The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  And so Peter began to love the child that hadn’t yet been born.

  Jude. My son.

  And then, unseen, at home, she became a mother. And what did I feel? I tried to ignore the sense of loss, the jealousy, the almost overwhelming physical need to hold him, to feel his weight, and the chaotic energy of his limbs. I went the first night after he’d been born into the water meadow opposite the old garage and watched the light burning at the upstairs window. And that’s when I knew I’d lost the life that could have saved me, when I heard his crying from the half-opened sash window of the bedroom.

  I knew he was ill, the village talked. But still the shock was visceral when it came. I was in the post office talking to Magda when her daughter came in with the news. Jude Neate was dead, dead in the night, and they wanted to bury him in Jude’s Ferry. I don’t know if I’d have been able to hide the way I felt if Magda hadn’t cried. So we held her, comforting her, and I wondered why she’d cry for a child she’d never seen.

  And so when the chance came, Laura, I tried to get Kathryn back, tried to redress the balance of right and wrong. I was standing at the bedroom window thinking about the past, about that last summer, drinking from a bottle of whisky I’d found in Dad’s desk when we were clearing the house. I’d arranged to go down to the inn that last night but I still felt like such an outsider – so Dutch courage, I guess.

  Then I saw Kathryn. She was coming along the towpath at the bottom of the garden in the dusk so I went out to meet her, as I’d always done. We could hear the crowd at the Methodist Hall, spilling out into the night. They put some fireworks up into the dusk and it seemed to make the shadows darker. I saw her face then, and realized what she’d been through alone.

  I said I loved her, I said I should have been with her. I said I loved her again but I think it was grief talking, not love but loss, and I think she knew. She said I’d killed him, the baby, that he knew he wasn’t wanted and that’s why he hadn’t fought. She said she was happy the boy was dead.

  It was a cruel thing to say and I hit her. She went down in the dust, and I remember the fireworks exploding overhead, and I saw the colour of her face change. But she stood up and came towards me, her arms out to comfort me and then when our heads were together she whispered it in my ear.

  ‘I hate you.’ Just for me, like a blessing.

  I don’t know how long I had my hands round her neck. When I looked at her again, her eyes reflecting a bursting rocket in the sky, I think I knew she was dead. There’s long grass by the towpath and I let her fall into it, and it closed over her, like water.

  It’s frightening how quickly we forget the dead; all I wanted to do was escape. No one had seen me, the path was deserted, and then the clock in the church chimed seven. So I ran quickly to The Dring, and then down to the New Ferry Inn. I bought people drinks and something clever in my brain cut out the memory of what I’d done. And I thought that if I stayed with them, part of the village that night, I’d be safe when they found her body. I’d be safe as long as I was one of them. And I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t the only outsider.

  And then the hours passed, measured only by the fact that she wasn’t there. I talked, shouting through the alcohol, trying to feel a part of what was happening, trying not to think of her lying in the dark now, growing cold.

  There was a fight in the pub – the Smith brothers. Mark wanted to pool the money, set up a building firm in Peterborough. Matthew wanted to set up a business with Paul Cobley, the kid who ran the taxis with his parents. They’d always been friends. Mark said he knew why his brother wanted to be with Paul.

  He let the accusation hang in the air. There were sniggers, a crowd forming, smelling blood. I didn’t want to join in but I had to, I couldn’t stand out, not then.

  We spilled out into the back yard – Ken Woodruffe pushed us out – the fight whirling with Paul trying to keep the brothers apart. I don’t know how it would have ended but it stopped when they dragged little Peter Tholy into the bar. When I saw Jimmy Neate’s face I knew he’d found her, there was death in his face. And George Tudor had the boy’s neck in the crook of his arm, twisting, smearing blood from cut lips over his skin.

  ‘It’s Tholy. Peter Tholy’s killed Kathryn,’ Jimmy said. And there he was, Laura, pathetic Peter, his thin arms shaking with fear and yet proud, he said, to have been the father of her child.

  ‘I’ve got money,’ he said, trying to stop it happening. We laughed, enjoying the torment. Penniless Peter. He said he hadn’t done it but we didn’t listen, trusting George because he’d always been Peter’s big brother, his champion when the bullies had circled.

  So I said nothing. Nothing when we took him down into Woodruffe’s cellar. Nothing when Jimmy kicked away the stool.

  Next day we met at Orchard House, all of us, all twelve. We got our stories straight. Walter Neate said they’d buried Kathryn with her son and replaced the stone. George Tudor promised he’d cover Peter Tholy’s tracks, make sure there were no questions. And we left the boy hanging, the cellar sealed up. Then we had a drink, swearing silence, and I felt ashamed that for the first time I felt part of it, Laura, part of Jude’s Ferry.

  And I thought that was the version of my life I’d have to live with until I died. A life in which I killed Kathryn Neate and let an innocent boy hang for the crime.

  And then Jimmy Neate rang me. They’d found the body in the cellar, so he was making sure we were all going to toe the line. He had names, people we could put in the cellar; the guilty men, names plucked from tombstones. I met Jimmy on Cuckoo Bridge, because I said I thought it was time to tell the truth. And I was scared, scared that if they asked questions – the police – I’d let them all down. I just couldn’t do it. And Elizabeth would know, she’d sense that I hadn’t told her, hadn’t told her why I didn’t want children, which was the one thing she did want.

  Jimmy hit me from behind, but I was conscious when I went into the water, and I saw him above as I floated away.

  And then, at last, God did smile on me. Thank you, Laura, for those e-mails. It’s always the innocent detail that saves us. You were telling me about the Skeleton Man, telling me what Philip had told you, what the grave robbers had found in Peyton’s tomb. The chipped ribs, the silent knife wound.

  A wound to the heart of Kathryn Neate.

  So there is someone I have to see before I die because there are two questions now. Why did he kill her, and why did he take Jude’s bones away?

  When I have answers I can die. I’ve remembered too much to think about a life now. So I won’t see you again, and now, at the end of my life, that’s the saddest thing.

  I’m going to bury my son.

  Jason

  ‘There is someone I have to see before I die,’ said Dryden. ‘Because there are two questions now. Why did he kill her, and why did he take Jude’s bones away?’

  Dryden thought of the body hanging on the wire. Had Jason Imber taken his questions to Neate’s garage?

  He rang Humph and met him on Market Street. The cabbie was half out of the car, sweat in wide wet horseshoes under his arms. ‘There’s something up at the unit – when I dropped Laura at the doors there were coppers everywhere. Security bloke says one of the patients has done a hop from a ground-floor room. Police are all over it like a horse blanket.’

  Driving north out of the city Dryden could see a loose cordon of three policemen making their way across a field of lettuce towards the woodlands which skirted the bypass. Humph dropped Dryden on the main road by the gates to the unit and the reporter cut across the grounds through a boundary marked by leylandii. At reception he saw a squad car on the forecourt and a PC at the automatic doors.

  Desmond Samjee was out in the hospital garden with a patient in a wheelchair, the swaddled figure hardly visible in a nest of blankets.

  ‘I thought he was under police guard?’

  Desmond fished in his pockets and began to assemble a roll-up. ‘How’d you know it was Imber?’

 
; ‘I didn’t,’ said Dryden, smiling. ‘But it’s a bloody good guess, right? You don’t get this kind of operation if someone discharges themselves. Imber wasn’t meant to walk away from police protection. He was scared to death someone was after him. If they’d guessed he might do a runner they’d have had him in custody for an interview at least. He knows a lot more about that last night in Jude’s Ferry than he’s telling. So – how’d he get out?’

  ‘Call of nature for the woman PC. She asked a nurse to keep an eye on him but she got distracted and our friend took his chance.’

  ‘And they couldn’t catch a man in pyjamas doing a runner across a floodlit car park?’

  ‘It was midnight, and he had a car outside, plus one small technicality I guess – he wasn’t under arrest. It was all supposed to be for his protection.’

  ‘A car?’ said Dryden. ‘What, waiting?’

  ‘No, no. His wife dropped off a people carrier the day before. The doctors told her to bring in his CD collection as it might jog the memory banks – he told her he wanted to listen in the car and chill out. She says she believed him, but she didn’t mention it to the PC. So he had the keys, and he grabbed some clothes from a locker in the orderlies’ room. Left his mobile by the bed. By the time they realized he’d got out through the window he was on the road – one of the nurses arriving for the shift saw him turning north on the A10. He could be anywhere.’

  Desmond’s face radiated his pleasure at the misfortunes of the Establishment. ‘Perhaps he’s gone home.’

  Dryden thought about the automatic gates to Imber’s house at Upwell. ‘Maybe. But I’m not sure he knows where that is.’

  35

  Back in the cab Dryden tracked down his mobile under the passenger seat, wrapped in a greasy pork-pie wrapper. Humph said it had rung but he’d given up the search.

  ‘You’d be amazed at what’s under that seat,’ said the cabbie, sniffing a mini Scotch egg he’d found amongst the debris.

  Dryden scrolled down to find he’d got a text message:

  MEET TEN POACHERS HIDE WICKEN FEN MATT SMITH

  Dryden looked at the name long and hard. Matthew Smith, the missing brother and Paul Cobley’s partner. The police had used the media to try to find him, including The Crow, but why had he used the media to get back in touch? What story did he have to tell? Had his mother persuaded him to talk to the reporter as Dryden had asked? Or was this an impostor, looking for a brief splash of the limelight?

  He handed the phone to Humph, who read the message, nodded, and fired up the Capri.

  They drove silently in the soft summer rain, the horizon never more than a sodden field away. Pickers out with the salad crops stooped amongst the vivid green heads of broccoli and lettuce.

  Dryden hit the return call button on the mobile but got transferred to voicemail. He cut himself off and sent a text instead: WHY?

  Wicken was a last precious corner of the old fenland, a maze of pools and rivers hidden in a wilderness of briar and reeds, the water mottled by surfacing fish and side-winding grass snakes. The National Trust had a lodge at the entrance, a bitumen black wooden teepee surrounded by a verandah. An elderly couple weighed down with binoculars and packs were setting out down one of the duckboarded pathways as they arrived but otherwise the fen was quiet: the small car park empty and the café closed. The dense fine rain had reduced the landscape to the ghosts of trees and reeds, and a single windmill. Dryden thought about ringing Shaw and telling him about the message, filling him in on the whereabouts of Matthew Smith. But what was the point before he found out what Smith wanted to say?

  Dryden paid for a ticket at the counter and found a map mounted on a board showing the paths through the reserve. Poacher’s Hide was the most distant of the many which dotted the winding waterways, a single cabin overlooking a wide lake marked as the habitat of migrating swans. Access was by the duckboard walkways maintained by the Trust, although there were plenty of other ways into the reserve for those who knew the lie of the land. Dryden trudged out into the fen, the visibility falling as he moved deeper into a world dominated by water. Twenty minutes later he was at the hide, deftly hidden in a thicket of thorns on the edge of the lake.

  He paused for a few seconds, wondering if there was any danger, aware that he’d made himself come this far to prove to himself, yet again, that he wasn’t a coward after all. He waited, listening, for ten minutes to make sure he’d got there first, then unlatched the door and slipped inside. There was a single bench up against a long observation hatch, its wooden shutter raised on the inside and suspended from hooks. Hanging from a string was a laminated pamphlet illustrating the birds commonly sighted from Poacher’s Hide, as well as butterflies, moths, and insects. Dryden scratched himself uneasily and sat, acutely aware for the first time that there was only one door to the hide.

  Outside the rain had intensified so that the dripping of water from the trees provided a soundtrack. A bird, dull and brown, alighted on the windowsill and looked at Dryden with one eye. Something large and covered in fur plopped into the water and left a trail like a speedboat through the weeds.

  He smiled at the bird. ‘Sod off,’ he said, searching in his pocket for some wine gums he’d left there a week earlier.

  The footsteps, when they came, were confident and multiple. Two people at least, perhaps more. He heard one set of feet circling the hide at his back while another approached the door. For the first time he thought of the hide as a trap, and fumbled with his mobile, trying to key in a text message for Humph to get help.

  But too late. A man came in, keeping his eyes on the floor, and closed the door carefully behind him. He was thin, below average height, the face strangely oval and plump, like a child’s. A face Dryden would never forget, but at that moment one he’d never seen before. The lips too, full in the middle, were pursed in a cupid’s bow, out of place in the rough middle-aged stubble of the chin. Dryden didn’t know who he was, but he knew who he wasn’t. He wasn’t Matthew Smith.

  The man smiled just once, but Dryden knew then he had to get out.

  ‘Questions, I know,’ the man said, holding up his hands.

  He walked forward confidently and took the mobile from Dryden’s hands. Outside they heard a match strike, an inward breath, the smoke expelled.

  ‘I thought you might respond to our text. How clever of me. But that’s journalists, I find: ever hopeful, even trusting. It’s rather uplifting in its way, and everyone seems to think it’s a cynical profession.’

  Dryden considered the open hatch and what would happen if he jumped through.

  ‘How can I help?’ he said, surprised by how emotionless his voice was.

  The man laughed. ‘My name’s Roland,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s one of my names and will have to do for our purposes. How can you help me? Well, interesting question, Mr Dryden. Do I have a problem? Yes. I do. At this moment in time a plain-clothes police team is mounting a round-the-clock surveillance operation on my home, and my business, in Coventry. They are, I’m told, under the impression I am some kind of mastermind of crime. Ridiculous, but there it is. I apparently coordinate horrific attacks on innocent people engaged in the breeding and torture of animals.’

  ‘And that’s not true?’ said Dryden, his jangling nerves making him dizzy.

  ‘Well, I didn’t say that. No. Oh no. My real problem is that the police – last night actually – arrested a colleague of ours. I use the term loosely; he was a member of our organization, something we now regret. They are threatening to charge him in connection with a series of incidents involving Sealodes Farm. This man will betray me. Because if he does not then he will go to jail, and that’s something he fears very much. And he will go to jail because he was stupid enough not to wear a balaclava on Thieves Bridge.’

  Dryden couldn’t stop himself reacting.

  ‘Indeed. And it will be your evidence of identification which will be crucial. And I’ve no doubt you will give it, Mr Dryden – after all, you’ve betrayed us
once already. I need to persuade you to decline to give that evidence.’

  The gun, when he took it out, was at first a comfort to Dryden. It was made of a dull smudged metal like pewter and he knew it wasn’t designed to fire bullets. There was a large aperture in the side of the barrel for loading something, but something that wasn’t lethal.

  ‘So you’re the man they’re after?’ said Dryden, only just succeeding in stilling the vibrato in his voice.

  ‘Indeed.’ The bird on the sill began to sing and the man stepped forward, genuinely captivated.

  ‘Meadow pipit,’ he said. ‘What a gift to hear it call.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ said Dryden, aware that the question betrayed his fear.

  ‘Well – on a purely personal level, Mr Dryden, I’d like to see you suffer like some of the animals do: perhaps a few days of enforced smoking, or a quick course of detergents applied to the eyes? Revenge – an unsavoury human emotion, but what the hell, eh? And then we’d very much like to persuade you that giving evidence in the forthcoming legal process – which I think is now inevitable – is something we’d like to ask you to reconsider. But we’ll ask nicely, when the time comes.’

  That smile again, and laughter outside. He took out the bolt quickly, a small phial with a feathered tail, and slid it into the gun. ‘We use these to upset our fox hunting friends,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought a horse down with this – very effective. The fall broke the rider’s leg – an excellent outcome.’

  From outside there was a low whistle. The man raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Dryden watched the bolt fly, in slow motion, turning like a winning dart from a TV replay. He felt the thud in his thigh and looked down to see the dart hanging out of his flesh. He lunged towards the open window and tried to raise his arm to the sill but found it disturbingly heavy, unresponsive to the repeated electrical orders he was frantically sending from his brain. He could see the pool outside, and the still reed heads, but they seemed to be at the end of a tunnel, drawing away from him, the sound of the dull bird singing beautifully fading quickly. His knees buckled and he slumped to the floor, his head thudding without pain against the bench on the way down. He could see a man’s boot close up, and the small desiccated corpse of a mouse, and then nothing.