The Skeleton Man

39

Up close Neate’s Garage was almost entirely obscured by ivy, the bole of which was as thick as a man’s torso and had split the façade of the Edwardian house, bursting out to fill the eyeless windows. The rain had stopped suddenly and the landscape was still, trapped in a paperweight.

Dryden moved towards a downstairs window and looked in. The ceiling had collapsed and the floor was obscured by distended lumps of plaster, rotting timber and the remains of a dead sheep, the lines of the skull softened by alpine-green moss.

From the back of the house came the thin creak of a door, and boots on floorboards. Dryden circled the building and came to the corner around which lay the rear garden. A blackthorn bush had burst out of the concrete path and writhed against the brickwork. Through the black maze of the branches Dryden could see a man standing with his back to the house, his head turned up into the grey sky. In one hand he had a spade and the other a garden fork, both flaked with rust. He retrieved what looked like a quarter bottle of whisky from his coat and took a long drink, wiping his eyes and mouth afterwards with the back of his hand. He seemed to be orientating himself to the main features of the old garden – an oak tree in the far corner, a path made from circles of York stone and a trio of apple trees which had once been expertly intertwined but which were now suffocating each other, the stunted fruit diseased on the branch. And close to where he stood the frost-shattered remains of a stone bird table.

One of the blackthorn twigs broke and the man turned, giving Dryden a half second to duck back behind the corner of the house. There was a silence, punctuated by the sound of a match struck, then unmistakably the gritty slice of the spade cutting through the blue clay upon which the village lay, and the slight sucking sound of the clod being lifted from the wet earth. And another noise, less rhythmic, the sharp intake of breaths which accompany spasms of pain. The methodical work continued, and Dryden thought of the graves which had dominated the story of Jude’s Ferry – from Peyton’s tomb to the cellar itself in which Peter Tholy’s frail body had been left to hang. And then there was another noise, unmistakable in that still air, the sound of metal on wood. Dryden peered round the corner and saw the man kneel, plunge his arms down into the trench that he’d dug and lift something free of the earth. He didn’t stand but sank onto his heels, amongst the loose soil he’d turned out of the grave. Beside him on the ground he’d laid out a mildewed blanket which Dryden guessed he’d found in one of the old bedrooms, but he didn’t place the object down. With his back to Dryden he rocked silently, cradling it to his chest, one hand rising to hold his head. Then he stood and turned and Dryden saw clearly what he held: a small wooden coffin caked in black earth, its white paint flaking. And Dryden saw the face of the man who’d reclaimed the body from the earth. The face was disfigured by dried blood, an ugly black wound cutting up between the forehead and the hairline. For a moment he thought it was indeed Jason Imber, returned to bury his son. But the skin was paler, the face dominated by the Celtic brow, the muscles knotted on the arms, the broken body seemingly supported by the blue mechanic’s overalls. And so he saw the face before him for what it was – that of Kathryn Neate’s brother, not hanging charred on the wire, but alive, a fresh gout of blood oozing from a wound on his head and trickling through his fingers.