.

He stood for a moment waiting for his eyes to penetrate the scene, with the help of a little light creeping in through the burnt rafters. The first thing that materialized was a stretch of black concrete wall which seemed to sparkle like quartz. Touching the surface, running his fingers back and forth, he looked at traces of blood on the tips. His blood. The wall was embedded with tiny shards of shattered glass.

A metal bench ran down the middle of the unit with machinery on top: iron, aluminium, steel. But all of it was partly melted, even the table itself, sagging and distorted. Dryden could feel the heat now, still radiating, almost burning his skin, and when he held a hand near the edge of the table, just an inch away, he had to whip it back as the pain pulsed in his arm.

He walked to the back wall of the unit and looked up. There was a small gap in the ruptured roof so that he could see sky framed by wooden rafters, each of which was charcoal black, and smoking very slightly. Light was fading from the clouds above, the sunset approaching. Under his feet the broken glass was a foot deep, a silica snowdrift, sucking in the light, so that the rest of the room seemed darker.

One more step and he was on the far side of the bench.

Two things happened quickly, in surreal succession. First he was blinded by a direct ray of sunlight. There must have been a hole in the metal roll-up door, because the setting sun was shining straight into his eyes from the west; the light beam, unbroken, was like a searchlight seeking him out. It was the last few seconds of the day, concentrated like a laser beam, preternaturally bright.

He put up a hand to block it out and then he saw what was on the floor at his feet: a scene from the museum at Pompeii. Three bodies, frozen in melodramatic poses on the floor: one leaning back against the wall, a hand up to shield his eyes, echoing Dryden; another, back turned, hunched forward so that the head was between the knees; the third flat out, arms straight up as if about to enter the water in an Olympic dive. Each one frozen stiff, as if in black ice.

Each was dead. Of that there was not a doubt.

Where he could see skin it was charred, ridged like wood which has smouldered all night in the grate. There were clothes but it was difficult to see where they ended and the skin began. The brunt of the heat had caught their faces, at least the two faces he could see. Flesh had burnt away leaving full sets of teeth, the incisors too long, stretching down where they should have been veiled by lips and cheeks. He looked for eyes but there were none. The Olympic diver had his mouth open; jaw-breakingly wide, and Dryden saw that he had no throat.

He could feel adrenaline in his blood and realized he hadn't breathed since he'd seen them. A second? A minute? At that his knees buckled and he knelt in the glass, ignoring the pain. One breath wasn't enough; he tried to suck in another, then another, but nothing seemed to fill his lungs. The slimmest strand of smoke rose from the victim with his hand up before his face. It circled the victim's fingers as if he was smoking the butt end of an unseen cigarette.

Dryden's vision buckled and he had to reach out for the edge of the bench and only remembered at the last second not to grip its red-hot surface so that he fell sideways, under the bench, into more glass. Scrabbling in the glass, he felt panic rising in his throat. His feet, kicking out, made no noise, even though he felt them striking the wall, and the metal stanchions of the workbench.

Then two hands, gloved, stiff, grasped him under the armpits and dragged him away, out through the door, his feet trailing, into the evening light. Air rushed into his lungs as if there had been none inside the lock-up. Sweet air, unblemished by the sickly smell.

He must have passed out, because when he came round a fire officer was beside him, kneeling on the grass, his face sooty where the visor had not protected it. His name was Bevan, a senior officer from Ely. A walkie-talkie cackled in his front pocket.

Dryden's head was supported on a rolled-up blanket. He guessed Humph had given them the dog rug from the back of the Capri because it smelt of Boudicca.

A paramedic appeared and gave Dryden a sweet drink in a bottle.

‘Sorry,' said Dryden. ‘I went in. I thought someone might be alive.'

Bevan nodded. ‘Me too.'

‘I saw the explosion. It didn't make a noise. And the smoke just stopped, like it was a bomb. And …'

Bevan put a hand on his shoulder to stop the words. ‘It
was
a bomb,' he said. ‘Sort of. The perfect explosion, like your Christmas pudding. All the fuel is used up in the ignition, there's nothing left for the sound. That's what the bang is, the energy left over after the explosion. There was nothing left after this one; well, very little. As I said, the perfect blast.'

‘The oil, they made oil, from rapeseed?' asked Dryden, trying to sit up.

‘Not in there they didn't.'

The fireman offered him an empty bottle to sniff. The yellow label showed reeds in a woodcut design.

‘Best fuel in the world,' said Bevan. ‘One-hundred-and-twenty per cent proof alcohol. It's moonshine. Once the fumes build up to more than three per cent of the air by volume, it can just explode. Delicious, I'm sure, but lethal.'

Dryden saw only the back-stretched corpse, the throat burnt away.

B
y midnight the old airfield was floodlit, a ring of scene-of-crime lamps around the industrial units, a helicopter circling above with a searchlight. The intensity of the beam was blinding, so that the distant fen beyond looked featureless and bleak. Emergency vehicles, including a set of vans from the police forensic unit at Wisbech, a single fire engine, a brace of police squad cars, and several CID estates, were dotted around the old runway. The judder of a digital printer came from a mobile incident room. The fire engine was drawing water from the Twenty Foot, two hoses snaking off behind the lock-ups.

The whole site had been sealed off. A TV crew was at the barrier gates, and a clutch of reporters, but no statement had been issued beyond a terse 100 words on a single sheet of A4 handed round by a uniformed PC. They'd given Dryden a copy: four victims, three dead, one in intensive care at Wisbech Hospital, an ongoing investigation. Nothing more. A second helicopter appeared, a commercial one, with a camera fixed in the open door. It was quickly grounded, according to the medic who kept checking on Dryden's condition, in order to leave the airspace clear for emergency services.

The three bodies had been taken away at ten o'clock. Forensic officers had completed the
in situ
examination of the corpses; Dryden watched them bring the victims out of the side door. A detail haunted him: the body bags had hinted at the stiff death poses within – one almost a ball, one the fully stretched diver, another triangular, perhaps the kneeling man, shielding his eyes. It was as if he could see through the mask of the black material to what lay beneath.

The medic who tended Dryden told him the survivor was gravely ill. Both of his lungs had collapsed, and he referred to him – twice – in the past tense, which indicated that the professionals didn't expect him to last the night. The shock wave had also broken three ribs, dislocated a shoulder, and ruptured his spleen.

‘Does that hurt?' asked Dryden, and was relieved to see the medic smile. He could only imagine what it had been like. He'd felt the shock wave two miles away. Will Brinks had been fifty yards from the explosion.

Dryden's own condition was curious. He'd suffered shock, and a brief period of unconsciousness, which had left him elated and desperately tired, so that intermittently he would wake up, to discover he'd been asleep. His eyelids were scratchy and painful. While he tried hard to arrange his thoughts in a logical sequence, nothing quite seemed to make sense. He noted with a strange objectivity that the little finger on his left hand was vibrating like a tuning fork. Every time he thought about the scene inside the lock-up he felt his throat constrict.

A uniformed constable gave him a blanket and asked him to stay at the scene to give a statement. Dryden told the constable he knew the name of the man who was in intensive care, and his address, but he was told to include that in the statement. A somewhat obvious instruction. Dryden added that the man had a dog, and had been holding the lead. It was, he thought, a mongrel, but mainly Doberman Pinscher.

The constable left him with a renewed instruction to stay put. They gave him a folding chair to sit on. He felt like an idiot, sitting wrapped in a blanket, bathed in halogen lights. But sticking around was what he wanted to do; because this was where the story was. Three dead, one dying, made an exploding wind turbine look like an outbreak of fly-tipping, even if the fatal blast proved to be an accident. Soon it would be midnight, press day would dawn, and
The Crow
would have the inside story.

A familiar figure dragged a lame foot towards him across the grass. DI George Friday carried two cups of coffee in plastic beakers.

‘Accident, then?' asked Dryden. ‘It's a still, right? For making alcohol?'

Friday put the coffee cups down on the grass and sank his hands deep in his raincoat pockets. Dryden guessed that he wasn't allowed to smoke at a crime scene, which was unlikely to improve his mood. ‘You've seen the statement. Forensics will take twenty-four hours. I'm going to wait for the results; I suggest you do the same.' Friday studied the reporter's face. ‘And I'd look after yourself. You've had a shock. You look like death warmed up.'

Dryden searched in his pocket and produced one of the fifty-pound notes they'd found near the body of Will Brinks. ‘You better have this.'

‘It's touch and go whether our survivor will make it, by the way,' said Friday. ‘Nasty internal injuries.'

‘The kid's called Brinks – Will Brinks,' said Dryden. ‘Lives over on the travellers' site at Third Drove.'

‘Who?'

‘The survivor.'

‘Christ.' Friday flapped his arms inside his raincoat. ‘We've spent the last hour trying to get something off what's left of his wallet. Why didn't you fucking well tell us you knew who he was?'

‘I did. I told the constable who asked me to stick around and give a statement.'

Friday threw his head back, looking up at the stars, which had started to pop out in the sky. He kept that pose for about thirty seconds and Dryden guessed he was counting, slowly, trying to keep his temper in check, his anxiety levels under control.

‘Anything
else
?' he asked eventually.

‘Strange kid. Learning difficulties, maybe Asperger's, but I'm no expert. A keen bird-watcher. The travellers left him behind each summer to look after the site on Third Drove while they went off flogging stuff. Maybe they sold one-hundred-and-twenty per cent proof vodka on their travels? That would work.'

Friday patted his raincoat against his thighs. ‘Anything
else?
'

He was joking, but the smile fell off his face as Dryden stood. ‘Yes. But I need to show you. In there.' Nodding at the burnt out lock-up, he felt something tighten in his throat. It was the last place on earth he wanted to see again. It was the first circle of hell.

For a moment Dryden's world spun round in a circle and he thought he was going to keel over.

Friday stepped in and took his arm: ‘Steady, soldier. It can wait.'

‘No, it can't. Believe me.'

It took ten minutes to get clearance from the forensic team, and then get togged out in the forensic overshoes and hairnet.

A few minutes later, standing in the unit by the metal bench, where the petrified corpses had lain in their shroud of broken glass, Dryden thought he could detect a smell, something which reminded him of a kitchen. He closed his eyes and tried to think of clear water, the smell of ozone.

‘Don't throw up,' said Friday. ‘Not in here, anyway.'

‘Can they cut the lights in here? I want darkness.'

They got a forensic officer in and he pulled a set of plugs off a lead. Dryden noted a strange effect: that as soon as he was deprived of sight his other senses were sharper. That smell was meat, specifically pork. Saliva flooded his mouth.

He forced himself to try and recall precisely his movements when he'd first entered the unit. ‘Here,' he said, walking round the bench. ‘I was right on this spot. Just by the corner. That's when I saw them on the floor.' He stood at the point. ‘There!' He didn't mean to shout but he was relieved that it hadn't been an illusion. ‘And I saw that too.'

Electric light leaked in through cracks and gaps where the blast had distorted the roll-up door. But there was one clean, crisp hole. Dryden walked forward to put his finger close to the edge. This was where the dying sunlight had glinted in his eyes in the second before he'd seen the bodies.

The hole was at the centre of a pit in the metal which had bent the door inwards. Friday got his nose up close and sniffed.