The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  ‘A friend,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s personal really.’ Dryden hesitated for effect. ‘It’s just that my wife and I have lost contact and we’re in the area for a few days.’

  ‘Right. Well – you could ask at Richardson’s – the big cash ‘n’ carry store, outside Ely. Know it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Ask there. But please, just say you’d heard from a friend, OK? We’re not supposed to give out contact details.’

  Dryden went back to the list, rang 118 118 and asked if there was a Jason Imber, one of his eight possible victims, in the Ely area: nothing, but a J. H. Imber was listed in Upwell, a village out on the Fens towards Peterborough. Ex-directory.

  ‘Shit,’ said Dryden, killing the phone and letting it slide to the floor.

  The Stopover Garage lay on a straight stretch of unclassified back road – one of the many ‘fen motorways’ which locals used to criss-cross the landscape. They could see a clear two or three miles in either direction along the arrow-straight carriageway. Mid-morning there was no traffic but come the rush hour Dryden knew the road would be a moving ribbon of commuters trailing home, avoiding the jams on the overloaded A and B roads.

  The four pumps stood at a spot where two drove roads turned off from the straight, one east, one west, running into the black peatfields like lost causes. A modern canopy had been slung over the pumps but, battered and dirty, it was a symbol of hard times, not modern times. A farmhouse stood on one side, abandoned now, the windows full of shadows and shattered glass. Back from the forecourt was a stand of pine trees sheltering a small bungalow and to one side a large engine shed built of corrugated asbestos. Once crisply whitewashed it was now peeling, but the giant letters STOPOVER were still legible in black enamel.

  Beside the pumps there was a wooden kitchen chair, set outside the shadow of the old canopy, on which sat a man in blue overalls drinking from a tin mug. He wore a peaked cap and held his free hand loosely in his lap. It could have been an everyday scene anywhere on the Great Plains.

  The route to the Stopover had taken them around the perimeter of Whittlesea Mere Firing Range and the security fence could be seen beyond the garage, through the trees. It was eight feet tall, topped with razor wire and as welcoming as a warning shot from a 12-bore shotgun.

  As Humph trundled the Capri off the tarmac and onto the gravel of the forecourt the man’s head came round, but he didn’t stand. Humph killed the engine and began to unfold a greaseproof paper package on his lap which concealed a Cornish pasty, a Scotch egg, a Yorkie bar and a single grape.

  Dryden kicked open the stiff passenger-side door with his boot. It was quiet now the cab’s engine was still, the hot metal ticking as it cooled. From the engine shed a radio played loud enough for the petrol-pump attendant to hear.

  The man in the overalls stood, one hand to a sore back. His hair was black, as oily as the rag in his hands, his age mid to late thirties, the eyes an emotionless blue against an outdoor tan. He was powerfully built, with a compact muscular frame, but he moved his limbs with exaggerated ease, as if concealing a tension within. His face was almost handsome, but the miss was as good as a mile. The features were too heavy, the brow Celtic and bony, the chin too weak by comparison – an ensemble which mocked the subtle beauty of the eyes.

  ‘James Neate?’ asked Dryden.

  His hand held the tin mug lightly, but the muscles on the arm were knotted under the skin.

  ‘Jimmy.’ The nod was cocky, a screen for insecurity, the smile boyish if not childish.

  ‘I can take it you’re not dead then.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ said Neate, tossing the straggly black hair out of his eyes.

  ‘Sorry. I work for The Crow at Ely. It’s about the skeleton they found at Jude’s Ferry.’

  Neate didn’t move his face, but he withdrew his leading foot an inch. ‘You probably heard about it on the radio,’ said Dryden. ‘I’m just checking on anyone who was in the village in those last days who would fit the age of the victim. Police called already?’

  ‘Phone,’ said Neate, drinking from the mug. Dryden noticed that Neate’s ring finger was bare.

  Dryden nodded. ‘What about your dad; Walter, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Dad’s fine, he’s still a partner in the business. We look after him.’ He slopped the dregs of the tea in the dust.

  Dryden could feel the interview dying on its feet. He wondered why Walter needed looking after but felt his witness had become hostile. From the Capri came the sound of Humph biting clean through the Cornish pasty, the upper set of teeth meeting the lower set with an enamel click. ‘You don’t sell food, do you?’ asked Dryden.

  Neate nodded and walked off towards the engine shed. A small office had been built inside to house the till. The place was deserted except for a brown-sugar Labrador which lay, as fat as a pig, on the cool concrete. There was a cold unit with a few pre-packed sandwiches, rolls, pies, biscuits, crisps and sweets. Dryden bought something he didn’t want and looked around as Neate got the change. A Ford van was up on a ramp for service, the entrails of the engine spilling out, dangling down like severed arteries. At one end of the shed logs were piled for sale, and down the side charcoal bags for barbecues.

  ‘How’s business?’

  Neate smiled, indulging Dryden’s attempt to keep the interview going. ‘No worse than it was at Jude’s Ferry.’

  He threw the rag onto a workbench. ‘In fact it’s better – we specialize.’ He nodded to one wall of the old shed which was covered with a board from which hung various car parts in cellophane wrappers. An advertising banner read FIRESTONE AUTO TIRES.

  ‘Left-hand drives,’ said Neate. ‘We do repairs, spares, the lot. Good market with the US air bases – they all get a car, pick-up, whatever, shipped when they’re posted. They need the indicators changed, the dip altered, that kind of stuff. It’s a tidy business.’

  Dryden nodded, freshly amazed at how little interest he had in motor cars.

  ‘Sorry about the questions,’ he said, turning back towards the cab, where he could see Humph had finished his lunch and was preparing for a siesta.

  Dryden got out in the sun then stopped and swung round so that Neate was closer than either of them had planned. ‘Who’d you reckon it is? The man in the cellar? On my reckoning there are only half a dozen possibilities… you must have known them all.’

  ‘If he’s from the village,’ Neate said, rocking back on his heels.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Dryden, lying.

  ‘We went back one year for the service, coupla years after Dad’s health started to slide. There was graffiti and stuff in the church, and a campfire down by the river. The army can’t keep people out. There’s a fence here, behind the pines, and there’s a hole – they don’t check as often as they say. OK they’ve patched it up, but there are others along the boundary. I’ve seen people on the far side, dusk, with guns, out for the rabbits and pheasants. I don’t think you’ll ever find out who it is. That’s why he chose Jude’s Ferry, he doesn’t want you or anyone else to know who he is, or why he died.’

  Dryden nodded, thinking it had been quite a speech off the cuff. ‘Don’t suppose you remember Colonel Broderick? He ran the cut-flower business by the allotments. Blooms – that the name?’

  Neate was looking at the wreck that was Humph’s beloved cab. He squatted down, looking under the rear bumper, examining a dent in the boot.

  ‘Everybody knew everybody in the Ferry,’ he said. ‘But it’s not gonna be him, is it? He must have been – what – seventy?’

  ‘I was just interested. I know his son.’

  Neate straightened up. ‘The colonel lived alone and grew his flowers. The son visited, holidays and stuff. Didn’t seem especially close, you know. Dutiful I guess. By the end the old man was in a wheelchair, so he had help, but we didn’t see much more of the son, less if anything. Anyway, the Brodericks had money so they didn’t talk to people like us except when they wanted their four-wheel drive
s filled up.’

  ‘The son’s a major in the TA, in fact he was with us when we found chummy in the cellar,’ said Dryden, wondering again about Broderick’s motives.

  A car swung in off the road and skidded on the gravel, small stones pinging off Humph’s Capri. It was an American pick-up with giant wheels and a picture paint job of a Red Indian on the driver’s door.

  Neate looked at his watch, a flash of anger disfiguring the carefully neutral features. A woman got out, long blonde hair black at the roots, jeans and T-shirt leaving three inches of flesh exposed at the waist.

  As she walked up she threw Neate a bunch of keys. ‘He’s calling later to get her,’ she said, the accent more mid-Fen than Midwest.

  ‘Hi. I’m Philip Dryden. The Crow at Ely.’

  She came up close, her breasts moving easily under a loose shirt. Her eyes, brown and frank, lingered on his. ‘I’m Julie Watts. What’s this about then, Jimmy?’ she asked, not looking at him. ‘It’s the Ferry, isn’t it? Dump of a place. Best thing about it was the road out.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Sure. We lived on The Dring. Jim didn’t talk to people like us then.’ She laughed, running a hand round Neate’s waist.

  ‘I was asking about Broderick – the cut-flower business.’

  ‘Him!’ She patted Neate’s stomach as he tried to wriggle free. ‘Well we all knew about him.’

  She took out a packet of cigarettes from her jeans and lit up, offering one out. Dryden shook his head, and so did Neate, but he rolled his tongue along his bottom lip.

  ‘That’s just gossip,’ said Neate, trying to stop her hands worming inside his overalls, unable to hide his embarrassment.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Since when did you not enjoy bad-mouthing someone from the Ferry?’

  She grabbed the hair at the nape of his neck. ‘You’re right,’ she said, turning back towards Dryden. ‘It probably was just talk. That’s all we had at the Ferry – talk. It was the village where nothing happened.’

  ‘Except something happened in the end,’ said Dryden.

  ‘We can’t help,’ said Neate. ‘I need to get started on the Yank’s engine,’ he said, walking away.

  She looked for a long moment into Dryden’s eyes. ‘Don’t mind Jimmy, he’s not the sociable type. But the best mechanic in the Fens according to his dad – very proud of him, is Walter. In fact that’s all Jimmy really cares about, making sure Dad’s still proud of him. He comes out sometimes from the home, sits in a chair and watches the traffic go by. That’s what counts as fun for the Neates.’

  Dryden looked around. ‘So Walter’s never lived out here?’

  She shook her head, coiling the hair behind one ear. ‘A few years. A home now, council geriatric unit at Ely. Not much of a memory our Walter, lucky if he can get the season right. He’s sixty-six, looks a decade older, mind. Jimmy visits and they talk about cars, that’s the kind of family it is, you see, close – but superficial. As long as Jimmy thinks Walter’s proud of him he’s happy.’

  She smiled, and Dryden tried to guess how quickly the good looks would fade to match the cynicism.

  ‘So what did they say about Colonel Broderick?’ said Dryden.

  ‘Like Jimmy says, villages are all about gossip. Colonel Broderick lived alone; charming, polite, with an interest in flowers. He employed young men to work his fields. What d’you think they said about him? Ask me, I don’t think the old bloke had it in him. Doesn’t mean to say it didn’t go on – you’d be surprised, a little place like the Ferry.’

  They watched as Neate threw up the hood on the pick-up and began noisily to examine the engine within.

  Dryden tried another line. ‘You there the last night – at the village?’

  She gave him a sideways look. The lower lip, as full as the top, jutted out.

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I was fifteen so we got to dance in the Methodist Hall, what more could a young girl want? Orange squash all round and choccy biccies for the neat and tidy. Good job they didn’t smell the cigarettes we were smoking round the back. Most of the lads were allowed in the pub, but not the girls. That’s the crappy bit about living in a small place, you can’t lie about your age. Place was medieval.’

  ‘Jimmy take you to the dance?’

  She laughed. ‘Nope. I was chasing him. In fact I chased him all night.’

  ‘Catch him?’

  ‘Not that night. He had other things on his mind. Took me ten years to corner him, but I got my man. Lucky me.’ She bit her lip.

  Dryden would have asked the next question but Neate was walking back, kicking up the red dust with his boots. He went to the back of the cab and, down on one knee, looked under the wheel arch.

  ‘The exhaust is hanging loose, I could see from over there. It’ll be off soon. I could do that for you – and fill the dent.’

  Dryden nodded, opening the passenger side door. ‘Thanks. But I think he likes it that way.’

  Humph woke.

  ‘The man wants to fix the car,’ said Dryden. ‘The exhaust is gonna drop off.’

  ‘Let it,’ said the cabbie, firing up the engine.

  As they drove off Dryden watched them in the rear-view mirror. Jimmy Neate broke away quickly, his head and shoulders back beneath the hood of the pick-up. But Julie Watts watched them go, her weight on one leg, a hand shading her eyes from the sun.

  16

  DI Shaw spread the pictures on the wooden trestle table, which was the only furniture in the detective’s office – the old bottle store behind the bar of the New Ferry Inn. Each print was set precisely and neatly apart, a gallery of disfigurement. Dryden sipped bitumen-strong coffee from a mug that Shaw had given him marked THE TEAM. At the firing-range gate he’d got a lift in Shaw’s car, an immaculate black Land Rover with the multicoloured sail of a windsurf board and a beach-kite furled on the roof like emerging butterflies. The interior had been unnervingly neat and well ordered, a characteristic which made Dryden anxious. The pictures made him anxious too, calling up an unspecific sense of guilt. He didn’t lean forward but his eye was drawn to that first print, which Shaw was tapping rhythmically with a ballpoint.

  ‘Daughter of the company’s on-site assistant chemist,’ he said. Shaw was early-thirties, white open-necked shirt and an outdoor tan, the skin like slightly creased quality leather.

  ‘Mary Christine’s the name. The company, Lincoln Life Sciences, tests cosmetics for the big corporates, using rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and dogs. It’s been the subject of low-level animal rights interest for some years. We knew that extremists based in the East Midlands had become interested and so security at the site was increased.’

  He tapped the picture again. ‘Unfortunately that wasn’t where they struck. Mary Christine opens the post at home just one day a week – Saturday. Rest of the time she’s at boarding school. She’s thirteen years old, thirteen years and two months. So that morning there was a parcel with her name on it with the rest of the letters on the mat. A thin parcel, just the right size for the letterbox. No stamp, delivered by hand, but there’s no CCTV.

  ‘She sits on the doormat to open it up. She’s excited because she doesn’t get post often and when she does it’s usually a present from her gran. It’s June, but it’s Christmas for Mary Christine, until she gets the bubble wrap off. Then it explodes in her face.’

  The burn covered the forehead and left cheek, the ear on the left side reduced to a trace of crackling, the upper eyelid raw.

  Dryden felt sick and looked around for a chair but the room was otherwise empty.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Shaw. He seemed genuinely flustered. ‘I don’t seem to use chairs,’ he laughed. ‘I can get you one from the incident room?’

  Dryden shook his head. ‘What was in it? The package.’

  ‘The chemical was phosphorus,’ said Shaw, looking at Dryden, not the picture. ‘It was mixed with various other common ingredients to create an effective incendiary. I can give you the exact
chemical composition if you want. The company’s based in Sleaford, forty miles up the road.’

  Shaw’s eyes were an extraordinary light blue, like falling water, creating the illusion for Dryden that he was looking through him. He had the impression he was dealing with someone with a well-ordered mind, and it was spooking him out. So far he hadn’t asked a question to which the detective inspector had not been able to give a precise answer.

  And Major Broderick had been wrong about the hair; it was cut short and blond, but Dryden guessed it had been dyed by immersion in the salt of the sea. He’d been right about the tie, though, which was missing from the immaculately white shirt. Shaw’s face was broad and open, and Dryden could imagine him looking out to sea. It was the kind of face that’s always searching a horizon. Above the trestle table was a notice board with rotas and pictures taken in the cellar and at St Swithun’s. There was one personal note, a snapshot of a beach, a single empty chair by the water’s edge, a sea rod beside it. Perhaps it was the one chair he did use.

  The detective’s mobile rang and he snapped it open quickly. ‘Shaw,’ he said. ‘Of course I’ve checked,’ he said quickly, laughing as if the reverse was an impossibility.

  Dryden stepped out of the office into the public bar of the New Ferry Inn, which had been commandeered as an operations room and was almost unrecognizable from the one in which he and Broderick had talked just three days earlier. Shaw had explained that the scene of crime forensics team had swept the upstairs rooms in the pub on the first night of the investigation and found nothing of significance. An industrial sized coffee maker gurgled on the bar, and six new darts stuck out of the old board. A wad of insulated cables had been fed in through the front window and provided telephone links and a broadband connection running to a radio car parked up on the town bridge. At a desk two plain-clothed detectives were on phones, tapping at laptops. Plastic sheeting had been draped over the door to the snug bar, beyond which Dryden could see two white-coated scene-of-crime officers working at a trestle table. Box files ran the length of the bar top. It was exactly the kind of operation you didn’t set up to deal with a decade-old suicide victim, and now Dryden knew why. DI Shaw’s interest was in animal rights extremists, and it was pretty clear he was under pressure to catch them quickly before they decided to send another deadly surprise by post.