The Coldest Blood

Were they dealing with a conman? Dryden recalled the news item in The Crow warning of bogus plumbers fleecing the elderly. Or had this conman been heading for Declan McIlroy’s flat all along? And had he just made a return visit? If it had been his intention to visit Declan, had he oiled the wheels of depression with the whisky, and then left him to commit suicide – or had he enticed him into unconsciousness and then thrown open the windows himself?

Or was Dryden indulging in newspaper fantasy? Perhaps it had been a low-life conman all along and the return visit was just a bit of unrelated daylight looting by one of High Park’s gifted thieves.

Dryden placed a palm on his forehead and felt a fresh layer of icy sweat. Either way he needed to tell the police what he’d learned, while at the same time delaying, if possible, any public statements on the news for the Express’s deadline on Tuesday. If he could raise enough questions over McIlroy’s sudden suicide he could at least run a story saying the police were – finally – investigating. He was inclined to sit on the information for twenty-four hours – but knew the possibility the bogus doctor would call again raised the stakes too high for journalistic games. He needed to get the information on the record fast.

He hit the dashboard with the flat of his hand. ‘Ely cop shop,’ he said. ‘Pronto!’

Humph finished his reiteration of directions to the railway station in what sounded like a suspiciously Fen dialect of Estonian and then fired up the Capri. A cloud of fumes belched from the exhaust pipe with a bang as the cab swept out of the car park, charging a series of sleeping policemen which lay in its path.

Ely police station was a local monument, a humourless glass and concrete block with a radio mast on top slightly too short to afford regular communication with the outer planets. It was a common prejudice in the town that this impressive outpost of the constabulary was almost constantly empty, local emergency calls being routed automatically to a helpful officer seventeen miles away in Cambridge. The skyscraper aerial was not, however, a complete waste of space as its impressive array of steel hawsers provided a roosting spot for several thousand starlings.

Today the mast was decked in ice, which hung like decorations on a giant Christmas tree.

The automatic doors opened as Dryden approached, revealing an empty counter, glassed in and meshed to meet terrorist attack. There were three seats for the public, across which lay The Crow’s ever-vigilant junior reporter Garry Pymoor.

Dryden woke him up.

‘Right,’ said Garry, brushing aside the embarrassment which would have overtaken lesser men. He sat up, unfolding himself from the ubiquitous black leather coat and releasing a faint odour of Indian Pale Ale and bubblegum.

‘They phoned. Said they’d got some stuff for us on the cannabis peddling. I was gonna ring…’ he said, yawning so wide that his jaw cracked.

Dryden pressed a button by a grille and waited for a disembodied voice to crackle into life, but there was silence.

‘Garry Pymoor and Philip Dryden from The Crow,’ he said. The reinforced door clicked open and Dryden pushed through into a long corridor which was slightly sticky underfoot and smelt of disinfectant.

A man stood at the far end in the customary uniform of the plainclothed detective: grey suit, light blue shirt and dark tie, with polished black slip-on shoes. His hair was white and cropped and his shoulders were set at an angle that exactly matched his career prospects. He welcomed them, offering his hand to Dryden. ‘Thanks for coming. Jock Reade, DI Reade. I’m the drugs liaison officer for the force – along with a few other jobs. We’ve got some film for you…’ Dryden noticed the acrid hint of nicotine mixed with aftershave and the complete absence of a Scottish accent.

‘Great,’ said Dryden. ‘I’m actually here on another case – the man found dead in High Park Flats yesterday. I need to talk to someone; I’ve got some information I think you should have.’

DI Reade buckled visibly at the prospect of extra work. ‘Er. OK. No one else here at present. But I can take a note – though I’ve got the CCTV set up for Mr Pymoor.’

‘Right. But who’s the investigating officer in the High Park Flats case?’

DI Reade rubbed a finger at his temple: ‘Pretty sure there isn’t one. I mean, bloke had tried to top himself a coupla times – right? We’re stretched, you know, on manpower. But I can pass anything up the line.’

Dryden held up his hands: ‘OK, OK. Let’s see the film.’

Reade led the way through the deserted police station. Stairs led down to the cell block, where they were led into a room with two rows of seats before a console of twelve TV screens. Above them was one larger screen showing a magnified image of one of the dozen pictures below. At the moment a lorry was seen backing into the car park by the Market Square, as a single pedestrian, swaddled in a thermal jacket, crossed towards the town’s shopping precinct. Reade hit a switch changing the images. ‘This is High Street just opposite the Lamb Hotel. Trouble spot on a Saturday night, of course. Not much happening now.’

Dryden nodded. ‘How long do you keep the film?’ He’d always suspected that the cameras were empty.

‘Usually 48 hours – then we reuse it. Otherwise we’d disappear under the video cartridges.’

Reade sat on the console desktop, playing with a packet of Silk Cut. ‘As you know, we’ve been concerned about cannabis being sold to teenagers in Ely. It happened quite suddenly, about a month ago, and continued for nearly three weeks. There’s no fresh reports – but we’d like to nail this in case it’s just a brief pause in the supply.

‘We picked up a couple of kids out of their heads down by the bypass last Thursday. They’d done some glue, which is nothing new, but they reeked of dope. Let’s say we were sympathetic about their cases – and in return we got some information about the supplier. They said he sells out of a car after dark just here…’

Reade got up and stabbed a finger into a large map of the town centre. ‘Just here. Very clever – it’s one of several blind spots not covered by the CCTV cameras. But he wasn’t as clever as he thought. Just overlooking this bit of car parking is the rear of Boots – they got broken into a couple of times in the summer so they’d put up a camera of their own. And they keep the film.’

Reade played importantly with some buttons.

The big screen showed a deserted car park at night, a halogen security light reflecting on frosty tarmac. A car