The Coldest Blood

‘That’s his mate – Joe,’ said Buster. ‘Haven’t seen him much. Declan said he had throat cancer, that he couldn’t travel no more. He’s got a place out there…’ He nodded to the window that faced north towards the open Fen.

Dryden studied the faces: Joe, white close-cropped hair, expensive, quality shirt and shoes, a cigarette trailing smoke in the summer air. And Declan, slight by comparison, shoulders turned forward, chest sunken, wrists narrow and frail.

Despite the friendship Dryden could sense the loneliness in the flat. ‘Any other friends? Christmas, whenever?’

Buster shook his head, but Dryden was pretty sure he’d missed the question, so he asked again.

‘A sister. Marcie. She brings him some food, checks on him. She came yesterday.’

There was a cheap pine sideboard in the lounge. On it was a bowl of nuts, the only festive touch in the flat. Inside, Dryden found glasses: odd wine goblets, dimpled pint mugs and a single cracked Champagne flute. Each one sat upside-down, precisely over a dust-free circle. All except one: a whisky tumbler.

4

Dryden sat at his desk, looking down into Market Street through the motif of The Crow etched in the frosted glass of the newsroom window. Below the strutting bird ran the paper’s motto since its foundation in 1882: Bene agendo nunquam defessus (Never weary of doing good).

‘That’s me,’ said Dryden, searching under the desktop clutter for his mug.

He retrieved a 1 euro coin from the plastic tub under the coffee machine and let it drop through the slot. The machine hissed, the steam puffing out into the nipped air. The cathedral’s bell tolled 9.00am and the radiators began to reverberate as the near-freezing water ran to the shuddering boiler.

Cradling the cup, Dryden looked out again into the street. Sunshine cut down the pavements from the east, and the rooftops opposite steamed. Icicles hung from The Crow’s gutters, but none of them dripped, while a single snowflake, an inch wide, fell like a feather.

He sat and booted up his PC. This is how he liked offices: empty.

But it wouldn’t be empty for long. It was press day and, though The Crow rarely buzzed, it was nevertheless likely to hum by lunchtime. Each of the three journalists’ desks was obscured by creeping glaciers of paper through which punched the occasional metal spike. A subs’ bench ran along one wall complete with two cumbersome layout computers which predated the flat-screen era and were three feet thick. Two ashtrays sat between the PCs and were on the same scale, being slightly too small to double up as hubcaps. The room held little of the romantic appeal of newspapers which had made Dryden choose his trade more than a decade before. That had been on Fleet Street, and the office had shuddered every time the presses ran in the basement. But now the smell of printer’s ink was just a memory, like yesterday’s headlines.

On Dryden’s lap the office cat, Splash, slept on its back, its pink paw pads extended. He stroked her, envying the independence as much as the fur coat.

His phone rang, making them both jump.

‘Got five?’ He knew the voice, feminine and forceful, and could almost smell the acrid scent of the builder’s tea in the big no-nonsense mug.

‘Vee?’

‘Pop over,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something you’d like.’

He slipped out the back of The Crow’s offices into the old print yard and around into Market Street, then down a treacherously iced alleyway to High Street. Vee’s office was over one of the town centre’s myriad charity shops, this one by the Sacrist’s Gate, the Norman gateway into the cathedral grounds. A Gothic shadow had left this darkened archway in permafrost since the cold snap had brought even the noontime temperatures below freezing. Beneath the cobbles here Dryden recalled that builders in the sixties had found the skulls of the cathedral’s monastic community, stacked in a charnel house. He shivered, wrapping his great black trench coat more closely to his thin frame.

In the charity shop a pensioner was trying on hats. A two-bar electric fire provided the shop assistant, who was asleep, with some warmth. Before her on the counter lay an offertory plate sprinkled with silver and copper coins. Up a spiral stone staircase Dryden found Vee’s office. Even here, amongst the damp cardboard boxes and the unstripped floorboards, Vee was patently top-drawer, a real-life living remnant of old money and radical liberal politics. She was a pocket battleship amongst pensioners: compact, with sinewy hands and an outdoor tan. One of her eyes had been blinded in youth, and the pupil was now a single white moon, which watered slightly. She rented the office, headquarters of the Hypothermia Action Trust, which she had founded, and a single bedroom above. That, and a £1m bank balance, was all anyone needed to know about Vee Hilgay.

‘Another one this morning,’ she said as Dryden came in, folding himself into a wobbly captain’s chair.

‘I know. I’ve been out – to High Park.’