The Funeral Owl by Jim Kelly Page B

before. He couldn’t decide if it betrayed stress or a need to draw attention to the bling.
    â€˜Sure,’ said Dryden. Although brought up in the Fens, Dryden had spent most of his working life in London, which was where he’d have been in June, 1999. Dimly he recalled this cold case, and as Powell had pointed out, the echoes of Truman Capote’s classic true-life crime novel
In Cold Blood
, which told the story of the brutal killing of a Kansas farmer called Herbert Cutter and his wife, and two of their children, by two armed robbers.
    â€˜That left four dead, of course,’ said Powell. ‘This could have been as bad. They did four properties in one day, a gang of three. First one was at Welney, a cottage. I’ve been down the lane to take a look and you can see why they chose it. There’s nothing else for miles, just the reed beds, the fields, the river. Owner was a widow in her sixties. They just burst in, tied her up. Then they searched the place, every room, clearly looking for something specific. It could have turned nasty because they couldn’t find it, so they asked her straight. She talked. It was right there, in the kitchen, hanging on the wall, so small they’d missed it. And that was all they took, an oil painting eight inches by six.’
    â€˜Experts then, art thieves?’
    â€˜You’d think.’ Powell used the heel of his palm to clear the watery eye. Dryden wondered how long he’d gone without sleep. With a murder on his patch he must be under pressure to give CID as much of his local knowledge as possible.
    â€˜The painting was by an artist called Louis Grimshaw,’ said Powell. ‘His father is more famous – I think Louis was Atkinson’s son. The two of them specialized in nineteenth-century scenes of industrial cities. This one was of Liverpool docks by moonlight. Worth fifteen thousand pounds.’
    Dryden whistled. ‘Not bad in nineteen ninety-nine. A decent’s day’s work by anyone’s standards. How was the woman?’
    â€˜They left her tied to the chair. Neighbours found her the next day. She said she’d been screaming for help for six hours. So she wasn’t great. Hospitalized, then released. She never went back to the house, not even to pack her things.’
    One of the Portuguese owners came out to clear their drinks. He talked them through the menu, even though they said they hadn’t come for food. They said they’d think about it.
    Once he was out of earshot Powell took up his story once again.
    â€˜Second one was at Friday Bridge. One elderly resident, a man this time, wheelchair bound. A terraced cottage, but the houses on both sides were empty in the day, which is when they called. This time they were after a watercolour. A moonlit scene of the Coliseum in Rome, half-buried in ivy and ancient trees. Victorian artist called Pether. Very collectible. Twenty thousand pounds.’
    â€˜So they always recce the house, and they know their art market,’ said Dryden.
    â€˜Turns out they’d got hold of an auction room catalogue plus the names and addresses of the owners of each item. Neat trick. So in each case they had the address and then the description of the item. Needless to say, a major breach of security on the part of the auction house. And yes, there was – in retrospect – evidence that they’d visited the scene before the day of the crime.
    â€˜Third one was a farmhouse at Upwell. Owners were out but their daughter was upstairs. She panicked when she heard them coming up the stairs so they coshed her, broke her skull. Then they took six paintings, all by an Italian artist of the nineteenth century, a series of rural scenes. Insurance cover was for two thousand pounds.’
    â€˜What age was the girl they coshed?’ he asked.
    Powell checked his notes. ‘Fifteen.’
    Dryden pushed the cutting aside and covered his eyes. Sometimes crime crept