The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  Dryden held out the paper at arm’s length. He didn’t care about tomorrow, journalism was about today. The story made him look like an amateur from the sticks. His stuff on Jason Imber was all over the front of The Crow while the News implied the police had already got their man.

  ‘A heads-up would have been nice,’ he said lamely, and cut the line. Dryden had thought about telling him what he’d learned from Fred Lake but calculated he could wait until after Shaw had interviewed the vicar the following morning.

  Then his phone went. He checked the incoming number. It was Charlie Bracken, The Crow’s news editor. Looking down Market Street Dryden could see him, standing outside The Fenman in the rain, a pint in one hand and a thin wisp of smoke rising from the other. Dryden guessed he’d just read the front of the Cambridge Evening News as well and wanted to know if they were going to look second-best all week. Dryden took the call, calmed him down, and told him to wait twenty-four hours. In the distance he watched as Charlie walked happily back into the bar.

  Dryden set off for the riverside and found Humph asleep in the cab by the slipway. Dryden thought again about that last night in Jude’s Ferry. The funeral of Jude Neate was the central event, and he felt convinced it was linked to the fate of both the Skeleton Man and the bones in Peyton’s tomb. He needed to know more about Kathryn Neate and the men in her life.

  He pulled open the passenger-side door, the rusted hinges squealing. ‘The Stopover, Duckett’s Cross,’ he said, viewing Humph’s collection of airport mini atures in the glove compartment. The cabbie stretched out, his finger joints cracking. ‘Duty Free’s open,’ said Dryden. ‘Now, what am I having?’

  28

  Jimmy Neate’s girlfriend was at the pumps, splayed in a deckchair set out in the late-afternoon sun, her T-shirt rolled up from her waist to reveal the pale shadows beneath her breasts. She didn’t move as Humph parked the Capri. The stand of dusty pines around the Stopover Garage shimmered in a light breeze, and a single HGV rumbled into the distance down the long stretch of featureless tarmac. When it had gone there was silence, except for the hum of flies from a manure bin by the BBQ coal.

  Julie Watts stood to meet him, her eyes running over him from the ground up. ‘Jimmy about?’ said Dryden, trying not to do the same.

  ‘Thought you might have come to see me,’ she said, and Dryden heard Humph snort as he made a fuss putting on his headphones.

  ‘Not unless you can tell me where Kathryn Neate is,’ said Dryden.

  She shrugged, and Dryden saw that she couldn’t help her hands taking refuge in the pockets of her jeans.

  ‘She left, years ago. I never saw her after we left the Ferry.’

  ‘You must remember her though; look like her brother?’

  She shook her head. ‘Quiet kid. Her body grew up before she did, that happens to us all, but Kathy didn’t have a chance. So she got knocked up. She was proud of it in an odd way. Like it proved someone loved her, which it didn’t, did it?’ She laughed again. ‘She didn’t deserve that, I guess.’

  ‘Didn’t Jimmy help – her dad?’

  She laughed. ‘They loved her all right – but with them it’s the kind of love you don’t do anything about. It’s just there, and everyone’s supposed to know without anyone saying anything. That wasn’t what she needed. Adolescence is a mess, they just waited for her to survive it. She didn’t.’

  They walked towards the bungalow as Dryden recalled the desperate plight of the girl described in Magda Hollings worth’s diary – pregnant, frightened, alone.

  ‘What about the father? Gossip says it was George Tudor.’

  ‘Maybe. He loved her, you could see that, but then Marion – their mum – was his aunt. I think he felt protective, especially after Marion died, and that’s not the same thing, is it? Although at the Ferry they got these things mixed up. That was always the joke they made at school in town – that the Ferry kids had family trees all right, they just didn’t have any branches on them.’

  Dryden laughed, closing his eyes and enjoying the sunshine. ‘Kathryn’s mother died young, didn’t she?’

  She nodded, not really interested. ‘Did for the family,’ she added, watching Jimmy Neate cross from the garage over to the bungalow in the trees. ‘You could tell something was missing; something they couldn’t put back. And Walter changed, he’d always been the jovial uncle type, but after that he just went into a shell. Kathryn looked like Marion too, so he found that painful, having her around. All he had was Jimmy really, and Jimmy doesn’t like being the centre of attention, not for anyone.’

  ‘They fight?’

  ‘That would have been healthy. So no, they didn’t. The old man’s just kinda had Jimmy where he wanted him. He lived – lives – his life through Jimmy, even when he’s stuck in some wing-backed armchair in a godforsaken old people’s home.’

  ‘Jimmy visit?’

  ‘Sure. Most days when he can get the cover or I can do the pumps.’

  Dryden could feel the heat radiating from the metal canopy. ‘They must have found it hard to cope when the kid arrived?’

  She slid a hand inside her jeans, stretching the belt out to reveal more skin, but didn’t answer.

  ‘D’you see him? Jude, wasn’t it?’

  She turned back to the road as a people carrier swept in, mangling gravel.

  She shook her head. ‘I never saw him, I don’t know anyone that did outside the Neates, and George Tudor I guess, and the doctor. He didn’t live two days, did he?’ She ran a rag through her hands. ‘Two days in summer.’

  ‘So if it wasn’t George Tudor, who was the father?’

  Jimmy Neate walked quickly out to talk to the driver of the people carrier which had parked near the bungalow.

  Julie turned to Dryden, dropping her voice just slightly. ‘Kathryn needed to know someone loved her, and there were plenty of people prepared to say they did. Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel, she learnt pretty quick how to use her body to get what she wanted. Ask me, I’d say she enjoyed the sex, it’s just it wasn’t what she was after, not in the end, and there was no one around to tell her that what she wanted didn’t just follow on from the sex. So who’s the father? How much gossip can you take? You could ask Jimmy – but don’t expect an answer. Losing that kid hurt them all. They protect the memory, in fact they’ve put more effort into that than they did trying to help her when she was here.’

  The people carrier swept out onto the open road and Jimmy Neate retreated into the bungalow. Dryden found him eating one of his pre-wrapped sandwiches in the kitchen of the bungalow. The room was in a time warp: a Rayburn range stood in one corner, a wooden pine table grey with age filled most of the space that was left, at its centre a clean ashtray. The lino on the floor was scrubbed but cracked. A portable TV was on the draining board showing the horse racing from Lingfield without sound.

  Neate let his eyes linger on the final furlong before turning to Dryden.

  ‘You’re back,’ he said, massaging his neck, the shoulders slumping down with fatigue.

  He leant back and Dryden saw that he’d been reading the Daily Mail.

  ‘Guess there’s no chance you’ve seen The Crow yet?’ he said, holding up a copy.

  Neate shook his head. ‘We get it delivered – mid-morning tomorrow out here. Welcome to the boondocks.’

  Dryden nodded, calculating. ‘They’re making some progress on the skeleton in the cellar. Forensic science is a wonderful thing.’

  Neate went to the fridge and pulled it open, taking out a can of beer. ‘Want one?’ he said, holding up the label so that Dryden could see.

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  They took the first couple of inches off the top of the cans in companionable silence. Dryden watched Neate’s hands, shuffling the can, picking at the grain of the old table. Outside they could hear Julie serving a customer, the radio blurting out the local station. It was a news bulletin, replete with details of the Cambridge Evening News’s front-page story about the Skele
ton Man. Even the boondocks get radio, thought Dryden, the insecurity of being scooped making him angry again.

  ‘It was your sister I was interested in,’ he said. ‘Kathryn. She had a baby, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah. So?’ But Dryden had seen the glance, out of the door into the bungalow’s gloomy hallway. There was a hardwood chest of drawers there in the shadows, the top crowded with framed photos.

  Dryden took a chair. ‘Picture?’

  Neate ran a hand through thick unwashed black hair and then stood, coming back with a small snapshot in an older wooden frame.

  Despite the studied air of indifference Dryden could sense the pride Neate felt.

  ‘She’s beautiful – when was this taken?’

  ‘At the Ferry, before the end,’ said Neate. She was by a hedgerow, a summer’s view behind her of the allotments running down to The Dring, the ditch clogged with reed heads.

  She had her brother’s hair, but the face was softer, an oval, the forehead high and pale, the hands long and white. An uncertain smile seemed to emphasize the fleeting nature of the moment in which she’d been captured, a single summer between childhood and the rest of her life.

  ‘You in touch?’

  He shook his head. ‘She didn’t come when Dad fell ill. I couldn’t forgive her for that. She took a car in ’92 – said she’d send us the money. That was the last time I saw her – she was standing right there,’ he said, nodding at Dryden. ‘She said she wanted a new life. So that’s fifteen years ago, the November. We asked her what her plans were, who she knew, but she just went. I got a letter from Dorset, a farm down there. Married and that, but no kids. Well, no more.’

  ‘And George Tudor?’

  He laughed. ‘George wasn’t the father if that’s what you’re thinking. George thought he knew what was best for Kath – which didn’t go down too well in our house. Family feuds, Dryden – Mum was a Tudor, and they always thought they were better than us. Ellen Woodruffe was Mum’s sister, another Tudor. It’s like the Mafia, only nastier. So George just tried to take over, said he wanted to take Kath with him to Australia, start a new life. Perth I think. Along with little Peter Tholy, just the three of them.’ Dryden sensed the ritual denigration of the runt, the village scapegoat. ‘Dad nearly killed him when he asked. Like we couldn’t look after our own.’

  Dryden let that hang in the air.

  Neate shrugged, taking the picture from Dryden and, replacing it in the hall, he brought back another – a large black and white picture of a man standing in front of the old garage at Jude’s Ferry.

  ‘Dad,’ said Jimmy simply.

  Dryden nodded, taking the picture, sensing it was an icon. ‘You’re gonna look like him,’ he said, knowing it would work.

  Jimmy smiled. ‘I miss her. Dad missed her – but it’s too late for all of us now.’

  Dryden thought he was trying to reassemble a memory, studying the picture himself as if it was new to him, but then he asked, ‘Forensics, you said?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s all in the paper. They’ve found a grave.’

  Neate picked up the beer can in a single fluid movement. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the cellar, where we found the Skeleton Man,’ said Dryden, taking a last gulp of beer.

  Neate leant forward, elbows on the newspaper. ‘And I bet I know what they found in the grave,’ he said.

  ‘Go on.’

  Dryden could see he wanted to say it but that the calculation was complex, and for a moment he hesitated. ‘Bones,’ he said, finally. ‘Old bones.’

  ‘And whose old bones would they be?’

  ‘Ask Ken Woodruffe, it was his cellar.’

  A woman’s bones. Dryden recalled the picture behind the bar at The Five Miles from Anywhere, the oval face at the upstairs window.

  Neate licked his lips. ‘Ellen Woodruffe, Aunt Ellen, was dying – she’d had a couple of strokes and her heart was failing. Ellen begged Ken, begged everyone, to end it. She wanted to die in her own home. I know for a fact she asked Dad to do it – give her some pills or something. Ken told everyone there was no way she’d leave, he reckoned they’d have to drag her out, or she’d do it herself. And there was the pain. You could hear her some nights, upstairs at the inn, trying to stop herself crying out. It tore Ken up because he wanted her to die then, but the doctors said it could go on for years. She was a strong woman, Ellen, and it was like her body wouldn’t give up, even when she wanted it to. So I wouldn’t blame him if he did it for her, I’d have done it. After we got fixed up in business here Dad rang the home Ken said he’d put her in – out on the coast – but she wasn’t there.’

  Neate leant back in his chair, tilting it on to two legs. ‘But like I say, good luck to him…’

  Dryden finished the can. ‘Actually, there was nothing in the grave. It had been dug, then filled in. Not a chicken bone, nothing.’

  Neate didn’t miss a beat. ‘So where did Ellen go?’

  In his mind Dryden was back on Thieves Bridge, cradling the skull in his hands again, the dark sockets lightless.

  29

  The North Sea was a grey slate, ruffled only by a squall of rain moving in from the east. The cab had cruised the front twice already but still they’d failed to see the sign. Perhaps it had long closed, perhaps it had been renamed, perhaps the picture had been a fake all along.

  ‘Remind me,’ said Humph, winding down the driver’s side window to clear it of the droplets which obscured the view.

  ‘The Royal Esplanade,’ said Dryden.

  It was dusk and the promenade lights flickered once then came on, somehow adding to the gloom. At sea a single trawler headed in, its green and red lights hinting at a subtle swell.

  They reached the miniature clock tower by the marine gardens which was the centrepiece of Lowestoft’s sea front.

  ‘One more time,’ said Dryden, wishing he’d done some research before they’d undertaken the trip.

  Humph swung the cab in a circle and headed south.

  Dryden was looking at the double-bayed fronts of the B&Bs with their winking ‘Vacancy’ signs when they came opposite a small park set back from the prom. Trees, heavy with summer leaves, obscured the buildings beyond.

  ‘Take the next right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go round the square.’

  And there it was, behind elegant Edwardian railings – the Esplanade.

  Dryden fished a tie out of the glove compartment and ran a hand through his hair, examining his face in the vanity mirror.

  ‘I need to look like an accountant,’ he said.

  Humph was biting the top off a pork pie. ‘Thank God you’ve failed,’ he said, wriggling his backside down into the seat.

  ‘Thanks for the support.’

  A female nurse in uniform answered the door, ushering him inside beneath a chandelier which failed to provide enough light. A long corridor led off into the heart of the building, the lino reflecting institutional lights, a distant wheelchair being pushed across from one room to another.

  The nurse left him in an office by the door, a room which had once been elegant, but was now disfigured by an electronic intercom board and a semi-circle of high-backed chairs.

  A tall man in a suit appeared through a connecting door, his hand already raised in welcome. ‘Mr Dryden? Dr McNally – I’m the head of care strategy here at the Esplanade – and at our other two establishments along the coast. I understand… please take a seat.’

  Dryden nodded. They both sat, a coffee table between them covered in old editions of Country Life.

  ‘It’s my aunt. She’s eighty-four. I’m thinking of suggesting she should… well, be looked after. She’s had several strokes and she’s now confined to a wheelchair. There are complications – mainly circulation. She needs a lot of looking after.’

  Dr McNally’s eyes flickered down to a notepad on the tabletop where his silver pen skated smoothly.

  ‘There’ve been a few accidents. It’s upset her, just the thought she’s a burden on anyone. And
even with a couple of care visits a day I think she’s beginning to get frightened – worried that something will happen and there’ll be no one there. So we’ve talked about it – which is when she mentioned the Esplanade.’

  McNally nodded, letting him go on.

  ‘She had a friend who came here I think – back in the nineties. Ellen Woodruffe? She always spoke very highly of the quality of the care so I think Miriam – that’s my aunt – would be happy to at least consider a move. But she wasn’t quite sure this was the right place. She seemed to think it was near the pier – which doesn’t sound right.’

  Dryden looked out of the window on to the dripping leaves of a plane tree.

  McNally nodded, stood, and went behind the desk, tapping the keyboard on an AppleMac. ‘Woodruffe, you said?’

  ‘Right. With a final “e”. She would have arrived in June 1990, I think.’

  ‘Let’s see…’

  ‘Miriam said she had a wonderful room, with a balcony. If there was any chance we could offer her something similar…’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. Have you seen our charges, by the way – there’s a schedule in this leaflet.’

  He pushed a brochure across the leather desktop. Dryden opened it, breathing in the mildly hypnotic whiff of freshly printed paper. The annual charges were listed in a small box and Dryden surreptitiously tried to hide his battered shoes by pushing his heels back under the chair.

  ‘Here she is,’ said McNally, and Dryden fought to hide his disappointment. ‘Let’s look at her file.’

  Dryden nodded. ‘Thanks. These charges seem very reasonable,’ he lied.

  McNally left the room, returning quickly with a box file.

  ‘Yes. Ellen Woodruffe. She came to us much later than that actually – 1992 – in the December. She was in Rosemary, that’s one of our best suites, looking out to sea. That’s a sitting room with en suite facil ities and a bedroom.’