Nightrise by Jim Kelly

dedicated fishermen behind FenFishing – would take you to the secret places and you’d go home with a nice digital-sharp image for the mantelpiece, holding a scales-topping prize.
    He flicked through the webcam options and chose a spot on the Little Ouse north of Isleham, not far from Flightpath Cottages
.
The image pixilated and re-set to give a clear view of the river between reeds, the water surface oily and disturbed by little whirlpools. A duck landed, water-skiing, before coming to rest like a flying boat. There was a houseboat in the distance, with permanent wooden boards set to link it with the riverbank, and a wind-generator turning in a blur. He thought he recognized the precise spot, a mile south of the inn at Brandon Creek.
    Dryden considered how much money you’d have to earn from such a website to be able to afford to keep it running, updated, virus-free. Finally he togged through a series of pictures of Setchey at work – fly-fishing, gutting a fish for an open-air BBQ. The image of his face: outdoor-healthy, a wide smile, mocked the vision Dryden couldn’t wash from his memory, with the single gunshot wound to the face.
    He sent the website an email, identifying himself and the paper, saying he’d like to talk to someone.
    Sia sat down and pulled the rings on two fresh cans. Dryden snapped shut the laptop. Not because he had any secrets from Sia but because his friend was a busy man – cooking, ordering, cleaning – and if he had time to sit down Dryden could make the time to talk.
    â€˜Radio says a murder – out on the fen,’ said Sia.
    â€˜That’s the splash,’ said Dryden. ‘Nasty.’
    â€˜And Humph said there was something else that I should ask,’ said Sia, holding the ice-cold can to his lips, nodding out the window to the cab parked just a few feet away. Humph was eating, ferrying noodles to his mouth with chopsticks. ‘Something about your father? He said you wouldn’t say anything unless I asked. He was right, wasn’t he?’
    â€˜Sorry,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s just been a shock. It was good not talking about it. But he’s right, I should. We thought Dad died in ’seventy-seven – the floods. Then I got this call.’ He told him about the road accident, the burnt-out car, the body on the mortuary slab. ‘They say it isn’t him – that someone stole his name, documents, his life. I have this fear – this premonition – that it
is
him.’ He looked out the window. ‘He lived here, on the Jubilee.’
    Someone came in for food so Sia went to serve them. In his carefully cultivated broken English he chatted to the woman, asking about her children, whose names he knew. His English was first class but he’d developed the pidgin version to make his customers feel at home.
    â€˜I don’t know, like, how it works here,’ said Sia, sitting down again, running a finger along a slim white scar that ran from his eyebrow to his chin. Dryden was pretty sure he hadn’t picked up that wound in a kitchen. It gave his friend an edge of suppressed violence which was a considerable asset on the Jubilee Estate.
    From the kitchen came the sound of his wife cooking.
    â€˜At home this couldn’t happen – in Singapore,’ said Sia. ‘If you’re dead they write it down. Everyone knows. You don’t get to keep stuff – medical card, driving licence, passport. You need papers for a job – for a pension. You’d be a non-person without them. And it’s not like they don’t ask. Police, on the street, they ask; you try and leave the country, they ask. Everyone asks. It’s like a national hobby. And they take all that away when you’re dead. They send people round to collect it.’ He laughed, draining the can. ‘No exceptions.’ He crushed the can.
    â€˜Yeah – same here, sort of,’ said Dryden. ‘You have