The Skeleton Man

32

Dryden strolled to the bar of The Five Miles From Anywhere and got himself a pint and Humph a fresh hamper of bar snacks and two pickled eggs. The cabbie had swung the cab round so that he could sit in the driver’s seat while, with the door open, he had an uninterrupted view of the river running north towards the silhouette of the cathedral. Suddenly, flying into the halo of light above the town, a fat-bodied military jet appeared heading east towards the runway at Mildenhall. As they watched another took its place, the beginning of a necklace of flights completing their transatlantic crossing.

On the river a pair of black swans glided past on the current, their wings cupped behind them like hands in prayer. Humph threw them a handful of crisps and their red beaks riddled the water.

Dryden sat on the bank, the grass already damp with dew. ‘So. I think I know what happened,’ he said, sucking two inches out of his pint.

Humph stretched his legs out into the night air and a spring in the driver’s seat flexed. ‘I’m listening.’

‘With three blinding exceptions.’

‘Ah,’ said the cabbie, exuding happiness.

Dryden was surprised to find that he hesitated, aware that the mysteries of Jude’s Ferry were intensely personal. ‘The person I feel sorry for is Kathryn Neate.’ He pitched a peanut at the nearest black swan, and from the reeds on the far bank a pair of Barbary ducks joined the food queue.

‘She’s sixteen, she’s beautiful – well, on the edge of beauty perhaps. But it’s there, in the willowy figure, the angel’s face that’s growing into something else – a woman’s face. Men circle her, all of them for different reasons. Her father and brother, cousins, lovers, protectors, gossips, and the legions of the jealous. Her mum, possibly the only person who ever put her best interests first, is dead a decade. And now the men in uniform have arrived to take her home away. More men, circling.’

Humph hit the cab horn once to scare the ducks away and let Boudicca out from the back seat to sit on the grass. The greyhound edged forward until she could rest her large bony head on Dryden’s shoe.

‘Then – disaster. She gets pregnant. I thought George Tudor was the father. But now it looks like it’s Peter Tholy, a friend of George’s off the farm. A frail, vulnerable boy whose only other friends were girls. Peter and George have put their names down for emigration, and the Reverend Fred Lake has vouched for both. Either way, no one seems too eager to step forward and help Kathryn get through the birth. Peter wants to do the right thing but lacks the courage. There’s a discreet silence for nine months and then the boy is born. He lives two days. According to Lake the child died of heart failure, brought on by acute jaundice.

‘The funeral is the last in Jude’s Ferry – at least it should have been. Jimmy and Walter Neate dig the boy’s grave – in the old Peyton tomb inside St Swithun’s. George Tudor turns up to give Kathryn support – moral and physical – which was either brave or stupid, or possibly both. The Reverend Lake certainly thought Tudor was the father, but nobody thought the police should know, and given that she was over-age by the time of the birth and wouldn’t name the father that’s not a great surprise. When they all get back to Neate’s Garage that evening Tudor’s got news for them – the father is Peter Tholy, and he wants to take Kathryn with him to Australia. Walter is against, Jimmy is against. They make Kathryn end it then, make her go and tell Tholy the family’s decision. She walks out that last summer’s evening and never returns.’

Dryden bent his neck back, looking straight up into the stars. ‘Why didn’t she want to leave, Humph? Australia must have seemed like a perfect escape.’

On the river a cruiser appeared around the bend, the cockpit lit, a couple standing enjoying the night, glasses full of wine the colour of pear drops.

‘She was escaping from the Ferry, anyway,’ said Humph. ‘Perhaps she didn’t love Peter Tholy, perhaps she never had,’ he added, thinking of another girl.

Dryden got a fresh round of drinks, the last-orders bell ringing out as he stepped into the cool night.

‘According to Fred Lake the funeral was at 5.00 pm. The next thing we know for sure is when Jimmy Neate and George Tudor turn up at the New Ferry Inn with Peter Tholy – that’s sometime after the Smiths begin brawling in the yard of the inn around eleven. They drag Tholy into the bar and break the news – that Kathryn’s dead, that Jimmy saw Tholy fleeing the scene, even though he claims he’s been alone all night except for a visit to old Broderick. Don’t forget Walter’s there by now and this was the daughter he loved too much, the one who always reminded him of the wife he’d lost.

‘It’s a tinderbox. Everyone’s popped up with the beer and God knows what else. The Smith brothers have been trying to tear each other apart in the yard, with Paul Cobley the next bout on the bill. Blood’s been spilt already and there’s all kinds of emotions rising to the surface. It’s the last night for this community; in a few hours they’ll all be gone, scattered to new lives. There’s plenty of anger, and suddenly they’ve got the ideal target – stumbling, half-witted Peter.

‘And there’s another strong emotion, Humph, they want to close ranks. This is something they want to deal with themselves, especially in those dying hours in the life of the village. They’ve lost one of their own, and the killer is one of their own. Tholy was never going to survive the night unharmed, but it turned out worse than that. How do ordinary people commit murder, Humph?’

‘They don’t,’ said the cabbie, watching some swifts play in the floodlight mounted on the side of the pub.

‘George Tudor is the key to this,’ said Dryden. ‘If there’d been any doubts about Kathryn’s death then they’d have knocked Peter about, then got the police. But there are no doubts because George is convinced Peter’s a killer and that’s good enough for everyone, good enough for any sceptics, because George is his true friend, perhaps his only friend, and they all know that.

‘And even then they don’t tear him apart. They take him down into the cellar to try and make him confess. To hear it from Peter’s own lips. And that’s another step towards the grave for Peter, down the cellar steps, out of the light, away from the lives they’ve all led. Once that trapdoor closes he’s never going to see the stars again.’

Dryden drained his pint. ‘When he’s dead they leave him there. That’s the first bit that doesn’t make sense. How could they be so sure nobody would find the body in the days after the evacuation? – the engineers were coming in to survey the place. OK, Woodruffe hadn’t marked the cellar on the questionnaire – but the whole point of the survey was to double check.’

Humph shrugged, thinking about breakfast.

‘Meanwhile Jimmy and Walter bury Kathryn with her son beside the Peyton tomb,’ said Dryden.

Humph cracked his knuckles, a series of delicate pops. The dog eyed the black swans, gliding past again without a sound. ‘So where’s the kid’s bones?’ asked the cabbie.

Dryden shrugged. ‘Precisely. Question number two. Perhaps the animal rights people found them but discarded them.’ But even he didn’t believe that: if they’d found the delicate skeleton of a two-day-old child they’d have tried to screw Peyton even tighter. ‘But I doubt it. If you’re playing emotional blackmail you don’t chuck in an ace.’

Humph struggled to his feet. ‘Refill? I could run to the bar, there’s just time. I might kip in the cab – you’ll have to walk.’

Dryden nodded and watched as the cabbie headed for the bar, not so much a run as a lope. It was two miles along the riverbank to PK 129 and he texted Laura to tell her where he was and that he’d walk home. Humph would curl up with the greyhound on his lap, and any car park was home for them.

Dryden turned to look back at the pub. A single bedroom light shone out, the curtains open to let the breeze through. Woodruffe appeared at the sill, a phone to his ear, but turned quickly and retreated beyond sight. A memory surfaced to match it, a figure, seen briefly at the window of Orchard House on the day of the evacuation.

Dryden heard the strangled cry of something being killed followed by the ghostly flight of an owl over the river.

Humph tottered back with the drinks and a question. ‘And Imber?’

‘I think he was down in the cellar too, but God knows why. He didn’t really know these kids, but I think he wanted to be part of the village – that’s why he’d stayed. But he was a posh kid in the wrong place that night. I think he got swept along and couldn’t get out once things got really serious – and once Tholy was dead there was no going back. Did he try to stop them? Like I say, he’d be a brave man. A place like the Ferry, it’s all about belonging – there’s no half-way house. I think when it was over he played a part in covering it all up. He got them to agree to meet next day at Orchard House, to double check their stories, make sure it all added up. And that’s why Ken Woodruffe calmed the crowd down in The Dring. He didn’t want the army moving in before they’d got the whole thing sorted. It was their last chance to make sure nobody ever knew Peter Tholy died at the end of a rope.’

They heard the bolts being shot on the doors of the pub, but the bedroom window remained open above, the light still burning.

Now that the pub was shut Dryden took his time, sipping the cool beer which caught the moonlight in its amber heart.

‘When that stray shell uncovered Tholy’s skeleton I think Imber cracked up, he knew the police would be on to them all and I reckon he doubted everyone would keep quiet. It only takes one to blow the whole thing apart, to name names. Seventeen years is a long time; just imagine how shocked they’d all be that their crime had been uncovered. They weren’t a bunch of teenagers any more: they had their own lives, careers, families, perhaps children. I think Imber met one of the others at Cuckoo Bridge to tell them what he was gonna do, which has to mean the police. And that’s how he ended up in the river.’

Humph drained his glass and swung his feet back in the cab.

‘You said there were two things you didn’t understand.’

Dryden stood, cold for the first time. ‘Woodruffe was clear – Peter Tholy strangled Kathryn Neate. Squeezed the life out of her. But if the bones in the Peyton tomb are Kathryn’s she died from a knife wound – the blade thrust between her ribs and into her heart.’