The Coldest Blood by Jim Kelly Page A

he’d strayed on to forbidden territory, and tried to fill the silence by uncorking the wine bottle he’d opened the night before. This was one of their small ceremonies: the shared glass of wine. As Laura’s condition had improved she was able to take liquids through a drinking funnel.
    ‘Anyway. Police have it down to suicide. Bloke had a history: depression, self-harm, the usual gloomy litany. But there’s something more there – perhaps he did do it, but I still don’t understand. He had plenty of cash, and he’d been drinking – and not alone. He’s got this mate called Joe, so perhaps they hit the bottle together.
    ‘I took Garry down to the allotments by the flats where the dead guy used to hang out in the summer. There’s this kind of little club there, and they meet in this shed with a stove. There was something really… exclusive about it. It wasn’t the Garrick or anything, but it was odd, like they were all there for some other reason… They wouldn’t tell me where Joe was, either, even though it was obvious they all knew him; said they’d pass on a message, but I bet they don’t. People never do.’
    Dryden laughed at himself and shook his head, holding the funnel so that he could let Laura sip the wine.
    ‘Then I went out to Lane End again – to St Vincent’s.’ Laura was the daughter of a north London Italian Catholic family who’d run a small café. He’d shared the whole long-running saga of the orphanage with her, knowing she understood his deep-seated reservations about such institutions, and the imposition of fear and guilt which held them together.
    ‘The priest in charge – Father Martin – took me round the place. He’s the only one left of all the priests there in the eighties. He actually made me feel sorry for him, which is a bit of a bloody miracle in itself. Anyway, two more kids have been found so the inquiry has enough evidence to move to court. His head will roll – but I doubt he cares now; he may not even live that long. Social services will probably get the real drubbing, and the police.’
    He brushed her hair then, having slipped a CD into the player attached to the COMPASS – II Trovatore .
    Outside he could see grainy snow falling in the super-cooled air. The drop in temperature with nightfall reduced the flakes to pellets of lightweight hail, blown with the wind.
    ‘It’s too cold to snow properly,’ he said. ‘But the water-meadows have got plenty of ice on them so they may race this weekend – or sooner. Remember when we skated at Burnt Fen?’
    He always paused for an answer, keeping alive the hope that one day there would be one.
    ‘I’ll dig the skates out just in case. I could run into town on the river – give Humph a day off. God knows what he’d do with it, mind. Probably drive round in circles.’
    He switched the brush to his left hand, trying not to think, trying to concentrate on the details of his day that didn’t matter, but the central faultline of his life was inescapable. After Laura’s accident he had been able to hope that one day they would be as they had been before that winter’s night. That he would go back to his job on Fleet Street, that she could return to her career as an actress – at that point a very promising career. Childishly he had held on to this dream longer than his wife. By contrast her hopes were a compromise, a deliberate attempt to lower expectations, to hope only for the next improvement, the tiny,almost unnoticeable triumphs which made her life worth living.
    Triumphs he had begun to despise. He suspected now that ‘recovery’ was a relative term, that he would never have his life back, never have his wife back, that the best they could hope for was an extended convalescence, a lifetime spent waiting beside a wheelchair or a hospital bed. And he despised himself for finding that that was not enough.
    She had sensed the change as well, despite being immersed in her battle to make her brain re-establish