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.’
Dryden had removed his ear bandage. A plaster hung like a cheap earring. He took her hand. It was an oddly parental reaction and he felt she looked sadder as a result.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. ‘Just don’t let me anywhere near that tosspot of a lord mayor.’
There was a loud bang and a cheer as the display moved towards its climax. Kathy jerked in her seat and shouted out with the pain. A St John’s Ambulance volunteer appeared out of the dark. He was two sizes too small for a uniform that was three sizes too big. He had to roll his sleeves up to take Kathy’s pulse, an operation hampered by a sudden explosion of firecrackers.
Dryden let the echoes die away over the park. The crowd ‘ahhhhhhhed’ as a rocket showered them with golden snow-flakes.
‘And what did the worshipful mayor do?’
‘It was the first sodding firework. All he had to do was light the blue touch paper and retire. Retire! Too bloody right. Let’s have a whip-round now’
Dryden brushed his hand across her cheek. A sign of intimacy a minute too late.
‘He got his chain tangled up with the rocket, pulled it over when he walked off. Next thing I knew it was headed straight for me. It hit me here.’ She pointed to her eye.
‘I was wondering.’
Kathy started to laugh, which brought on tears.
Two orderlies arrived to lift her into the ambulance. Dryden promised to come and see her later. Then he collared a medic who appeared to be in charge. ‘She gonna be OK?’
‘Eyesight should be fine. Luckily the rocket was so large it couldn’t penetrate the socket. But the bruising is nasty and the force of the rocket may have cracked her skull. The eye filled up with mucus from the impact and the fumes. She’ll just need to rest and let it clear, then we’ll know for sure. And she’s going to go into shock soon.’
Dryden caught up with Roy Barnett in the VIPs’ enclosure with a large whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His Bobby Charlton hairstyle had flopped badly over his left ear. He had been released from the Tower on Saturday and advised to rest and avoid alcohol. He was due back for a check-up in forty-eight hours. Dryden felt the appointment might be immaterial, he could be dead by then.
As Dryden approached he was just finishing an anecdote. ‘… So I said to the headmistress: Can I come too!’ There was a dutiful peal of laughter. Then he spotted Dryden advancing across the grass and tried to make a break for the civic Daimler.
The reporter expertly cut him off, flipping open his notebook as he did so.
Barnett rearranged the offending chain. ‘Nasty business, Dryden, very nasty.’
‘She’s going to be fine by the way, so are the kids. Thought you’d want to know.’
‘Oh. Yes. Good. Wonderful work by the emergency services. You can quote me.’
‘Thanks. Perhaps you can tell me what happened.’
Over the mayor’s shoulder Dryden could see some of his Labour Party colleagues. Most were smirking. Barnett had got to the ceremonial top in local politics thanks to his money. He’d made a £50,000 donation to the party in the mid-1960s – a bribe that secured three terms in the Mansion House and a nameplate on the party’s town centre HQ which read ‘Barnett House’. He was well aware he had no friends. He was even aware he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, a level of self-knowledge that made him easy to underestimate. Dryden noticed, not for the first time, his eyes. The rest of his face was crowded with a bigger person’s features. But the eyes were doll-like, black, and oddly threatening.
‘Simple accident. I bent down to light the fireworks and the chain of office slipped round the rocket. The fuse was very bright so I jumped back and the rocket fell over. Frankly – and this is off the record – I blame the organizers. It wasn’t very secure.’