The Skeleton Man

Sunday, 22 July

38

What had the army statement said? That there would be two signal maroons – one at 9.30am and one at 9.55am, then the first bombardment of the chosen targets would begin at 10.00am. He had thirty minutes. He checked his watch: he had twenty-seven.

He walked to the iron door and taking off his heavy boot crashed the heel into the unyielding metal – a stone stuck in the tread producing a single spark which, together with the noise, reignited the dogs’ chorus. Dryden repeated the blow ten times and then, his heart racing, returned to his seat to listen for a response.

He searched the silence, finding again a distant aircraft, and now perhaps the sound of other flags – signal flags for the distant artillery, which he imagined flying over the village, from the church, the factory chimney, and the roof of the Methodist Hall. The flag that he could hear was close, very close. Was the old fuel store a target? What if there was another wayward shell?

Suddenly the bars of sunlight were gone, and the sound of rain plashing on the sills filled the building. The light dimmed and the dogs, still confused by the drugs in their blood, flopped down together. He closed his eyes, trying to bring relief to the tension in his shoulders, but the nerve signals from his joints seemed to buzz in time with the ticking of his wristwatch.

‘So this is their punishment,’ he thought. ‘My torture.’

When he heard the footsteps he thought he was hallucinating; they were at the door almost before he had accepted that they were real. But the clacking of the metal key in a heavy padlock was too crisp to be imaginary, and then the door swung in and he was blinded by the light around the silhouette – the figure short, stocky, with spiky hair making him look shorter still, and at his heels a wispy-haired terrier.

And before the Alsatians could react: ‘Saverne.’ He stepped in and closed the door. He looked at the docile dogs. ‘You knew the command word? Lucky man. They’d have scared you to death otherwise. They don’t bite, but you didn’t know that, did you?’

Dryden recognized the cruelty more than the face. ‘Skeg,’ he said, suddenly seeing what he should have seen. The lapel badges, the maudlin affection for the thin-ribbed dog.

‘I talked about my fear of dogs to you, didn’t I? Shared the confidence. Thanks for passing that on to your friends.’

Skeg was nodding his head as the terrier whimpered and slunk behind his heels away from the silent Alsatians.

‘Look. I do what I do because it’s right. I need to do it.’ The tight-wired frame was strangely animated, releasing emotion. ‘And Skeg’s not my name, all right? It’s Martyn, Martyn Armstrong. I like to be called that now, now I know who I am.’

Dryden didn’t move, sensing his position was no longer as precarious as it seemed. Why was he being rescued? The door was unlocked, why did he need anyone’s help to escape? And the name hit a note which made him see Elizabeth Drew hunched over her desk in Goods In.

He had it. ‘Armstrong – you were born here. Your father was the caretaker at the factory.’ And then he understood him. ‘And you didn’t like seeing animals caged up, did you?’

‘No. I didn’t like that, I’m proud of what I did, what I do.’

He rounded up the dogs and carefully attached their collars to a set of leads.

Dryden knew then why he’d come for him.

‘It’s the dogs, isn’t it? You thought they might get hurt.’

‘We’re supposed to be animal rights protesters. They made me shoot ’em up.’ He laughed as if he couldn’t believe anything that had happened. ‘Bastards. And they think we’re amateurs.’

‘You’re my guard?’

He nodded. ‘I’m supposed to make sure you were in ’ere until the shelling started and then I’m to get out and let you sweat. I guess they didn’t want you getting out and wandering into a shell. In here you’re probably safe, I think the army’ll be pretty careful for a while after the last fiasco. We’re a hundred yards from any of the targets – more. I said the noise would freak out the dogs, but they didn’t care. I don’t know what they care about.’

Dryden brushed a line of sweat from his forehead and flexed his arms where the stress was making the joints ache. Carried on the wind they heard the sound of a vehicle, caterpillar tracks whirring as it climbed a dyke bank.

‘We better go,’ said Skeg, checking his watch. ‘Twenty minutes – less – we need ten to get clear.’

‘You think I’m just gonna forget it was you?’ said Dryden.

‘Christ no. I don’t want anything to do with these people; they don’t really care about the animals, it’s a game for them, retribution. Like it’s an excuse to be cruel, to damage people. I want out. And I don’t fancy my chances with them when they find you got out. So I’m gonna do my own deal – I’d make a fucking good witness in this case they keep talking about. I got them into Sealodes in the first place, I worked there for a few months last year till old Peyton gave me the push. But he let me walk the dogs, see, that’s how I knew.’

He sucked in air, trying to keep his courage alive. ‘I’ll do it too, but I want witness protection. I got a chance that way, but you get blown to pieces it’s all over for me.’

He pulled the three dogs to their feet. ‘So we’re all going.’

They stepped outside and the soft rain was falling again in gentle folds like net curtains. The fuel store was on the very edge of the village, beyond the river, and so the cottages on The Dring and the New Ferry Inn were a distant jumble of grey shadows.

‘Will they fire in this?’ said Dryden, as Skeg tried to arrange the three dogs on the leads.

‘Probably,’ said Skeg. ‘Now they can, they will. They’re just more likely to miss.’ He led the dogs down to the river and then down some stone steps. ‘You’re gonna get soaked, the water’s up over the path, but just keep with me.’

They splashed in amongst the reeds, Skeg holding the terrier under one arm and the triple lead with the other. The water was at least six feet below the edge of the dyke so that their escape was covered from view, even without the comforting blanket of rain.

Dryden reckoned they were three hundred yards clear of the edge of the village when he felt the double percussion of the two maroons through his feet: a dull visceral thud followed by a rattling scream as the signal climbed; repeated again before the first echo had died. They scrambled to the top of the dyke and looked up into the grey sky. Above their heads the two signals exploded with a crackle like fireworks, the deep purple smudges seen for just a second through the cloud.

Skeg was beside him. ‘That’s the all-clear. They’re gonna wait for the rain to stop.’

Dryden shrugged, watching a pale sun fade behind drifting cloud. ‘I still don’t understand why you came back,’ he said, leaning against the damp grass of the steep bank. ‘Why you’re here.’

Skeg embraced the head of one of the dogs, squatting down. ‘We took the rats two weeks ago, before Roland and his friends got involved. We needed somewhere to keep them. The range was closed then. I knew ways in, you can still get a boat to within half a mile – they never think of that, see; with a small boat you can almost get to the Ferry. Then you turned up those old bones in the cellar and the place was crawling with coppers. It didn’t bother us – so what if they found ’em? But they didn’t – they didn’t even cross the river. I had the dogs in town so they made me bring them out for you. As a present.’

Skeg stood. ‘We should take our chance, let’s go.’

Dryden was about to scramble down when he saw across the fields that the rain was lifting and that the grey shadow of Neate’s old garage could be seen on Church Street. The house was lifeless, the windows black, the glass long fallen from rotten frames. But there was an outhouse, a workshop, and through the windows of the double doors Dryden saw clearly the sudden flash of an orange-red torchlight, sweeping once, twice, in the shadows.

He watched, his eyes aching with the effort of seeing through the falling greyness of the morning.

But there: again, this time from an upstairs window, the sudden flash of electricity, as unmistakable as lightning.

Someone was searching Walter Neate’s garage. He decided then, before he could assemble his fears. When he looked back Skeg’s head was at the parapet, waving, but Dryden turned and ran on through the wet field, exhilarated by the sudden motion, the rain running down his face. Ahead of him the light had gone, but he didn’t doubt what he had seen. Someone else had returned to Jude’s Ferry.