The Skeleton Man (24 page)

‘So – that’s narrowed it down, has it?’ asked Humph. ‘We’re looking for a blood donor. Is Tony Hancock the victim?’

‘Jabs,’ said Dryden. ‘When are you likely to need an injection as an adult?’

Humph tipped a packet of crisps back so that the last grains of monosodium glutamate could trickle down his throat.

‘Inoculation – a trip abroad?’

‘Correct. George Tudor was about to emigrate to Australia, so was Peter Tholy.’ Dryden recalled the tape they’d listened to on the riverside. Tudor had said he’d got a reference from the vicar of St Swithun’s – Fred Lake.

Dryden fished out the telephone number he’d dug from Crockford’s directory and rang on the mobile, letting a minute pass as he imagined the phone echoing in an empty house. Then a child answered, confident and clear, running to fetch Fred Lake. While he waited Dryden thought of the voice on the tape he’d played on the riverbank, and the more distant memory of meeting him on that final day. He recalled a disdain for tradition and the fabric of the old church, and a mildly trendy upbeat emphasis on community, and the treacly remains of that South African accent.

Dryden tried to conjure up his face from that last day in Jude’s Ferry, but the image was elusive, overshadowed by more potent images – an old woman crying on her doorstep, the men on the bench outside the almshouses watching the army clear the cottages along The Dring.

Footsteps clipped across an institutional floor. ‘Sorry,’ said Lake quickly, out of breath. ‘Summer holidays. We run a club. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s hell. Believe me, I should know, it’s my job.’

They both laughed. The accent was flatter, less distinct after seventeen years, diluted by the estuary
English of King’s Lynn’s overspill estates. Dryden did his pitch, nearly perfect. He was writing a feature to run with the latest news on the body found at Jude’s Ferry. He needed a ten-minute chat, nothing personal, just a feel for the place and those last few hours in the life of a community. Community: the key word.

‘Sure. The police have called too – I’m seeing a detective in the morning at St Bartholomew’s – perhaps they’re expecting a confession.’ Dryden didn’t know if he was joking so he said nothing. ‘But like I said, we’ve got forty kids here and we’re off to the beach… packed lunches, I’m afraid, no room for a proper Cape barbie.’

Dryden let the silence deepen a few more seconds. ‘Just ten minutes.’

‘Well, all right, all right. Let’s say the pier at Hunstanton, at three. We’ll eat on the grass opposite the entrance. There’s a big pub there and they let us use the loos. Know where we are?’

Dryden knew it, had spent a childhood’s worth of summers on the wide expanse of sand, and a small fortune in pocket money in the jangling arcades. Humph drove north and they stopped for chips at a roadside van where the owner brought the food out to the cab.

‘I rang ahead,’ said Humph, by way of explanation, passing on a polystyrene plate layered with fish, chips and processed peas. Dryden got out to put his food on the Capri’s roof, a hotplate of peeling paint. They were in the shadow of an oak tree by the old A10.
Looking west Dryden could see the grey-blue sweep of The Wash, waves of brilliant white surf marking the incoming tide, a distant charcoal line the coast of Lincolnshire. He dragged in a lungful of air and despite the carbon monoxide caught the exhilarating whiff of ozone.

By the time they reached Hunstanton the car reeked of lost holidays; over-heated plastic tussling with vinegar and petrol. On the green above the pier a few couples lay, entwined listlessly in the sun. By an ice-cream hut a group of children sat on the ground eviscerating plastic lunchboxes with manic concentration. Lake stood, cradling a half-pint glass of beer, and Dryden knew him then, remembering the anonymous face, the defeated shoulders. His hair had thinned and was now stretched in individual strands across his skull, a touch of vanity which robbed a still-young face of what youth was left. He wore a white shirt, the neck open, the collar frayed, and his narrow limbs, folded now to sit on the grass, seemed to bulge at the joints.

Dryden was just a few feet away when Lake smiled, clearing a space on a dusty Greek beach mat. ‘I thought so,’ said Lake. ‘I told my wife I’d met you before. That last day at the Ferry, yes? I’m right, aren’t I?’

Dryden smiled a reply and took a plastic cup of orange squash from a small diligent girl who offered it, remembering for the first time that he’d liked Fred Lake when he’d met him, liked the irrational
high spirits and the absence of personal vanity, the frankness, despite the weight of responsibility which seemed to crush him.

‘I wanted to ask a few questions about Jude’s Ferry. The police are trying to identify the skeleton they found in the cellar. There was an audio tape made before the final evacuation…’

Lake stood, touching a teenage boy on the shoulder as he passed out of the group. ‘If – no, when – they threaten to riot, buy them ice creams. I’ll just be ten…’ he said, putting a twenty-pound note into his empty half-pint and pressing it into the boy’s hand. ‘My son,’ said Lake, by way of explan ation, as they walked down onto the hot, crowded sands. They retreated into the shadows beneath the pier, where the light shone in stripes through the decking above, creating a world lit through a venetian blind. Lake sat on damp pebbles and, producing a small tin of tobacco, began to roll a cigarette. ‘My secret, when I can get away,’ he said, lighting up and letting the smoke caress his face. ‘And I promised I’d keep out of the sun.’

They sat on a steep bank which dipped down to the sand. ‘George Tudor,’ said Dryden. ‘He said on the tape that you’d acted as a character reference, I think, for his application to emigrate. I thought you might have kept in touch?’

A skidoo whined out at sea, and Lake watched as a kite surfer rose out of the sea, twisted, and splashed back into a wave.

‘Not a word from George, I’m afraid. I think it was Perth in the end, that’s what he said anyway. But no, nothing, I contacted the church there as well to provide some help when he arrived but they never saw him. Still, we don’t do these things to be thanked. It’s just nice when it happens.’

Dryden didn’t laugh. Lake passed a hand over his eyes and took a quick drag on the cigarette butt before drilling it down into the sand. ‘You don’t think it’s George in the cellar?’

Dryden shrugged. ‘Seventeen years is a long time. The police’ll check him out. When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Oh, I remember that all too well. It was in the church, that last night at a burial service.’

Dryden tried not to react, sitting back instead and using his elbows to angle his face into the slated sun.

‘A burial? Who?’ he asked, his eyes closed.

‘Well. Er, where to start?’ Lake closed his eyes. ‘Jude’s Ferry had its own special problems, but it had all the normal ones too. Like teenage pregnancies. That last summer there was a kid – just fifteen – who fell pregnant. That’s very English, isn’t it – that “fell” – makes it sound as if she could make herself pregnant. Anyway, this girl – Kathryn Neate – gave birth to a baby boy just before the final evacuation of the village. The doctor asked some questions, as did social services, but Kathryn wasn’t telling who the father was and, frankly, it was her life. She’d kept it
secret as long as she could and it was too late to get rid of the child. And she was torn anyway, between hating it and wanting someone to love. She was a lonely kid and sometimes people get confused about what love is. Anyway, when it all came out the family reacted badly. Especially her father.’

‘He ran the garage on Church Street?’ prompted Dryden, but he was thinking of something else; Magda Hollingsworth labouring over her diary, struggling with her conscience over the death of a child, before deciding to confront the mother over the rumour that she had killed her son. And the diary code entry for the child’s mother L.O. – each letter one place on in the alphabet from K.N.

Lake didn’t hear the question, wrapped now in his own memory. ‘Walter, the father, odd bloke – I guess aloof is being kind. He loved Kathryn, but it was sadly not the unqualified love that kids really need. Walter’s wife had died fairly young and I think he saw Kathryn as a kind of reincarnation – a symbol that she wasn’t gone completely from his life. Weird, but then the Ferry wasn’t a living example of robust mental health at the best of times. Anyway, it’s pretty clear Kathryn’s unwanted pregnancy didn’t fit Walter’s vision of his daughter, let’s put it like that.’

Lake turned his head up to catch the thin slats of sunshine. ‘Sadly the boy didn’t survive. The delivery was at home and premature. There were complications – jaundice, I think – and he died less than forty-eight hours after the birth from heart failure.
Kathryn, a child really, was in bits, not surprisingly, but that lack of maturity made it worse, if that’s possible to imagine. She came to me, alone, and asked if the baby could be buried at St Swithun’s. I’ve often thought what a clever idea that was. She could visit him then, but only once a year when the villagers were allowed back for the annual service. It was a way of limiting her grief, I think, but still honouring her son.’

Lake was rolling up a fresh cigarette, agitated by the story he was telling. A wave broke out on the sand, the white water catching the sun.

‘So, did you bury her son?’

‘Yes. It was the last burial at St Swithun’s. But it wasn’t easy – there were two hurdles to jump. First, we had to rush through the paperwork and get the coroner to issue the death certificate. But we were lucky – I had contacts, and even in bureaucracies people can sometimes let kindness bend the rules. But the real problem was where to bury the child. Legally we’d been banned from burials in the graveyard from the point at which the MoD served its notice. They did not, and never have, guaranteed that the churchyard will not be damaged, you see – it’s technically part of the range. But the church is listed so they had at least to give an undertaking that they would seek to preserve it – especially as they’d told many of the villagers that they’d all be back within the year. But obviously a burial in the church is very difficult. Happily, there was a solution.’

He turned to Dryden, the stripes of shadow
shifting over his soft features. ‘You know of the Peyton family?’ he asked, and Dryden felt the hairs on his neck rise.

‘Sure. There’s a tomb in the nave. It was damaged in the bombardment that went astray.’

Lake nodded vigorously. ‘Quite. Well, they were the patrons of the church – the Peytons – and we used to get visitors from the US on a very regular basis. It’s a very distinguished family, Founding Fathers and such. There’s actually a family association – in Baltimore – which made regular and substantial donations to the cost of the upkeep of the church and the tomb. Crucially, they similarly fund a church in Lincolnshire which holds the family vault of the other senior branch of the original family. They clearly had to be informed about the MoD’s plans for Jude’s Ferry, and they were pretty upset.

‘The long and the short of it is that they paid to have the vault emptied at St Swithun’s, and the remains transferred to Lincolnshire. I did try to argue for a year’s grace to see if the MoD would let the residents back but their view, an understandable one, was that they needed prompt and reliable access for their members. Their solution means visitors can pay their respects in one spot. There was also talk of moving the funeral casket and its statuary but I’m afraid English Heritage put their foot down there. Perhaps not the best decision, considering what’s happened.’

Lake stopped, and seemed to have lost his thread.

‘So, when Kathryn Neate’s baby…’

‘Indeed. Technically the Peyton tomb had been handed back to the parish and because the army had suggested the villagers might soon be returned to Jude’s Ferry the church remained consecrated – as it still is, by the way, although I suspect not for long. So St Swithun’s was available for burials. Kathryn Neate’s baby won’t be the first cuckoo in the nest in St Swithun’s – over the years I’m sure many of the vaults were reused. The bones were often dug up and put in the ossuary – the bone room, it’s just off the nave and a very fine, and rare, example in England. They’re much more common on the continent of course, where graves are reused all the time to save space.’

Dryden nodded, recalling the small Gothic doorway in St Swithun’s he’d tried on the morning of the bombardment.

‘We held the service on that last night, at dusk. It’s bizarre but it was also very beautiful. Colonel Broderick had heard about the service and had sent up flowers from his fields – lilies mainly, I mean hundreds of them, beautifully arranged. It was quite sensational actually, the smell was just astonishing, and I’m not a big fan of that kind of thing, but even I thought it made the service special. I think Kathryn was overwhelmed.

‘The brother, James, dug the grave with his father. Walter had been the sexton for twenty years, he seemed determined to carry on despite the fact it was
his own grandson. The service was not well attended. They were ashamed of Kathryn and angry too, so the rest of the village kept its distance. Exactly what they shouldn’t have done, but there it was. It was really difficult. All those emotions, bottled up.’

Dryden searched his face where the shadows fell.

‘We were stood around the tomb, I remember, and we’d lowered the small casket down. Walter had made it with as much love as he could muster – but there was no name, no mark at all. It was St Swithun’s Day of course, and the sun had shone. The village was quiet. There were events planned for later – a dance at the Methodist Hall, games at the inn, and fireworks for after dark – but just then, around five, it was very quiet. And then the door opened and in came George Tudor. He walked up the aisle and found Kathryn, and he took her hand. And they stood there, together, as we covered the child’s coffin over with earth. I always thought it was the bravest thing, what George did. He knew Walter and James and I think he knew they didn’t have it in them to comfort Kathryn, not in public. George was a bachelor, childless, and I think he felt she should have someone with her, that it was wrong just to let a child bury a child alone. And he was a cousin too, on the mother’s side, I think. No doubt the tongues wagged, of course. And who knows, perhaps he was the father. I left them then, when the service was over, but I heard voices later from the vicarage – they were still in the church. Angry voices.’