The Coldest Blood

It was of two men, naked, standing waist deep in a pool. The colours were dark, soiled and crude, but the brush work adept. One of them had white hair and Dryden recognized the same box-like features as in the painting that hung above McIlroy’s fireplace: the elusive Joe. Was the other man Declan? Dryden found it difficult to tell, the features here were smudged and chaotic. But the picture’s real impact was not in the composition but the colour of the pool. It wasn’t blue, grey or white but a startling arterial red, and from each man a trickle of blood ran down from wounds on the arms to replenish the pool beneath.

‘That’s Joe, I guess?’ said Dryden, pointing. Buster nodded. ‘Don’t know where he lives, do you – or his surname?’

‘Just Joe. Lives on the Fen, that’s all I know. He didn’t come much; they met down at the allotments. He just called when Declan was sick, ’cept this time of course.’

‘Did you know Declan painted?’

‘No idea. I asked Marcie – that’s the sister – and she said it was therapy. No – therapeutic, that’s what she said. But she didn’t want the pictures, coz he’d given her one with loads of paint on she could feel – a landscape, she said; reeds and stuff. And he’d always said to burn ’em anyway. Said I could have one of ’em for being neighbourly, to remember him by.’ Buster laughed: ‘Must be fuckin’ jokin’.’

‘It’s blood,’ said Dryden, leaning forward to look more closely. ‘Can I take this one?’

Buster was shivering. ‘Be my guest. She’s gonna pick up the others tomorrow for the tip.’ He watched as Dryden took down the canvas and rolled it.

‘What do you think it means, then?’ asked Buster, backing off.

‘Looks like a nightmare to me,’ said Dryden.

They went back into the lounge. ‘Bloke from the council said they’d have someone new in by the end of the month,’ said Buster, picking up his tea mug from the table. ‘Missus says it’ll be a bunch of darkies with loud music. I hope it is, give her something to fuckin’ moan about ’cept me.’

Dryden felt the cool wind from the north blowing through the gaps around Declan McIlroy’s picture windows. ‘I don’t think Declan did kill himself, Buster. What do you think?’

Buster held his dressing gown to his throat. ‘If the police are happy, I’m happy. Why make trouble, eh?’

He was watching Buster’s face when it froze, the eyes looking over Dryden’s right shoulder. He wheeled and saw what he’d seen: through the frosted glass of the hatch to the kitchen, a face, the parallel opaque lines distorting the features.

The intruder sensed that the sudden silence signalled discovery and bolted for the door, heavy boots thudding on the cheap lino.

Dryden was ten feet behind him as he made it to the balcony in time to see him take the steps down by the landing. As Dryden followed he heard the lift wheezing, the doors clattering on the floor below, then the lift again.

Heart creaking, Dryden vaulted the concrete stairs two, three and four at a time until he reached the ground floor where, doubled up, he waited for the lift to arrive. It thudded finally to rest, and the doors clattered open to reveal Buster’s cat.

Looking up, Dryden saw a head jerk back from a balcony a few floors above, then running footsteps receded, muffled as they turned a corner and were gone, heading for another exit.

From the top balcony Buster waved lamely: ‘Tea?’ he shouted.

11

Dryden threw himself into the Capri’s passenger seat and slammed the door, tossing Declan McIlroy’s canvas on to the back seat beside the dog. The cab swayed, crying out on its geriatric springs. Humph, oblivious, had his earphones on and was repeating with painstaking care the directions to the railway station in Kohtla-Jarve. Dryden wiped the sweat from his forehead and, trying his pockets, uncovered a comforting cocktail sausage and munched it, regardless of the fluff. His diet, outside the egg sandwich for breakfast and the occasional full English, was satisfied by a kind of trouser-pocket smorgasbord, featuring pork pies, raw mushrooms and anything else acquired on his travels. In the other pocket he found a packet of wine gums and took two for pudding.

He considered the brutal façade of High Park Flats. He’d rung Vee Hilgay on his mobile from Buster’s flat and she was still adamant that the unannounced doctor’s visit had nothing to do with the Hypothermia Action Trust. She’d checked with the local NHS Trust to be sure and there was no record whatsoever of such an initiative in the Ely area. Dryden asked her to contact local GPs as well.

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?