The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  ‘That call?’ prompted Dryden.

  ‘Sure,’ said Broderick, turning away to use a mobile.

  Dryden took out the map Broderick had given him and spread it on the bar top. When the major returned he tapped his finger on the outhouses next to the New Ferry Inn.

  ‘There’s no cellar shown,’ he said.

  Broderick studied the plan carefully. ‘Well that can’t be right – a lot of time and effort went into making these things. They’re based on a series of surveys taken in the three months after the final evacuation – and on questionnaires the villagers had to fill in.’

  ‘So that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?’ said Dryden. ‘Not only did the cellar not crop up on the questionnaire, the engineers missed it when the surveys were done after the evacuation. Whereas the cellar under the pub is clearly marked,’ he said, stamping his foot on the bare floorboards.

  Dryden looked at the key to the map and the legend which carried the name Col. Flanders May.

  ‘Who’s Flanders May?’ he asked.

  ‘CO for the engineers, the map-makers. That’s why it was a work of art. Perfectionist – but then even they make mistakes, right?’

  They heard the thwup-thwup of the approaching helicopter and stepped outside.

  Dryden looked up into the falling rain, watching the black underbelly of the helicopter emerge from the grey cloud base.

  ‘The questionnaires – they still in the records?’ asked Dryden.

  But Broderick pointed at his ears as the rotors screamed over their heads.

  5

  ‘This is BBC Radio Cambridgeshire bringing you all the news at 6.00pm. This is Mark Edwards in the studio.’

  Dryden leant forward and edged the volume up on the Capri’s radio; the headlines were dominated again by the mounting death toll in Iraq. Humph flipped down the glove compartment and retrieved two miniature bottles of Bell’s whisky, part of the haul he regularly replenished on trips to Stansted Airport.

  They cracked the bottle tops open in perfect harmony. The cab stood beside the single-bar gate to the firing range, the landscape beyond reduced to a smudge of bog-green seen through the condensation running down the windows. Rain clattered on the cab roof.

  Parked up next to them was the BBC radio car, its telescopic mast now fully extended. Dryden swigged the whisky, shuddered and pushed the passenger door open, rust screaming from the hinges. The door of the radio car was open for him by the time he reached it, and he settled into the seat, folding his six-foot-two-inch frame as neatly as a deckchair. The radio reporter was sucking the life out of the butt end of a cigarette before crunching it quickly into an overflowing ashtray.

  ‘And now we go live to Whittlesea Mere Firing Range south of Peterborough where Jason Diprose has a breaking story…’

  ‘Indeed, Mark…’

  Dryden felt his guts tighten at the prospect of the live interview. He tried a smile in the rear-view mirror to boost his confidence but his green eyes, wary now, betrayed his anxiety at the prospect of a public performance.

  But Diprose was in full flight. ‘… I’m at the gates to the range right now and we have initial reports that during routine training an army patrol has made a gruesome discovery in the village of Jude’s Ferry – listeners will recall the village was evacuated by the army nearly twenty years ago to make way for military exercises. I’m joined by The Crow’s chief reporter, Philip Dryden, who was with the soldiers of the Ely-based TA unit when they went in this morning. What did you find, Philip?’

  Through the window Dryden could see Humph, head thrown back in an attempt to enter deep sleep.

  ‘It was very dramatic, Jason. We found a body, well – just a skeleton really, hanging in a cellar near the village pub, the New Ferry Inn. It’s pretty clear it had been there many years – perhaps since the evacuation in 1990. The wrists were tied – but in front of the victim. It was a sad sight, and there is speculation of course that it may have been suicide, but at this stage they can’t rule out murder.’

  ‘Any idea yet who the victim was?’

  ‘Too early, Jason. The military police have secured the scene and all firing has been suspended – initially for a week. I understand CID from King’s Lynn will be visiting the scene later today. The pub was the centre of village life, and most of the residents who had hung on to the bitter end were there on the last night. At the moment there’s a presumption the victim was a woman – but that’s all it is. The clothes have just about disintegrated, so they’re not much help. At this stage there are very few facts. I’d hope to have a lot more to say in the Ely Express on Tuesday, and of course in Friday’s Crow.’

  ‘And not the only drama today?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dryden, relaxing now that he’d found a spot to slip in his free advertising plug. ‘Before we went in there was an artillery bombardment of two targets on the edge of the village. There were two stray shells – one hit the church, and one the outbuildings next to the pub. That’s how we found the victim in the cellar. The damage to St Swithun’s was extensive, I’m afraid.’ Dryden had decided not to mention the opened grave in the church for two reasons: one, it complicated the story which was strong enough already, and two, it left him something to work on for the paper that probably wouldn’t get released by the police in the next twenty-four hours. He’d also decided to keep to himself speculation the victim could be Magda Hollingsworth; there was always a chance he could follow the lead up himself and get a new line for the Express.

  ‘What will be the reaction from the villagers – there’s an association, isn’t there – a campaign group?’

  ‘Sure. Friends of the Ferry. There’ll be some bitterness. They were angry anyway. This year was the first year in which they were not allowed to return to Jude’s Ferry on St Swithun’s Day. The MoD announced only last week that there will be no annual pilgrimages back to the village, and the courts have failed to back the villagers’ case that they have a right of return. What with the war in Iraq, the chances of getting back are fading fast – and I think they know that now. But the army did promise back in 1990 – in writing – to make sure the church survived. It’s still a Grade I listed building. I think this will be seen as a further signal that, as lost villages go, Jude’s Ferry is lost for ever.’

  ‘Thanks, Philip. Stick with us for a minute and we’ll talk some more after the rest of the local news. I’m sure there are some listeners out there who remember Jude’s Ferry and would like to share those memories with us. Do ring us or e-mail. But in the meantime…’

  The live feed switched back to the studio. ‘Quiet day?’ said Dryden when he knew they were off air.

  ‘Like a graveyard,’ said Diprose. ‘We led the lunchtime on twenty-five deaths in Iraq – outside a police station in Baghdad – so that’s how thin the news is. Most days it’s fifty and it’s the last item. Good job this turned up. Bloody rain on the roof doesn’t help – I better check they want a second slot. Do you mind sticking around?’

  They listened to the rest of the bulletin in silence, the radio reporter jotting down questions on a foolscap pad. Dryden fished in his trouser pocket and found a wine gum which he sucked noisily. The studio gave the go-ahead for a second slot on the story, largely because it was indeed a quiet news day both locally and nationally.

  The studio finished up the bulletin and came back to the radio car.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Diprose. ‘I’m here on the edge of Whittlesea Mere, a few miles south of Peterborough. Earlier today a group of soldiers on exercise in the army’s firing range discovered a skeleton – thought to be that of a woman – hanging in a cellar in the abandoned village of Jude’s Ferry. I’m joined again by Philip Dryden, chief reporter on The Crow, who was with the platoon which made the discovery. Philip, you were in the village seventeen years ago on that last day. Can you describe what it was like?’

  Dryden felt the almost visceral thud of the memory.

  ‘It was a very emotional day for some o
f the villagers, of course. I saw one elderly woman literally carried from her home. She’d been born in the house, her husband was buried in the churchyard, her children had all moved on… the village was all she had.

  ‘But, even then, I think many of the villagers knew that Jude’s Ferry didn’t have a future. The school had long closed and most of the youngsters had left. The beet factory shut down in ’89, I think… a real blow. And whatever you want to say about the village it isn’t the kind of place that would have thrived as a dormitory for commuters. It’s not thatched-cottage country at all and Peterborough’s still a good drive away, while there are other villages much nearer, much more chocolate-box. So the writing had been on the wall for some time.’

  ‘Right. But it seems incredible now, doesn’t it, that these people were moved, just thrown out of their homes. I guess public opinion has shifted since the attacks on New York, Madrid, London – but back in 1990 it must have caused an uproar, surely? It seems sort of medieval – how could the army do that in the twentieth century?’

  ‘Well, the fact is it was, you know, partly the villagers’ own fault. The MoD had always used the mere for exercises but in the eighties, when farmers in places like Jude’s Ferry were really struggling to stay in business, the government offered to buy the land. They put up a good price and an undertaking to rent back the property to the original owners at low rents, peppercorn actually. And it wasn’t just the agricultural land – they bought the cottages in the village, the shop, the pub, the lot. Once the big landowners had sold there was a rush to take the money because people feared that anyone who hung out would get caught by a compulsory purchase order. They said, the army, that the idea was to increase the number of days on which they could use the range for firing, but leave the village as a going concern. But when it came to the crunch, and the crunch was the Middle East, of course, and Saddam Hussein, they had the right to terminate the leases with just twelve weeks’ notice. I guess that’s the lesson, you know – it was always there in black and white, why write that into the lease if there wasn’t a chance they’d use it? So these people had less than a hundred days to say goodbye to everything, and in some cases each other.’

  ‘But there was some money too, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Sure. Compensation was paid for loss of earnings and some removal costs – that was all in the lease agreement as well. And there was this unwritten promise that the villagers would be allowed back, one day.’

  ‘Right. And we’ve had plenty of e-mails about that – and we’ve got someone on the line, I believe. A Mrs Drew, is it? Elizabeth Drew – from Peterborough. Hello Mrs Drew, what’s your point?’

  ‘Hello. Yes. I just wanted to say, you know, that Mr Dryden makes it sound like Jude’s Ferry was dying on its feet, but I don’t agree.’

  ‘You were a villager?’ cut in Diprose.

  ‘No. I was a rural officer for the county council, and it was my job to keep communities like this alive. So,’ she laughed, ‘I know I may be biased. I’m not saying it wasn’t a struggle and the beet factory closing was a dreadful blow but there were plans for the future – growing flowers was a developing local niche market, and the RSPB was interested in a reserve, the river could have been dredged for pleasure boats, the shop was thriving really. We had this group, which I ran, which tried to encourage enterprise – we got all the school leavers together, for example; there were start-up funds for small businesses, free skills training, a mentoring scheme. I know it wasn’t an idyllic thatched village, but what you couldn’t see was really special, you know – there was a community there, and I said then that once you cut the ties between the people and the place where they’d lived all their lives, then those networks, those ties, would be gone, gone for ever; and that’s what’s happened, hasn’t it? And now they’ve found this poor woman. And what’s it all been for? I –?’

  ‘I guess some people would say we can all sleep easier in our beds knowing the army’s well trained,’ offered Diprose, cutting in.

  ‘Well I can’t,’ she said bluntly. ‘What’s the point of going half-way round the world to defend freedom when we do this kind of thing on our own doorstep?’

  Diprose moved quickly on, reading out a few e-mails, most in support of the army. Finally he wrapped Dryden back into the item. ‘So what was Jude’s Ferry really like, Philip? Paint us a picture.’

  Dryden hugged his knees, beginning to feel the cramped space in the passenger seat. ‘Jude’s Ferry? You could argue the Fens are full of places like it. Lonely, forgotten, one-horse towns. That last day there were just fifty people left – something like that anyway. A pub, a shop and post office, a garage, a taxi firm, a redundant factory, a wharf that hadn’t seen a cargo in sixty years. And a church, of course. It was fifteen miles to anywhere else, and there was hardly any through traffic.’

  Diprose cut an imaginary line across his throat with his pen.

  ‘But it was famous for two things, Jason,’ said Dryden, expertly taking his cue to wrap up. ‘Your listeners will no doubt correct me but… I think you’ll find the village was originally called Nornea. The name changed sometime in the sixteenth century to Jude’s Ferry – a reference to the man who bought the ferry over the new drain and started charging villagers a stiff price for the crossing. Jude’s a derivation of Judas, of course – so it was all about betrayal. That’s the story anyway.’

  They laughed. ‘And the other thing it’s famous for?’ asked Diprose.

  ‘The claim was made – and it’s difficult to test this one out – but the claim was made that in its thousand-year history the village boasted not a single recorded crime. But that may change, of course.’

  ‘Sounds idyllic,’ said Diprose.

  ‘Sounds like they never got caught,’ said Dryden.

  6

  When the rain cleared, the landscape was crisp and clear, the distant silhouette of Ely cathedral a pinsharp medieval model on a toy horizon. They drove towards it through a mathematical landscape of right angles, ditches, drove roads and flood banks, intersecting with unnatural precision. The Capri echoed to the sound of Faroese, Humph’s latest eccentric choice of European language tape; a Nordic tongue which offered the comforting certainty of being totally redundant in the middle of the English Fens.

  Dryden wound down the window and took in the intoxicating freshness of the black peat, soaked with the sudden downpour. He considered the hanging skeleton in the cellar. An impromptu radio interview had not been the place to mention Flanders May’s map and the implication that whoever had owned the outbuildings next to the New Ferry Inn in 1990 had failed to indicate that the building had a cellar. It suggested, at the very least, the possibility of premeditation, and even collusion. Dryden presumed that the outbuildings were part of the complex of buildings linked to the village pub – and he wondered how long it would take CID to track down the licensee, presumably the young man Dryden had seen on the doorstep that last morning in the village.

  And then there was that partly open grave…

  The drove road brought them into town through a line of pre-war semis and a play park, the sun glinting now off the water pooled under the swings and slide, a woman smoking on a bench as a single child clambered over a wooden fire engine. Half a mile later they were in the town centre, the sudden sunshine throwing the shadow of the cathedral half-way across Market Square. A pair of seagulls splashed in a wide puddle, rocking a floating ice lolly wrapper.

  They dropped down Fore Hill, Dryden drinking in the distant view across the lazy river to a blue horizon as straight as a spirit level. On Waterside holidaymakers were beginning to appear on the decks of the white boats moored by the bank. Wine bottles long uncorked, they emerged blinking into the late-afternoon sunlight.

  Humph dropped him by the town bridge and drove off without a word, concentrating with unnatural excitement on repeating the Faroese for a wide range of chocolate puddings.

  Dryden began to walk the towpath south. He flicked open his mobile an
d did a quick round of calls, the schedule of numbers already logged into the phone’s memory. His position as chief reporter brought with it a modest set of duties, in return for which he received an even more modest salary, currently one sixth of that he’d drawn during a Fleet Street career which had spanned a decade. So, twice a day, every day, and three times on press days, Dryden made the ritual round of telephone calls: county police, local police, county fire brigade, local fire brigade, ambulance control – then repeated it for West Norfolk and Peterborough. In return for such extra duties the editor had agreed a small guaranteed weekly expense account which Dryden diverted exclusively to Humph, whose role as the reporter’s unofficial chauffeur was punctuated with more lucrative contracts ferrying school children in the mornings and nightclub bouncers after midnight. The Capri’s meter was stuck permanently reading £2.95, the wires hanging loose and disconnected beneath the dashboard.

  West Norfolk police confirmed that the body discovered at Jude’s Ferry had been transferred from the jurisdiction of the Royal Military Police to King’s Lynn CID. A pathologist would undertake an initial examination at 10.00am the following morning. Inquiries had begun in an attempt to trace the identity of the victim, and Lynn CID appealed for anyone with information helpful to the police to come forward. A number was provided for the purpose, and an assurance given that all communications were in strictest confidence. Dryden noted that, while a brief statement confirmed the circumstances of the discovery of the body, there was no mention of possible causes of death, or the sex or age of the victim.

  Dryden stopped walking and climbed the flood bank to look south. Ahead the river met Barham’s Dock, a 100-yard cut-off channel once used to load vegetables and salad crops direct from the fields into barges for the London markets. PK 129, Dryden’s floating home, was moored just off the main river. A former inshore naval patrol boat, which had played a small part in the great events of the last century, it had retained its camouflage grey, distinguishing it from the ubiquitous white hulls of the floating gin palaces of the holiday trade. On deck Dryden could just see Laura sitting in the shade of the tarpaulin which he’d rigged over the boat’s cockpit.