The Skeleton Man (30 page)

Humph struggled to his feet. ‘Refill? I could run to the bar, there’s just time. I might kip in the cab – you’ll have to walk.’

Dryden nodded and watched as the cabbie headed for the bar, not so much a run as a lope. It was two miles along the riverbank to
PK 129
and he texted Laura to tell her where he was and that he’d walk home. Humph would curl up with the greyhound on his lap, and any car park was home for them.

Dryden turned to look back at the pub. A single bedroom light shone out, the curtains open to let the breeze through. Woodruffe appeared at the sill, a phone to his ear, but turned quickly and retreated beyond sight. A memory surfaced to match it, a figure, seen briefly at the window of Orchard House on the day of the evacuation.

Dryden heard the strangled cry of something being killed followed by the ghostly flight of an owl over the river.

Humph tottered back with the drinks and a question. ‘And Imber?’

‘I think he was down in the cellar too, but God knows why. He didn’t really know these kids, but I think he wanted to be part of the village – that’s why he’d stayed. But he was a posh kid in the wrong place that night. I think he got swept along and couldn’t get out once things got really serious – and once Tholy was dead there was no going back. Did he try to stop them? Like I say, he’d be a brave man. A place like the Ferry, it’s all about belonging – there’s no half-way house. I think when it was over he played a part in covering it all up. He got them to agree to meet next day at Orchard House, to double check their stories, make sure it all added up. And that’s why Ken Woodruffe calmed the crowd down in The Dring. He didn’t want the army moving in before they’d got the whole thing sorted. It was their last chance to make sure nobody ever knew Peter Tholy died at the end of a rope.’

They heard the bolts being shot on the doors of the pub, but the bedroom window remained open above, the light still burning.

Now that the pub was shut Dryden took his time, sipping the cool beer which caught the moonlight in its amber heart.

‘When that stray shell uncovered Tholy’s skeleton I think Imber cracked up, he knew the police would be on to them all and I reckon he doubted everyone would keep quiet. It only takes one to blow the whole thing apart, to name names. Seventeen years is a long time; just imagine how shocked they’d all be that their
crime had been uncovered. They weren’t a bunch of teenagers any more: they had their own lives, careers, families, perhaps children. I think Imber met one of the others at Cuckoo Bridge to tell them what he was gonna do, which has to mean the police. And that’s how he ended up in the river.’

Humph drained his glass and swung his feet back in the cab.

‘You said there were two things you didn’t understand.’

Dryden stood, cold for the first time. ‘Woodruffe was clear – Peter Tholy strangled Kathryn Neate. Squeezed the life out of her. But if the bones in the Peyton tomb are Kathryn’s she died from a knife wound – the blade thrust between her ribs and into her heart.’

With the dawn came the question: what should Dryden do next? He lay beside Laura in the silver light, feeling her warmth and the still thrilling movement of her fingers, stretching and gripping under the influence of a dream. He put his hand on her neck below the ear and stroked her hair, trying to soothe the anxiety which made an eyelid vibrate.

The luminous face of his watch read 5.13am. Would Ken Woodruffe be setting out soon to find DI Shaw? Dryden would give him until mid-morning before ringing the detective to check. The publican wouldn’t tell the whole truth but enough of it to identify both victims: the skeleton of Peter Tholy in the cellar of the New Ferry Inn and Kathryn Neate’s bones in the Peyton grave at St Swithun’s.

Dryden rubbed a knuckle into his eye socket. Shaw’s job would be to prove that Tholy died at the hands of the lynch mob and to find some suspects whose mutually supportive alibis didn’t put them in the bar of the New Ferry Inn while the murder was taking place in the cellar. Dryden guessed that Ken Woodruffe’s late-night calls had been to secure that ring of alibis, to provide the common song sheet from which they could all sing.

At least DI Shaw had his forensics – the DNA traces could be enough to put Ken Woodruffe in the cellar and digging the grave, although not necessarily when Tholy died, while the single helix coil of fibreglass was, Dryden guessed, a possible link to Walter Neate’s garage. But the intervening years had almost certainly destroyed any chance of making a match with the original workshop. The gravel from Orchard House was an even more tenuous link to Jason Imber. Anyone could have trudged up the drive and got the stones in the tread of their shoe – anyone, including the village postman. Even with the link it was circumstantial evidence at best, and any decent lawyer would undermine its significance in front of a jury.

Without a break, or a witness outside the tight circle of village life, Shaw might never get his case to court. Unless, of course, Jason Imber’s memory returned, and he was prepared to tell the truth, risking retribution.

Dryden gently eased himself over to his left side so that he could see out of the porthole. A white mist threaded its way past the glass, the only things visible the ferns and grass of the bank and the edge of the old wooden landing stage. He could feel the world pressing in, creating pressure in the boat like that in an aircraft cabin. The silence was profound, and he searched it until he located the reassuring hum of the generator below the deck. Then, on the edge of hearing, tyres screeched, and his heartbeat
picked up as a car rumbled over the cattle grid up by Barham’s Farm, prompting a rhythmic guttural bark from the guard dog.

He dropped a naked foot to the cool boards of the deck and dressed quickly. By the time he had unpopped the tarpaulin cover to the cockpit Humph’s Capri was trundling to a halt, emerging from the mist like a ghost ship.

The interior was hot from the heater and laced with petrol fumes and the heady aroma of two fried-egg sandwiches. ‘Sorry,’ said Humph, as Dryden noticed the dog had been promoted to the passenger seat. ‘Couldn’t sleep – I went to the truck stop and the radio says there’s been a fire at that garage – the Stopover, Duckett’s Cross. Early hours – 4.00am. Sounds nasty, but they got someone out.’

Which meant they didn’t get everyone out.

Dryden went back on board and whispered into Laura’s ear that he’d send Humph at 9.00am to run her to the unit. Then he grabbed a coat and the office digital camera and they split the mist, the Capri wafting the white threads up and over the bonnet to trail like ribbons from the rear bumper.

By the time they reached the cathedral they were navigating through a fog, with a hint of the dark phlegm of carbon monoxide, but as they drove north the air cleared and they could see the watery blue of the river and reflected on its ruffled surface a first sight of the pale disc of the sun.

A mile short of the Stopover they joined a snaking
line of commuter traffic headed for Peterborough, and Dryden noted that nothing was coming the other way. A hundred yards further on a police car was parked up across both carriageways, nose to tail with a Fire Brigade control car. There was a junction here and a yellow diversion board sent traffic off across Farcet Fen – a ten-mile loop down single-carriageway droves. Dryden got Humph to swing off the road and park up in the entrance to a field, then strolled forward, trying to rearrange his sheaf of dark hair.

He knew both the uniformed PC by the squad car, a special constable he’d interviewed when covering an anti-graffiti project on Ely’s Jubilee Estate, and the fireman – an Assistant Divisional Officer from Cambridge who talked to the press on issues to do with safety each year ahead of Bonfire Night.

‘Dryden,’ said the fireman.

‘Mr Walker,’ said Dryden, then nodded to the copper. He was trying to recall just how critical the piece about anti-graffiti had been, but didn’t like the scowl which had disfigured the young policeman’s face. ‘What’s up?’ said Dryden, unbuttoning his jacket to reveal the camera. ‘Thought I’d get some pix for the
Express
– nationals maybe?’

Dryden knew that if they didn’t turn him away in the first few seconds it was because they had a story to tell, a story they wanted in the papers.

The PC turned his back as a radio began to crackle.

Walker nodded. ‘Who thumped you?’ he asked.
Dryden’s broken cheekbone had spawned a black bruise, now turning purple.

‘Fell downstairs,’ said Dryden, not caring that he wouldn’t be believed.

Walker smiled. ‘Come on – your luck’s in. Only one resident listed on the electoral roll – James Neate. No sign of him. But there was a girlfriend. We got her out of the bungalow when it went up, we’ve got video – unbelievable she’s alive. She’s at Ely now, the burns unit.’

Dryden nodded: a good story but bad news, if the brigade had a film they’d pass it on to the networks and it would be all over the teatime TV screens.

‘And Neate?’

‘Still looking – but he wasn’t in the house, and he certainly isn’t in the garage.’

Dryden didn’t react, letting the information appear to slip by. ‘But the girl – bad?’ he said, changing tack.

‘Well, she’s out cold. The smoke got her down on the floor, which was lucky, as she could have passed out in the bed and then it would have killed her. There’s some burns on her hands, but first degree, they’ll heal. Face too.’

Dryden tried not to imagine it. ‘Stay here while I square this off,’ said Walker.

Smoke, lazy and thin, rose from the charred roof of the bungalow. Behind it the stand of pine trees still smouldered too, several blackened and stunted by fire. Dryden knew the stench well, not so much
the burnt wood and the incinerated plastic, but the sodden carpets and the stagnant black water. The house was a shell, but the main shed of the garage appeared untouched, although he could see within a tape had been strung across the vehicle bay and a man in a white forensic suit was working in the office behind a glass partition. Out on the forecourt the covers to the underground petrol tanks had been raised while Neate’s car was being hauled off on its front wheels by a pick-up truck.

‘OK.’ The fire officer was back. ‘You can come with me; got a notebook?’

They stood in the small weedy garden in front of the house.

‘The name you want is Firefighter Jo Campbell. When the first pump got here at 4.30am the house was well alight, and it was impossible to gain entry through either the front door or the kitchen. Jo smashed the windows to the lounge, got to the rear bedroom wearing a fire protection outfit and pulled the girl out. The first pump didn’t have specialist breathing gear on board – so the rescue was completed unaided.’

‘He’ll get a medal?’ asked Dryden.

Big smile. ‘Yes.
She
will. Come on, I told you it was a decent story.’

The front door had been knocked off its hinges to reveal the hall within. All the walls were black, but splashed clean where the hoses had been at work. The sideboard which had held the family photos was charred, the pictures contorted, Walter Neate’s face
almost obscured by a smoky stain. The kitchen was blackened too, and Dryden noted two suitcases on the lino floor. He got a few snaps on the digital and then moved forward to the rear bedroom. The bed itself was just wire and metal, the mattress charred springs. A small bedside table had been reduced to a jet-black box of carbon, fragile and oddly beautiful, like an artefact in a museum. The curtains were wet and black, the window glass burnt bronze.

Dryden took his snaps, taking plenty and checking them out on the display screen. Then he moved back to the hallway and out through the rear door to try to get a shot in through the bedroom window.

He stood in the cool early morning air, trying to imagine the flames. ‘Can I speak to the heroine?’ he said, using a word he hated.

‘Sure, we’ve got a mobile canteen out down the road, she’s just having some grub. You’re in luck – she’s a looker.’

They turned to go but stopped when they heard shouting from deep within the pines which shielded the house from the north. Dryden thought he heard a single word – ‘medics’ – then a dog barked once, the bark subsiding into whimpers. At the bottom of the bungalow’s rough lawn there was a path into the woods and Dryden got there as two uniformed PCs began pushing aside the charred branches, trying to see ahead through the undergrowth, much of which still smouldered from the fire.

When he burst out of the trees behind the two
policemen the landscape was transformed. Ahead lay the open fenland of Whittlesea Mere, low trees and a limitless stretch of water from which a flock of birds was now rising into sunlight. Between the wood and the firing range lay a wide drain – perhaps twenty feet across – a mathematically straight ditch brimming with stagnant green water.

But there was only one thing anyone was looking at. Access to the range was barred by a ten-foot-high wire fence with a curled razor-wire top. A man’s body hung from the razor wire, his shredded mechanic’s overalls snagged by several of the vicious teeth. The body was black and distorted, the limbs set in awkward ugly angles from the torso. The dog lay still now beneath, sniffing the air, while from the corpse a thin line of white smoke rose, caressing the charred skull, wisps of black hair whitened with ash.

Had he been trying to get to the water? Or had he been trying to get away?

And then Dryden noticed something else. Almost directly beneath the body a fresh gap had been made in the wire, cut methodically in a vertical line, opening the way towards Jude’s Ferry.

They got Dryden off the site in five minutes, bundled into the cab with Humph, and as they drove away a line of squad cars passed them heading back into the Stopover. At the roadblock Walker had radioed ahead for the heroine firefighter and she posed while Dryden took some snaps, with the garage in the distance. Given the discovery of the body on the wire it was debatable whether Jo Campbell’s heroism would get the treatment it deserved, but everyone went through the motions, striving for the upbeat.