Sley drew in two lungfuls of nicotine. ‘So. How well did they know each other?’ repeated Dryden.
‘The allotments were a meeting place. For all of us.’
‘But before. How long had they been friends?’ Dryden could sense the boundary he was pushing at, sure now that just beyond it lay the link he sought. He watched Sley through the drifting smoke from the cigarette, and sensed he was calculating a reply.
Sley stood, drinking savagely, the liquid slopping in the glass. ‘They grew up together, in care. Brothers really, but for the accident of blood.’
Dryden nodded. ‘So what’s the big secret?’ But his thoughts raced: if Joe had been at St Vincent’s was he too embroiled in the action against the orphanage?
‘There’s no secret. It’s just private, isn’t it? They were orphans. Joe’s parents were travellers, Romany. Gyppos – take your choice. Petulengo – a name he was proud of, eventually. But that was the nightmare for him – being in care, being inside, being locked up.’
‘And you?’
Sley ignored the question, refilling his glass. ‘Joe lived in a caravan, a mobile home really – plush. You’d be surprised. Snug as a peg.’ He laughed again, and Dryden sensed a longheld prejudice, finally liberated by death.
‘Until…?’
‘Last year. He was diagnosed with the cancer, throat. He said he’d always promised himself he’d die in a house. Die in his own home. Crazy. So he bought the Letter M and then spent most of his time on that seat by the water, just looking at it.’
‘He had the money then?’
‘Oh yeah. He was never short, Joe.’ He laughed without a sound. ‘And when Mary died he’d nothing left to spend the money on.’
‘A wife – I saw the picture,’ said Dryden.
‘Yeah. She was older, MS. Pretty nasty really. He never really got over it, although most of us thought she was pretty aloof, focused on the money. She’d married it, after all.’
Dryden let the slight pass. ‘And the allotment?’
‘Outside again. He spent hours here. It was Declan who’d started first. The council gave him that flat but he couldn’t stand it. Claustrophobia – much worse than Joe – even when he was out on the balcony. He’d slept rough for years – that’s where he really wanted to be. He just used to shrivel up indoors.’
Dryden nodded as if he understood. ‘Is that why he drank?’
Sley shrugged. ‘Life he’d had, you don’t need an excuse.’
‘And the cannabis. Anyone else smoke the stuff? Declan?’
Sley shook his head.
Dryden stood. ‘You said orphanage. He was a Catholic, Joe – yes? I noticed a cross, a crucifix on a chain at his neck.’
‘Sure. St Vincent’s, with Declan. It’s closed now.’
Dryden smiled, enjoying the inevitability of fate.
‘Declan was a victim of abuse in the case against St Vincent’s. Was Joe another?’
Sley shrugged. ‘Sure. I doubt any kid who went through that place escaped, do you?’
Dryden accepted a second mug of beer. The glow from the stove was more substantial, and he stretched out his legs in the heat. He saw them differently now, these two men whose damaged lives had ended so savagely; saw them at a dormitory window, two pale faces, held close, dreaming of an end to childhood.
17
Dryden set out across town, the stunning canopy of the night sky an antidote to sleep. Wisps of mist trailed from the cathedral’s great West Tower like medieval pennants in the moonlight. On Palace Green a single muntjac stood chewing at what looked like a refuse bag. As Dryden crossed the grass the deer looked up and then sprang into flight, its white underside flashing as it headed for the cathedral park. The cold of the night was at its deepest and each shop window glittered with rocket bursts of crystal ice.
As he trudged towards the distant landmark of The Tower Hospital Dryden considered the extent to which he had succumbed to a dubious conspiracy theory. If Declan’s death was suspicious, what about Joe’s? Had someone really murdered them both? They were both witnesses in the case against St Vincent’s – but was that really a motive for murder? A more mundane explanation looked plausible: that a lonely, damaged alcoholic had taken his own life when the bitter winter had offered him the opportunity; and that a benign accident had sped Joe Petulengo to a quick death, where a lingering one had seemed a certain fate.
But what of John Sley? Could the sale of drugs be linked to either death? Was the production of marijuana, so efficiently organized, really just to ease the passing of a friend?
The gravel on The Tower’s drive was frozen solid, each stone to its neighbour. The great clock was still lit in its mock-Florentine tower, but had frozen at 11.45, a disc of ice smudging the normally crisp outlines of the Roman numerals of the face. The automatic doors of the foyer swished open and he lingered in the caress of the hot air within, letting his shoulders slump, easing the exquisite pain in his joints. The nurse behind the desk was a regular and looked up only to check the electric clock: 1.02am.
‘For Laura Dryden,’ he said. The nurse nodded. Dryden’s late-night visits were not uncommon. Laura’s sleep pattern was erratic enough for it to make little difference to her when he called, as long as he did.
Her room was tropical. As he closed the door the COMPASS clattered into life and he analysed his reaction: was he pleased that his wife was conscious? He walked to the bed and felt the familiar thrill of seeing her face, her brown eyes wide and, briefly, locked on his. He leant in low, and lifted her in an embrace.
He took the tickertape from the COMPASS.
A LETTER.
He searched the screen of the PC and found a new file marked HOLIDAY.
He opened the document, and lay beside her on the pillows to read. Laura’s consultant had suggested that she could leave the hospital for a brief break. They’d had to put the request in writing, and this was his formal reply. For more than six months now she had been free of the complications which had once confined her to her room: bouts of pneumonia and a series of blood infections had demanded constant observation. But now her health was stable, the lingering physical symptoms of her illness the only bar to a wider freedom – and even here there had been improvements.
But for Dryden the progress she had made merely doubled her schizophrenia: her world had always been divided between conscious and unconscious – but now the conscious world was divided between those hours when her recovery provided hope of a return to the life they had once had, and those in which it mocked their dreams, promising only the prospect of a slow and imperfect rehabilitation, a struggle back to the rudimentary movements of early childhood.
Tonight her hopes were alive and Dryden shared them, genuinely thrilled that there might be a life for both of them outside this hospital room.
The memo listed the conditions for her release from The Tower for a period of seventy-two hours.
• You will need to either transport a hoist or take the break at a destination which has one on site. We recommend a bridge hoist with a lifting weight of no less than 100lb.
• You will need a supply of waste bags and PEG-feed apparatus. We can provide these.
• We recommend that your destination should be no more than 45 minutes drive from a general hospital. Ideally it should not be more than 90 minutes from The Tower.
• You will need to either transport a wheelchair or have immediate access to one at your destination. We recommend you take one of those used at The Tower which can be adjusted to relieve pain and increase seating tolerance.
• Clearly it is possible to transport the COMPASS, although cumbersome. A small handheld version is now on the market and costs around £2,000. Unfortunately, we do not have this item, but we can order it for you.
• We need both a landline telephone number and a mobile number deposited with us at reception. We will give you the emergency lines for the hospital. We can guarantee an immediate response and retrieval of the patient to The Tower within four hours as long as all other stipulations have been followed.