The Moon Tunnel(10)
‘Security,’ he said out loud, and saw again the agonized limbs of the three dead Alsatians.
The Littleport bus had just pulled up at the stop in front of The Crow’s offices and the smog swirled around it, rivulets of water running down the windows. From somewhere outside came the rhythmic percussion of shoes fitted with metal blakeys hitting the pavement hard. Dryden waited as the solitary beat drew nearer, The Crow’s front entrance bell rang, and then the metallic tattoo climbed the stairs. Garry Pymoor burst into the newsroom. ‘Hold the front page!’ he shouted, as he always did.
From behind the editor’s screen a series of sharp sniffs erupted.
Garry had suffered from meningitis as a child and in order to give him some semblance of the balance the disease had destroyed the doctors had hit upon the sonic shoes: the regular audible feedback helping him to stay upright. But disorientation was part of Garry’s character, and even if he stayed on his feet he’d normally find some other way of falling down.
‘Got the feature,’ he said, dropping his notebook onto his desk and putting his feet up. ‘Could be fifteen job losses in the short term – twenty-five if it closes for good. End of a family business etc., etc.’ Garry grinned, happy wallowing in someone else’s misfortune.
‘Drink?’ Dryden asked, standing and closing down the PC. ‘How about Jerry’s?’
Garry, pleased they were boycotting the usual drunken post-deadline bash in The Fenman with Charlie Bracken, grabbed the full-length leather coat he had worn throughout that stifling summer. His personal hygiene was what the Americans like to call ‘an issue’.
‘On the mobile,’ shouted Dryden, leading the way.
5
Jerry’s was Ely’s only nightclub, a refurbished former bingo hall just off Cambridge Road. At Christmas and on Friday nights it employed a solitary bouncer in ill-fitting DJ, but the rest of the time the last thing Jerry’s needed was someone to turn people away. The interior was painted blackout black, principally to disguise tatty furnishings. A neon sign outside flashed ‘J rr ’s Nites ot’. A blackboard advertised live Premiership football and a ‘happy hour’ from 5.00pm to 8.30pm nightly.
Dryden bought Garry a bottle of industrial-strength lager which he drank by the neck, and a pernod and blackcurrant for himself, insisting that the barman add the cocktail umbrella advertised on the poster behind the counter at the inclusive price of £1.80. They took seats by the pool table and watched as two teenagers wordlessly played out a game. The juke box finished playing something contemporary Dryden didn’t recognize and then fell silent, the scattered customers unwilling to invest further cash. Beside the clash of the pool balls there was silence; it was 4.29pm on a Thursday, pay day for most of Jerry’s customers. Later on things would quieten down.
Garry fingered his crotch and lit a cigarette, the exhaled smoke catching the spotlight beams focused on the pool table. His acne, in full battle formation, shone under the harsh lighting. Dryden heard the distant sound of the cathedral bell tolling the half hour and stood, putting a pound coin in the juke box, from which he selected ten records, six from the golden oldies section after first picking four at random from this year’s hits. This way he would be sitting down before his own embarrassing choices came on. With luck, another punter would be at the juke box by then.
Dryden inhaled some alcohol and thought about the body in the PoW camp tunnel. He thought about his dream: the compression of the sand around him, the grains in his mouth. How had the victim died? And who was the killer? It seemed certain that he had been crawling into the camp. Had his killer been waiting for him, or attempting to escape?
The door opened, admitting a wedge of spectral autumnal light which illuminated a smashed bottle in a corner by a one-armed bandit. And in walked Russell Flynn trying to look old enough to buy a drink. Russell was one of Dryden’s contacts, the provider of a string of lowlife tipoffs from the town’s notorious Jubilee council estate. Russell had been born on the Jubilee, Ely’s answer to Moss Side, a rabbit warren of terraced council houses enlivened by the odd wrecked car.
Dryden’s cat-green eyes followed him to the bar. The teenager had bright red hair, innocent freckles and teeth with gaps, none of which had prevented him from getting two years’ community service after pilfering the contents of an entire row of allotment sheds on the edge of town. The manhunt to track this super-criminal down had been aided by the discovery at the scene of Russell’s coat, hung on a hook in the first hut, where he had taken it off in anticipation of working up a sweat as he loaded the pilfered tools and assorted hardware. Inside the coat was Russell’s wallet. Inside that was his benefit card and provisional driving licence. It was a crime of such baffling ineptitude it even made it on to the ‘and finally’ section of the local TV news. The magistrates were less amused, and but for some entirely fictitious story about his father dying of cancer Russell would have spent the rest of the year in Bedford prison.