The Moon Tunnel - By Jim Kelly Page 0,2

V: a straight brow, jutting cheekbones, and deep-set green eyes, while the black hair was thick and short. His age was thirty-something, and would be for a decade yet.

‘I feel like I’ve been injected with concrete. I was so bored I nearly passed out,’ said Dryden. ‘Two people did.’

Humph laughed inaudibly, emitting a vaguely suspicious odour of cabbage and curry. Dryden lowered the window despite the damp, and took a second swig. One of the shops on the square had just reopened after a decade of stately dilapidation and now specialized in camping, climbing gear and outdoor pursuits. A mildly famous Alpine climber had been drafted in to cut the red tape. Dryden had been there to find a story.

‘The Fens’ own mountaineering supply shop. Brilliant. That’s really going to bring ’em in,’ said Dryden.

‘It might take off,’ said Humph, firing the Capri into life and pulling away.

Dryden considered his friend. Humph might be at conversational level in eight obscure European languages but his conversational English was as underdeveloped as the East Anglian Mountain Rescue Service.

‘That’s quite a recommendation from the owner of the only two-door taxi-cab in Ely. That’s your unique selling point, is it?’ said Dryden, enjoying himself. ‘You have a hackney carriage accessible to only half the population. And only half of those who can get in, can get out again.’

‘It’s good for tips,’ said Humph defensively.

‘I bet it’s good for bloody tips!’ said Dryden.

Humph allowed his rippling torso to settle slightly, indicating an end to the subject. He scratched his nails across the nylon chest of his Ipswich Town FC replica shirt and brought the cab to a sharp halt in a lay-by in the cathedral close, realizing they were going nowhere. The mist, suddenly thickening, caressed a buttress of the cathedral down which the damp was running in rivers.

‘Where next?’ said Humph, by way of a challenge.

Dryden was in no hurry, and indeed had not been in a hurry for several years. He turned to the cabbie. ‘So. What did the doctor say?’

Humph’s physical deterioration had been almost completely masked by the fact that he never got out of his cab. But a recent bout of breathlessness had prompted a surgery visit that morning.

‘Well?’ Dryden foraged in his overcoat pocket and, discovering a slightly bruised sausage roll, began to munch it with the Talisker.

‘He said I should lose three stone – quickly. He gave me a diet sheet. No chips.’

Dryden nodded. ‘What you gonna do?’

‘Get a second opinion. So, where next, then?’

It was a good question, and one which would have haunted Dryden if he had allowed it to. Humph, a divorcee who pined for his daughters, was stalked by the same ghost. They shared an aimless life punctuated by the relief of regular movement. Today, tomorrow, for the rest of my life, thought Dryden: where next?

There was no copy in the shop opening. The Crow’s deadline was just a few hours away. The mountaineer was strictly C-list celebrity status. Dryden couldn’t remember what he’d said if he tried. He’d taken a shorthand note, but like all his shorthand notes, it was unreadable. In fact, come to think of it, he’d forgotten the bloke’s name.

‘Let’s check the dig,’ he said, running a hand back through his close-cropped black hair. Humph swung the cab out into the traffic, its headlights scything through the gloom. The dig. Dryden had picked up a series of decent tales that summer from a team of archaeologists working in a field on the western edge of town. The onward march of the Barratt Homes generation threatened the site – indeed the whole western side of the town.

‘The invasion of the little boxes,’ said Dryden as they swept past the latest outcrop of executive homes, their carriage lamps dull orange in the gloom.

‘You’re an executive,’ said Dryden, turning to Humph. ‘An executive operator in the rapid transit sector.’

Humph burped. The Capri turned off the tarmac road onto a gravel drive and trundled forward, mistwrapped pine trees just visible on either side. As they crawled forward Dryden felt they were leaving the world behind: the world of shop-openings, deadlines and doctor’s appointments. Ahead lay the past, buried for more than a thousand years in the sticky clay of the Isle of Ely, and around them the trees dripped rhythmically, like clocks.

2

The cab edged its way forward, lifting and separating the folds of smog like some ghostly snowplough, its lights dim replicas of the invisible sun. Dryden, his head back on the passenger headrest,