The Skeleton Man

31

They saw the fairy lights on the pub as soon as they turned off the main road half an hour later – shuffling white and red bulbs neatly outlining the building. But the car park was nearly empty now that darkness had driven the evening trade home, or back to the boats. When Humph killed the engine they could hear a party somewhere out on the water amongst the floating gin palaces, the clash of glasses punctuated by overloud voices.

Dryden left Humph enjoying a nightcap from the glove compartment and found Woodruffe in the bar reading the Licensed Victualler. A barmaid moved to serve Dryden but Woodruffe waved her back, pulling the reporter a pint and then helping himself to a large whisky delivered direct into the pottery mug.

Dryden looked around. There were half a dozen customers at one table and two teenagers at the bar talking about Top Gear. Woodruffe’s hands, trained by a lifetime behind the bar, effortlessly rearranged the bar towels and respaced a row of glass ashtrays.

‘I’ve just been out to Lowestoft for the day,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice to conspiratorial. ‘Had a chat with one of your mother’s old friends; a close friend actually. That’s the thing about old age, it loosens the tongue, sweeps away inhibitions.’

Woodruffe walked to the barmaid, slipping a hand around her narrow waist, whispering in her ear. It was an intimate gesture and Dryden looked away. The publican flipped up the bar top and led the way to the patio doors which opened onto the riverside. There was a short jetty here for cruisers to use during the day. They walked to the end and Woodruffe stood at the rail, sipping his drink, his back to the water. The night was silent but for the ducks in the reeds and the rumble of generators from the cruisers moored on the bank.

‘You dug the grave for her, didn’t you?’ said Dryden, looking downriver towards the cathedral. ‘In the cellar.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ A denial without enthusiasm, Dryden sensed that Woodruffe was already aware how weak it sounded.

‘Right. Spain always a favourite holiday spot, was it? That’s when you started smoking Ducados? When’d you give up? The day you read about the forensic evidence they’d found in the cellar?’

Woodruffe shook his head. ‘This is crap.’ He turned round, looking out into the night. On the far side of the river a flock of birds rose off the distant fen and crossed the moon.

‘But they’ve asked for a DNA check, haven’t they – so they’ll know soon. They’ll match you with the stub. That puts you in the cellar digging the grave. What was it going to be: pills? A pillow over the face?’

Woodruffe looked away but in the darkness Dryden could see the moonlight reflecting off the tears.

‘You’d promised her, promised that if it came to it you’d end her life there, in Jude’s Ferry, to save her the pain, and to give her the peace she wanted. So you got it all ready – the grave in the cellar, the concealed trapdoor, the booking at the Esplanade in case anyone asked where Ellen was going. You’d always planned to cancel it. But then you lost your nerve. What was Spain – a holiday to buy her off?’

He tried to gulp the whisky but fumbled with the mug so that it fell into the river without a splash.

‘I bought a bar, back in the eighties. Sitges, down the coast. I’d always planned a long break and I said she should come too. I’d arranged nursing care, everything. If we liked it we could stay, flog the licence on this place.’

He bowed his head. ‘But she wanted me to end it for her, then, at the Ferry. Her whole life had been in that village, she was born down along The Dring, moved to the pub when she married Dad, I was born there. It’s like the place was part of her, like a limb. She used to say she could close her eyes and see it all, every door, every tree, and all the people who’d been there, even the ones who were dead.

‘But I couldn’t kill her. That’s what it is, even if she said it wasn’t. When I told her about Spain she cried all night, begged me to end it. She said that Dad would have done it for her, which I guess was true. Next day she started packing, and we never mentioned it again.’

He held a hand wet with sweat to his forehead. ‘And it was a new life, a new life for me. Mum had her own flat and everything, a balcony, the sea near by, the nurse was good, the doctors. I said she could stay and I’d come out every month, see her, check on the bar. Winters it wasn’t too hot, I said she’d get used to it; she said she couldn’t take the pain, that she was just sick of living really and why didn’t she just go home, see England again. She said if I wanted a new life why didn’t I just stay in Spain.’

He knelt on the boards, fishing with his right hand in the dark green water for the mug. Then he stood, black strands of weed curled round his elbow.

‘So you came back,’ echoed Dryden. ‘And the years went by and nobody found the Skeleton Man. But the police aren’t going to stop asking questions, are they? Not if it is your DNA on that butt. And they’re gonna keep asking you. They need to find out who killed George Tudor. Perhaps they think you helped. Kathryn was your cousin, if the family turned on George they’d expect you to back them up, right?’

Woodruffe wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, his eyes on Dryden. ‘Paper said they think Mark Smith killed his brother. They fought that night, we saw them out in the yard at the Ferry. It’s Matthew in the cellar – got to be.’

‘Bad news,’ said Dryden. ‘Matthew James Smith is alive and well and living with Paul Cobley – he’s changed his name – fixed himself up with a new life. They run a business out on the Fen – by the looks of it pretty successfully. One Greek holiday this year already – my guess is they’re just on another. To use a quaint term, they’re an item. But my guess is you knew that. That was what that argument was really about, wasn’t it? Mark wanted to set up a business with his brother but his brother had a better offer. Dirty linen in public, never a pretty sight.’

Dryden could see Woodruffe calculating. ‘It’s not George Tudor,’ he said. ‘I talked to Georgie by phone three days ago. He’s running a smallholding in the Swan Valley near Perth, Western Australia. Three hundred sheep, a grove of olive trees and a vineyard. Sounds like paradise.’

Dryden was thinking fast. ‘Why’d you ring him?’

‘We kept in touch.’

‘You told him what we’d found in the cellar, didn’t you? Why did he need to know that, Ken? There was a murder in that cellar and you’re shaping up as one of the main suspects. You need to tell the truth, and you need to tell it quickly. The police are gonna put you in that cellar – your cellar. And they’re going to ask questions, questions like did you provide the rope as well.’

Woodruffe’s head jerked up and Dryden saw for the first time the desperation he’d been hiding. The publican sank down to the wooden planking and sat, cradling his knees. ‘I didn’t go down. The others did but I didn’t.’

Dryden fished in his pockets for a packet of Gauloise and offered one. Woodruffe took it with a steady hand, the prospect of confession calming his nerves.

‘They’re not George Tudor’s bones,’ he said, his throat full of fluid. ‘They’re Peter Tholy’s. George was six foot, a carthorse. That sound right to you?’

Dryden tried to put the jigsaw back together, trying to picture the frail boy with learning difficulties Elizabeth Drew had described. ‘But Peter Tholy went to Australia – Fremantle,’ he said. ‘He sends cards back to Fred Lake, he visits his local church. Why would he end up on the end of that rope – he wasn’t a danger to anyone.’

Dryden took a step closer and saw that Woodruffe was still sweating in the moonlight. Under the jetty the river glugged and the cool stench of rotting weed was heady.

Woodruffe put the cigarette between his lips and hid his hands. ‘Peter Tholy killed Kathryn Neate because she wouldn’t go with him to Australia.’

Dryden sucked in some night air. ‘You’re saying Kathryn Neate was murdered?’

Woodruffe nodded, chin down.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ interrupted Dryden, struggling to take it in. ‘It was George Tudor who wanted Kathryn to go with him to Australia. Peter Tholy just made up the party – because George looked after him.’

Woodruffe shook his head, exasperated. ‘Sure, George wanted Kathryn to go with him, because he wanted her to have a life away from the Neates. But it was Peter that wanted to love her, wanted her as a wife. George went back to Neate’s Garage that night to plead for Peter. George was like a big brother to that kid, always had been since school. George likes to protect people – he tried to protect Kathryn, for her mother’s sake. Christ, she needed it. She’d never really grown up. After Marion died she went back in her shell and Walter didn’t help, couldn’t help. He couldn’t look at her sometimes, it was like Marion had come back to life.’ Woodruffe raked in some more night air. ‘And Jimmy isn’t the type to give someone a shoulder to cry on. So she didn’t really have anyone. But she was beautiful, and I don’t think she understood, you know…’ He looked at Dryden. ‘What they were after. She was too lonely to keep them away.’

He rubbed fingers into his eye socket, trying to clear an image. ‘George only turned up at the funeral because Tholy had promised Kathryn that he’d be there, because he was the father, because he loved her. But he didn’t have the guts to show his face. Someone else letting her down, see? It was little Peter’s child, and little Peter wanted to take Kathryn to Australia: the three of them, escaping. But Jimmy and Walter wouldn’t have it.’

‘And how do you know all this?’ asked Dryden.

Woodruffe looked away. ‘George and Jimmy told us – all of us – the next day. We met at Imber’s house. And I knew about Kath, through the family.’

Dryden remembered the open window, the sunlight on the orchard below.

‘They weren’t lying, Dryden, believe me. It was little Peter that loved Kathryn Neate.’

Dryden closed his eyes, trying to imagine night falling on Jude’s Ferry.

‘When the family got back to the garage that night, after the funeral, Walter told Kathryn she had to be straight with Peter, tell him to go without her. Jimmy said later she set off down to The Dring towards Tholy’s cottage, about six thirty. That was the last time any of us saw her alive.’

On the horizon the floodlights on the cathedral’s Octagon Tower blanked out.

‘Jimmy said it was late – nearly ten thirty – by the time they got worried enough to organize a search. He went down to Tholy’s cottage, tracing her steps, and George checked out around the Methodist Hall – the dance was over but there were still kids about. Anyway, Jimmy found her soon enough, behind Tholy’s cottage on the riverbank. He reckoned they’d met on the path where it cuts behind Orchard House. She’d been strangled and the prints were black round her neck – the fingers, where he’d pressed into the flesh. Jimmy said that as he’d come along the river he’d seen someone by her body, but they’d heard the footsteps and run for it back to the house, Tholy’s house.

‘Jimmy took her body along the river path back to the garage and then he found George by The Dring and they knocked on Tholy’s door, forced it off its hinges. He was alone, packing, and he said he’d been alone all night, that he’d gone to say goodbye to old Broderick, but he hadn’t seen Kathryn. That’s when Jimmy said he knew he’d done it because he’d been down by the body. So they dragged him out in the street and down to the inn.

‘We were all out in the back yard watching the Smiths fight. It was sport, really; everyone was drunk, and if they’d finished we’d have turned on Cobley next. We knew about them, see, knew what they were. They couldn’t hide it that night, couldn’t say it wasn’t true.’

He laughed, brushing the back of his hand over his lips. ‘There was gonna be blood spilt. Something about the drink, and leaving, it seemed to make everyone crazy for a night. And there was this blood-lust, you just knew it would end in blood.’

A pike surfaced on the river and then dropped out of sight with a plop.

‘Anyway, we was all watching the fight but John Boyle – he’s long dead – was out on the front step throwing up and he looked up the street and saw them coming. George had him round the throat so we knew then that he’d done something terrible because nobody stood up for Peter more than George. They said he’d killed Kathryn, strangled her down by the reeds because she wouldn’t go with him.

‘Everyone looked at Walter, of course. He’d doted on her all her life, since the mother died. He just crumbled at first, then turned on Jimmy, saying it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. He felt guilty anyway, about the kid, we all knew he’d never wanted it. We were all looking at him, waiting for a lead I guess. So he went for Peter, like he’d kill him there, so we dragged him back – told him we hadn’t heard Peter speak, that he had to have the chance.’

Dryden shivered, the sweat beginning to cool on his forehead. ‘So what did Peter say?’

Woodruffe shrugged. ‘He said he didn’t do it, said he hadn’t seen her that day at all. But Jimmy cut in, asked him if he was the father of her kid, and you could see he was because he couldn’t think of an answer. So Jimmy said there was a place they could find out the truth. The cellar.’

‘How’d Jimmy know about that?’

Woodruffe looked at his hands. ‘Like I said, family. Jimmy said he’d help, when Mum said she wanted to die, he said it was what his mum would have wanted. I couldn’t do it alone so we dug the grave.’

‘Did anyone think of phoning the police?’ asked Dryden. ‘What about the army, didn’t they have anyone in the village that night?’

Woodruffe shook his head. ‘She was dead, they weren’t gonna bring her back, were they?’ He paused, deciding. ‘I didn’t go down. But they said – later – said they’d snapped his neck. Snapped the runt’s neck.’

‘And Kathryn?’ asked Dryden, but he knew already. He’d held her skull that night on Thieves Bridge, the searchlight driving the shadows into the eye sockets.

‘They’d sobered up by the time they came back up,’ said Woodruffe, ignoring the question. ‘When they realized what they’d done, Walter was kind of pumped up, like he’d enjoyed the revenge, as if he’d left his own guilt down in that cellar.’

‘This was in the bar?’

Woodruffe nodded. ‘Walter said that justice had been done and that now we had to keep Tholy’s crime a secret, between us, for ever. They left him hanging in the cellar – I said the army’d find him but they said the trapdoor was good enough and they’d covered it up. Besides, Jimmy knew I’d left it off the plans the army made us fill in, so it wasn’t like they’d look for it.

‘It was Kathryn that was the problem. They had to hide the body. Walter and Jimmy hadn’t finished with the child’s grave up at the church, they were gonna do the rest in the morning. So that’s where they took her. Walter wanted that, insisted, even when Jimmy said they should bury her out on the mere. But Walter said she deserved more than an unmarked grave.

‘We worked the rest out next day at Orchard House. George said he’d cover Tholy’s tracks – made sure no one was ever suspicious about where he’d gone. Tholy had told him about his mother out in Perth, so George said he’d fix that when he got out there. He went and saw her and said Peter had changed his mind, that he’d gone to the Midlands somewhere on a big farm. That he didn’t want to be a burden.’

‘And he sent cards back to Fred Lake,’ said Dryden.

‘Look.’ Woodruffe held out his hands, and Dryden could hear the stress in his voice now, serrating the words. ‘I didn’t go down. He’d squeezed the life out of her. Jesus, she was sixteen, Dryden.’

Dryden thought about the chipped ribs amongst the bones he’d collected on Thieves Bridge. ‘You knew Kathryn well, all her life. Any accidents, violence at home, fights?’

Woodruffe shook his head, confused. ‘Childhood stuff – chicken pox, the usual. She was a quiet kid, she wouldn’t fight. And her dad and brother made sure she didn’t get picked on.’

Dryden stood, hugging himself against the sudden cold. ‘So who did go down into that cellar?’

Woodruffe shook his head violently, tears flowing now, but Dryden guessed that it was self-pity.

‘They’ll want names,’ said Dryden. ‘I’d be prepared for that. If they don’t get names they’ll put you down there – with the mob. So think about it – my guess is George Tudor, Jimmy, Walter.’

Woodruffe shook his head, but it didn’t stop him talking. ‘Walter. Yeah, Walter. You couldn’t stop Walter that night. But Jimmy didn’t – Walter told him to stay in the bar and keep a lookout with George, that it was his job to deal with Peter. We all just sat tight.’

‘So who?’

Woodruffe closed his eyes. ‘Johnny Boyle, Jack Forde, Reg Bright – I think. They were from the almshouses and they’d been drinking all night. The rest, who knows? Some went home when they saw what was up. How many does it take?’

Dryden memorized the names. ‘So – Boyle, Forde and Bright. How many are still alive?’

Woodruffe shrugged. ‘Reg died last year – they always read out any deaths when we have the annual service back at St Swithun’s. Johnny’s dead too, like I said. Jack – I don’t know.’

And Walter Neate’s in a geriatric unit, thought Dryden. He suspected that, given time, Woodruffe would use the ranks of the dead and infirm to people the cellar that night. ‘And Paul Cobley? That was it, wasn’t it…’ Dryden could see it then. The scene in the bar that night as the clock ticked towards midnight. They’d closed ranks, all of them, putting aside prejudices, and so Paul Cobley and Matthew Smith had escaped what had been coming to them – a beating, perhaps more.

Woodruffe didn’t answer. Dryden saw him in his memory again on the sunlit doorstep of the New Ferry Inn.

‘And Jill, was she there?’

Woodruffe covered his eyes. ‘I sent her upstairs. She didn’t see anything.’

Dryden wondered how true that was. ‘But that’s why she left you? Because of what you did that night? Because you let it happen. That was the end of it for her, wasn’t it?’

Woodruffe ignored the question, looking out into the dark. ‘How long have I got before you go to the police?’

‘I’ll ring DI Shaw first thing. Take my advice – drive up yourself, to Lynn. Tell him you want him to know the truth – and don’t leave anything out. Tell him everything you’ve told me.’

Woodruffe knelt again and splashed some of the river water in his face.

Dryden looked up at the moon and thought of the cool light falling onto Laura’s bunk on the boat.

‘And what about Jason Imber? If you met at Orchard House the next day he must have been there. Did he go down into the cellar? And who else, Ken? Who else?’

He looked up but Woodruffe had gone, fleeing along the riverbank, away from the lights, the people, and the questions.