The Funeral Owl (24 page)

‘You know what those tinkers are up to?' said Rick. ‘This is Third Drove we're talking about? Rumour is they're pulling together the cash to buy the land, then get planning permission for mobile homes. Maybe they saw moonshine as a useful source of cash to finance the purchase.'

It was a trend in the Fens. A big travellers' site at Smithy Fen, north of Cambridge, had become a national
cause célèbre
. They weren't Romany – they were Irish, and in the winter they went home to the Republic, to a village outside Cork, where they had smallholdings. They'd bought the land in Cambridgeshire off the local farmer and were trying to get planning permission for homes, against the opposition of nearby villagers. Local house prices had plummeted.

The idea of the Irish running the illicit still – and the scrap metal trade – upset DI Friday's neat picture of inter-Chinese community warfare.

‘So what are we saying?' asked Dryden. ‘That the Irish set up the still to generate the cash to buy land and put down roots? And they got the Chinese and the Pole to do the work. So this kid, Brinks, was like the overseer?'

‘Maybe. He might have been simple but he wasn't stupid.'

It was a thought that seemed to transform the story: the idea that Will Brinks might have been in control. In a perverse way it meant the dead men were victims too, exploited workers, not criminal entrepreneurs. But if he'd been in charge, why had he taken that shot? Had the travellers decided to pull out of the business after the murder of Sima Shuba in the graveyard at Christ Church? Was Brinks leaving the site with his investment reclaimed in fifty-pound notes?

Dryden held the picture of Will Brinks out at arm's length. He realized then that the yellow in the vodka bottle was a perfect match for the light he'd seen when the still had blown up. Electric yellow, like the hottest part of a flame, the eye of the storm which had knocked Brinks down so hard he might never get up. Whatever Brinks was doing that day at Barrowby Airfield, he held the key to the mystery of the triple killing. If he died in Wisbech General, they might never know the truth.

I
t was a journalistic ritual that Dryden found hypnotic. A kind of newspaperman's tai chi. He'd buy a beer from the
Fenman bar behind the Lamb Hotel and then wander out into the old coaching inn's yard. They'd put out dusty picnic tables on the cobbles, which had been colonised by smokers. He could see the cathedral's West Tower, and
The Crow
, across Market Street, and there would always be a small queue at this time: four p.m. Not waiting to get into the newspaper offices, but lined up on the pavement, apparently going nowhere. Then the van would arrive from the printers and the driver would throw open the back doors to reveal the piles of papers, and heave one on to the pavement, then two, then go.

Jean,
The
Crow
's resident receptionist, would come out and clip the plastic bindings with scissors. It was ‘right money' only, and everyone knew, so she just had a box for the coins.

Dryden would leave his pint, saunter over, and Jean would give him two papers off the top of the pile and take no money. The rest of the punters would give him a curious, mildly antagonistic glare.

Back at the table he'd stand up, put one of the papers on the seat, and judge the front page.

BULLET HOLE RIDDLE AS

THREE DIE IN FEN BLAST

POLICE PROBE LINK TO CHURCHYARD MURDER

DETECTIVES WAIT TO SPEAK TO SURVIVOR

By Philip Dryden

Dryden felt his world tilt just a few degrees. The ritual was supposed to make him feel centred, secure. During the long months of Laura's coma after their car accident he'd needed something to hold on to, a career, a purpose. But this headline made him see again the petrified bodies of the dead and he drained an inch off his pint, struggling to keep the horror of the scene at a safe distance. And there was a sliver of guilt too, in that he always felt the frisson of excitement in seeing his byline, even attached to such bleak news.

Now there was a new satisfaction: as editor he could admire the whole paper, and feel that it was in some way all his work. It looked good: newsy, and the gunshot scoop put them one step ahead of the morning papers and TV and radio. He'd let the story tell itself, and it proved to be a powerful narrative. The gun at the scene, the bullet hole being tested, Will Brinks guarded in hospital, the police keen to interview the survivor. The wire services were already running the story, with
The Crow
getting an upfront credit.

Page three carried the shots he'd snapped at Euximoor Fen as the storm had blown through, plus the cross-reference to the story on page seven. He ran a finger over the table top and picked up a smudge of peat dust.

Humph pulled up in the cab, finding a space in the Lamb's rank of reserved guest spots, so that if he sat with the door open he could chat. Dryden went and got him his usual, a pint of Electric Pig cider at eight-point-five per cent.

‘How's Grace?' asked Dryden, after ten minutes of silence.

‘I've just dropped her in town. She wants to shop.' He shook his head and extended his upper lip to the edge of the pint pot. ‘She's up to something.'

‘Boyfriend trouble?' suggested Dryden.

‘Christ.' Humph spilt cider on his Ipswich Town top. ‘She's fifteen. Last time I took her out she wanted to see the latest Walt Disney. She ran away with a cuddly toy. I don't think so …'

Dryden's phone buzzed on the picnic table top with an incoming text. It was Vee Hilgay.
Dacey auction rooms – police raid. Now
.

Dacey's stood beside Ely's old cattle yard at the back of Market Square. There was a single Victorian wrought-iron and glass structure, effectively an ornate shed, which could have easily accommodated a small zeppelin. The cattle yard was now a car park. Friday evening was viewing time ahead of the main sale on a Saturday morning. Everything from bicycles and furniture to tools and antiques. With the pubs open, and the working week at an end, the auction rooms always drew a big, high-spirited crowd.

The police and trading standards kept an eye on the goods for sale. What intrigued Dryden was why the West Cambridgeshire Constabulary would divert scarce resources to raiding the auction rooms on a day when they were still struggling with what might be an outbreak of violent gang warfare in the Fens.

There were four police vans parked in front of the auction hall, which was surrounded by a crowd. Dryden spotted one of the local trading standards officers pushing his way in.

An unmarked police squad car arrived and DI Friday got out.

Dryden gave him a copy of
The Crow
.

‘Thanks. I can't talk,' said Friday. ‘Go away.'

‘What's this got to do with the explosion?' asked Dryden, tracking the detective as he walked.

But Friday had said all he was saying.

Dacey's main hall was packed, flooded with light through the frosted glass panels in the walls and roof. It was like a miniature Crystal Palace. There was a café in one corner, a cash office in another. All the goods for the main Saturday auction were on show like a modern-day Aladdin's Cave. Except it was mostly tat, not gold. There was a crowd around one pen reserved for ironware: ornamental garden objects, a fountain, a sundial, gnomes. Each item was being listed, bagged up, taken away by uniformed constables.

A hand touched his shoulder and he turned to find Vee, notebook open.

‘They've taken a load of stuff from outside too, metal castings, cabling, some railings. Looks like they're trying to find out how the Chinese fenced the stuff once they'd nicked it.'

‘What do the auctioneers say?'

‘They say the stuff's all come from legit sources. I can't get to the boss; he's doing a property auction in the hall at the back. That's on now.'

The auction hall had been founded by a local estate agency, which occupied a 1920s building tacked on to the main shed, and still ran occasional property auctions on a Friday evening.

‘There's not much we can do here tonight,' said Dryden. ‘Pics?'

Vee pointed to a raised platform by the auctioneer's dais. Josie Evans was perched on one of the iron girders taking snaps of the crowd below. She was being held securely in place by a young man Dryden recognized as the Fulham supporter she'd brought to the office summer party. Dryden doubted she needed quite that much support.

‘I'll hang about,' said Dryden. ‘I'd knock off if I was you. Paper's terrific, by the way. Well done.'

Dryden got a coffee and sat watching the milling crowd. The police had caused a stir but they hadn't diverted the regulars from their Friday night entertainment, checking out the lots. The sellers swelled the crowd, keeping an eagle eye on their goods. He saw Grace Humphries, Humph's daughter, wandering with the rest, until she came to a display of framed old maps of the Isle of Ely. She studied one, a map of the new waterways built in the seventeenth century, a network of straight drains and cuts, drawn together at the centre by Denver Sluice, the beating heart of the whole, living, watery system. She seemed drawn to it, and stood staring for several minutes. Then a clutch of girls her own age surrounded her, hugging, holding hands, whispering. There was something subdued about the group, with not a giggle heard. They moved off towards the café, towing Grace along.

Dryden flicked through an auction catalogue. At the back was a list of the properties to be sold by auction. There were six in all, a pair of derelict cottages on farmland in Manea, two lots of agricultural land with planning permission for homes, three rented houses in Ely being sold by a single landlord, and one sale from the Church Commissioners: Sexton Cottage, Christ Church, Brimstone Hill.

The Rev. Temple-Wright had said nothing would stop the sale. She always kept her word.

The door to the property auction room was manned by a flunky for Dacey's. The atmosphere beyond was very different from the main shed. Here there was an intense silence, broken only by the auctioneer's clipped commentary. The room was packed with about 200 people.

The auctioneer stood at an ornate wooden lectern. He wore a spangled waistcoat and was in the middle of selling one of the parcels of land with planning permission attached.

‘I have one hundred and forty-five thousand pounds with number sixty-seven.'

Dryden was standing at the side of the room. Looking across the ranks of punters sitting down, he could see one man holding a wooden panel, the number sixty-seven painted in black.

He'd covered a property auction before for the paper; the sale of an old Methodist Church in Ely which went to a family who planned to open a curry house. Only registered customers could bid, those who'd given their details to the auctioneers beforehand and had proved they had adequate finances to complete a sale. They would also have agreed to pay a fifteen per cent deposit, non-returnable, if they won the bidding. A lot of institutions used auctions because they were fast, sure and above board, with no chance of gazumping, or backhand deals.

Sexton Cottage was next up.

‘Very nice property,' said the auctioneer. ‘An acre of land. Needs a little work done to modernise, but plenty of period Gothic detail. Leasehold tenant in situ who requires only one month's notice. There's a surveyor's report with the papers. So I don't see why we can't start at eighty-five thousand.'

There was silence in the room.

The auctioneer knew his business. He let it last three seconds. ‘Fifty thousand, then. Let's get this started, please.'

A paddle rose at the back of the room.

‘Thank you.' He pointed a pen at the bidder. ‘Sir. Number eighty-one leads the bidding.'

Dryden scanned the room and spotted Temple-Wright, her brittle grey hair catching his eye in the back row. Even from a distance he could see her steely glint fixed on the auctioneer.

‘So. Do I see fifty-five thousand?'

Beside the auctioneer stood two ‘spotters', assistants who'd also note the number of whoever came second in the auction in case the winner couldn't meet the price.

Another paddle rose. And a third bidder outbid him. A buzz seemed to bring the room alive.

Dryden leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, listening to the hypnotic rise of the bids. The three raced to ninety-five thousand in under a minute. He thought of the blind old man in Sexton Cottage at that moment, sightless eyes turned to the light of the window, with its view of Christ Church.

‘So. With number eighty-one, where we started, we have ninety-five thousand. Any more?'

Two seconds' silence.

‘Thank you, sir. Number thirty-one. A new bidder at one hundred thousand pounds? Thank you. One hundred thousand it is.'

There was a rustle in the room as heads turned. The new bidder was standing on the same side of the room as Dryden, and so he couldn't see him, as the side aisle was crowded with people.

The bidders edged to one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds.

‘So. With our new bidder, number thirty-one. Any more for any more? The last time of asking. Sir? No? OK. And …'

A sharp, untheatrical tap of the gavel and the house was sold.

The crowd dispersed, while a buzz of gossip filled the room, and Dryden saw the winning bidder being approached by one of the spotters with a clipboard. The bidder was Vincent Haig: the poor, struggling picture framer whose grandfather faced eviction from Sexton Cottage.

Dryden hung around outside by the exit. He was angry, confused, but most of all he felt like a fool. But for the fact that the Barrowby Airfield blast had wiped most other stories off the newslist, he'd have run the story of Sexton Cottage in
The Crow
:
how a heartless vicar threatened to evict a blind man from his home. Now it turned out the victim's family had the cash to buy the house. It seemed Dryden had merely offered Haig a useful option: if he'd failed to win the auction, the newspaper story would have applied some pressure on Temple-Wright to find his grandfather a decent home.