The Skeleton Man

37

He went back to his chair and tried to think clearly. The sun had broken through and sets of golden stripes inched their way along the rough whitewashed walls. So morning: but what day? If the dart had put him out overnight then it was Saturday.

If he was on the old airfield then the police must be close at hand. Shaw had said they had the area under surveillance, but then Dryden bitterly reflected, they’d had Thieves Bridge under surveillance as well. Could they know Dryden was a prisoner? It was possible, as Humph had dropped him at Wicken Fen and must have raised the alarm by now. But he’d probably been smuggled onto the airfield at night or in the boot of a car. So perhaps his best plan was to devise some sort of signal to say he was a prisoner.

Escape was improbable. His mobile had been taken, the windows were shuttered in iron, the door securely locked. There were no other doors and the roof rafters were too high to reach, even with the help of the chair. Roland, he sensed, was far away. But Dryden suspected someone was keeping watch. Roland had said they wanted to make him understand that he should not give evidence if the case came to court. They wanted simply to scare him, a task they had begun efficiently and would have accomplished triumphantly if his fear of the dogs was not mitigated by the knowledge that a single word should render them harmless. But he could act scared if needed: it hardly needed a leap of the imagination.

He laughed to himself, trying to drive away the fear. The sudden noise disturbed the dogs and one began whimpering in a tortured half-sleep. The rats, Peyton’s rats he knew now, heaved in their pen. Dryden remained in his chair, hoping that it represented a position of authority. Remembering that dogs can smell fear he willed his nervous system into neutral, concentrating instead on how he could contrive to make a big enough noise to alert a police unit which must be within a few hundred yards of the building he was in.

He needed a tool of some sort, something he could rattle against the metal shutters. He was taking off his shoe when one of the dogs rose up suddenly and double-clamped its jaws with a hollow plastic ‘dolck’. It stood, disorientated, trying to clear the grogginess by shaking its head. When it saw Dryden its lips rolled back in a snarl. It tried to jump but its legs failed to respond and it slumped instead. Then its aggression overcame its bewilderment with frightening speed, and scrambling to its legs, its nails clattering on the concrete floor, it edged down the room until it stood before him, swaying slightly, one of its back legs occasionally buckling.

All its teeth now showed, and it began to drop its shoulders preparatory to an attack. A second dog was standing, while the third whimpered and struggled to rise.

Dryden knew what he had to do and knew he had to do it with authority and timing. He crossed his legs, placed either hand on the arms of the chair, and said the word as calmly and clearly as he could.

‘Saverne.’

The effect was miraculously instant. The dog’s eyes left his and began to wander listlessly. Relieved of its duty it staggered to the edge of the floor and slumped down, its chin on its forepaws.

‘Good dog,’ said Dryden, and regretted it instantly as all three dogs barked, building on the noise level and until they were baying in time. Dryden sat still, hoping the police might hear, and noting that no other dog answered their call.

Outside the only noise was the snapping of the windsock and, a long way off, an aircraft, the engine note switching as it prepared for some distant landing. And then he heard the maroon and a second later felt a jolt through the earth. He imagined the purple smudge in the sky overhead.

Part of him knew then, but his conscious mind tried to hold on to the world he had constructed around himself since coming round. A signal flare on a commercial airfield? Why?

The answer was chillingly simple. Because it wasn’t a commercial airfield. And it wasn’t a windsock flapping in the wind, it was a target flag. And he wasn’t near Coventry, he was in Jude’s Ferry, in the heart of Whittlesea Mere. But if it was Saturday, why the warning? And then he remembered something else, a fragment from the long drug-induced sleep. This room, half seen at night, moonlight at the shutters, a plate set down, an apple, some biscuits.

A voice: ‘Eat.’

And then he knew. He’d slept for two days. Yes, he was in Jude’s Ferry. But it wasn’t Saturday, it was Sunday, the day the army was due to begin live shelling again.