Dryden slipped the note free without waking his friend.
Gary phoned. Cathedral crawling with coppers. He’ll see you there. Wake me.
There was no need. A nerve-crackling squeal of tyres signalled DS Stubbs’s rapid exit towards town. He’d clearly just got the same message. Humph was on his tail before he’d cleared the gates of the Tower. They followed the unmarked police car effortlessly through the deserted streets and parked up on Palace Green, an open triangle of grass in front of Ely cathedral’s Norman west front. Overhead the county force’s helicopter swung as if on gyres, its solitary searchlight playing across the vast lead roof. Dryden had seen more police hardware in twenty-four hours than at any time in the last two years.
The clock tolled midnight and the sky, which had been weeping snow for the last hour, looked ready to unload a blizzard. The great grey-white lid of the sky was low enough to pick up the aluminium-white lights that illuminated the central Octagon Tower of the great church.
At ground level a solitary ambulance stood quietly, its light flashing a useless warning. There was none of the anxious rush associated with an accident, nor the almost tangible excitement that goes with the scene of a crime. A group of about a dozen uniformed PCs were standing around smoking and chatting in the hush habitual outside church.
Gary Pymore, junior reporter, stood shivering by the police incident van despite the ever-present full-length leather coat. He’d acquired a polystyrene cup of coffee and a sticky bun from the police mobile canteen. He fingered his ear stud as Dryden approached.
‘Hi. Thought I better let you know what was up. I can handle it of course.’
‘I’ll tag along,’ said Dryden, taking what was left of the bun out of Gary’s hand. Gary replaced the bun with a cigarette and Dryden watched with joy as the teenager’s eyes clouded with the effort of stifling a cough.
A small, tubby man stepped out of an ageing black Jaguar that had been parked up by the cathedral’s west doors. He had an overfed face, a neatly trimmed white beard, and the kind of pitted bald head that can put you off your food. His builder’s overalls were spotless and his plastic hard hat had the logo NENE & SONSon the front. He had the scrubbed neatness of a VIP visitor. He wore a heavy scarf at his throat and his eyes were brown and muddy, like the water in a building-site ditch.
Stubbs had acquired a clipboard and command of the scene. He bustled up officiously: ‘Josh Nene?’
Nene touched his hat and sniffed loudly. He looked to be fighting a mild temperature and a grumpy disposition.
Dryden left Gary by the mobile canteen and hung around just within earshot as Nene and Stubbs looked up at the scaffolding they could see against the night sky.
‘OK, sir. Can you lead the way up?’
By way of answer the builder unlocked a small wooden hatchway cut into the great oak doors of the cathedral.
Stubbs called Dryden over. ‘You can tag along. But this is a favour. One that I expect to see repaid on Tuesday morning.’
Dryden put his thumbs up. A wordless bargain he would be more than happy to break.
He stepped through the hatchway last and inhaled the scent of candles while suppressing the memory of a north London Catholic childhood. The vast nave was too dark to see but it was impossible not to sense the cavern of still space above them. They stood on the Norman tiled maze of the floor while they were issued with hard hats and fluorescent jackets.
Somewhere a door slammed and footsteps slapped on stone. With time Dryden’s eyes began to discern the dim symmetry of the vast church, the arches of the nave like the rib-cage of a great whale that had swallowed them whole. Directly above he could see the warm gold glint of a Christ-figure decorating the high Victorian painted roof.
Nene slipped with surprising agility through a small door in the massive south wall of the cathedral and they followed, Dryden feebly attempting to convince himself that he was unafraid of heights, and enclosed spaces, although he forgot both at one point when Nene’s torch failed and he remembered he was even afraid of the dark.
The party of three came to a stone landing lit by a single unshaded light bulb with a wire cover. Two corridors met here at right angles, while ahead of them was a small door. The staircase turned onwards and upwards towards the viewing platform of the West Tower, 215 feet above the ground. Set in the wall were the massive steel ties of the emergency restoration in the 1960s, which had saved the great tower from collapse as its weight distorted the Norman foundations. The small door stood open, letting in silver-grey light. A policeman stood guard, hastily crushing a cigarette underfoot. Dryden recognized Sergeant Tom Pate, a man whose incompetence was legendary. His appearance in court giving evidence for the prosecution was almost always enough to secure an acquittal. Sergeant Pate looked with horror at the reporter. Stubbs looked with horror at the cigarette stub.