The Skeleton Man (7 page)

‘It’ll be my last sermon – but they know it well. My wife says I bang on about it, but it’s relevant, even now, and these days if you want to get something across to people, past the distractions of the TV, and video games, and the rest, well you’ve got to bang on. So – St Swithun, the great bishop of Winchester, said he wanted to be buried out of doors so that, he said, the “sweet rain of heaven” could fall on his grave. There was a deeper message, a political message really…’ Dryden noted how strong the accent had suddenly become, the guttural nasal vowels distinct in the word ‘political’.

‘He was saying that he didn’t want to be buried alongside the great and the good inside the cathedral, all the posh people. He wanted to be outside with us, the also-rans.’

He laughed and Dryden thought how little bitterness there was in the voice. ‘But then of course the people who came after him thought they knew better. They decided to dig up his bones and put them in a fancy tomb inside. And that, of course, is when it rained, ruining their plans, filling the grave as they dug it. For forty days and forty nights it rained, a mark of just how disappointed God was with their attitude, the way they’d forgotten this wonderful lesson they’d been given by Swithun, this great example.’

A cough, a fresh gust of wind… ‘OK. I think the ringers are ready for us.’ The deep note of a tenor bell sounded, being rung down.

‘Bubbly?’ asked Humph, firing another green tennis ball despite the gathering darkness. They watched as Boudicca moved like a shadow over the field, and the cabbie refilled their glasses. To the north, over the cathedral, a brace of US fighters wheeled, the roar of the engines swelling suddenly, rattling the boat’s portholes.

Laura looked towards them, shielding her eyes awkwardly with her hand. ‘Much more now,’ she said, and Dryden understood her. Since the invasion of Iraq the US air bases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath were busier; a steady stream of transport planes bringing in fuel and stores for shipment on to the Middle East, while the fighter pilots trained before being posted to the skies over the Gulf.

The tape moved on, through the voices in the belfry to an elderly farm labourer who recalled, beside the slow-crackling peat fire in his cottage, the day the beet factory opened – the steam whistle which marked the shifts salvaged from a transatlantic liner. Then came the village baker, long retired to a cottage over The Dring – the village’s narrow high street flanked on one side by a culvert – where he tended an allotment of berries, the gentle clip of the pruning shears marking his progress along a hedge.

Then the tape filled with static, the irritating clatter of a taxi firm’s radio network.

‘OK, Sam. You picked up yet?’

‘Two minutes. Two minutes.’

‘OK. Next, can you pick up from Peterborough railway station? That’s forecourt Peterborough. Back to the New Ferry, Sam. Back to the New Ferry.’

The static faded. The woman’s voice was throaty and scarred by cigarettes.

‘My name’s Jan Cobley. We’ve run the firm now for twenty-six years, Sam and me. I do control, here, and he’s out in the cab. We’ve got two, and our son’s in the other. He’s worked hard, but these days they expect more, don’t they? We think we’ve done all right, really – there’s a roof over our heads and we get a holiday, that’s more than some here. People said we’d fold, of course. But Jude’s Ferry’s miles from anywhere and when the factory was running we was off our feet. And the bus don’t run at all now, so that’s more trade when it’s about. And we have to do the school runs – primary and for the college in Whittlesea.’

A kettle whistled and there was the sound of a teapot filling. ‘And you’d be surprised where you can get trade,’ she said. Humph blew air out of the tiny bow of his mouth. ‘Take the army. They might get marched out to the gate posts on the range but they don’t mind a lift home.’

She laughed then and Dryden imagined a mouth with wrecked teeth, and cellulite arms.

‘We’ll keep going, move the business, Sam’s got some ideas. We’ll be all right, the two of us.’ Dryden
noted that the Cobleys’ son was not included in their plans. Clearly running a mini-cab wasn’t top of his career ladder.

Humph left, kissing Laura and ignoring Dryden, gathering the dog into the Capri and swinging it out along the road to Barham’s Farm and the A10.

‘I wonder who she was,’ said Dryden to Laura as he stood on the riverbank watching the tail-lights dim. ‘The woman we found in the cellar.’

The swinging skeleton held the focus of his memory, and he was struggling to erase its image. He thought of the cellar now, as night fell, and the cruel hook driven into the beam to take the rope.

From the tape came the unmistakable mewl of a kitten, and distantly, the bark of a dog. Metal cage doors were shut and opened and there was the sound of a bucket on a stone floor.

‘My name’s Jennifer Smith and I work here at the boarding kennels in Jude’s Ferry.’ There was another pause for an edited-out question.

‘Yeah. There’s no problem having dogs and cats together. They have separate compounds and they never see each other. I like the cats best, yes…’ The sound of purring suddenly filled the soundtrack.

‘We’re full tonight – that’s nearly thirty cats and twenty-five dogs – plus two kittens in the house. It’s been here – the business – for nearly forty years, so I guess it’s the reputation that brings people. Mrs Verity, that’s the owner, she says it’s because we’re so far away from towns and noise and things.

‘I’m not clever enough to be a vet but Mrs Verity has a friend, Mrs Royle, who runs a cattery the other side of Peterborough – so I might go there. My brothers are leaving home, and Dad died last year – so Mum said she’d come too. There’s some money, from Dad’s insurance, so the twins might set up a business of their own, building like Dad, but they can’t make up their minds. Brothers, right?’

She laughed, covering something else that she wanted to hide. ‘It’s a new start, isn’t it, and I’m looking forward to the animals. It’ll be good, it will.’

The wind buffeted the microphone again and Dryden could hear the sound of a dog straining at a leash. ‘I love walkin’ them. That’s Ely cathedral over there, do you see? That’s twenty-two miles – and you don’t see it that often. And that’s the power station at Flag Fen – that’s just eighteen. There’s nothing else, just space I guess, and sky.’

Seagulls calling swelled before fading out as the tape moved on to its final talking head. Dryden’s fire crackled, dying down to the last orange embers.

The sound of a tractor clattered close, then died. ‘My name is George Tudor and I work on Home Farm here in the village, or out in the flower fields.’ The voice was light and young, heard against the backdrop of the seagulls which had trailed the plough. ‘They say we’ll be back here in a year but that’s too long for me, too long for a lot of us. I can’t live on their promises. I know they need the village and
we shouldn’t fight it. So I ain’t fighting it… I’m leaving. Western Australia – they need people out there on the land and I’ve got my exams. So I’ve filled out all the forms, and people have said the right things about me, that I work hard and that. Fred, the vicar, he’s put his name down for us. So we’re off. For good.’

A fighter plane suddenly exploded over their heads, low, screaming east to west.

As the engines faded they listened for the tape again, and the faint sound of a lid being popped off a lunchbox. ‘I won’t miss it, no,’ he said. ‘It’s a hard place to make a living, Jude’s Ferry, and it’s a lonely place too, despite the people. Sometimes, because of the people.’

The tape hissed to an end and in the silence an owl flew through the light of the fire.

It had been two days since that wayward shell had crashed beside the New Ferry Inn but Dryden knew less now about the skeleton in the cellar than he had in those first minutes before its bones had finally fallen to the floor. Which was not a good position for any reporter to be in two hours before his final deadline.
The Crow
’s downmarket tabloid sister paper the
Ely Express
went to bed that morning. Most of the nationals and all the regional evening newspapers had carried the bare details of the story already. He needed a new line, and he needed it fast.

Dryden sat at his desk in the newsroom. He’d opened the central sash in the bay window. Outside he could hear the bustle of Market Street; a dog tied up outside the post office yelped rhythmically while a bell tinkled as customers came and went at the haberdasher’s opposite
The Crow’
s offices.

He forced himself to look at his PC screen. He’d knocked out his eyewitness account of the events at Jude’s Ferry, but that was already old news and strictly inside-page material. That left him with the opened grave in the church, details of which the police had not released, but had now confirmed in response to his inquiry.

What he needed on the grave-robbers story was some background, some colour to flesh out what little he knew. He went online and called up Google, putting ‘Peyton’ and ‘Jude’s Ferry’ in the search window. He clicked on
peytonfamily.com
, a US website, and his screen began to fill with coats of arms and an elaborate family tree, as well as links to chatrooms, an annual convention home page, and a visitors’ site.

Dryden read the welcome note: ‘Thank you for logging on to the home page for the Peyton family here in the United States. We are one of the nation’s oldest families, tracing our roots back to the Pilgrim Fathers and the founding of the Republic. If you are a Peyton, or just interested in one of the country’s noble “first families”, please read on, or e-mail our online editor, John Peyton Speed, who will deal with your questions. We hope you are as fascinated as we are by the story of one of America’s great dynasties.’

Dryden skimmed the history page, finding a society dedicated exclusively to the genealogy of the family and, in particular, its origins in the east of England. Annual trips were organized to visit significant sites in the UK – Battle (apparently the point of arrival for the Peytons with William the Conqueror), the Tower of London and the three parish churches holding the remains of the Peyton ancestors – St Winifred’s, Lincoln; St John’s, Boston; and St Swithun’s at Jude’s Ferry. Dryden hit the link for Jude’s Ferry and swore…

So he hit the e-mail link for John Peyton Speed and set out briefly the events at Jude’s Ferry, including the damage to the church and the evidence of grave robbery. He explained who he was and asked for a prompt reply, but with the time difference it would have to be a storyline he’d develop later in the week.

Which just about took him back to square one. Compared to what had been dubbed the ‘Skeleton Woman’ by the tabloids, a bit of grave robbing was a sideshow, especially as there was no evidence it was linked directly with the corpse found hanging in the cellar.

He needed a new line on the main story and his one hope appeared to be Magda Hollingsworth, the missing shopkeeper. None of the other papers had yet mentioned her, and the police seemed to be keeping that line of inquiry discreet, presumably to help shield the family from having to relive their grief. Dryden had done some research in
The Crow
’s archives on her case, which had been briefly covered in the nationals but had then been relegated to a local cause célèbre, warranting only a brief mention on the first anniversary of the evacuation of the village.

Magda Hollingsworth had last been seen alive, without any doubt, at 4.00pm on the day before the final evacu ation. Her son, Jacob, had shut up the business for the final time and they’d spent an hour
putting stock from the post office in crates before he’d driven into Whittlesea with the last cash box of takings. All the foodstuffs and perishables had been phased off the shelves in the weeks leading up to the final day. According to
The Crow
, Magda had then gone up to her bedroom to write her diary – apparently a daily event – and been heard taking a bath later in the evening. She had plans, according to the diary, to visit one of the villagers that evening and they’d confirmed they’d seen her about 7.30 to 7.45. One of the youngsters who had attended the dance in the Methodist Hall told police he was pretty sure he’d caught sight of her walking out along the road by the allotments at around 8.30pm. While he had not seen her face, her clothes were a distinctive trademark: a multicoloured pleated dress and a leather waistcoat and bag in harlequin patches of yellow and red.

Mrs Hollingsworth’s children, who worked in the shop but had already moved out of the village, did not discover her disappearance until the next morning when they returned to help her pack the last of her belongings into the family car. She had been planning to retire to a bungalow at Wells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast. But she was nowhere to be found that morning. The family reported her missing at noon to army officials in charge of the final stages of evacuation. Military police, on the scene anyway, took a statement and contacted the control room at Lynn and a general description was circulated. The army conducted a
thorough search of the village that evening after the villagers had left. No trace of her body was ever found, her bank account remained untouched, but a police spokesman did say that, having been given access to her diary, they were concerned for her safety and that she may have tried to take her own life. They declined to give further details, except to say that she had been suffering from depression.