The Skeleton Man

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.

The first thing I remember about myself is being amongst the reeds. They crowded round, like witnesses, where I lay.

I knew nothing at that moment. I had no name, I had no loves. I just was. Of the life I remember it is the happiest moment.

I didn’t panic. I had been here before in another life, in those few seconds after waking when identity eludes us. Where was I? Who was I? I could wait for the answers. They would float up amongst the reeds.

Then the rain fell and I knew I was in the river; the drops splashing around me, my back resting on the mud, my legs, buoyant, in the side stream. And time marked out by the thudding mechanical drum of boat engines going past, the wash rocking me gently.

And still I didn’t know my name.

Only the pain was real. It cut down along my arm and across the knuckles of my fingers. So I raised my right hand to the grey sky and saw that the top of each finger had been sliced off. Skin hung from one exposed bone, the fingers white and bloodless.

I felt some disgust then, but distantly, as if on behalf of someone else.

And then I knew two things. I knew I was dying there in the water. And I remembered a voice I’d once known telling me something I’d always feared to hear.

‘They’ve found the cellar. Ring me.’

Tuesday, 17 July

7

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…

SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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.