wondered if he’d regret not going straight to the police with what he knew.
‘I’m not trying to prove anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to write a feature about those in danger from the cold – if they were friends, that helps. This is information I need. But just a reminder – if I don’t get it, I’ll get something else off the police in return for tipping them off as to the identity of the elusive drugs peddler. How does that sound?’
Dryden realized he didn’t fear Sley any more. It was an eloquent admission that he sensed a common decency beneath the brutal exterior.
Sley drew in two lungfuls of nicotine. ‘So. How well did they know each other?’ repeated Dryden.
‘The allotments were a meeting place. For all of us.’
‘But before. How long had they been friends?’ Dryden could sense the boundary he was pushing at, sure now that just beyond it lay the link he sought. He watched Sley through the drifting smoke from the cigarette, and sensed he was calculating a reply.
Sley stood, drinking savagely, the liquid slopping in the glass. ‘They grew up together, in care. Brothers really, but for the accident of blood.’
Dryden nodded. ‘So what’s the big secret?’ But his thoughts raced: if Joe had been at St Vincent’s was he too embroiled in the action against the orphanage?
‘There’s no secret. It’s just private, isn’t it? They were orphans. Joe’s parents were travellers, Romany. Gyppos – take your choice. Petulengo – a name he was proud of, eventually. But that was the nightmare for him – being in care, being inside, being locked up.’
‘And you?’
Sley ignored the question, refilling his glass. ‘Joe lived in a caravan, a mobile home really – plush. You’d be surprised. Snug as a peg.’ He laughed again, and Dryden sensed a longheld prejudice, finally liberated by death.
‘Until…?’
‘Last year. He was diagnosed with the cancer, throat. He said he’d always promised himself he’d die in a house. Die in his own home. Crazy. So he bought the Letter M and then spent most of his time on that seat by the water, just looking at it.’
‘He had the money then?’
‘Oh yeah. He was never short, Joe.’ He laughed without a sound. ‘And when Mary died he’d nothing left to spend the money on.’
‘A wife – I saw the picture,’ said Dryden.
‘Yeah. She was older, MS. Pretty nasty really. He never really got over it, although most of us thought she was pretty aloof, focused on the money. She’d married it, after all.’
Dryden let the slight pass. ‘And the allotment?’
‘Outside again. He spent hours here. It was Declan who’d started first. The council gave him that flat but he couldn’t stand it. Claustrophobia – much worse than Joe – even when he was out on the balcony. He’d slept rough for years – that’s where he really wanted to be. He just used to shrivel up indoors.’
Dryden nodded as if he understood. ‘Is that why he drank?’
Sley shrugged. ‘Life he’d had, you don’t need an excuse.’
‘And the cannabis. Anyone else smoke the stuff? Declan?’
Sley shook his head.
Dryden stood. ‘You said orphanage. He was a Catholic, Joe – yes? I noticed a cross, a crucifix on a chain at his neck.’
‘Sure. St Vincent’s, with Declan. It’s closed now.’
Dryden smiled, enjoying the inevitability of fate.
‘Declan was a victim of abuse in the case against St Vincent’s. Was Joe another?’
Sley shrugged. ‘Sure. I doubt any kid who went through that place escaped, do you?’
Dryden accepted a second mug of beer. The glow from the stove was more substantial, and he stretched out his legs in the heat. He saw them differently now, these two men whose damaged lives had ended so savagely; saw them at a dormitory window, two pale faces, held close, dreaming of an end to childhood.
17
Dryden set out across town, the stunning canopy of the night sky an antidote to sleep. Wisps of mist trailed from the cathedral’s great West Tower like medieval pennants in the moonlight. On Palace Green a single muntjac stood chewing at what looked like a refuse bag. As Dryden crossed the grass the deer looked up and then sprang into flight, its white underside flashing as it headed for the cathedral park. The cold of the night was at its deepest and each shop window glittered with rocket bursts of crystal ice.
As he trudged towards the distant landmark of The Tower Hospital Dryden considered the extent to which he had succumbed to a dubious conspiracy theory. If Declan’s death was suspicious, what about Joe’s? Had someone really murdered them both? They were both witnesses in the case against St Vincent’s – but was that really a motive for murder? A more mundane explanation looked plausible: that a lonely, damaged alcoholic had taken his own life when the bitter winter had offered him the opportunity; and that a benign accident had sped Joe Petulengo to a quick death, where a lingering one had seemed a certain fate.
But what of John Sley? Could the sale of drugs be linked to either death? Was the production of marijuana, so efficiently organized, really just to ease the passing of a friend?
