The Skeleton Man (22 page)
Authors: Jim Kelly
24
‘Imber,’ said Garry, covering the mouthpiece. ‘Jason Imber. He writes scripts for TV – comedy, radio, he’s sort of half-famous really. Won a Bafta in ’99. Wife turned up this morning – saw his face on the TV. She’d been away, seeing friends, and he’d said he might go to London, so she hadn’t missed him till yesterday. House out at Upwell by the Old Course.’
‘Imber?’ repeated Dryden, knowing instantly where he’d seen the name. But he double-checked the notes he’d made from the TA records Broderick had let him see and there it was: Jason Imber, Orchard House, Jude’s Ferry. He wrestled with the chances of a coincidence, but only briefly. Jason Imber had been fished out of the river less than forty-eight hours after the accidental shelling of St Swithun’s and the outbuildings by the New Ferry Inn. There had to be a link.
Dryden checked the clock: 10.30am.
DI Shaw was due to ring on the hour with the latest on the animal rights activists. Dryden stood at the coffee machine studying his face in the chrome as the mechanical innards churned. He’d cracked a cheekbone and severely bruised his skull in the scuffle on Thieves Bridge – a set of injuries which had kept him
in A&E overnight while they X-rayed his head. Shaw had come to see him in hospital during the night, but would say only that they’d caught one of the men who had met him at the bridge – the one in the boat.
‘One?’ Dryden had said. ‘Oh great. Well, that’s a result. So now the other one is out there telling his mates I doubled-crossed them. Well done, well done. I can look forward to some mindless act of cruelty, can I?’
And there was more bad news. Shaw would now be certain to want him to hold the story for at least a week while they tracked down the second suspect. Dryden closed his eyes as a wave of sleepless nausea swept over him. His skull was numb but a single source of pain hovered behind his left eye. He’d only been home briefly to check Laura was OK and help her into the cab for her session at the unit; he hadn’t trusted himself to lie down for half an hour in case sleep engulfed him, and he’d brushed aside her questions about his wound. He’d told Charlie, the news editor, that he’d fallen on the boat, cracking his head on a beam. Garry, predictably, had sneered at this version of events, suspecting alcohol had led to a fight, or at the very least an undignified fall down the wooden gangway of
PK 129
.
Dryden opened his eyes, refocused on the PC screen and began checking the newslist for that week’s edition of
The Crow
, rereading the stories on the schedule that had his name on them. He was laboriously running through a 500-word screed about local planning decisions when the phone
rang. It was Shaw, on the handsfree, his breathing matching a fast walking pace.
‘Hi. Hi. I promised, sorry I’m early. We camped out here at Jude’s Ferry overnight to get through the rest of the forensics, we’ve been up since dawn. Is this OK for you?’
‘Yup. Bad news, right? I’m guessing I have to hold?’
‘Indeed.’ Dryden heard a door shut and the sound of the wind disappeared. He imagined him standing in front of the trestle table in the makeshift office at the New Ferry Inn, mapping out exactly what he was going to say. ‘We haven’t charged the man we arrested at Thieves Bridge – we’re still playing him out for information. He’s talking. He’s not saying a lot, but he’s talking. The other one’s on the run, but we know the route – he may even take us where we want to go – a safe house in the Midlands. The unit here has located some activists who meet on an airfield, renting one of the old sheds. If we can catch our runaway suspect trying to make contact at the airfield we’ve hit the jackpot. The unit’s guess is they’re using the sheds to store the stuff they use for raids – spray cans, wire cutters, shotguns. They may even have some “liberated” animals on the site. So yes, we’d all appreciate a bit more time. We don’t know if the leadership knows the drop-off was a set-up last night. We don’t know if they know we’ve got someone in custody. Just a few days, Dryden.’
‘An airfield?’ said Dryden, ignoring the question, recognizing its inherently rhetorical nature. Instead he
remembered the background sounds to the call he’d taken on the mobile from the local activists, a plane wheeling in the sky, then returning.
Before Shaw could answer Dryden told him his plans for the Skeleton Man story in that week’s
Crow
, plans he did not intend to alter. ‘You know what I’ve got on the body in the cellar. I’m using the lot today. Plus I’ve been working on the ID. According to my calculations there were eight possible victims – given that our man is not from out of town. I’ve talked to one – Jimmy Neate. You’ve talked to Mark Smith – what about the other brother?’
‘No go. Part of the problem is that there are, naturally, a lot of Matthew Smiths in the world. And the one we’re looking for might be in the morgue. So there’s no point throwing manpower at it until we’ve got the DNA results.’
‘Sure. So he’s still your best guess for our friend in the cellar then?’
‘Yes. But don’t quote me, please. You’re going to be a mile ahead of the rest of the pack on this story and I’d like them to think you got at least some of it from your other sources.’
‘Right – but I can use the fight in the pub, the argument over money?’ Dryden took silence for assent. ‘Then today…’
‘Indeed. Ely’s been in touch, an ID on the man fished out of the river. Someone smart spotted the name on the list of possible victims we’d circulated to local stations. Plus he’d mentioned Jude’s
Ferry, of course; apparently he thinks he was born there.’
It was Dryden’s turn to take refuge in silence.
‘So we can take Jason Imber off the list as well,’ said Shaw.
‘How about putting him on another list instead – the list of suspects?’
Shaw hesitated, but Dryden knew the detective owed him a brace of favours after the failure to secure his safety on the previous night’s exercise. Not only had he played a key part in getting the police operation an arrest, he’d taken a beating on their behalf.
‘Possibly,’ said Shaw. ‘We’re interviewing him now. My DS has gone out to the unit. There might be a link – it could have pushed him over the edge, literally. If he was involved he must have thought the crime was long forgotten. So perhaps it was a suicide attempt. But like I said, this isn’t down to one man. There’s got to be a conspiracy, and he can only be part of that. But we’re interviewing him, you can report that.’
‘Perhaps he met someone out at the bridge.’
Dryden heard pages turning. ‘Maybe. A woman did come forward, a birdwatcher. She’d been up by the bridge the day before and said there was a car parked up off the road with a man in the passenger seat.’
‘Passenger seat?’ said Dryden.
‘That’s what she said. Said he gave her a filthy look so she didn’t hang about. Description roughly fits Imber, but then it would fit half the population
of East Anglia. But the car was a 4x4, black. Imber drives a red Audi.’
‘Passenger seat,’ said Dryden, thinking about it. ‘What about the bones from Peyton’s tomb? Tell us anything?’
‘A woman. Pathologist says death occurred less than thirty years ago, but at the moment we can’t say how old she was when she died. Teeth aren’t great but that could just be poor dental care. The lot was wrapped up in a piece of carpet, pretty much rotten but design and threads point to 1950s. Cause of death is conjecture at this point, and possibly all points in the future too. There’s not a lot left to examine. But we can get some DNA from the bones. And there are two chips to consecutive ribs on the left side, a sharp metal object had been thrust between them causing small fractures in both.’
‘A knife wound?’
‘Yeah. Or an accident. Could have been inflicted long before death of course, that’s the problem. We need to talk to the vicar and to Peyton, find out if there were any later burials from the Peyton family. If not we’ve got another puzzle on our hands.’
Shaw rang off while Dryden checked the clock: he had half an hour to write up the story on Jude’s Ferry for the front page.
But an image hung before him – those metal fillings catching the floodlight on Thieves Bridge. A woman’s bones? Magda Hollingsworth perhaps? But hardly a suicide in that case – unless it was a very tidy suicide.
Murder? Had someone decided Magda knew more than she should – and that she’d written it all down in her diary? He glugged some coffee, focusing instead on the blinking cursor of the computer screen, and attacked the keyboard…
EXCLUSIVE
By Philip Dryden
Detectives were yesterday (Thursday) interviewing a 41-year-old man in connection with the discovery of the so-called ‘Skeleton Man’ found hanging in a cellar in the abandoned village of Jude’s Ferry.
‘We are hoping this man may be able to give us information which will help us identify the victim quickly, and even give us a lead to the identity of his killer, or killers,’ said a detective helping to lead the inquiry.
Mr Jason Imber, a TV scriptwriter from Upwell, will be questioned by detectives from the inquiry team now based in the village of Jude’s Ferry, which was evacuated in 1990 to make way for military exercises.
Mr Imber was rescued from the River Ouse two days after the Skeleton Man’s remains were revealed in a cellar in the village following a live artillery firing exercise involving Ely TA soldiers.
He was taken to the Oliver Zangwill Centre at Ely’s Princess of Wales Hospital where he is being treated
for amnesia under police protection. A hospital spokesman said his memory was slowly returning.
Mrs Elizabeth Imber identified her husband after the police released pictures taken at the unit to the media. She travelled to Ely yesterday to visit her husband but was not available for comment.
Mr Imber lost fingers from his right hand during his ordeal and it is believed he may have become entangled with a boat propeller after falling from Cuckoo Bridge, north of the city.
Mr Imber was a teacher at Whittlesea High School before becoming a TV scriptwriter.
Meanwhile police are keen to talk to Matthew Smith, a former builder and decorator who was involved in a violent argument in Jude’s Ferry on the night before the final evacuation.
‘Mr Smith was seen leaving the village pub that last evening and we are very keen to contact him so that we can eliminate him from our inquiries,’ said the detective.
Police have released a picture of his brother – Mark – in the hope that he still bears a strong likeness to his twin. It is understood the brothers were involved in an argument over setting up a new business. It is possible that Matthew Smith is now known by a different name.
Detectives based at King’s Lynn are working on the hypothesis that the victim, a man aged 20–35, was murdered by a lynch mob in the final days before the village’s evacuation in 1990.
A thorough examination of the cellar in which the Skeleton Man was found has revealed another bizarre twist – an empty grave, dug and refilled.
‘Perhaps it was designed for the victim,’ said the detective, who declined to be named. ‘But instead it was neatly filled in. It is a bizarre development in a difficult case.’
Forensic scientists are examining a cigarette butt found in the refilled grave. It is of a common Spanish brand, another example of which was found in the cellar itself. Samples have been sent for DNA analysis.
Several other items found at the scene, including a twist of fibreglass and some ornamental gravel, are being examined further.
Police are working on the initial premise that the victim is a former resident of Jude’s Ferry. They are trying to contact men of the right age to eliminate them from their inquiries.
Any reader who might be able to help them should ring Freephone 0700 800 600.
Dryden pressed his fists into his eye sockets and thought about the rope tightening around the Skeleton Man’s neck. He tried to imagine the years passing, the body rotting in its undisturbed tomb. Why had the cellar lain undiscovered for those years?
‘Flanders May,’ he said out loud, remembering the ‘perfectionist’ Major Broderick had said oversaw the survey of the village in the months after the
evacuation. He Googled the name and found two references, the first to the regimental history and his role in mapping several British military installations in India in the months before independence, and the second to the Royal Society of Cartographers. Colonel Flanders May DSO had been president in 2003 and an e-mail address was provided. Dryden jotted down two questions and sent the message, betting himself he’d never get an answer.
He picked up a photocopy of the picture of Mark Smith that DI Shaw had released. They were not, apparently, identical twins but there was enough in the face to help prompt an ID: the narrow skull, the heavy jaw which seemed to throw the whole off balance, the weak fleshy nose. Dryden reread his story and filed it.
Then he added an extra paragraph:
Police have said that their inquiries at the scene will be completed by Saturday morning. The range will reopen for live firing on Sunday. All roads into the range area are already closed to traffic. A maroon will sound at 9.30am and 9.55am from the firing range HQ at Whittlesea Lane End. Artillery will begin live shelling at 10.00am. A combined forces exercise will follow involving units from the TA and US forces based at nearby RAF Lakenheath. Live ammunition and artillery will be used.
Humph and Dryden headed north through a curtain of St Swithun’s rain towards Jason Imber’s home at Upwell. The village was deserted except for a murder of crows tearing at the squashed flesh of a large rat in a gutter. The house lay along a drove by the church behind an ugly high wall and a protective ring of pines. At the gate an expensive, polished intercom panel appeared to work, but there was no answer.
‘Scriptwriting pays then,’ said Dryden, flopping back into the passenger seat after briefly inspecting the gates. ‘There’s a car in the drive that looks like a Porsche.’
‘What else do we know?’ asked Humph, a single yawn threatening to suck all the air out of the cab’s damp interior.