The Coldest Blood

‘Declan had some severe social problems which stemmed from a very unhappy childhood. He was in care, an orphanage. He was actually very bright, which didn’t help, of course. I put him in touch with a therapist, and he had some treatment. There was a friend, Joe, who had a house out on the Fen, and he spent some time there – but it was a temporary respite. Declan painted too, and I think he was gifted in some ways, even if the work was self- indulgent. He took courses – correspondence courses – hundreds of them, in fact: electrical engineering, IT, computer maintenance, stuff like that, as well as history of art.

‘But as I say the problems were chronic. There were always unresolved frustrations which resulted in periodic outbursts of anger. Violence – sometimes against the nearest person to hand, often against himself.’

There was a cheer and everyone on the Fen turned to watch two skaters leaving the starting line to test the course, each with an arm held at the back, the other swinging like a pendulum.

‘Do you think he committed suicide, then?’

‘I guess. But it wasn’t characteristic.’

Dryden was confused. ‘You said the violence was often directed against himself?’

‘Yes. But that was violence. The manifestation was always immediate and pretty brutal. A slash with a broken bottle, a head-butt into concrete, that kind of thing. This was very… passive, I guess. Very controlled. It wasn’t what I would have expected. But then the pressures were new…’

They walked on, Dryden allowing the silence to acknowledge the fact that Bardolph had led him on.

‘The court heard this?’ he asked gently.

‘No. It was in reports; the coroner will have read them.’ Bardolph sighed. ‘But they’d have to confirm if you asked – just leave me out of it, OK?’

Dryden nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘The case against St Vincent’s – the Catholic orphanage. Declan was a victim. You know the background, I’ve read your stories in The Crow. That was a pressure in itself. But we’d had to… unearth is the right word, unearth the past. It brought out the issues, you know, the causes of his lack of self-respect. It was a painful time.’

Dryden saw the mottled face of Father John Martin, the birthmark livid against the cool blue eye.

‘He was one of the victims who had just been identified?’

Bardolph nodded. ‘That’s right, which means the pressures were new.’

‘It might not have been suicide,’ said Dryden, turning away, looking back at the cathedral, the West Tower now lost in its own private snowstorm. ‘Declan had a visitor the day he died. A man claiming to be a doctor giving advice on the cold. I don’t think he was there to keep Declan warm.’

Bardolph shook his head in disbelief, but Dryden left the thought hanging, unresolved. ‘Was anything else on Declan’s mind? Any other worries?’

Bardolph shook his head again, putting a glove back over his hand, and Dryden knew he’d lied by the flicker of his eyelids and the pinching of his nose.

Dryden nodded as if he understood. ‘At the very least it deserves investigation.’

Bardolph nodded, stamping his foot on the ice, impatient to get back to the Eskimo hole.

‘Funeral?’ asked Dryden.

Bardolph pulled his attention back to his former client. ‘Cremation – it’s private. Then they’ll scatter the ashes. He would have liked that. Claustrophobia – worst case I’ve ever come across, actually. He had to be sedated in prison. That all goes back to childhood too…’ Bardolph let his gaze slip away over the ice. ‘Spent most of his time out on that balcony, twelve storeys up.’

Dryden nodded, as if sharing an old truth. So Buster Timms was right about his next door neighbour’s criminal past. Dryden thought of the doorless flat and the windows thrown open to the night. ‘It’s getting colder,’ he said, his jaw suddenly juddering with a shiver.

Bardolph grinned, watching the circling pair of speed skaters. ‘I know. Isn’t it wonderful?’

Dryden walked to the riverbank and found a bench free of snow. The more light he let fall on Declan McIlroy’s life the more the shadows seemed to deepen. He felt the first lethal pangs of depression. The cold was getting to his heart, the chill in his back making his shoulder blades ache. Closing his eyes, he tried to conjure up a warmer memory, an antidote to the cold. It was that last summer again, always that last summer. His parents had sent him away with his uncle and aunt to the coast while they took in the harvest at Burnt Fen Farm: 1974. They were worried: worried he’d been lonely too long, an only child whose life had encompassed little more than the hamlet around the farm. So they’d decided on the break, just beyond the horizon, surrounded by children, at a holiday camp.

He could feel the warmth now. The hissing white water around his legs where the waves had broken, the sun beating flat down on the footmarked sand, and the glow of the sunburn on his shoulders. He would remember that summer always because of what came next. The return home, the snows of winter, and the floods which took his father away. So it had been his last summer, the last summer of childhood.

13

Humph was waiting on Waterside, the Capri a bubble of vanity light emitting the bass notes of an Estonian folk song. Dryden didn’t realize how cold he’d become until he bent his six-foot two-inch frame and folded it into the passenger seat.

‘Jesus,’ he said, his knee-joints popping like champagne corks. Reaching for the glove compartment, he cracked the top off a bottle of malt whisky – a Glenfiddich – as Humph studied the thermometer he’d hung out the door on a short piece of string.

‘Minus 8,’ he said, the little bow of his doll-like mouth drawing together to produce a tuneful whistle.

Dryden checked his watch: 3.15pm. By dusk the temperature would be even lower, with every chance that the