familiar feeling of claustrophobia: you could have played five-aside football in his old office at the
He logged on to his PC, secured an internet connection and browsed the local council site. He called up the electors’ roll and punched Hilgay into the search box. Four names appeared: three in one household out on the Fen in a nearby village and one in an address on the Jubilee Estate. If this was the last living member of the family which had once owned Osmington Hall then they’d certainly fallen on the hardest times of all. The Jubilee gobbled up about 80 per cent of the county’s social services budget in the city and about 75 per cent of police time – benefits for which the residents were less than appreciative.
He switched to Google and typed in ‘Richard Dadd’. From artcyclopedia he found a link to artprice.com and found a Dadd auctioned in New York in 2003 – a canvas ten inches by six, it had fetched $2.6m. Dryden looked at his ruler, whistled, and searched for the website of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. There he found that many of its works were reproduced online. Dryden tapped in ‘Dadd’ and ‘moonlight’.
A picture appeared and Dryden felt a sudden cold-ness: the sketch showed a moon rising through the leaves of a forest, an adolescent boy in rustic smock was watching it rise, as if witnessing a vision. The scene was dreamlike, and the nearby woods hid half-seen faces of elves and fairies. The picture held a spell, and Dryden understood why someone might have killed to get it. He hit the printout button, pocketed the A4 reproduction and closed down the PC.
He walked to The Tower thinking about the moon, and lunatics. It was a gibbous moon, just four days from full, a bulging lantern of cold white light directly overhead. The town was silent, in that unnatural lull between the shops closing and the pubs getting into full swing. Somewhere, in the trees of the cathedral park, he heard an owl’s call followed by the tiny shriek of something being killed.
As soon as he opened Laura’s door he knew she was awake. The COMPASS machine clattered into life.
‘SHOULDERS.’
Dryden knew it was unreasonable but the peremptory tone of the COMPASS tickertape always irritated him. He knew the missing question mark was in his wife’s mind, but its absence made her request into an order, and he felt the familiar guilty urge to be free of his role as dutiful visitor.
He put his head beside the PC screen hoping her eyes would be able to see him with peripheral vision but, oddly dry, they stared past him.
‘Sure,’ he said, sitting on the bedside and insinuating an arm behind her so that he could lift her forward, laying her head on his shoulder. He began to massage the muscles at the base of her neck, feeling the knots which caused her so much pain. He felt the familiar onrush of tenderness, and began to widen the movements of his hand in a sensuous and sinuous series of circles.
As he worked he talked, feeling the warmth of her body raise his spirits, so that he found it easier than he’d expected to tell her about his visit to Buskeybay and his decision to sell off his mother’s belongings.
He laid Laura’s head gently back on the pillow, then used a brush to arrange her hair. Then he uncorked the wine bottle beside the bed and poured himself a glass, lighting up the single Greek cigarette.
There was silence and Dryden was irritated again, irritated that she didn’t respond in some way. She’d known his mother too, and could have shared the memory.
He forced himself to talk. ‘I’m sorry you wasted time on the PoW – nobody ever escaped, I know. The curator at the museum, I’ve mentioned him before…’
The COMPASS burst into life with a rapid: XXXXXXXX, part of their code, a signal that she wanted to butt in.
‘SEE 15.’
On the PC’s desktop various folders held documents Laura would work on when she was conscious and alone. Dryden moved the cursor over to document 15 and double clicked, sitting up beside her on the raised pillow so that he could read the screen.
There was a single line of text, the spelling mauled by Laura’s botched attempts to control the COMPASS. He reminded himself of the effort required for her to type out a single letter.
MOD EMAIL SEE INBOX. NO POWS OUT. BUT SEE REOLY ITALIAN ASOC ALSO EMAIL AND MOD 2.
Dryden swung the cursor into Laura’s e-mail inbox and retrieved the reply from the MoD’s information desk.
Dryden fished out the return e-mail from Manchester.
