The Skeleton Man (20 page)

She ushered Dryden out of the door as the driver ran the back of the container up to reveal a row of butchered sides of beef hanging from hooks, the meat red and bloody where the circular saw had split the bodies open, the bones caressed by the ice which hung in the refrigerated air.

The first time he saw them together it felt like a dislocation; bones parting in the socket. Laura hadn’t been on the gallery in the sun, enjoying solitude in a wicker chair. Instead he’d been directed down through one of the wards to the unit where the patients were taken for physiotherapy. She was on a weights machine, lying flat, trying to raise the bar hung with circular lead cogs which crossed her feet.

And he was beside her, the man they’d fished out of the river, the man who didn’t have a past. He was talking into her ear, his wheelchair pulled up and braked, the wounded hand held on his lap like a parcel, the fingers swaddled to form a mitt. Even in a dressing gown he looked elegant, the arms drooping languidly from the rests of the chair. The kind of man, Dryden imagined, who would shoot the cuffs on a suit.

Something about the attitude of his neck, the slightly bowed head, suggested confession.

It was the first time since the accident he’d seen her talking to someone he didn’t know, someone who wasn’t from his world. A good sign, he reasoned; she was getting better, putting together an independent life, building her own world as best she could.

Laura said, ‘Hi,’ the syllable clearer, sharper than he’d heard since the speech therapy had begun just six months earlier.

‘Hi,’ said Dryden, fighting an urge to apologize for the intrusion. ‘Humph and I are off to the coast,’ he said. ‘We could do the beach – I’ve got an interview in Lynn. We thought you’d come.’

The man released the brake on the chair and a uniformed PC whom Dryden had not noticed stood, ready to escort him back to his room. But Laura raised her hand, struggling to control her face. ‘This…’ she said, and then they laughed. ‘This is the man who does not know his name,’ she said, each word contorting her face with effort, but each sound now distinct, articulated.

They all laughed this time, but Dryden thought he was somehow outside the joke. Laura’s face was flushed with effort and something else, something close to joy.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I was there when they got you out of the river. My name’s Dryden. Philip Dryden.’ He took the proffered good hand, noting again the handsome face, the crisp line of the jaw, and the complexion Dryden always associated with money. ‘I work for
The Crow
– that’s the local paper. Remember much?’

He shrugged, laughing, the green eyes searching Dryden’s. ‘Not really – just fragments and they seem to belong to someone else, someone who isn’t me, at least not yet. It’s a really bizarre experience. I can
remember everything about life – you know, how to operate a coffee machine, or send a text message, or find Radio Four – but nothing about
my
life.’

‘How’d you feel, inside – emotionally?’

The man looked at Laura. ‘Scared, to be frank. Anxious. I don’t know what happened at the bridge. I can’t be sure someone didn’t throw me in – so, yeah, scared. How would you feel? If they’re out there, this person, these people, then they might try again. So I feel a bit hunted, a target.’

The voice was modulated, unhurried, with the self-possession of a BBC newsreader.

‘Anything… do you not remember anything?’

‘I’m writing it all down in a diary, but it’s just feelings really. And some inconsequential fragments from a childhood, the childhood of this other me I suppose. I can see a garden with all these exotic plants – palms, not spindly Cornish ones, hundred-foot ones. And I can see an ocean, with boats on it, thousands of them, and this incredible lawn, like a cool green carpet, between the flowering shrubs. God knows what all that’s about.’

‘A holiday?’ suggested Dryden.

He shook his head, but didn’t answer. ‘And rugby posts. This is a different place because there are low hills in the background dusted with snow. There must be six pitches, more, and round every one is arranged a thin crowd. I think my parents are there, in that memory somewhere. But I don’t know, I don’t see them.’

He laughed. ‘So, stuff like that. Not very useful. Laura’s said I could send her what I write. There’s nobody else, and the doctors said it might help. She says she’ll write back. I’m really grateful. There’s something about words that’s comforting, something really fundamental.’ He picked a magazine from the metal folder attached to the side of his chair. ‘Something about the black letters arranged on the white paper. It’s just important, but I don’t know why. They make me happy, I guess; happier, anyway.’

Dryden nodded, trying to look pleased, irritated by the note of self-pity.

‘Does Jude’s Ferry mean anything?’

He edged his chair towards the machine next to Laura and swung himself easily into the seat. Dryden thought he was making the time to think through an answer. ‘Sure. I think I was born there; like I say, bits of childhood have come back. But this is just a name – there’s not much to go with it.’

‘It’s not much of a place.’

‘There’s this street with a ditch full of reeds on one side. Is that right?’

Dryden nodded. ‘Sure. That’s The Dring – the main street.’

‘And bells ringing over my head, and the smell of wax on the ropes, the scent of a guttering candle. Peacocks on a lawn – not the exotic green one, this one’s covered in leaves at autumn, and it’s patchy. And a post office. I can remember the smell of it, and bells again, the little bells when the door opened,
and one of those trays of sweets just right for my height. It’s just the echo of a memory.’

Dryden shrugged, wondering where he’d learned to use words like that, the sophistication of the imagery.

‘But nothing about falling in the river? The handrail was broken, that took some force…’

Laura pulled herself upright, cutting in. ‘Philip. Give him time.’ Dryden knew what she’d said, but he could see the other man struggling to unpick the sentence.

‘We should give you a name,’ said Dryden, knowing the thought was callous. Outside, through a picture window, he could see the Capri idling, the boot up ready to stow the wheelchair.

‘The coast?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘I’ll do the weights,’ she said, making a mess of the last word. ‘I must. See you at the boat. Tonight.’

They kissed, but as he walked away he felt uneasy, as if his back was being watched. Then his mobile rang.

By the time he’d reached the Capri the call was over. It was the same man, unable to disguise the voice or the triumph within it, once he heard that Henry Peyton didn’t want a fight, that he’d shut down Sealodes Farm and retire quietly with the fortune he’d already made. Then the suspicions had kicked in: had Dryden called the police? Had Peyton? One blue uniform, he said, and they’d dump the bones in a ditch and Peyton would never see the dogs again. And then they’d be back: they’d be back every day of every week of every month of every year until his business was ruined and his life was a living nightmare. Dryden imagined the face on the other end of the line, a glove over the mouthpiece, spit in the wool.

They fixed a point to pick up the bones and the dogs. Thieves Bridge, Ten Mile Bank, at dusk – 9.45pm that evening. He was to come alone, leave the cab in the village, and walk out to the river. Dryden didn’t have time to say no. He rang DI Shaw with the details and the detective outlined his plans. He’d put a team on the river in a boat, and a helicopter would be ready on the ground at Downham ten miles to the north, where they had a helipad for the holiday traffic snarl-ups on the A10. Shaw and the team would
maintain a cordon half a mile from the bridge. They were a professional unit, he said, and no one would spot them. He promised it would be all right; in the way that people always do when they think it might not.

Dryden cut the call and tried a big smile. ‘Shit,’ he said, feeling his guts tighten. ‘Tonight, Ten Mile Bank,’ he said to Humph. He covered his face with his hands and wished he wasn’t such a coward as to always agree to anything that proved he wasn’t. Now he had hours to contemplate his fear before his appointment with the balaclavas.

‘Where’s Laura?’ said Humph.

‘She’s got to work out. We do the coast another day – the Reverend Lake’s not going anywhere fast.’

Humph, sensing an unhealthy silence, took control. He swung the cab out onto the old A10 and headed north. ‘I’ve got someone you should meet,’ he said by way of explanation.

At Southery they pulled off the road and into the village. The high street was blocked by two tractors, travelling in opposite directions, which had stopped to allow the drivers to enjoy a chat. Humph deftly mounted the pavement, crossed a grass verge, and left them to it.

Clear of the last house they burst out onto a wide fen flattened by a vast sky. This was Methwold Severals, a tract of peat distinguished by nothing but a single sugar beet factory, a plume of smoke from its giant modern chimney trailing across the late afternoon sky. They zigzagged towards it using
a maze of drove roads, navigating by sight, leaving in their wake the abandoned farmsteads which had given way to the big commercial farming companies which dominated the whole of the Black Fen.

They inched closer, impeded by a series of right-angle bends, until they came to the factory gates. This was a modern industrial site, a 1960s beet plant, as removed from the small-scale operation in Jude’s Ferry as Stephenson’s
Rocket
is from an Inter-City 125. Four towering silos blocked the view north towards the sea, each linked to its partners by an overground complex of pipes, cables and conveyor belts. Steam leaked from various valves and Dryden could feel the hum of the machinery vibrating through the cab once Humph had parked up by the entrance.

The factory had replaced an older one on the same site, the only remnant of which was a pair of two-up, two-down brick cottages to one side of the new plate-glass reception and security building. Across the façade of both was a neon sign which read TAXIS.

Humph adjusted his headphones and flicked on his language tape. ‘This is it. You did ask – the Cobley family? Used to run the cab firm in Jude’s Ferry. This is them.’ He closed his eyes, job done.

Dryden got out and considered the inappropriate extravagance of the neon, which flickered slightly, emitting a trembling buzz. One door was bricked up, the other was half glass, reinforced with wire, and had been slammed shut a million times by people who didn’t care. Inside was a waiting room, with
three armchairs of tattered leather and a wall map of the Black Fen.

Behind the glass sat a woman smoking a cigarette, her flesh piled on itself to produce a torso the shape of a Walnut Whip. Beside her was an old TV showing a video of
Shrek 2
. Shelves held the black cartridges of hundreds of others.

‘Mrs Cobley?’ asked Dryden, inadvertently drawing in a lungful of smoke.

‘If you want a car it’s a wait. The shift’s just finished and we’re ferrying the regulars home.’

Dryden nodded: ‘Sure. How many work here now?’ The sugar works was the biggest employer within thirty miles.

She killed the sound on the video. ‘Two hundred, in the season it’s nearly three. A lot of ’em live out nowhere. Shall I book you one? It’ll be an hour now.’ As she said it she looked in a mirror up by a security camera and saw Humph’s Capri idling at the kerb.

‘Oh. What is it then?’

‘My name’s Dryden – from
The Crow
. I’m writing something about Jude’s Ferry – you’ve probably heard?’

She flicked off the microphone in front of her. ‘Sure. That skeleton they found. The police have been anyway. You’ve wasted a trip.’ Dryden thought that must be the ultimate crime in the taxi trade.

Behind her on the wall was a notice board with snapshots pinned up over a rota. Several showed a teenager with thick black hair and adolescent lips,
plus a fringe which had been out of fashion for more than a decade.

Dryden looked at her face, a study in neutrality. ‘It’s your son,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds daft but I’m just tracking down all the lads from the village whose age would fit the body they found. Sorry. I know it sounds ghoulish – but I guess he’s OK, yeah? Police probably asked the same question.’

But he knew then, because all the snapshots were of the same age.

She took her time lighting a fresh Silk Cut, half of which she appeared to inhale in one draw, the ash falling unnoticed on her bare arm.

A light flickered on her console. She flipped the button on the microphone. ‘OK, Sam. Sam. Picked up?’ He recognized her voice now from the tape they’d listened to on the riverbank. The intervening years had simply shredded it some more, nicotine smoking the vocal cords.

Static filled the room, a burst of sound as raw as whale song. She listened and seemed to get the sense. ‘Number, 134. That’s one, three, four, Sam. Customer still waiting.’ She killed the noise and began to fiddle with an electric kettle on a table beside her.

‘Paul was the name, wasn’t it?’ asked Dryden carefully.

‘It’s not him,’ she said, dropping her chin into the folds of fat around her throat. ‘I told the police the same. Told them not to bother. They thought it might be but I’d know. I know I’d know.’ She held
her hand to her chest where Dryden guessed the pain was sharpest.

He studied the snapshots. ‘But you haven’t seen him since – when?’

They watched the video in silence as Shrek talked to a giant gingerbread man. ‘He had an argument with his father, it’s a long time ago now. He hated the cabs, the late nights. Computers was his thing, design and that. We didn’t know what he was talking about. So he left.’

‘Right. But when?’

‘When we left the Ferry. We stuck around – there was loads of business, carting everyone about, taking the soldiers around too. Then we’d moved in ’ere. He had a room and everything but he had this friend, he said, a boy.’ She blew a smoke ring with exaggerated finesse. ‘That was the final straw really. They were more than friends – you know,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘We didn’t understand. And Sam wouldn’t have it. He was angry, really angry.’ She caught Dryden’s eye and remembered to add something. ‘We both were.’