The Skeleton Man

by Jim Kelly

  Matter-of-fact, devoid of emotion.

  ‘He ran to the woods, blindly, and then he saw the water beyond the wire and tried to get to it. When I got there he’d stopped climbing and the body was still, so I let him burn.’

  ‘And then you cut the wire,’ said Dryden. ‘Where did you go?’

  Neate’s hand returned to the wound on his head. ‘I took some food and clothes. There’s an old sheepfold out on the mere where we played as kids. I wanted this to heal, but it won’t.’ He dropped his hand and examined the blood on his palm.

  Dryden nodded. ‘What you didn’t know was that he’d set light to the trees as he ran through, the fire spread to the bungalow.’

  Dryden watched Neate’s eyes; a single blink, a slight jerk of the chin.

  ‘She’ll live,’ he said. ‘But no thanks to you.’

  Neate looked out again. ‘Go, or you’ll die,’ he said, and Dryden knew then that he hadn’t told the whole truth, that he was going to let that perish with him on Telegraph Hill. ‘It might as well end here,’ said Neate, not turning away from the light.

  Dryden dropped swiftly down the flights of stairs out into the now brilliant sunshine.

  He stood for a second considering his options. A thick pall of smoke rose from the old factory, drifting low over the village towards the church. He ran west and then down the hill to The Dring, turning north along the old Whittlesea Road. When he got to the cattery where the Smith girl had worked he cut off the road into the open fields, finding a low ditch to take cover. Looking back he was in time to see a gout of black earth springing up from a spark of red flame just thirty feet from the old water tower, then came the percussion, the thud felt through the earth. The second shell found its mark, punching a hole beside one of the windows on the second floor and exploding within the room. The blast blew all the remaining windows out and smoke, like milk, filled the interior. The third shell fell into the roof and Dryden heard the unmistakable scream of steel being twisted out of shape, and the hiss of water falling down through the burning rooms below.

  Wednesday, 1 August

  41

  They let the villagers back one last time to bury the bones of Kathryn Neate and her son Jude. Crowded into St Swithun’s they could hear the rain which still fell on the grey stones of the graveyard. At the lych-gate a gaggle of press photographers held a line set down by the police, shutters whirring. And over Whittlesea Mere a single tenor bell rang out sixteen times for Kathryn, once for her son, the ringers struggling with the rotten ropes and the falling dust in the bell chamber.

  Inside, the villagers edged forward down the nave, past the rows of plastic seats, seeing in each other’s faces the joy and despair which had filled the years they’d been away from Jude’s Ferry, the years in which Peter Tholy’s bones had hung in the lightless cellar. Dryden sat on a stone bench by the ossuary watching them, Humph beside him, tiny hands held in a prayer over his stomach.

  Matthew Smith and Paul Cobley stood together, pale beneath their summer tans, their shoulders close but never touching. Jan Cobley was with them, alone, trying to be proud of the son who had torn her family apart. Smith’s twin, Mark, stood with his wife on the other side of the nave, a lifetime apart from his brother, his eyes set on the remains of the stained-glass figure of St Swithun above the altar in the east window. And Ken Woodruffe held back, in the side aisle near the Peyton tomb, an uncertain hand pushing his thin hair over his skull, nodding to those who were prepared to acknowledge him.

  And then the Reverend Fred Lake climbed the charred pulpit and looked down on the two coffins set on trestles in the nave, below the patched hole in the roof punched out by the stray artillery shell.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he said, and what was left of Jude’s Ferry fell to its knees.

  Dryden, suddenly suffocated by a sense of being too close to a past he no longer wished to share, slipped out through the warped oak doors into the rain. The press had retreated beneath a sycamore where they huddled under umbrellas, waiting for the service to end. Laughter, barely suppressed, rippled through the group. Dryden recognized faces, a few from his Fleet Street past, and felt uneasy again, finding himself part of the story. The gruesome death of Jason Imber on the perimeter wire of the range, the identification of the bones of Kathryn Neate and the suicide of her brother had been enough to bring the Fleet Street pack to Whittlesea Mere; they had a few facts, but as yet no story to link them all together.

  DI Shaw stood by his black Land Rover, a white shirt open at the neck, enjoying the cool rain. On the dashboard Dryden glimpsed a row of seashells and a package, rolled roughly in newspaper. A brace of sea rods was bound expertly to the roof rack, ready for a trip.

  ‘The beach?’ asked Dryden.

  Shaw nodded. ‘A few days off.’ He looked towards the church. ‘I came to talk to Ruth Lisle,’ he said. They moved into the lee of the tower out of the wind, looking down on the village, monochrome in the flat afternoon light.

  ‘They’re all inside,’ said Dryden. ‘Why Ruth?’

  DI Shaw looked towards Telegraph Hill. ‘The shelling punctured the tank in the water tower. It took some time but the 600 gallons finally seeped out this morning. There were some bones at the bottom, human bones, weighted with stones in an overcoat pocket. It’s difficult to say, but there was a silver anklet above the right foot.’

  Dryden saw her again, walking along the road to Neate’s Garage, relieved perhaps that she had finally taken the decision to unburden herself of her debt to Jude. And then the brutal rejection at the hands of Jimmy Neate and George Tudor – the final confirmation that she was still an outsider, would always be an outsider. So she’d run, suddenly overcome by the depression which had haunted her that summer, run up to Telegraph Hill where she had always found peace. She knew where Bob Steward kept the keys so she’d got them, climbed up as he had done through the empty brick rooms and then further, past the point where Dryden had stopped – up the spiral staircase to the platform above the black dripping water, below the dank wooden roof.

  Then she’d let gravity take her life.

  Dryden shivered. ‘Magda called at Neate’s Garage that last night to say there was a rumour in the village that Kathryn had poisoned the baby, and so she was going to go to the police, and that she wanted the family to be prepared for that. An honourable woman, foolish too. All she wanted was a home.’

  Dryden leant back against the rough stone wall. ‘They drove her out. A hundred years ago they’d have done it with clods of earth. But they knew her, they knew how to hurt her – with words. How to make her feel exactly what she didn’t want to feel – rejected like an eternal outsider, carrying the stigma of the newcomer who doesn’t belong. It was what she’d always feared. It was enough.’

  They both looked towards the distant ruin of the water tower on Telegraph Hill, a grey silhouette in the rain.

  ‘I doubt she ever suspected the truth; that Jimmy had poisoned the child, or at least harried his sister into giving the child the dose,’ said Dryden. ‘God. Imagine it.’

  Dryden looked into Shaw’s water-blue eyes and saw the first hint that the truth was worse.

  ‘Jude’s bones,’ said Shaw, looking down at the grass. There was a stone tomb chest behind him and for the first time since Dryden had met him he sat – a small act of respect.

  Dryden felt the slight nausea which always told him he’d got something wrong, that some fundamental truth had eluded him. ‘Jimmy said they’d used ethylene glycol – that there’d be traces,’ he said.

  Shaw returned his gaze. ‘I don’t want this used – not yet. You can have it first when we’re ready. The forensics aren’t signed off.’

  Dryden stepped closer. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We had a series of test results. The DNA on the Ducados in the grave matched up to Jimmy Neate.’

  ‘What?’

  Shaw shrugged. ‘Real life’s like that. Perhaps Ken Woodruffe offered him one while they dug the grave. It’s a lucky break for Ken, a
lthough he neither deserves nor needs it. I wouldn’t get a murder charge past a committal with the evidence we’ve got, and the alibis they’ve manufactured are pretty watertight. But a DNA match would at least have given us a chance of breaking him down, peeling him away from the rest. But no go, I’m afraid.’

  Dryden nodded, knowing that wasn’t the news Shaw had brought. ‘What else?’

  ‘Jude’s bones. The toxicology is clean, which it wouldn’t be with that kind of poison. It lodges in the bones, and it’d still be there if it had killed Jude Neate seventeen years ago.’

  Dryden pushed himself away from the stone wall of the nave.

  ‘And I checked with the death certificate,’ said Shaw. ‘The doctor who attended was a locum from Peterborough, near retirement, and now dead. But he kept decent notes. The baby had been born with severe jaundice and a blood transfusion had been recommended. There was a rapid deterioration, they tried to get him into hospital, but he died before leaving the house. Natural causes. There was a full post mortem, which wouldn’t have detected the antifreeze, but then we now know he hadn’t been dosed with that. I think he died of natural causes, Dryden.’

  Dryden looked up into the sky, trying to work it out, to see what could have driven Jimmy Neate to hide his nephew’s bones that night in 1990, and then to return to try and make sure they’d never be found.

  ‘But the answer was in the bones,’ said Shaw. ‘I was unhappy with some of the assumptions we’d made about identity in this case so we set about crosschecking DNA samples. We needed to find Jude’s skull in the ossuary – the child’s other bones were probably dust, anyway – so we did some standard tests using material from Tholy’s bones, and from Imber’s corpse. Both candidates for the child’s father. There were no matches at all.’

  ‘There must be…’ said Dryden.

  Shaw held up a hand. ‘We used Kathryn’s DNA and found him quickly enough. But it was Jude’s DNA which told the truth.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The science is a bit of a nightmare, but broadly we’ve found that it is probable, certainly beyond doubt in my mind, that Jude’s birth was the result of an incestuous relationship – a very close incestuous relationship. Practically speaking, the father was one of two people – either Kathryn’s brother or her father, Walter. So we matched up Jimmy and the child’s DNA and got the exact match we were looking for. There’s little doubt, Dryden. Jimmy Neate was the father of his sister’s child.’

  Once he’d said it Dryden knew it was true, the extent of Kathryn Neate’s nightmare life revealed at last.

  ‘No chance it’s Walter?’ he asked.

  Shaw shook his head.

  ‘Surrounded by men,’ said Dryden, watching a crow shuffle on the rim of a gravestone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Shaw, as much to the gravestones as to Dryden.

  Inside the church the congregation sang, Fred Lake’s the only voice clear and strong.

  Dryden shook his head. ‘Jimmy couldn’t risk a pathologist getting near the bones. Even in 1990 there’d have been enough genetic material to lead them back to the family. But with modern methods and technology Jimmy was right in the frame. With the police now in pursuit it would not take them long to search the old garage and garden. That’s why he came back – he knew it was all over but he still couldn’t die with the knowledge that his crime would finally be revealed. Above all that it would be revealed to Walter – probably the only human being Jimmy Neate actually ever cared about.’

  A few villagers had left the church now and were standing in a group in the churchyard, cigarette smoke curling up above their heads, huddled close under umbrellas.

  Dryden looked up, letting raindrops fall into his face. ‘I think Kathryn threatened to expose him that night on the towpath. And to protect herself she told Jimmy that Tholy knew the truth, a little lie that cost Tholy his life as well. If she did tell Tholy, he took the secret to the grave with him. But no one would have believed him anyway.’

  A crow cackled from a hawthorn tree and made Dryden jump. The press was bunched at the gate again trying to entice comment from the mourners with little success.

  They walked to Shaw’s Land Rover and the detective reached inside and retrieved the newspaper package and gave it to Dryden.

  ‘Sea trout,’ he said. ‘A brace. Caught just after dawn.’

  Dryden could smell the ozone and the salt. ‘They’re all guilty,’ he said. ‘All of them in the cellar. The mob.’

  Shaw laughed, shaking Dryden’s hand. ‘But no one was in the cellar – they all went home that night. Jan Cobley heard Paul coming in about 11.00 apparently. They shared a drink in the garden. The Smiths had their fight, made up, and split a bottle of whisky in the front room of the family council house. Their sister watched them from the stairs and remembers the clocks chiming midnight – a charming scene. Ken Woodruffe was in bed with Jill Palmer. We tracked her down in Sheffield – married with two kids. But still sticking to the story. You can’t really blame her, it’s a past she doesn’t want to revisit.

  ‘When he came to making a statement Woodruffe was a little more selective with the truth than he had been with you. Sure, he admits digging the grave for Ellen and concealing the trapdoor, but he insists he stayed in the bar with the others when Jimmy and George Tudor dragged Peter Tholy into the yard. He claims he never knew what happened later, didn’t want to know, and that he’d shut the pub when the mob left. He named those he claimed made up the gang – all of whom, except Walter Neate, are now dead.’

  ‘And George Tudor?’

  ‘Interviewed by police in Fremantle yesterday. He named Jimmy Neate as the ringleader who took Tholy down to the cellar – but by then he knew he was dead. Ken Woodruffe’s made six calls to Australia in the last three days according to his BT records, so not surprisingly Tudor’s story tallies beautifully with the others. He denies sending the postcards home impersonating Tholy, or ringing his mother. And, of course, he wasn’t down in the cellar either. He says he walked home alone at midnight, had a sleepless night, but heard nothing.’

  Shaw leant against the damp black bodywork of the car. ‘So the only names I’ve got of those in the cellar are on stones like these,’ he said, looking into the graveyard. ‘Woodruffe now says Jimmy Neate and Jason Imber went down – along with three old boys from the almshouses. All dead. And Walter Neate of course, but he’s never leaving the bed he took to when they told him his son had gone before him. The only person who was ready to tell us who was really in that cellar was Jason Imber, and he paid for that with his life.’

  Dryden looked down at the crowd, dispersing now, climbing into an army coach parked up below the allotments. ‘But Imber’s e-mail to Laura said there were twelve of them that night. So there’s six missing. My guess would be Woodruffe, Cobley, the Smiths, and Tudor. We’re still one short.’

  Shaw looked at his boots in the grass. ‘My job’s getting people into court, Dryden. If there’s one missing, there’s one missing. Fact is, I haven’t enough evidence to issue a parking ticket to any of them when it comes to murder. My best bet was conspiracy to pervert, seeing as they do admit that they knew Kathryn had been killed, and that they failed to report that in 1990, and again when Peter Tholy’s skeleton came to light. But conspiracy’s a tough call – it only needs one of them to slip the charge and the whole lot walk. And do we really want a trial which highlights the fact we can’t nail anyone for the murder? The file’s with the CPS, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  ‘So they got away with it, didn’t they?’ said Dryden.

  ‘You think? You don’t have to be behind bars to serve a sentence, Dryden. Jimmy Neate went gladly to his death, which tells you something about the life he had.’

  The wind had picked up, and Dryden turned his face into it, closing his eyes.

  ‘I’d like them to know that their guilt isn’t a secret any more,’ said Dryden.

  Shaw climbed into the Land Rover. ‘They know,’ he said. ‘Beli
eve me, they all know. But if I can’t get a conviction I need to move on. They’ll just have to go on living with what they did. They hanged an innocent man, something they didn’t know until a few days ago. So that’s something Jason Imber would be proud of. The truth. It’s justice of a sort.’ Shaw edged the 4x4 forward, rolling up the side window, and joined the queue of vehicles edging its way down Church Hill.

  The rain, heavier now, began to bounce off the gravestones.

  Dryden found Major Broderick in the church standing before the wreaths arranged on the Peyton tomb.

  ‘Spectacular,’ said Broderick, nodding at a huge bouquet of lilies.

  ‘Your father grew lilies, didn’t he, when he was here at Jude’s Ferry. It was a kind of brand almost, what he did best, right?’

  Broderick nodded, sensitive enough to pick up the insistence in Dryden’s voice, the edge of accusation.

  ‘So when he offered to decorate the church for Jude Neate’s funeral it had to be lilies. Lilies, Fred Lake said, hundreds of them beautifully arranged. And that must have been you. Your father was in a wheelchair by then and no one else had the skills, except perhaps for Peter Tholy and he said he spent all day packing in his cottage down on The Dring – except for a brief visit to your father that evening. Did you meet him then?’

  Broderick stepped forward and ran the petals of a rose through his fingers.

  ‘Did you hate him?’ asked Dryden, walking round the tomb, aware now that they were alone. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did. He’d taken your place in some ways, a son’s place. And then he came that last evening and your father gave him something, didn’t he, some money?’

  Dryden nodded as if there had been an answer. ‘He tried to buy his life with it later, in the inn, didn’t he? He told them he had money but they all laughed. Did you laugh?’