The Skeleton Man

Kathryn.

I knew something about Kathryn. I knew she didn’t give me the ring that I wear.

Where do I see her? I see her first sitting with the others at the back of a classroom. No proper wooden desks, just those plastic seats with the flip-over rest. She’s what? Sixteen perhaps, maybe not. There are no uniforms, no clues. Outside a vast concrete playground disfigured by puddles. I see her hair, lustrous black, under the neon light, and the small ripe mouth partly hidden by the hand.

And although I can’t see it I know her body beneath; the long limbs curled effortlessly in mine, the thin white neck arched with pleasure.

What am I to her? I’m outside looking in, a porthole meshed with wire, and then the door opens and I find the desk at the front, sitting on the edge, a lesson begun, while I watch her with peripheral vision.

So we know now what I did. And was this what was wrong?

Now the nurse comes with the painkillers. I can see her through the porthole window, like the one in the classroom door, checking, just as the others have done, waiting for me to finish. To rest.

But there is too much fear for sleep. And I still have work. I must set down what I know now to be true, even as I write it: that Kathryn is dead and guilt, like the dusk, fills my room.

Wednesday, 18 July

14

He took the call on the deck of PK 129 in the early morning rain, his voicemail ringing him back with a message left overnight. The river, cratered with big fat storm drops, gave off the exhilarating aroma of dawn.

A voice echoing in an enclosed space, cars swishing past, a whisper close up. ‘Listen.’ The menace in the word, the cruelty, made his heart freeze for a beat. ‘Jude’s Ferry, you were there. We were there too. We opened the tomb, at St Swithun’s. We’ve taken her bones. If Peyton doesn’t shut down Sealodes Farm – stop the breeding – he’ll never get them back…’

There was the rustling of paper and, approaching, the sound of a light aircraft.

‘Our aim is to inflict economic damage on those who profit from the misery and exploitation of innocent animals…’ he read on, another voice cajoling in the background. A prepared statement, larded with the stilted language of the true fanatic. Then he said it again: if they didn’t shut down Sealodes Farm, announce it in the press, then they’d ditch the bones down a sewer. There was a brief silence in which Dryden could hear the light aircraft returning. ‘We’ve told them. Now we’re telling you. We want it in the paper that they’re closing down the business. Otherwise this is just the start. We gave them a little visit a couple of weeks ago. This time no police, until it’s in the paper. Tell ’em that.’

Dryden timed it – less than thirty seconds. A public call box. He got a notebook and took the call down verbatim in case he lost it from the mobile’s memory. Then he listened to it five times, noting the double return of the aircraft, and the jittery voice, the strain of disguise audible. He wondered what they’d done on their visit to Sealodes Farm, and why they felt they needed to fool him about the voice. Did he know him – or did they think they’d trace a recording? At least he now knew why he should have recognized the name on the tomb. Henry Peyton was a well-known local farmer and owner of a highly controversial business: breeding animals for laboratory experiments.

Humph appeared out of the rain at 8.00am with two fried-egg sandwiches wrapped in foil. Dryden took out the coffees and they watched the dog run through the wet grass. Laura had got herself in her shower seat and dressed by the time they went down for her, lifting her just as far as she couldn’t go herself, into the waiting wheelchair on the deck. The ambulance would call at 10.00am to take her for the regular sessions: physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and speech therapy. Dryden arranged the tarpaulin cover so that she was dry and made sure the laptop and the mobile were within reach.

‘What yer gonna do?’ he said, curling a loop of hair off the nape of her neck.

‘Lines to learn – twenty-three words,’ she said, the tongue still lazy as if she was recovering from a dentist’s needle. Dryden kissed her and refilled the coffee cup at her elbow. Then, making an effort, he knelt by the chair. ‘You can do a reading for me tonight – OK? I’ll play the rest of the cast, you do your stuff.’

He kissed her again and got into the Capri, Humph pulling away immediately, hooting the horn twice before they swung out of sight.

‘Take the Manea road, over the Levels at Welney,’ said Dryden, then he left a message on the news desk answerphone asking Charlie to send Garry to the magistrates’ court in his place. He had a story, a good one, and he’d be back by lunch with it in the bag. It was the kind of message he loved to leave.

He’d never been to Sealodes Farm. It wasn’t the kind of place that welcomed publicity. It was poor land, below the dyke which kept the tidal water out of the richer peat fen. Over the years, in the dry summers, the water had welled up in the fields, leaving behind a deadly rime of salt. Sealodes was good only for turnips and beet, not the cash crops which underpinned the fortunes of the big corporate-owned farms of the Black Fen. So twenty-five years ago Sealodes had turned to a less conventional crop: breeding guinea pigs and rats for big companies and universities.

The farm looked like a battery-hen unit. The old farmhouse, a Victorian London-brick cube, had been abandoned and cracks veined its facade, the roof sagging like a hammock strung between the chimneys. Next to it stood a tasteless Southfork-style bungalow with four garages and a bristling mast of TV dishes and aerials. An ugly brick wall encircled a garden crowded with pots, a water feature and a line of palm trees in containers. Against the ugly brick wall was a line of three ugly brick kennels, but there was no sign of the ugly dogs within.

Dryden got out of the Capri, slammed the door and listened to the echo bouncing off the distant bank of the dyke. The rain had stopped but the cloud was low and oppressive, a grey lid on a grey landscape. A large corporate flag hung limp from a flagpole, but Dryden could just discern the logo of a pale sunflower. A man in a one-piece green overall appeared from one of the battery sheds with a pet carrier in his hand. He stood his ground, waiting for Dryden to close the space between them. Up close he still had a farmer’s face despite the green wellington boots and a Mediterranean tan. He said nothing so Dryden introduced himself, squatting down to get a closer look at the black guinea pig in the carrier.