The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  He rubbed fingers into his eye socket, trying to clear an image. ‘George only turned up at the funeral because Tholy had promised Kathryn that he’d be there, because he was the father, because he loved her. But he didn’t have the guts to show his face. Someone else letting her down, see? It was little Peter’s child, and little Peter wanted to take Kathryn to Australia: the three of them, escaping. But Jimmy and Walter wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘And how do you know all this?’ asked Dryden.

  Woodruffe looked away. ‘George and Jimmy told us – all of us – the next day. We met at Imber’s house. And I knew about Kath, through the family.’

  Dryden remembered the open window, the sunlight on the orchard below.

  ‘They weren’t lying, Dryden, believe me. It was little Peter that loved Kathryn Neate.’

  Dryden closed his eyes, trying to imagine night falling on Jude’s Ferry.

  ‘When the family got back to the garage that night, after the funeral, Walter told Kathryn she had to be straight with Peter, tell him to go without her. Jimmy said later she set off down to The Dring towards Tholy’s cottage, about six thirty. That was the last time any of us saw her alive.’

  On the horizon the floodlights on the cathedral’s Octagon Tower blanked out.

  ‘Jimmy said it was late – nearly ten thirty – by the time they got worried enough to organize a search. He went down to Tholy’s cottage, tracing her steps, and George checked out around the Methodist Hall – the dance was over but there were still kids about. Anyway, Jimmy found her soon enough, behind Tholy’s cottage on the riverbank. He reckoned they’d met on the path where it cuts behind Orchard House. She’d been strangled and the prints were black round her neck – the fingers, where he’d pressed into the flesh. Jimmy said that as he’d come along the river he’d seen someone by her body, but they’d heard the footsteps and run for it back to the house, Tholy’s house.

  ‘Jimmy took her body along the river path back to the garage and then he found George by The Dring and they knocked on Tholy’s door, forced it off its hinges. He was alone, packing, and he said he’d been alone all night, that he’d gone to say goodbye to old Broderick, but he hadn’t seen Kathryn. That’s when Jimmy said he knew he’d done it because he’d been down by the body. So they dragged him out in the street and down to the inn.

  ‘We were all out in the back yard watching the Smiths fight. It was sport, really; everyone was drunk, and if they’d finished we’d have turned on Cobley next. We knew about them, see, knew what they were. They couldn’t hide it that night, couldn’t say it wasn’t true.’

  He laughed, brushing the back of his hand over his lips. ‘There was gonna be blood spilt. Something about the drink, and leaving, it seemed to make everyone crazy for a night. And there was this blood-lust, you just knew it would end in blood.’

  A pike surfaced on the river and then dropped out of sight with a plop.

  ‘Anyway, we was all watching the fight but John Boyle – he’s long dead – was out on the front step throwing up and he looked up the street and saw them coming. George had him round the throat so we knew then that he’d done something terrible because nobody stood up for Peter more than George. They said he’d killed Kathryn, strangled her down by the reeds because she wouldn’t go with him.

  ‘Everyone looked at Walter, of course. He’d doted on her all her life, since the mother died. He just crumbled at first, then turned on Jimmy, saying it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. He felt guilty anyway, about the kid, we all knew he’d never wanted it. We were all looking at him, waiting for a lead I guess. So he went for Peter, like he’d kill him there, so we dragged him back – told him we hadn’t heard Peter speak, that he had to have the chance.’

  Dryden shivered, the sweat beginning to cool on his forehead. ‘So what did Peter say?’

  Woodruffe shrugged. ‘He said he didn’t do it, said he hadn’t seen her that day at all. But Jimmy cut in, asked him if he was the father of her kid, and you could see he was because he couldn’t think of an answer. So Jimmy said there was a place they could find out the truth. The cellar.’

  ‘How’d Jimmy know about that?’

  Woodruffe looked at his hands. ‘Like I said, family. Jimmy said he’d help, when Mum said she wanted to die, he said it was what his mum would have wanted. I couldn’t do it alone so we dug the grave.’

  ‘Did anyone think of phoning the police?’ asked Dryden. ‘What about the army, didn’t they have anyone in the village that night?’

  Woodruffe shook his head. ‘She was dead, they weren’t gonna bring her back, were they?’ He paused, deciding. ‘I didn’t go down. But they said – later – said they’d snapped his neck. Snapped the runt’s neck.’

  ‘And Kathryn?’ asked Dryden, but he knew already. He’d held her skull that night on Thieves Bridge, the searchlight driving the shadows into the eye sockets.

  ‘They’d sobered up by the time they came back up,’ said Woodruffe, ignoring the question. ‘When they realized what they’d done, Walter was kind of pumped up, like he’d enjoyed the revenge, as if he’d left his own guilt down in that cellar.’

  ‘This was in the bar?’

  Woodruffe nodded. ‘Walter said that justice had been done and that now we had to keep Tholy’s crime a secret, between us, for ever. They left him hanging in the cellar – I said the army’d find him but they said the trapdoor was good enough and they’d covered it up. Besides, Jimmy knew I’d left it off the plans the army made us fill in, so it wasn’t like they’d look for it.

  ‘It was Kathryn that was the problem. They had to hide the body. Walter and Jimmy hadn’t finished with the child’s grave up at the church, they were gonna do the rest in the morning. So that’s where they took her. Walter wanted that, insisted, even when Jimmy said they should bury her out on the mere. But Walter said she deserved more than an unmarked grave.

  ‘We worked the rest out next day at Orchard House. George said he’d cover Tholy’s tracks – made sure no one was ever suspicious about where he’d gone. Tholy had told him about his mother out in Perth, so George said he’d fix that when he got out there. He went and saw her and said Peter had changed his mind, that he’d gone to the Midlands somewhere on a big farm. That he didn’t want to be a burden.’

  ‘And he sent cards back to Fred Lake,’ said Dryden.

  ‘Look.’ Woodruffe held out his hands, and Dryden could hear the stress in his voice now, serrating the words. ‘I didn’t go down. He’d squeezed the life out of her. Jesus, she was sixteen, Dryden.’

  Dryden thought about the chipped ribs amongst the bones he’d collected on Thieves Bridge. ‘You knew Kathryn well, all her life. Any accidents, violence at home, fights?’

  Woodruffe shook his head, confused. ‘Childhood stuff – chicken pox, the usual. She was a quiet kid, she wouldn’t fight. And her dad and brother made sure she didn’t get picked on.’

  Dryden stood, hugging himself against the sudden cold. ‘So who did go down into that cellar?’

  Woodruffe shook his head violently, tears flowing now, but Dryden guessed that it was self-pity.

  ‘They’ll want names,’ said Dryden. ‘I’d be prepared for that. If they don’t get names they’ll put you down there – with the mob. So think about it – my guess is George Tudor, Jimmy, Walter.’

  Woodruffe shook his head, but it didn’t stop him talking. ‘Walter. Yeah, Walter. You couldn’t stop Walter that night. But Jimmy didn’t – Walter told him to stay in the bar and keep a lookout with George, that it was his job to deal with Peter. We all just sat tight.’

  ‘So who?’

  Woodruffe closed his eyes. ‘Johnny Boyle, Jack Forde, Reg Bright – I think. They were from the almshouses and they’d been drinking all night. The rest, who knows? Some went home when they saw what was up. How many does it take?’

  Dryden memorized the names. ‘So – Boyle, Forde and Bright. How many are still alive?’

  Woodruffe shrugged. ‘Reg died last year
– they always read out any deaths when we have the annual service back at St Swithun’s. Johnny’s dead too, like I said. Jack – I don’t know.’

  And Walter Neate’s in a geriatric unit, thought Dryden. He suspected that, given time, Woodruffe would use the ranks of the dead and infirm to people the cellar that night. ‘And Paul Cobley? That was it, wasn’t it…’ Dryden could see it then. The scene in the bar that night as the clock ticked towards midnight. They’d closed ranks, all of them, putting aside prejudices, and so Paul Cobley and Matthew Smith had escaped what had been coming to them – a beating, perhaps more.

  Woodruffe didn’t answer. Dryden saw him in his memory again on the sunlit doorstep of the New Ferry Inn.

  ‘And Jill, was she there?’

  Woodruffe covered his eyes. ‘I sent her upstairs. She didn’t see anything.’

  Dryden wondered how true that was. ‘But that’s why she left you? Because of what you did that night? Because you let it happen. That was the end of it for her, wasn’t it?’

  Woodruffe ignored the question, looking out into the dark. ‘How long have I got before you go to the police?’

  ‘I’ll ring DI Shaw first thing. Take my advice – drive up yourself, to Lynn. Tell him you want him to know the truth – and don’t leave anything out. Tell him everything you’ve told me.’

  Woodruffe knelt again and splashed some of the river water in his face.

  Dryden looked up at the moon and thought of the cool light falling onto Laura’s bunk on the boat.

  ‘And what about Jason Imber? If you met at Orchard House the next day he must have been there. Did he go down into the cellar? And who else, Ken? Who else?’

  He looked up but Woodruffe had gone, fleeing along the riverbank, away from the lights, the people, and the questions.

  32

  Dryden strolled to the bar of The Five Miles From Anywhere and got himself a pint and Humph a fresh hamper of bar snacks and two pickled eggs. The cabbie had swung the cab round so that he could sit in the driver’s seat while, with the door open, he had an uninterrupted view of the river running north towards the silhouette of the cathedral. Suddenly, flying into the halo of light above the town, a fat-bodied military jet appeared heading east towards the runway at Mildenhall. As they watched another took its place, the beginning of a necklace of flights completing their transatlantic crossing.

  On the river a pair of black swans glided past on the current, their wings cupped behind them like hands in prayer. Humph threw them a handful of crisps and their red beaks riddled the water.

  Dryden sat on the bank, the grass already damp with dew. ‘So. I think I know what happened,’ he said, sucking two inches out of his pint.

  Humph stretched his legs out into the night air and a spring in the driver’s seat flexed. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘With three blinding exceptions.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the cabbie, exuding happiness.

  Dryden was surprised to find that he hesitated, aware that the mysteries of Jude’s Ferry were intensely personal. ‘The person I feel sorry for is Kathryn Neate.’ He pitched a peanut at the nearest black swan, and from the reeds on the far bank a pair of Barbary ducks joined the food queue.

  ‘She’s sixteen, she’s beautiful – well, on the edge of beauty perhaps. But it’s there, in the willowy figure, the angel’s face that’s growing into something else – a woman’s face. Men circle her, all of them for different reasons. Her father and brother, cousins, lovers, protectors, gossips, and the legions of the jealous. Her mum, possibly the only person who ever put her best interests first, is dead a decade. And now the men in uniform have arrived to take her home away. More men, circling.’

  Humph hit the cab horn once to scare the ducks away and let Boudicca out from the back seat to sit on the grass. The greyhound edged forward until she could rest her large bony head on Dryden’s shoe.

  ‘Then – disaster. She gets pregnant. I thought George Tudor was the father. But now it looks like it’s Peter Tholy, a friend of George’s off the farm. A frail, vulnerable boy whose only other friends were girls. Peter and George have put their names down for emigration, and the Reverend Fred Lake has vouched for both. Either way, no one seems too eager to step forward and help Kathryn get through the birth. Peter wants to do the right thing but lacks the courage. There’s a discreet silence for nine months and then the boy is born. He lives two days. According to Lake the child died of heart failure, brought on by acute jaundice.

  ‘The funeral is the last in Jude’s Ferry – at least it should have been. Jimmy and Walter Neate dig the boy’s grave – in the old Peyton tomb inside St Swithun’s. George Tudor turns up to give Kathryn support – moral and physical – which was either brave or stupid, or possibly both. The Reverend Lake certainly thought Tudor was the father, but nobody thought the police should know, and given that she was over-age by the time of the birth and wouldn’t name the father that’s not a great surprise. When they all get back to Neate’s Garage that evening Tudor’s got news for them – the father is Peter Tholy, and he wants to take Kathryn with him to Australia. Walter is against, Jimmy is against. They make Kathryn end it then, make her go and tell Tholy the family’s decision. She walks out that last summer’s evening and never returns.’

  Dryden bent his neck back, looking straight up into the stars. ‘Why didn’t she want to leave, Humph? Australia must have seemed like a perfect escape.’

  On the river a cruiser appeared around the bend, the cockpit lit, a couple standing enjoying the night, glasses full of wine the colour of pear drops.

  ‘She was escaping from the Ferry, anyway,’ said Humph. ‘Perhaps she didn’t love Peter Tholy, perhaps she never had,’ he added, thinking of another girl.

  Dryden got a fresh round of drinks, the last-orders bell ringing out as he stepped into the cool night.

  ‘According to Fred Lake the funeral was at 5.00 pm. The next thing we know for sure is when Jimmy Neate and George Tudor turn up at the New Ferry Inn with Peter Tholy – that’s sometime after the Smiths begin brawling in the yard of the inn around eleven. They drag Tholy into the bar and break the news – that Kathryn’s dead, that Jimmy saw Tholy fleeing the scene, even though he claims he’s been alone all night except for a visit to old Broderick. Don’t forget Walter’s there by now and this was the daughter he loved too much, the one who always reminded him of the wife he’d lost.

  ‘It’s a tinderbox. Everyone’s popped up with the beer and God knows what else. The Smith brothers have been trying to tear each other apart in the yard, with Paul Cobley the next bout on the bill. Blood’s been spilt already and there’s all kinds of emotions rising to the surface. It’s the last night for this community; in a few hours they’ll all be gone, scattered to new lives. There’s plenty of anger, and suddenly they’ve got the ideal target – stumbling, half-witted Peter.

  ‘And there’s another strong emotion, Humph, they want to close ranks. This is something they want to deal with themselves, especially in those dying hours in the life of the village. They’ve lost one of their own, and the killer is one of their own. Tholy was never going to survive the night unharmed, but it turned out worse than that. How do ordinary people commit murder, Humph?’

  ‘They don’t,’ said the cabbie, watching some swifts play in the floodlight mounted on the side of the pub.

  ‘George Tudor is the key to this,’ said Dryden. ‘If there’d been any doubts about Kathryn’s death then they’d have knocked Peter about, then got the police. But there are no doubts because George is convinced Peter’s a killer and that’s good enough for everyone, good enough for any sceptics, because George is his true friend, perhaps his only friend, and they all know that.

  ‘And even then they don’t tear him apart. They take him down into the cellar to try and make him confess. To hear it from Peter’s own lips. And that’s another step towards the grave for Peter, down the cellar steps, out of the light, away from the lives they’ve all led. Once that trapdoor closes
he’s never going to see the stars again.’

  Dryden drained his pint. ‘When he’s dead they leave him there. That’s the first bit that doesn’t make sense. How could they be so sure nobody would find the body in the days after the evacuation? – the engineers were coming in to survey the place. OK, Woodruffe hadn’t marked the cellar on the questionnaire – but the whole point of the survey was to double check.’

  Humph shrugged, thinking about breakfast.

  ‘Meanwhile Jimmy and Walter bury Kathryn with her son beside the Peyton tomb,’ said Dryden.

  Humph cracked his knuckles, a series of delicate pops. The dog eyed the black swans, gliding past again without a sound. ‘So where’s the kid’s bones?’ asked the cabbie.

  Dryden shrugged. ‘Precisely. Question number two. Perhaps the animal rights people found them but discarded them.’ But even he didn’t believe that: if they’d found the delicate skeleton of a two-day-old child they’d have tried to screw Peyton even tighter. ‘But I doubt it. If you’re playing emotional blackmail you don’t chuck in an ace.’

  Humph struggled to his feet. ‘Refill? I could run to the bar, there’s just time. I might kip in the cab – you’ll have to walk.’

  Dryden nodded and watched as the cabbie headed for the bar, not so much a run as a lope. It was two miles along the riverbank to PK 129 and he texted Laura to tell her where he was and that he’d walk home. Humph would curl up with the greyhound on his lap, and any car park was home for them.

  Dryden turned to look back at the pub. A single bedroom light shone out, the curtains open to let the breeze through. Woodruffe appeared at the sill, a phone to his ear, but turned quickly and retreated beyond sight. A memory surfaced to match it, a figure, seen briefly at the window of Orchard House on the day of the evacuation.

  Dryden heard the strangled cry of something being killed followed by the ghostly flight of an owl over the river.

  Humph tottered back with the drinks and a question. ‘And Imber?’

  ‘I think he was down in the cellar too, but God knows why. He didn’t really know these kids, but I think he wanted to be part of the village – that’s why he’d stayed. But he was a posh kid in the wrong place that night. I think he got swept along and couldn’t get out once things got really serious – and once Tholy was dead there was no going back. Did he try to stop them? Like I say, he’d be a brave man. A place like the Ferry, it’s all about belonging – there’s no half-way house. I think when it was over he played a part in covering it all up. He got them to agree to meet next day at Orchard House, to double check their stories, make sure it all added up. And that’s why Ken Woodruffe calmed the crowd down in The Dring. He didn’t want the army moving in before they’d got the whole thing sorted. It was their last chance to make sure nobody ever knew Peter Tholy died at the end of a rope.’