The order to make a forced entry into No. 29 was given by hand signal and by the time they hit George’s front door they really had built up quite a speed. They saw the splinters fly from the Peking.
Dryden winced. ‘Hope they got the right address.’
After a brief attempt to break the world record for the number of uniformed police officers crammed into a terraced house, a group of three PCs appeared with George. He had been restrained – a procedure that had broken both his china teacup and his nose in about the same number of places.
‘Here we go,’ said Dryden, ripping the ring-pull off another can of beer. ‘They’ve been watching those repeats of The Sweeney again.’
Sia placed two plates of chicken chow mein on the table. The usual.
Dryden deployed chopsticks for the meal. ‘Hard luck, Gary.’
Gary didn’t even look at his. It was one of the eternal verities of life as a junior reporter that when shit did happen – it happened to you.
‘Talk to the neighbours before the coppers get to ‘em. Then get down to the station to see what the story is. My guess is he’s been arrested in connection with the Lark killing. We’ve got a line in tomorrow’s paper already – but get any details for The Crow. It’s too late to update now.’
Gary’s shoes banged noisily out of the Peking.
A small crowd had already begun to gather outside No. 29. Nobody was as excited as Gary. Dryden reflected that despite some serious handicaps, including phonetic spelling and Olympic stupidity, Gary was probably a born reporter.
Humph flashed the lights on the Capri. Dryden bolted his food, a bad habit he enjoyed, and jumped in.
‘Radio News,’ said Humph. ‘An accident at the fireworks display by the cathedral. Some kids hurt.’
The thought of blood and burns turned Dryden’s stomach. They both jumped as a rocket exploded overhead and silver rain fell on the dreary streets of the Jubilee Estate.
17
A crowd of about 8,000 had filled Cherry Hill Park – an open field that boasted one of the few gradients steep enough in the Fens for tobogganing. It provided a natural grandstand to view the display in the cathedral meadow opposite. Humph parked up at the Porta, the massive medieval gateway to the cathedral grounds. Dryden left his friend heroically attempting to extricate himself from the cab and ran through into the crowds.
The police had decided to let the display restart – the best way of keeping the crowd in the park and not fouling up the emergency services. In the cathedral meadow a Catherine wheel whirled while acrid smoke drifted off to be caught up in the cathedral’s pinnacles. The great oaks and alders of the meadow cast black flickering shadows; beneath each stood a volunteer with stirrup pump and fire bucket.
Two fire engines and three ambulances had come in through the lower gates and were parked up behind the small row of mobile fish and chip shops, burger bars and hot soup sellers. Laid out on the grass or sitting on the ground were about twenty children, surrounded by a knot of parents and St John’s Ambulance Brigade volunteers.
There were plenty of noisy tears but no sign of blood – both good signs.
Dryden headed straight for the fireman in the bright yellow jacket: the incident controller. He recognized him – one of the bonuses of local newspapers.
‘Wondered when you’d turn up. Good news is that the kids are going to be fine. Scared stiff most of ‘em but all superficial burns – although a couple actually took a glancing blow off the thing. They’ve got some nasty bruises.’
The fireman turned round and picked a large burnt-out firework from a metal box. What was left of it was about three foot long and about as thick as the core of a toilet roll. It appeared to be smeared with blood.
Dryden felt the earth tilt. Scared of blood. Just scared. He concentrated on a point between the fireman’s eyes. ‘And the bad news?’
‘The first one to get in the way of this charming object was your colleague. Kathy Wilde. Over there.’ He pointed to the ambulances.
Dryden found himself analysing his feelings as he walked across the grass, winding his way through knots of happy smiling families. Happy smiling families didn’t seem to be his destiny. The women in his life seemed to be exposed to bizarre life-threatening dangers. He half-expected to find Kathy in a coma. He wondered, not for the first time, if he brought them bad luck. He felt a pang of guilt, but not a very strong one.
Kathy was sitting in a wheelchair wrapped in a blanket beside an ambulance. She had a patch over a swab on the right eye and a bandage, wrapped around her head, above the left.
He stood in front of her without speaking. Her one good eye looked skywards. ‘This is so fucking embarrassing.’