The Skeleton Man (26 page)

‘Actually I’ll give it a miss – a deal’s a deal after all, and if I offer more you’d probably stitch me up too, eh?’

He didn’t deny it, and Dryden left him fluttering around a new customer.

Back on Market Square Skeg was now at his pitch by the mobile tea stall, a fresh pile of papers on his
trestle table. He pasted on a smile for Dryden but couldn’t hide the anxiety which made his narrow, childish body shake slightly as he handed Dryden a copy of
The Crow
.

Dryden looked into the wide brown eyes and guessed he was a few shillings short of a fix.

‘’Nother good week,’ said Skeg, dipping the waxed hair like a cap, forcing a smile beyond its natural life. He cradled a plastic cup of weak tea and a toasted cheese sandwich lay beside the papers, oozing grease. As well as the pile of first editions of
The Crow
there was also the
Cambridge Evening News
. Dryden read the banner headline and froze:

ARREST IN HUNT FOR VILLAGE KILLER

He grabbed a copy, threw some coins in Skeg’s tray, and read the first paragraphs, scanning the lines in a few seconds…

Dryden scanned down the rest of the story and found nothing else that was new – and none of the details in his story.

But it was still a better story than the one he’d run. ‘Shit,’ he said, walking quickly away from the market-day crowd around to the back of the fish stall, where he stood amongst the discarded plastic crates still half full of crushed ice. He hit the automatic dial for the detective’s mobile.

Two rings. ‘Shaw,’ said the DI.

‘Dryden.
Cambridge Evening News
– front-page splash. They say you’ve made an arrest on the Skeleton Man case, which makes me look like a tosser. Anything you’d like to say?’

DI Shaw’s voice was low, and Dryden could hear the crackle of police radios in the background. He guessed he was still in the incident room at the New Ferry Inn.

Again, the maddening pause, time to work out exactly what he wanted to say.

‘It’s Mark Smith and he is under arrest for obstructing our inquiries, OK? That’s it. He has not been charged with murder and there is no intention to charge him with murder. His version of events on
the last evening, when the brothers fought, is full of holes. We’ve interviewed him three times and got a different story each time. I think the fight was about something else, something a lot more important than money, but he won’t give an inch. This might convince him we are serious about finding out the truth.’

But Dryden wasn’t giving up. ‘And what if it turns out it was his brother on the end of that rope in the cellar? What if the
News
has called it right? You don’t know for sure, do you – unless the DNA analysis is back?’

‘The lab has not got the results yet, that’s true. But I do know it wasn’t Matthew Smith in the cellar.’

‘You do? You going to share that information?’

‘Sure. But I don’t want it in the paper.’

A shower of rain had begun to fall and Dryden edged under a shop awning, watching the crowd run for cover. ‘OK,’ he said, realizing he had little choice.

‘Jennifer Smith, the sister, backs up her brother’s story for that night, as far as she can. She says they got home together before midnight and drank in the front room. I believe her about as much as I believe her brother, but there it is. I went to see her again this morning to run through it again and told her Mark was under arrest. This produced a remarkable return of memory. Apparently, a year after her mother’s death, she got a letter from Matthew. Nothing specific, just saying he was OK, and not to worry. She didn’t keep it. There was a snapshot inside of him kneeling by their mother’s grave. She kept that. She said she’d
never shown it to Mark. She showed it to me. They’re not identical twins – so there’s no doubt.’

Dryden let it sink in. ‘You might have mentioned the arrest.’

‘I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want some idiot running a story like this. It leaked from Cambridge. The
News
read me the story and I told them not to print it – it’s misleading at best. We have absolutely no evidence he’s a killer, and pretty good evidence he didn’t kill his brother as he was alive and well several years after the evacuation. If Mark starts talking, and more to the point tells the truth, he’ll be out by teatime. If he gets himself a decent lawyer he’ll be out anyway. So the
News
will look pretty stupid tomorrow.’

Dryden held out the paper at arm’s length. He didn’t care about tomorrow, journalism was about today. The story made him look like an amateur from the sticks. His stuff on Jason Imber was all over the front of
The Crow
while the
News
implied the police had already got their man.

‘A heads-up would have been nice,’ he said lamely, and cut the line. Dryden had thought about telling him what he’d learned from Fred Lake but calculated he could wait until after Shaw had interviewed the vicar the following morning.

Then his phone went. He checked the incoming number. It was Charlie Bracken,
The Crow
’s news editor. Looking down Market Street Dryden could see him, standing outside The Fenman in the rain, a pint
in one hand and a thin wisp of smoke rising from the other. Dryden guessed he’d just read the front of the
Cambridge Evening News
as well and wanted to know if they were going to look second-best all week. Dryden took the call, calmed him down, and told him to wait twenty-four hours. In the distance he watched as Charlie walked happily back into the bar.

Dryden set off for the riverside and found Humph asleep in the cab by the slipway. Dryden thought again about that last night in Jude’s Ferry. The funeral of Jude Neate was the central event, and he felt convinced it was linked to the fate of both the Skeleton Man and the bones in Peyton’s tomb. He needed to know more about Kathryn Neate and the men in her life.

He pulled open the passenger-side door, the rusted hinges squealing. ‘The Stopover, Duckett’s Cross,’ he said, viewing Humph’s collection of airport mini atures in the glove compartment. The cabbie stretched out, his finger joints cracking. ‘Duty Free’s open,’ said Dryden. ‘Now, what am I having?’

Jimmy Neate’s girlfriend was at the pumps, splayed in a deckchair set out in the late-afternoon sun, her T-shirt rolled up from her waist to reveal the pale shadows beneath her breasts. She didn’t move as Humph parked the Capri. The stand of dusty pines around the Stopover Garage shimmered in a light breeze, and a single HGV rumbled into the distance down the long stretch of featureless tarmac. When it had gone there was silence, except for the hum of flies from a manure bin by the BBQ coal.

Julie Watts stood to meet him, her eyes running over him from the ground up. ‘Jimmy about?’ said Dryden, trying not to do the same.

‘Thought you might have come to see me,’ she said, and Dryden heard Humph snort as he made a fuss putting on his headphones.

‘Not unless you can tell me where Kathryn Neate is,’ said Dryden.

She shrugged, and Dryden saw that she couldn’t help her hands taking refuge in the pockets of her jeans.

‘She left, years ago. I never saw her after we left the Ferry.’

‘You must remember her though; look like her brother?’

She shook her head. ‘Quiet kid. Her body grew up before she did, that happens to us all, but Kathy didn’t have a chance. So she got knocked up. She was proud of it in an odd way. Like it proved someone loved her, which it didn’t, did it?’ She laughed again. ‘She didn’t deserve that, I guess.’

‘Didn’t Jimmy help – her dad?’

She laughed. ‘They loved her all right – but with them it’s the kind of love you don’t do anything about. It’s just there, and everyone’s supposed to know without anyone saying anything. That wasn’t what she needed. Adolescence is a mess, they just waited for her to survive it. She didn’t.’

They walked towards the bungalow as Dryden recalled the desperate plight of the girl described in Magda Hollings worth’s diary – pregnant, frightened, alone.

‘What about the father? Gossip says it was George Tudor.’

‘Maybe. He loved her, you could see that, but then Marion – their mum – was his aunt. I think he felt protective, especially after Marion died, and that’s not the same thing, is it? Although at the Ferry they got these things mixed up. That was always the joke they made at school in town – that the Ferry kids had family trees all right, they just didn’t have any branches on them.’

Dryden laughed, closing his eyes and enjoying the sunshine. ‘Kathryn’s mother died young, didn’t she?’

She nodded, not really interested. ‘Did for the family,’ she added, watching Jimmy Neate cross from the garage over to the bungalow in the trees. ‘You could tell something was missing; something they couldn’t put back. And Walter changed, he’d always been the jovial uncle type, but after that he just went into a shell. Kathryn looked like Marion too, so he found that painful, having her around. All he had was Jimmy really, and Jimmy doesn’t like being the centre of attention, not for anyone.’

‘They fight?’

‘That would have been healthy. So no, they didn’t. The old man’s just kinda had Jimmy where he wanted him. He lived – lives – his life through Jimmy, even when he’s stuck in some wing-backed armchair in a godforsaken old people’s home.’

‘Jimmy visit?’

‘Sure. Most days when he can get the cover or I can do the pumps.’

Dryden could feel the heat radiating from the metal canopy. ‘They must have found it hard to cope when the kid arrived?’

She slid a hand inside her jeans, stretching the belt out to reveal more skin, but didn’t answer.

‘D’you see him? Jude, wasn’t it?’

She turned back to the road as a people carrier swept in, mangling gravel.

She shook her head. ‘I never saw him, I don’t know anyone that did outside the Neates, and George Tudor I guess, and the doctor. He didn’t live two
days, did he?’ She ran a rag through her hands. ‘Two days in summer.’

‘So if it wasn’t George Tudor, who was the father?’

Jimmy Neate walked quickly out to talk to the driver of the people carrier which had parked near the bungalow.

Julie turned to Dryden, dropping her voice just slightly. ‘Kathryn needed to know someone loved her, and there were plenty of people prepared to say they did. Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel, she learnt pretty quick how to use her body to get what she wanted. Ask me, I’d say she enjoyed the sex, it’s just it wasn’t what she was after, not in the end, and there was no one around to tell her that what she wanted didn’t just follow on from the sex. So who’s the father? How much gossip can you take? You could ask Jimmy – but don’t expect an answer. Losing that kid hurt them all. They protect the memory, in fact they’ve put more effort into that than they did trying to help her when she was here.’

The people carrier swept out onto the open road and Jimmy Neate retreated into the bungalow. Dryden found him eating one of his pre-wrapped sandwiches in the kitchen of the bungalow. The room was in a time warp: a Rayburn range stood in one corner, a wooden pine table grey with age filled most of the space that was left, at its centre a clean ashtray. The lino on the floor was scrubbed but cracked. A portable TV was on the draining board
showing the horse racing from Lingfield without sound.

Neate let his eyes linger on the final furlong before turning to Dryden.

‘You’re back,’ he said, massaging his neck, the shoulders slumping down with fatigue.

He leant back and Dryden saw that he’d been reading the
Daily Mail
.

‘Guess there’s no chance you’ve seen
The Crow
yet?’ he said, holding up a copy.

Neate shook his head. ‘We get it delivered – mid-morning tomorrow out here. Welcome to the boondocks.’

Dryden nodded, calculating. ‘They’re making some progress on the skeleton in the cellar. Forensic science is a wonderful thing.’

Neate went to the fridge and pulled it open, taking out a can of beer. ‘Want one?’ he said, holding up the label so that Dryden could see.

‘Sure. Thanks.’

They took the first couple of inches off the top of the cans in companionable silence. Dryden watched Neate’s hands, shuffling the can, picking at the grain of the old table. Outside they could hear Julie serving a customer, the radio blurting out the local station. It was a news bulletin, replete with details of the
Cambridge Evening News
’s front-page story about the Skeleton Man. Even the boondocks get radio, thought Dryden, the insecurity of being scooped making him angry again.

‘It was your sister I was interested in,’ he said. ‘Kathryn. She had a baby, didn’t she?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. So?’ But Dryden had seen the glance, out of the door into the bungalow’s gloomy hallway. There was a hardwood chest of drawers there in the shadows, the top crowded with framed photos.

Dryden took a chair. ‘Picture?’

Neate ran a hand through thick unwashed black hair and then stood, coming back with a small snapshot in an older wooden frame.

Despite the studied air of indifference Dryden could sense the pride Neate felt.

‘She’s beautiful – when was this taken?’

‘At the Ferry, before the end,’ said Neate. She was by a hedgerow, a summer’s view behind her of the allotments running down to The Dring, the ditch clogged with reed heads.

She had her brother’s hair, but the face was softer, an oval, the forehead high and pale, the hands long and white. An uncertain smile seemed to emphasize the fleeting nature of the moment in which she’d been captured, a single summer between childhood and the rest of her life.