She nodded. ‘Which one? He used to describe them to me, the colours and the texture of the oil.’
Dryden laughed. ‘Two men, their arms mutilated by wounds, standing in blood. Not uplifting, I’m afraid.’
She looked away so that Dryden couldn’t see her eyes.
He looked around at the men trying to clear the debris of the fallen kite and bundle it down the staircase onto the shop floor.
‘Do they know the boss is dead?’ he asked.
‘They do now – John’s just told them, he’s the foreman, has been since the start almost. We don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a private company so it keeps trading until the estate is sorted out. Who knows then?’
‘Foreman?’ said Dryden licking ice from his upper lip. ‘Must be nice – secure job, decent pay…’
Marcie turned her head towards him and Dryden felt something stir in his memory, but saw only a kite flying over a distant beach. ‘Look. We both thank you for what you’ve done. He won’t do it again. Money is a problem. It was a temptation, and he’s sorry, believe me.’
Sley joined them. ‘Dryden. News?’ He seemed less menacing in a pair of blue overalls, the powerful hands winding in the kite cord like wool.
Dryden wondered what he was expecting. ‘I wanted to know more about Joe. You didn’t mention the factory…’
Sley held up a hand by way of truce. ‘I’ll get coffee.’
They sat in the main stairwell, away from prying ears, perched on the ice-cold concrete steps. Marcie Sley reached out her hand and her husband took it, holding it in his on his lap, where a wedding ring with a Celtic pattern caught the light. It was an intimate gesture and Dryden looked away.
Marcie’s green eyes were on him when he finally looked back. ‘John didn’t mention JSK because he’s still ashamed of the past. A distant past, Dryden. He got the job here because Declan vouched for him – and he knew him because they’d shared a prison cell.’
‘And…’ said Dryden.
‘It’s past,’ said Marcie quickly, holding her husband’s hand tightly. ‘He’s not proud of it, but it was nearly twenty years ago. OK? Joe gave him a chance – a big chance. Getting a decent job straight out of prison is almost impossible.’
Dryden shrugged. ‘Fine. Why didn’t he give Declan a job?’
‘He’d never have stood it – inside, with all these people. My brother was the loner’s loner. It was all we could do to get him to come down to the allotments. Or to stay in the flat. We’ve had to trawl the streets to find him before now.’
From the factory unit they heard a mechanical saw and the swish of an industrial cutter across a metal tube.
‘Why was Declan in jail?’ asked Dryden.
Marcie’s eyes swung round. ‘He attacked a man who stole a bottle from him – while he slept. He caught him doing it – so he smashed the bottle and put it into his face.’ She left the statement hanging there, while they imagined the trickling blood, and the serrated slice of the glass through skin.
‘I’m interested in them,’ said Dryden, deciding for now not to ask how John Sley had ended up in a prison cell. ‘They were both at St Vincent’s. Victims together. They’d agreed to give evidence in the action against the diocese, right?’
Marcie Sley nodded and her husband leant forward. ‘You think someone killed them to stop them getting to court?’
That was exactly what Dryden had thought. ‘No. Just interested. Could it have driven both of them to suicide?’
John Sley looked to his wife, then took up the lead. ‘Declan was under a lot of pressure. The case brought back memories, things he’d never really dealt with. Issues.’ It was what Ed Bardolph, Declan’s social worker, had said too. ‘Issues’ was one of those words Dryden disliked: a euphemism, an Americanism, a screen.
Marcie shifted on the step and Dryden caught a glance from her husband. ‘Isn’t it all a bit, I don’t know, archaic – orphanages? It sounds Dickensian, what about foster homes, adoption?’ asked Dryden.
He noticed their hands tightening. ‘It was difficult,’ said Marcie. ‘Mum was still alive. A psychiatric hospital in London, Claybury. Even back then Declan could be violent. But they tried, I was fostered for a while. But we all ended up back where we started… always.’
There was a note of anger in the voice, the first he’d heard from this strangely serence woman. Anger and something else. They talked more about Declan, with John Sley taking the lead, but Dryden watched his wife’s face and saw playing across it another story, as yet untold.
They left him eventually and he stood for a second looking at the stencilled letters on the door to the workshop as it flapped closed: JSK. He knew now he’d forgotten to ask the obvious question: surely it should be JPK. What did the S stand for?
19
In the cathedral the Victorian cast-iron heaters hummed in counterpoint to the practising choir. Dryden paused inside the west doors, letting his ears search for the perfectly struck higher notes, while ahead of him a thin layer of mist crossed the nave like the signature of a ghost. He cut into the north transept, beneath the angel roof, and through a side door into the pale stone chamber of the Lady Chapel. A zealous bishop of the Reformation had smashed out the stained glass so here the light was cold, falling without judgement on the mutilated heads of the carvings which crowded the room.
The hum of electric fan heaters set up a whirring chorus. About 150 people were crowded in, swaddled in blankets and seated either in wheelchairs or on pews brought in from the side-chapels of the main cathedral. A
