The Skeleton Man

27

They drove back south in silence, Humph lost in the vocabulary of a Faroese banquet, Dryden massaging his battered skull. As they reached Ely the sun finally broke through the mist and lit the cathedral’s lantern tower, the damp lead of the vast roof steaming in the sudden warmth. Dryden leant his forehead against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. Fred Lake had complicated the mystery of Jude’s Ferry to the point where Dryden found it hard to see any truth clearly. Where were the remains of Kathryn Neate’s child? Had she killed him in a bout of depression after the birth? Whose bones had been robbed from the Peyton tomb? And what of the empty grave in the cellar? Had George Tudor’s act of compassion in comforting his cousin cost him his life?

Dryden checked his watch: 5.20pm. The early editions of The Crow would be printed by now and sometimes the delivery vans dropped some off in the Market Square, offering the paper’s loyal readers the chance to read tomorrow’s newspaper. The square was still crowded with market stalls, and a children’s roundabout played an annoying tune at the wrong speed. Skeg’s trestle table was on his pitch beside the Big Business tea bar, but there was no news paper seller and no Crow, just a pile of Cambridge Evening News’ and an honesty box, although his dog lay tethered to one of the tea-bar tables. Dryden walked briskly to The Crow’s offices but there was no sign of any papers there either, and Jean was placating a gaggle of keen customers who’d turned up to get first look at that week’s small ads.

Dryden jumped the stairs to the empty newsroom and logged on to check his e-mails. The US Peytons had been in touch.

Dear Mr Dryden,

Thank you for your e-mail – yes, we had been informed, but nevertheless what distressing news! As you may know, the society paid for the removal of the family remains in 1990 but we were unable to transfer the memorial and statuary due to the intervention of English Heritage. In retrospect we consider this decision was short sighted and ill advised. I thought you might like to know that we are reapplying to have the monument moved now – I attach the documentation – and have instigated legal proceedings against the Ministry of Defence for compensation. We hope to have the tomb fully restored in its new position at St John’s, Boston, Lincolnshire. Our own architect and restorer, who visited the original site in 1989, estimates the costs of removal and restoration at $360,000. We are reconstructing our website on St Swithun’s to accommodate an appeal form and this will be up and running by the end of the month. We hope your readers will be generous in their support.

Yours faithfully

John Peyton Speed

PS. I can’t resist a bit of personal history, if you’ll forgive me, Mr Dryden. My mother was a Peyton and was able to trace her lineage back to Sir Philip Peyton, one of the part owners of the Providence, the ship which made a landfall in Virginia in the third season after the arrival of the Mayflower. Sir Philip’s branch of the family had several manors in eastern England – including Nornea Hall at Jude’s Ferry – now lost of course but which stood on the site of Orchard House in the village. If you look carefully at the gardens you can still see the ditch which formed the moat. My wife and I had a most wonderful visit to the site in 1985. One of the truly memorable moments of our lives.

PPS. And if you do get the chance to visit the church ask for the key to the ossuary – an extraordinary room which gave us a real sense of all those past generations stretching back into history. Totally unique!

Dryden winced at the tautology in the last line, then sent himself an e-mail reminder to follow up the message on the legal action for compensation with the MoD.

Splash, the office cat, appeared and sat on his keyboard, a line of question marks appearing on screen. The touch of the fur brought back an image, the teenage Martyn Armstrong lobbing a petrol bomb through a pet-shop owner’s window.

He went online to find the archive for the Cambridge Evening News. Thankful for the slightly eccentric spelling of Martyn he quickly found eight articles stretching from January 1995 to November 2004. All were court cases involving animal rights demonstrations outside research companies in the Home Counties which experimented on live animals. The charges ranged from breach of the peace to assault, and most had resulted in short jail terms.

Armstrong’s address was different in each article, but all were in or around Ely, except the last, which was listed as no fixed abode.

‘Animal rights,’ said Dryden, shutting down the screen and running a finger along the still-tender wound round his eye.

Downstairs copies of The Crow had still not arrived so he cut down High Street Passage and into Butcher’s Row, stopping outside the display window of Foster & Co., Land Agents. There were fifty properties in the window, none of them matching the cottage next door to Paul Cobley’s he’d seen in the snapshot his mother had shown Dryden. He went in and a yob-in-a-suit, who was about to shut up shop, gave him an oily smile. Dryden liked estate agents, largely because they saved journalists from being listed as the country’s most despised professionals.

‘I was looking for a property someone said you had for sale – a cottage, one of a pair out on the fen. Victorian, I guess, red-brick, in need of work.’

The smile never faltered. ‘Right. You know, that’s so unlucky. I think we’ve just taken an offer on that and the vendor has accepted – so we’ve had to take it off the market.’

Dryden shrugged and headed for the door, wondering how long it would take for the prospect of a bigger commission to bend the rules.

‘But… you know. If you’re interested, I can ring the vendor now because nothing’s been signed.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Bit of gazumping eh? Can I see the details?’

He got the file from a pile by a cappuccino machine.

Albert Cottage was on Sedge Fen, a bleak farming district close to the edge of Thetford Forest, about ten miles from Ely. Dryden read the details and noticed the broadband internet link, the double garage and the access to the A12. Then he memorized the address and tossed the file back.

‘Actually I’ll give it a miss – a deal’s a deal after all, and if I offer more you’d probably stitch me up too, eh?’

He didn’t deny it, and Dryden left him fluttering around a new customer.

Back on Market Square Skeg was now at his pitch by the mobile tea stall, a fresh pile of papers on his trestle table. He pasted on a smile for Dryden but couldn’t hide the anxiety which made his narrow, childish body shake slightly as he handed Dryden a copy of The Crow.

Dryden looked into the wide brown eyes and guessed he was a few shillings short of a fix.

‘’Nother good week,’ said Skeg, dipping the waxed hair like a cap, forcing a smile beyond its natural life. He cradled a plastic cup of weak tea and a toasted cheese sandwich lay beside the papers, oozing grease. As well as the pile of first editions of The Crow there was also the Cambridge Evening News. Dryden read the banner headline and froze:

ARREST IN HUNT FOR VILLAGE KILLER

He grabbed a copy, threw some coins in Skeg’s tray, and read the first paragraphs, scanning the lines in a few seconds…

By Nikki Reynolds

Detectives have made an arrest in the hunt for the killer of the ‘Skeleton Man’ found hanged in a cellar in the abandoned Fen village of Jude’s Ferry.

The 37-year-old was taken to Midsummer Common police station, Cambridge in the early hours of this morning.

The man, who is understood to live in the Cambridgeshire area, had been interviewed on three occasions before being arrested at his home. It is understood no charges have as yet been made.

‘We are close to identifying the victim in this case, who we now believe may have been murdered by a lynch mob,’ said one detective close to the case.

Dryden scanned down the rest of the story and found nothing else that was new – and none of the details in his story.

But it was still a better story than the one he’d run. ‘Shit,’ he said, walking quickly away from the market-day crowd around to the back of the fish stall, where he stood amongst the discarded plastic crates still half full of crushed ice. He hit the automatic dial for the detective’s mobile.

Two rings. ‘Shaw,’ said the DI.

‘Dryden. Cambridge Evening News – front-page splash. They say you’ve made an arrest on the Skeleton Man case, which makes me look like a tosser. Anything you’d like to say?’

DI Shaw’s voice was low, and Dryden could hear the crackle of police radios in the background. He guessed he was still in the incident room at the New Ferry Inn.

Again, the maddening pause, time to work out exactly what he wanted to say.

‘It’s Mark Smith and he is under arrest for obstructing our inquiries, OK? That’s it. He has not been charged with murder and there is no intention to charge him with murder. His version of events on the last evening, when the brothers fought, is full of holes. We’ve interviewed him three times and got a different story each time. I think the fight was about something else, something a lot more important than money, but he won’t give an inch. This might convince him we are serious about finding out the truth.’

But Dryden wasn’t giving up. ‘And what if it turns out it was his brother on the end of that rope in the cellar? What if the News has called it right? You don’t know for sure, do you – unless the DNA analysis is back?’

‘The lab has not got the results yet, that’s true. But I do know it wasn’t Matthew Smith in the cellar.’

‘You do? You going to share that information?’

‘Sure. But I don’t want it in the paper.’

A shower of rain had begun to fall and Dryden edged under a shop awning, watching the crowd run for cover. ‘OK,’ he said, realizing he had little choice.

‘Jennifer Smith, the sister, backs up her brother’s story for that night, as far as she can. She says they got home together before midnight and drank in the front room. I believe her about as much as I believe her brother, but there it is. I went to see her again this morning to run through it again and told her Mark was under arrest. This produced a remarkable return of memory. Apparently, a year after her mother’s death, she got a letter from Matthew. Nothing specific, just saying he was OK, and not to worry. She didn’t keep it. There was a snapshot inside of him kneeling by their mother’s grave. She kept that. She said she’d never shown it to Mark. She showed it to me. They’re not identical twins – so there’s no doubt.’

Dryden let it sink in. ‘You might have mentioned the arrest.’

‘I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want some idiot running a story like this. It leaked from Cambridge. The News read me the story and I told them not to print it – it’s misleading at best. We have absolutely no evidence he’s a killer, and pretty good evidence he didn’t kill his brother as he was alive and well several years after the evacuation. If Mark starts talking, and more to the point tells the truth, he’ll be out by teatime. If he gets himself a decent lawyer he’ll be out anyway. So the News will look pretty stupid tomorrow.’

Dryden held out the paper at arm’s length. He didn’t care about tomorrow, journalism was about today. The story made him look like an amateur from the sticks. His stuff on Jason Imber was all over the front of The Crow while the News implied the police had already got their man.

‘A heads-up would have been nice,’ he said lamely, and cut the line. Dryden had thought about telling him what he’d learned from Fred Lake but calculated he could wait until after Shaw had interviewed the vicar the following morning.

Then his phone went. He checked the incoming number. It was Charlie Bracken, The Crow’s news editor. Looking down Market Street Dryden could see him, standing outside The Fenman in the rain, a pint in one hand and a thin wisp of smoke rising from the other. Dryden guessed he’d just read the front of the Cambridge Evening News as well and wanted to know if they were going to look second-best all week. Dryden took the call, calmed him down, and told him to wait twenty-four hours. In the distance he watched as Charlie walked happily back into the bar.

Dryden set off for the riverside and found Humph asleep in the cab by the slipway. Dryden thought again about that last night in Jude’s Ferry. The funeral of Jude Neate was the central event, and he felt convinced it was linked to the fate of both the Skeleton Man and the bones in Peyton’s tomb. He needed to know more about Kathryn Neate and the men in her life.

He pulled open the passenger-side door, the rusted hinges squealing. ‘The Stopover, Duckett’s Cross,’ he said, viewing Humph’s collection of airport mini atures in the glove compartment. The cabbie stretched out, his finger joints cracking. ‘Duty Free’s open,’ said Dryden. ‘Now, what am I having?’