The Skeleton Man

Cuckoo Bridge crossed the river a mile north of the town, a wooden arch built in the fifties to link Quanea Fen with the towpath. Its pitch-soaked timbers had warped over the decades so that its once graceful lines were tortured now, a miniature nightmare of twisted boards over the wide expanse of the grey river, its surface pockmarked with the falling rain. The river ran through thickets of thorn here, and the only sign of humanity was the distant cathedral tower, just visible over the flood bank. It was here, more than a thousand years before, that the monks had come ashore with the body of St Etheldreda. Dryden always imagined the scene – the mist cloaking the little procession as it dragged the coffin on a cart along the old green lane by the river.

Dryden had hauled Mitch out of the darkroom and commandeered his van for the brief journey. They parked at the river authority depot and walked the last hundred yards along the narrow, single-track drove. Humph was alone on the bridge, the Capri beyond on the other bank beside the emergency vehicles, the cabbie’s weight prompting creaks from the woodwork. The safety rail on the downriver side was broken at its central section, the snapped timber ends raw and pale.

The main river pooled here in a wide reed marsh, a clear channel for the tourist boats cut through the middle. The search and rescue team were twenty yards from them on the east bank. A whining inflatable dinghy nosed its way forward through the rushes while four divers squirmed in the shallows like tadpoles.

Humph handed Dryden a set of field glasses, stowing the camera now that the professional had arrived. Mitch, manically equipped for all eventualities, had retrieved waders from the back of his van and was making his way along the opposite bank to get a shot of the action. Dryden could see the victim now, spreadeagled in the reeds, a lifeless starfish. Up close through the field glasses the man’s face looked impossibly pale, and his body entirely motionless. One of the divers was trying to bag his right hand, securing a watertight knot at the wrist.

‘Looks bad,’ said Dryden, trying to feel something for a nameless victim, aware that his profession could produce a disfiguring cynicism.

The dinghy was alongside now and a metal stretcher was manoeuvred under the body. As Dryden watched he saw the victim lift an arm so that he could cover his eyes with his uninjured hand.

‘Hold on. Bloody hell. It’s a live one,’ said Dryden, flicking open the mobile. He got through to Jean – The Crow’s half-deaf receptionist and copy-taker. He gave her a three-line paragraph and told her to pass it straight to the editor’s screen as a suggested fudge box – an item of late-breaking news which could be added to the back page after the presses had started to run. Then he got her to read it back and corrected the six errors which had crept into less than fifty words.

‘Looks like he fell in here,’ said Dryden to Humph, edging towards the gap in the safety rail. ‘Hard to believe he got caught by a boat – unless it was night time. Surely you’d see him, or hear him. Mind you, half the skippers on the white ships are pissed by ten.’ Dryden thought about it – the drifting gin palaces tinkling with wine bottles.

Humph took a step towards the edge and they both felt the planks twist under their feet. ‘He might have hit those,’ said the cabbie, pointing down. Directly below the missing safety rail the bridge’s central support was buttressed with timbers. ‘That would have knocked him out; he could have drifted into the slipstream and then…’ He used one hand like a cleaver to cut down on the fingers of the other.

They walked over towards the ambulance and stood a respectful distance away as they slid the stretcher on board. The victim’s hair was black, cut stylishly short at the back, the jawline military-straight, hinting at a good diet and inherited wealth, a solid build without being athletic, and despite the pallor – a tan which hadn’t come out of a bottle. His clothes were casual but expensive – an olive-green linen shirt, moleskin trousers and one remaining brown leather shoe. Dryden could see a watch and what looked like the trailing lead of a mobile phone’s handsfree set entangled with the arm. The sock on the shoeless foot hung loose, the exposed skin ribbed from the long immersion in the river water. He looked away, disturbed by the intimacy and vulnerability of a semi-naked foot.

The stretcher was half-way in when he turned his head towards them, and as the sun broke through the clouds Dryden glimpsed the eyes: pale green against the skin, and in the blast of light he was sure that, while water trickled down from the hairline, tears fell as well. As they slid him into the rear of the ambulance the man grabbed one of the paramedics by his fluorescent jacket and Dryden heard him choke and then the voice, forced out, ragged with stress.

‘Don’t leave me alone.’

Dryden waited for them to go, light blinking silently, before approaching the diving team, who stood now in a circle inhaling ritual cigarettes. The Express’s last edition was long gone so there was no need to push for more information, a luxury which ironically made his job that much easier. Boudicca padded up with him and lay at his feet like a croissant.

Two of the divers were sharing a cigarette, their wetsuits unzipped to the waist and turned back and out of the arms, revealing pallid white muscle and damp hair. One was tall, his long arms painfully pale and hairless, the other squat and tanned, with black curly hair over much of his torso. The support team were smoking too, diligently checking equipment as they repacked it into the unit van. Dryden felt excluded from this aggressively male club and fiddled ineffectually with the top button of his white shirt.

The sudden sunlight had transformed the landscape and revealed a wide sky of chef’s-hat clouds. ‘You boys got here quick,’ said Dryden, making sure they saw him pocket his notebook. ‘We got some pix, so if you want copies shout.’

‘Eel catcher spotted him,’ said the tall diver, speaking expertly while holding the cigarette between his jaws. Ely still boasted a council waterman, and Dryden had often seen him moving stealthily on the river at dawn by Barham’s Dock in a low-sided fowlers’ punt.

‘How long you reckon he’s been in there?’ said Dryden, waving as Mitch drove off.

The tanned diver shrugged, squeezing water from his hair. ‘With a bit of luck, just overnight. There’s some hypothermia, any longer than that and he may have trouble recovering. Plus there’s a bump on the head – it’s a three-inch gash and it’ll need stitches. Guess he tumbled in off the bridge. We’re gonna close it, by the way, at least until they repair and strengthen the rails. It’s in a pretty dangerous state.’

‘Nobody noticed the broken handrail then? Not yesterday, not this morning?’

A shrug again. ‘It’s a lonely spot.’

They tried to turn away, cutting short the interview, but Dryden took a half step in. ‘Did he say much? He looked upset – distraught really. Does he remember what happened? Think he jumped?’

An exchange of glances: ‘We don’t want to see any quotes in the paper, OK?’ said the tall one. Dryden nodded. ‘At the moment he can’t remember his own name.’

Dryden thought about that. ‘Amnesia? Believe him?’