The Skeleton Man

26

Humph was waiting for him in the Capri, a piece of surgical gauze held to his arm by a small plaster. The cabbie was listening to his language tape but still managed to exude a sense of painful self-sacrifice, one hand fluttering, but never quite touching, the wound.

Dryden got in and kicked out his long legs.

Humph disconnected the earphones and flipped down the glove compartment, retrieving two bottles of sambuca, cracking the tops of both and offering one to the reporter.

‘Lunch,’ he said, adding a packet of BBQ-flavoured crisps. ‘How’s Laura?’ he asked.

Dryden flipped down the vanity mirror and looked at his bottle-green eyes. How was Laura? It was a question he seemed, suddenly, least qualified to answer. He’d seen her briefly while Major Broderick had visited Jason Imber. She’d asked him then, again, about the bruising on his face, holding his head in her hands, and he’d told her about Thieves Bridge, the animal rights activists and the woman’s bones recovered from the Peyton grave, the ribs chipped by a blade. He talked about being afraid, and about not showing it.

‘You should tell me about these things,’ she said, her lips touching his ear. ‘We talk about what you do, but we don’t talk about you and how you feel.’

Dryden knew she was right, but he went on talking about what he did.

‘There’s this copper on the case, called Shaw, Peter Shaw. He’s kind of weird really. Young, driven, knows his stuff on the science, a real high flyer too, but then his dad was a DCI so everyone probably thinks he’s had it easy. But I don’t think so – Dad got chucked off the force a decade ago for fabricating evidence. I think it’s chewing him up, driving him on. It’s frightening you know, being around someone that focused.’

They’d laughed then and he’d taken the opportun ity to tell her what he really feared. ‘Don’t get too close to Jason Imber, Laura – we don’t know what happened to him. Help, there’s nothing wrong with that. But remember he can’t – he doesn’t know what he did, who he was. That could be a shock when he does find out.’

She shrugged, but Dryden could sense the irritation. ‘I just listen. I read the messages he sends,’ she said, touching her laptop. ‘He reads mine. I tell him about us, about your stories. It helps. He’s got nothing else to think about but missing memories, Philip.’

She closed her eyes, seeing that Dryden’s antagonism was undiminished. ‘Please, my neck.’

He’d massaged her shoulders then, knowing the long silence was a reproach.

Dryden rummaged in the glove compartment for a refill. Laura’s relationship with a man who might be a murderer disturbed him. What he couldn’t admit was that what really troubled him was that she had a relationship with someone else at all.

He rang DI Shaw on the mobile.

‘Tell me you’ve caught the other one,’ said Dryden before the detective could speak.

‘We still think he’s on his way to Coventry. He got the National Coach out of Cambridge yesterday for Nottingham, he’s on the CCTV. We’ve lost him at the other end, but he’s getting close. We know where he’s going, we just have to wait.’

Dryden inhaled some more alcohol. ‘Anything breaking I need to know about on the Skeleton Man?’

‘We’ve got a match on the gravel we found in the cellar…’

‘Orchard House, right?’ said Dryden. ‘Jason Imber’s home.’

‘Indeed. But it isn’t good enough for a courtroom – we’d be laughed out. It just helps if we get something else that puts him at the scene. And we’ll be interviewing Imber again once he’s recovered from the wounds to his hand. Forty-eight hours, perhaps a bit longer. He’s not going anywhere in the meantime.’

‘Charges?’

Shaw laughed and Dryden could hear him tapping a computer screen. ‘Imber’s keeping a secret. But the doctors say he’s genuine about the memory loss. We can’t push it, not now. Even if he did it we’re still short of a few crucial elements in our case, don’t you think – like a motive, the identity of the victim, the names of his accomplices, and any rationale at all which puts him in the river.’

‘Anything else on forensics?’

But Shaw did not intend to be pushed any further. Dryden’s deadline had gone, and with it some of his purchasing power. ‘I’m not aware I have a duty to update you in real time, Dryden – let’s have a chat after the weekend, OK?’

Dryden cut him off, angry that their deal had left him with one story he couldn’t print and another which made little sense. But the anger worked, as it often did, fusing two images in his memory – the gently turning bones of the Skeleton Man on his hook in the cellar and Humph, running a finger around the patch on his arm where the blood had been taken.

Dryden snapped his fingers, knowing just how much it annoyed the cabbie.

‘Surgical gauze,’ he said. ‘The Skeleton Man had a patch of surgical gauze on his arm.’

‘So – that’s narrowed it down, has it?’ asked Humph. ‘We’re looking for a blood donor. Is Tony Hancock the victim?’

‘Jabs,’ said Dryden. ‘When are you likely to need an injection as an adult?’

Humph tipped a packet of crisps back so that the last grains of monosodium glutamate could trickle down his throat.

‘Inoculation – a trip abroad?’

‘Correct. George Tudor was about to emigrate to Australia, so was Peter Tholy.’ Dryden recalled the tape they’d listened to on the riverside. Tudor had said he’d got a reference from the vicar of St Swithun’s – Fred Lake.

Dryden fished out the telephone number he’d dug from Crockford’s directory and rang on the mobile, letting a minute pass as he imagined the phone echoing in an empty house. Then a child answered, confident and clear, running to fetch Fred Lake. While he waited Dryden thought of the voice on the tape he’d played on the riverbank, and the more distant memory of meeting him on that final day. He recalled a disdain for tradition and the fabric of the old church, and a mildly trendy upbeat emphasis on community, and the treacly remains of that South African accent.

Dryden tried to conjure up his face from that last day in Jude’s Ferry, but the image was elusive, overshadowed by more potent images – an old woman crying on her doorstep, the men on the bench outside the almshouses watching the army clear the cottages along The Dring.

Footsteps clipped across an institutional floor. ‘Sorry,’ said Lake quickly, out of breath. ‘Summer holidays. We run a club. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s hell. Believe me, I should know, it’s my job.’

They both laughed. The accent was flatter, less distinct after seventeen years, diluted by the estuary English of King’s Lynn’s overspill estates. Dryden did his pitch, nearly perfect. He was writing a feature to run with the latest news on the body found at Jude’s Ferry. He needed a ten-minute chat, nothing personal, just a feel for the place and those last few hours in the life of a community. Community: the key word.

‘Sure. The police have called too – I’m seeing a detective in the morning at St Bartholomew’s – perhaps they’re expecting a confession.’ Dryden didn’t know if he was joking so he said nothing. ‘But like I said, we’ve got forty kids here and we’re off to the beach… packed lunches, I’m afraid, no room for a proper Cape barbie.’

Dryden let the silence deepen a few more seconds. ‘Just ten minutes.’

‘Well, all right, all right. Let’s say the pier at Hunstanton, at three. We’ll eat on the grass opposite the entrance. There’s a big pub there and they let us use the loos. Know where we are?’

Dryden knew it, had spent a childhood’s worth of summers on the wide expanse of sand, and a small fortune in pocket money in the jangling arcades. Humph drove north and they stopped for chips at a roadside van where the owner brought the food out to the cab.

‘I rang ahead,’ said Humph, by way of explanation, passing on a polystyrene plate layered with fish, chips and processed peas. Dryden got out to put his food on the Capri’s roof, a hotplate of peeling paint. They were in the shadow of an oak tree by the old A10. Looking west Dryden could see the grey-blue sweep of The Wash, waves of brilliant white surf marking the incoming tide, a distant charcoal line the coast of Lincolnshire. He dragged in a lungful of air and despite the carbon monoxide caught the exhilarating whiff of ozone.

By the time they reached Hunstanton the car reeked of lost holidays; over-heated plastic tussling with vinegar and petrol. On the green above the pier a few couples lay, entwined listlessly in the sun. By an ice-cream hut a group of children sat on the ground eviscerating plastic lunchboxes with manic concentration. Lake stood, cradling a half-pint glass of beer, and Dryden knew him then, remembering the anonymous face, the defeated shoulders. His hair had thinned and was now stretched in individual strands across his skull, a touch of vanity which robbed a still-young face of what youth was left. He wore a white shirt, the neck open, the collar frayed, and his narrow limbs, folded now to sit on the grass, seemed to bulge at the joints.

Dryden was just a few feet away when Lake smiled, clearing a space on a dusty Greek beach mat. ‘I thought so,’ said Lake. ‘I told my wife I’d met you before. That last day at the Ferry, yes? I’m right, aren’t I?’

Dryden smiled a reply and took a plastic cup of orange squash from a small diligent girl who offered it, remembering for the first time that he’d liked Fred Lake when he’d met him, liked the irrational high spirits and the absence of personal vanity, the frankness, despite the weight of responsibility which seemed to crush him.

‘I wanted to ask a few questions about Jude’s Ferry. The police are trying to identify the skeleton they found in the cellar. There was an audio tape made before the final evacuation…’

Lake stood, touching a teenage boy on the shoulder as he passed out of the group. ‘If – no, when – they threaten to riot, buy them ice creams. I’ll just be ten…’ he said, putting a twenty-pound note into his empty half-pint and pressing it into the boy’s hand. ‘My son,’ said Lake, by way of explan ation, as they walked down onto the hot, crowded sands. They retreated into the shadows beneath the pier, where the light shone in stripes through the decking above, creating a world lit through a venetian blind. Lake sat on damp pebbles and, producing a small tin of tobacco, began to roll a cigarette. ‘My secret, when I can get away,’ he said, lighting up and letting the smoke caress his face. ‘And I promised I’d keep out of the sun.’

They sat on a steep bank which dipped down to the sand. ‘George Tudor,’ said Dryden. ‘He said on the tape that you’d acted as a character reference, I think, for his application to emigrate. I thought you might have kept in touch?’

A skidoo whined out at sea, and Lake watched as a kite surfer rose out of the sea, twisted, and splashed back into a wave.

‘Not a word from George, I’m afraid. I think it was Perth in the end, that’s what he said anyway. But no, nothing, I contacted the church there as well to provide some help when he arrived but they never saw him. Still, we don’t do these things to be thanked. It’s just nice when it happens.’

Dryden didn’t laugh. Lake passed a hand over his eyes and took a quick drag on the cigarette butt before drilling it down into the sand. ‘You don’t think it’s George in the cellar?’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Seventeen years is a long time. The police’ll check him out. When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Oh, I remember that all too well. It was in the church, that last night at a burial service.’

Dryden tried not to react, sitting back instead and using his elbows to angle his face into the slated sun.

‘A burial? Who?’ he asked, his eyes closed.

‘Well. Er, where to start?’ Lake closed his eyes. ‘Jude’s Ferry had its own special problems, but it had all the normal ones too. Like teenage pregnancies. That last summer there was a kid – just fifteen – who fell pregnant. That’s very English, isn’t it – that “fell” – makes it sound as if she could make herself pregnant. Anyway, this girl – Kathryn Neate – gave birth to a baby boy just before the final evacuation of the village. The doctor asked some questions, as did social services, but Kathryn wasn’t telling who the father was and, frankly, it was her life. She’d kept it secret as long as she could and it was too late to get rid of the child. And she was torn anyway, between hating it and wanting someone to love. She was a lonely kid and sometimes people get confused about what love is. Anyway, when it all came out the family reacted badly. Especially her father.’

‘He ran the garage on Church Street?’ prompted Dryden, but he was thinking of something else; Magda Hollingsworth labouring over her diary, struggling with her conscience over the death of a child, before deciding to confront the mother over the rumour that she had killed her son. And the diary code entry for the child’s mother L.O. – each letter one place on in the alphabet from K.N.

Lake didn’t hear the question, wrapped now in his own memory. ‘Walter, the father, odd bloke – I guess aloof is being kind. He loved Kathryn, but it was sadly not the unqualified love that kids really need. Walter’s wife had died fairly young and I think he saw Kathryn as a kind of reincarnation – a symbol that she wasn’t gone completely from his life. Weird, but then the Ferry wasn’t a living example of robust mental health at the best of times. Anyway, it’s pretty clear Kathryn’s unwanted pregnancy didn’t fit Walter’s vision of his daughter, let’s put it like that.’

Lake turned his head up to catch the thin slats of sunshine. ‘Sadly the boy didn’t survive. The delivery was at home and premature. There were complications – jaundice, I think – and he died less than forty-eight hours after the birth from heart failure. Kathryn, a child really, was in bits, not surprisingly, but that lack of maturity made it worse, if that’s possible to imagine. She came to me, alone, and asked if the baby could be buried at St Swithun’s. I’ve often thought what a clever idea that was. She could visit him then, but only once a year when the villagers were allowed back for the annual service. It was a way of limiting her grief, I think, but still honouring her son.’

Lake was rolling up a fresh cigarette, agitated by the story he was telling. A wave broke out on the sand, the white water catching the sun.

‘So, did you bury her son?’

‘Yes. It was the last burial at St Swithun’s. But it wasn’t easy – there were two hurdles to jump. First, we had to rush through the paperwork and get the coroner to issue the death certificate. But we were lucky – I had contacts, and even in bureaucracies people can sometimes let kindness bend the rules. But the real problem was where to bury the child. Legally we’d been banned from burials in the graveyard from the point at which the MoD served its notice. They did not, and never have, guaranteed that the churchyard will not be damaged, you see – it’s technically part of the range. But the church is listed so they had at least to give an undertaking that they would seek to preserve it – especially as they’d told many of the villagers that they’d all be back within the year. But obviously a burial in the church is very difficult. Happily, there was a solution.’

He turned to Dryden, the stripes of shadow shifting over his soft features. ‘You know of the Peyton family?’ he asked, and Dryden felt the hairs on his neck rise.

‘Sure. There’s a tomb in the nave. It was damaged in the bombardment that went astray.’

Lake nodded vigorously. ‘Quite. Well, they were the patrons of the church – the Peytons – and we used to get visitors from the US on a very regular basis. It’s a very distinguished family, Founding Fathers and such. There’s actually a family association – in Baltimore – which made regular and substantial donations to the cost of the upkeep of the church and the tomb. Crucially, they similarly fund a church in Lincolnshire which holds the family vault of the other senior branch of the original family. They clearly had to be informed about the MoD’s plans for Jude’s Ferry, and they were pretty upset.

‘The long and the short of it is that they paid to have the vault emptied at St Swithun’s, and the remains transferred to Lincolnshire. I did try to argue for a year’s grace to see if the MoD would let the residents back but their view, an understandable one, was that they needed prompt and reliable access for their members. Their solution means visitors can pay their respects in one spot. There was also talk of moving the funeral casket and its statuary but I’m afraid English Heritage put their foot down there. Perhaps not the best decision, considering what’s happened.’

Lake stopped, and seemed to have lost his thread.

‘So, when Kathryn Neate’s baby…’

‘Indeed. Technically the Peyton tomb had been handed back to the parish and because the army had suggested the villagers might soon be returned to Jude’s Ferry the church remained consecrated – as it still is, by the way, although I suspect not for long. So St Swithun’s was available for burials. Kathryn Neate’s baby won’t be the first cuckoo in the nest in St Swithun’s – over the years I’m sure many of the vaults were reused. The bones were often dug up and put in the ossuary – the bone room, it’s just off the nave and a very fine, and rare, example in England. They’re much more common on the continent of course, where graves are reused all the time to save space.’

Dryden nodded, recalling the small Gothic doorway in St Swithun’s he’d tried on the morning of the bombardment.

‘We held the service on that last night, at dusk. It’s bizarre but it was also very beautiful. Colonel Broderick had heard about the service and had sent up flowers from his fields – lilies mainly, I mean hundreds of them, beautifully arranged. It was quite sensational actually, the smell was just astonishing, and I’m not a big fan of that kind of thing, but even I thought it made the service special. I think Kathryn was overwhelmed.

‘The brother, James, dug the grave with his father. Walter had been the sexton for twenty years, he seemed determined to carry on despite the fact it was his own grandson. The service was not well attended. They were ashamed of Kathryn and angry too, so the rest of the village kept its distance. Exactly what they shouldn’t have done, but there it was. It was really difficult. All those emotions, bottled up.’

Dryden searched his face where the shadows fell.

‘We were stood around the tomb, I remember, and we’d lowered the small casket down. Walter had made it with as much love as he could muster – but there was no name, no mark at all. It was St Swithun’s Day of course, and the sun had shone. The village was quiet. There were events planned for later – a dance at the Methodist Hall, games at the inn, and fireworks for after dark – but just then, around five, it was very quiet. And then the door opened and in came George Tudor. He walked up the aisle and found Kathryn, and he took her hand. And they stood there, together, as we covered the child’s coffin over with earth. I always thought it was the bravest thing, what George did. He knew Walter and James and I think he knew they didn’t have it in them to comfort Kathryn, not in public. George was a bachelor, childless, and I think he felt she should have someone with her, that it was wrong just to let a child bury a child alone. And he was a cousin too, on the mother’s side, I think. No doubt the tongues wagged, of course. And who knows, perhaps he was the father. I left them then, when the service was over, but I heard voices later from the vicarage – they were still in the church. Angry voices.’

Dryden nodded, pressing on. ‘So. If someone opened that grave now, today, they’d find a small casket and the bones of a newborn child?’

‘That’s right. The paperwork was all in order. The death was properly registered. And there he lies, Mr Dryden, just two days old, and nothing to take with him but his name – Jude.’

Dryden tried to picture the scene. Dusk falling over the village, and the Neate family making its way home down Church Hill.

‘So the service was at five – what time did they go home? Did George go with them?’

Lake looked up at the sky through the gaps in the wood above. ‘It was all over in twenty minutes. I went back to the vicarage and I saw them leave about half past five – I know it was then because we had a little party planned at the vicarage and that’s when people started arriving. And yes, I think George Tudor went back with them.’

‘Did you see Kathryn again?’

‘No. But I went down to Neate’s Garage later – about eight.’

‘Why?’

‘Before the burial service Kathryn had asked a favour. She wanted to get into Peterborough the next morning and asked if we’d give her a lift. She didn’t say but I know her social worker was there and she’d been in before, when she was pregnant. As I say, I didn’t ask, but the fact that she didn’t explain suggests that was where she was going. I don’t think the family approved of the social worker, of any outsider really, getting involved in the family’s business. The Neates were going straight to the new garage the next morning, so she was stuck.’

‘So you gave her a lift?’

‘I said yes at the time but then we decided, later on, that we’d drive up that night and leave the removal men to load up in peace the following morning. So I went down to say that perhaps they would take her if I had a word – but she’d have to get up to the vicarage by nine or they’d probably be off – we’d packed all the crates, you see, and we didn’t have a lot of furniture of our own. A lot of the church’s stuff had been sold at an auction in the village the week before – that’s what a lot of people did.

‘Anyway, I had to let her know that the arrangements had changed and she’d have to try her luck.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. She wasn’t in. Jimmy answered the door and we went into the kitchen. George was still there and they’d been drinking, there was a half-drunk bottle of whisky on the table. Walter was upstairs, they said, sleeping it off. I just told them to give her the message, that I couldn’t help with the lift.’

‘What was the atmosphere like? You said they’d argued in the church.’

Lake shrugged. ‘Like I said, George was family really so I guess they’d cleared the air.’

‘And that was it?’

‘That was it. I thought about going into the village to try and find her but it was late by then and dusk was falling. I could see lights down on The Dring where the dance was on, people out in the street, music. The last thing young people want to see when they’re enjoying themselves is a dog collar.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Did you see anyone else that night, before you left?’

‘A few. As I said, we had this little party, well a few drinks, for the sidesmen, the organist, the women who helped with the old people’s club, and the ringers, of course – those that were left and still sober. And my wife went down to the almshouses to bring Joyce Crane up – she was ninety then. We would have brought the others up, the men, but they were already in the inn. Free beer, you see. Our invitation was not the first on the list of attractions.’

Dryden nodded.

Lake raised a finger to his lips. ‘And Magda.’

‘Magda Hollingsworth?’ Dryden could see her now, bent over her diary, setting down the story of the girl who’d threatened to kill her baby.

‘Yes. I remember because I told the police, when they got in contact later after they found she was missing. I said she’d had problems with depression and suchlike but that I never thought she’d harm herself. But I saw her that last night, yes, walking out along Church Street, out of the village, towards Telegraph Hill. That was later – just before eight, just before I went down to the garage.’

‘Was that unusual, to see her out there?’

‘No. Magda was a great walker, which caused a bit of a scandal – I mean talk about narrow-minded. They said it was gypsy blood, that she couldn’t bear to be inside a house for long. Rubbish! That woman loved her home. I think it was losing it that broke her. She’d often go up there and sit by the water tower with a book – another dangerous eccentricity in Fen eyes, I’m afraid. My wife liked her, said she really cared about the place, the village community. But she was a bit much for most people – ankle bracelets, that kind of thing. They thought of her as a gypsy. And you couldn’t say a lot worse than that in Jude’s Ferry.’

Lake held up a hand, aware he’d gone too far. ‘She had friends in the village, good friends. Not everyone tried to cast her out. Bob Steward – one of our churchwardens – used to work for the water board, it was his job to check the tower every week and the water quality. He’d often find her up there on the grass, enjoying the solitude. I told her once that if she really wanted peace and serenity she could always sit in the church.’ He laughed. ‘Didn’t work.’

Suddenly there was a wave of screaming from the surf and they both stirred, as if wakened from a sleep. Dryden switched tack. ‘And Peter Tholy – he was a friend of George, wasn’t he? Did you help him with his immigration request?’

‘Yes. I was amazed he did that, a lot of people were.’

‘Why?’

‘Just so timid. He was eighteen then, perhaps nineteen, and I really don’t think he’d been out of the village but to go to school. But I guess he trusted George, and there was nothing for him here. I did warn him, you know. I said I was an immigrant too and it wasn’t all bold new horizons.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Nobody else in his life?’

Lake shook his head. ‘I knew the family actually, going back a couple of years – his mother went out first to Australia after she remarried. Callous woman, she wanted a new life and I don’t think she was particularly bothered if Peter followed her out or not. And there was Broderick, Colonel Broderick, he’d given Peter work and was genuinely concerned for his future I think. A glowing testimonial and references certainly – even if he was a bitter man.’

‘Bitter?’

‘I don’t know much – they were Methodists and worshipped in Whittlesea. But the marriage had failed and the son, the only child, had very much sided with the mother over the years. He visited, in fact he was often here in the holidays, but you could tell they didn’t hit it off. So I guess Peter helped fill the gap.’

‘So Peter’s father, then? Dead?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Many years before, long before I came to the Ferry in ’82. Farm labourer like his son. They were poor, genuinely poor. Those houses along the far side of The Dring were slums. The father had been married before and there were children from that marriage, I think. Anyway, complicated, if not by Fen standards. So plenty of mouths to feed and not much by way of a wage. Incredible, isn’t it? People used to stop and take pictures of those cottages, Americans mainly, come to see the church. That’s the problem with rural poverty, of course, it’s invisible. But it’s just as nasty as any ghetto. A little Soweto on Whittlesea Mere.’

‘Did you hear from him, from Peter?’

Lake leant back on his elbows. ‘Yup. I got cards from Peter and he made contact with the church in, er… now, where was it? Fremantle, I think. Yes, he was studious at keeping in touch, Christmas cards, that kind of thing. At least for the first few years.’

Dryden nodded.

‘But he never mentions George, which is odd now I think of it.’

‘Not so odd if George’s skeleton was hanging in Jude’s Ferry all the time,’ said Dryden.

A cloud crossed the coast, the temperature dropping suddenly, and as the rain began to fall the screams of little children filled the afternoon air.