The Skeleton Man (17 page)

‘It’s the cellar,’ said Shaw.

‘So you
don’t
think it’s suicide?’

Shaw shrugged. ‘Who cares what I think? I need to be sure it isn’t murder. My job’s to catch people who break the law. It’s pretty black and white. On this case I have two problems. Identifying the victim, and then working out if there’s any chance they were strung up by a person or persons unknown.’

‘What about the Smith twins?’

Shaw smiled. ‘Bravo. Indeed.’ The detective’s shoulders relaxed visibly. ‘Research of your own?’

‘Maybe,’ said Dryden, determined to gather information, not give it away.

Shaw pressed on. ‘Yup. It’s a good question. They went for each other’s throats that last night, out in the yard of the inn apparently, thirty yards from the trapdoor down to the cellar. Woodruffe, the landlord, has given us a blow-by-blow account – but then he’s keen to divert attention from the fact that we found the skeleton in his cellar.’

‘Brothers fall out all the time – why should this end in murder?’

‘Standard version of events says it’s money – isn’t it always? At least that’s what Mark Smith says – he ended up working for one of the big national builders,
based out near Thetford. He’s a bitter man. He says the two brothers had a great opportunity to relocate their own business – the father was a builder, and they’d been brought up in the trade. The old man died in 1989 and there was some insurance money, plus a lump sum off the MoD for compensation. Mark reckons something like £45,000 in total. It was their mother’s really, but she said she’d back whatever they agreed to do – if they agreed. But Matthew said no – he had his own ideas, a new life. Sounds like he was smarter, wanted to start up a design business with a friend customizing websites. So they came to blows, like brothers do, and stumbled out into the dark. That’s the last time anyone seems to have seen Matthew outside the family. None of the witnesses we know were in the inn that night say they followed them outside, a lack of curiosity which borders on the unnatural, I think. That was just after eleven o’clock. Mark claims the fight petered out and they walked home twenty yards apart. Next morning there was a silent breakfast, punctuated by an announcement from Matthew that he’d been offered a job in computers in North Wales and he was going to take it. A story which is corroborated by the sister – Jennifer. Mark says his brother phoned home a couple of times to talk to his mother, and there was a telephone number where they could call him, but they never did. Apparently the mother felt he’d deserted them when they needed him most. She’d taken the death of her husband very badly. As far as she was concerned Matthew was a
non-person, a view which turns out to be uncannily close to the truth.’

‘Which is?’

‘Matthew doesn’t appear to exist. We’ve tried Swansea, Inland Revenue, trades unions, credit companies, banks, but so far there’s no record of a Matthew James Smith.’

‘The mother – where’s she?’

‘Dead within eighteen months of the move.’

‘And Mark got all the money?’

‘Yup. She’d changed her will to cut out Matthew from inheriting half the estate, but there was a small bequest which was never claimed. Mark says that his brother phoned soon after the death and was devastated to find he’d missed the funeral. Why hadn’t they called? A good question, to which they don’t have much of an answer. Anyway, Mark says his brother’s view was that if they really wanted him out of their lives he’d oblige. They’d never see him again, and if they were that ashamed of him he’d change his name. A convenient detail, which doesn’t mean it’s not true, although there’s no official record of a change of name by deed poll.’

Dryden thought about the Skeleton Man, turning slowly on the rusted hook. ‘But Mark couldn’t have done it alone – strung him up like that. And it would mean the sister was in it too – or at least in covering up. If the victim was conscious he’d have kicked out, the hands were only loosely tied so he could have done some damage with his arms as well. There’s
no way one man could get him up onto that stool unless he went willingly, and I don’t think that’s likely, do you?’

Shaw nodded. ‘If it is murder, it’s a lynch mob.’

Dryden had thought of that but it was the first time anyone had said it out loud. It was an ugly term, even uglier than the thought of the yellow bones hanging silently in the cellar for seventeen years.

‘Mark Smith has given us a DNA sample to crosscheck with the skeleton. We’ll know in two to three days if there’s a family link. I have to say he looks pretty relaxed about that, but you never know.’

The detective smoothed out the plan of the cellar. ‘Which brings us back to the forensics. We needed the best examination possible of the cellar floor – the best in the circumstances, given the time limits – and luckily the animal rights SOCO team is first class, so when they’d finished with Peyton’s tomb they did some overtime for us.

‘One of the problems here is that with over a decade separating us and the crime in question any successful prosecution will demand material evidence that puts our villain, or villains, in the cellar. The problem is contamination of the scene. Half the British army had been through it by the time we got here, led by Major Broderick himself. In fact if someone had set out to contaminate a crime scene they couldn’t have done it better. Size 12 boots everywhere. Then there was the water from the hoses they used to put the fires out. We put in some
hot-air blowers but it took us twenty-four hours to dry the place out. Then they combed it, every centimetre, starting here at the foot of the stairs and working outwards. We’re nearly done now.’

‘And?’

‘These,’ said Shaw, unlocking a small cash box. He took out a plastic envelope with three or four pieces of gravel inside. ‘Shropshire pea,’ he said. ‘Ornamental gravel. Looks like it fell out of the tread of someone’s shoes. We’ve checked the squaddies’ boots – nothing.’

‘So, is there a match in the village?’

‘Several. But it’s not a standard gravel size. It’s much smaller than the commercial brands we’ve located so far. So we’re having samples from the village analysed upstairs. We might get a match, who knows.’

Dryden held the small packet as if it might bite. ‘Where’d you get the degree in forensics then?’

Shaw looked at the gravel in the bag. ‘Cambridge.’

‘Couldn’t you get in anywhere else?’

Shaw laughed.

‘So what else did you find?’

The next packet held three cigarette ends, reduced to shreds barely held together by thin cylinders of paper. ‘Standard brands. All date to mid to late eighties, early nineties – except for one, a single Ducados stub. Common Spanish brand – we’re having the company take a look in case there’s something – anything – unusual.’

‘Spanish?’

‘Yes. But we’re not that excited. It’s the kind of brand holidaymakers used to pick up through duty free. There’s no genetic material on any of these stubs – the soaking didn’t help – but I’d be delighted if you forgot to mention that in your story. The Ducados is significant in a way, but I’ll get to that later.’

Dryden wondered if Shaw realized the depth of the parochialism of the Fens. A Spanish cigarette was about as exotic as a snow leopard.

Shaw shook another evidence bag. ‘There was one crisp new Marlboro dog-end, but Major Broderick informs me one of his men is on a charge as a result. Got bored on guard duty, apparently.’

Putting it aside he brought out a fourth envelope. ‘There was this,’ said Shaw. It held a small curl of plastic, a bit like one half of a DNA helix. ‘Fibreglass shaving, machine tooled.’

They both shrugged, but Dryden suspected Shaw was holding back, giving him just enough for a decent story which would unnerve the culprit, or culprits, if they were still alive, and still local. He noted that he hadn’t mentioned any progress on the surgical gauze found under the victim’s sleeve.

Dryden peered at the helix through the evidence bag. ‘It could be good,’ he said.

Shaw smiled again, the teeth as white as chalk cliffs. ‘Not as good as what we found under the floor.’

Plastic sheeting covered the well of the stairs down to the cellar and Shaw had to lift two folds to descend, holding one back for Dryden to duck under. Dryden stepped down, acutely aware that his pulse rate had picked up. Below, the brick floor glistened with moisture, lit by the halogen lamp which burned in the far corner, where a woman in wraparound scene-of-crime overalls worked on her knees with pincers. A small video camera stood on a tripod, its nose dipped down at 90 degrees to the floor, behind a sheet of reflective foil.

The hook which had held the Skeleton Man had fallen to the floor with his bones, but the broken screw end was still embedded in the overhead timber. They stood beneath it.

Shaw took a breath and Dryden sensed again that he was framing what he would say next.

‘We noticed as we worked our way across the floor that the bricks over here, in this far corner, were loosely laid down without cement, just bedded in the clay beneath. So we took up the bricks, as you can see.’

On the floor a white line edged a rectangular shape set into the cellar corner, the bricks that had been removed being piled in a neat heap to one side.

‘We dug them up and dug down. We dug down six feet – into the clay subsoil. Then we put it all back.’

The hair on the back of Dryden’s neck prickled and he felt sure the temperature had dropped.

‘What was in the hole?’

‘Nothing. The point is that the hole had been dug before, and then filled in. The stuff we took out was jumbled up peat, topsoil and some building hardcore. We’ve taken a look down elsewhere using an auger and the soil profiles are undisturbed. You’ll know yourself that if you’ve ever dug a hole the big problem is that there is always more to put back than you took out. And we found the excess; in the crates up against the far wall which we’ve moved out. So. It’s pretty clear that someone dug the hole, then filled it in, replacing the bricks.’

‘It is a grave, isn’t it?’

Shaw shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to come up with another sensible suggestion. It’s about five foot six long – which is a bit short – and five feet deep, which is a bit shallow, and two foot wide, which is narrow. A chest maybe? But I doubt it. No. A grave has to be the working hypothesis. Which prompts two questions. Who was it dug for, and why aren’t they in it?’

Dryden laughed, shaking his head. The officer working in the corner sat back on a small stool, massaging her hands.

‘The Skeleton Man, surely,’ said Dryden.

‘But then why leave him hanging?’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t time,’ suggested Dryden.

‘They had time to fill it in, put the bricks back. It was neat work. So either they abandoned a plan to bury someone in the grave, or – outside chance – they buried someone and then dug them up. It’s possible the infill has been used twice – there’s no real way of telling, although the experts seem to think it’s unlikely as the material is still roughly stratified, whereas if they’d done it twice it would be more mixed up. Make sense?’

Dryden nodded. ‘And there’s something else,’ said Shaw, nodding to the SOCO before leading Dryden back upstairs into a splash of sun. In a dry corner of the storehouse above plastic sheeting had been wrapped round various bits of timber and brick.

‘When the shell exploded it blew bits of the cellar roof out into the street. We’ve found these pieces, bits of the jigsaw. We found this too.’

Shaw drew back some sheeting. It was a trapdoor, about three foot square, made of wood.

‘This would have been at the top of the steps down to the cellar?’ asked Dryden.

‘Indeed. But look at the other side.’ He flipped it over and what would have been the top side was covered in small floor tiles – many of them shattered, but which matched those on the storehouse floor. In one was a small slot, cut through to the other side.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Dryden.

‘I can’t pretend we do either. It’s not that unusual
– but it might be significant. The trapdoor has been concealed by blending it with the rest of the floor – the hole is for a crude key, you just drop it down through the slit, turn it, and pull up.’

‘Which is why it was never found during the military exercises?’

‘Right – plus the fact that the people running the exercises thought there was nothing here to find, so I doubt the squaddies were given much time to search the building anyway – certainly not long enough to find a door like this, and Woodruffe says the storeroom was full of packing cases and there’s still loads of them around.’

‘And what’s the explanation for the trapdoor being concealed?’ asked Dryden.

‘He says it was like that for as long as he can remember. He was brought up at the inn – his mother was the licensee, the father before that. He says he thinks the building might have been a shop at one time – hence the tiles, which are Victorian. In that context, tiling over the trap isn’t that bizarre.’

They walked out into the street.

‘But it adds to the picture, doesn’t it?’ asked Dryden. ‘The Skeleton Man, an empty grave, a hidden door.’

‘Yes,’ said Shaw.

‘I said the grave was empty,’ said Shaw. ‘But that’s not quite true. We found this.’ Another evidence bag, a cigarette butt inside. ‘Ducados,’ said Shaw. ‘Our exotic

friend again – and because the water hadn’t soaked down that far there’s some DNA material this time, enough for an ID if we’re lucky.’ Shaw smiled. ‘And I feel lucky.’

The rain was setting in, falling in curtains of newsprint-black from a low grey sky. They walked up the street towards the hump-backed bridge over The Dring which trickled now with water from the hill. A rat scuttled in the gutter beside them, slipping effortlessly down a drain with a languid splosh. Birds’ wings fluttered amongst the exposed roof beams of Palmer’s Store, where Magda Hollingsworth had so painstakingly written her diary.

Dryden caught his own reflection in the broken window of a house by the bridge. Startled, he jumped visibly, and Shaw stopped. ‘There always seems to be something moving in the shadows in this village,’ said Dryden, and a sparrowhawk took up position high above their heads, as if listening.