The Skeleton Man

17

Plastic sheeting covered the well of the stairs down to the cellar and Shaw had to lift two folds to descend, holding one back for Dryden to duck under. Dryden stepped down, acutely aware that his pulse rate had picked up. Below, the brick floor glistened with moisture, lit by the halogen lamp which burned in the far corner, where a woman in wraparound scene-of-crime overalls worked on her knees with pincers. A small video camera stood on a tripod, its nose dipped down at 90 degrees to the floor, behind a sheet of reflective foil.

The hook which had held the Skeleton Man had fallen to the floor with his bones, but the broken screw end was still embedded in the overhead timber. They stood beneath it.

Shaw took a breath and Dryden sensed again that he was framing what he would say next.

‘We noticed as we worked our way across the floor that the bricks over here, in this far corner, were loosely laid down without cement, just bedded in the clay beneath. So we took up the bricks, as you can see.’

On the floor a white line edged a rectangular shape set into the cellar corner, the bricks that had been removed being piled in a neat heap to one side.

‘We dug them up and dug down. We dug down six feet – into the clay subsoil. Then we put it all back.’

The hair on the back of Dryden’s neck prickled and he felt sure the temperature had dropped.

‘What was in the hole?’

‘Nothing. The point is that the hole had been dug before, and then filled in. The stuff we took out was jumbled up peat, topsoil and some building hardcore. We’ve taken a look down elsewhere using an auger and the soil profiles are undisturbed. You’ll know yourself that if you’ve ever dug a hole the big problem is that there is always more to put back than you took out. And we found the excess; in the crates up against the far wall which we’ve moved out. So. It’s pretty clear that someone dug the hole, then filled it in, replacing the bricks.’

‘It is a grave, isn’t it?’

Shaw shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to come up with another sensible suggestion. It’s about five foot six long – which is a bit short – and five feet deep, which is a bit shallow, and two foot wide, which is narrow. A chest maybe? But I doubt it. No. A grave has to be the working hypothesis. Which prompts two questions. Who was it dug for, and why aren’t they in it?’

Dryden laughed, shaking his head. The officer working in the corner sat back on a small stool, massaging her hands.

‘The Skeleton Man, surely,’ said Dryden.

‘But then why leave him hanging?’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t time,’ suggested Dryden.

‘They had time to fill it in, put the bricks back. It was neat work. So either they abandoned a plan to bury someone in the grave, or – outside chance – they buried someone and then dug them up. It’s possible the infill has been used twice – there’s no real way of telling, although the experts seem to think it’s unlikely as the material is still roughly stratified, whereas if they’d done it twice it would be more mixed up. Make sense?’

Dryden nodded. ‘And there’s something else,’ said Shaw, nodding to the SOCO before leading Dryden back upstairs into a splash of sun. In a dry corner of the storehouse above plastic sheeting had been wrapped round various bits of timber and brick.

‘When the shell exploded it blew bits of the cellar roof out into the street. We’ve found these pieces, bits of the jigsaw. We found this too.’

Shaw drew back some sheeting. It was a trapdoor, about three foot square, made of wood.

‘This would have been at the top of the steps down to the cellar?’ asked Dryden.

‘Indeed. But look at the other side.’ He flipped it over and what would have been the top side was covered in small floor tiles – many of them shattered, but which matched those on the storehouse floor. In one was a small slot, cut through to the other side.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Dryden.

‘I can’t pretend we do either. It’s not that unusual – but it might be significant. The trapdoor has been concealed by blending it with the rest of the floor – the hole is for a crude key, you just drop it down through the slit, turn it, and pull up.’

‘Which is why it was never found during the military exercises?’

‘Right – plus the fact that the people running the exercises thought there was nothing here to find, so I doubt the squaddies were given much time to search the building anyway – certainly not long enough to find a door like this, and Woodruffe says the storeroom was full of packing cases and there’s still loads of them around.’

‘And what’s the explanation for the trapdoor being concealed?’ asked Dryden.

‘He says it was like that for as long as he can remember. He was brought up at the inn – his mother was the licensee, the father before that. He says he thinks the building might have been a shop at one time – hence the tiles, which are Victorian. In that context, tiling over the trap isn’t that bizarre.’

They walked out into the street.

‘But it adds to the picture, doesn’t it?’ asked Dryden. ‘The Skeleton Man, an empty grave, a hidden door.’

‘Yes,’ said Shaw.

‘I said the grave was empty,’ said Shaw. ‘But that’s not quite true. We found this.’ Another evidence bag, a cigarette butt inside. ‘Ducados,’ said Shaw. ‘Our exotic

friend again – and because the water hadn’t soaked down that far there’s some DNA material this time, enough for an ID if we’re lucky.’ Shaw smiled. ‘And I feel lucky.’