for the place, a picture in my head.’
‘I got sacked,’ she said, answering the question he hadn’t asked. ‘They probably said.’ Dryden shook his head. ‘My David died and I couldn’t really take it any more.’
Dryden took a step back, embarrassed by the personal detail.
‘They were right, I wasn’t pulling my weight. David had been the manager here, so they got me in. It was good of them, it’s a family firm.’
She stood, a kettle beginning to boil on the ground by the plug, and took two crockery mugs out of a small sink. She made Dryden tea without asking, and they didn’t say a word while she completed the little ceremony.
‘It’s a bit soulless,’ said Dryden, nodding towards the empty aisles and the stacks of packed food hidden by the steel wall.
‘Yes,’ she said, and for a moment Dryden thought she was going to cry. ‘It’s better here.’
‘So. Jude’s Ferry, what was it like? Soulless too?’
‘Good God no,’ she said, hitching her feet expertly up on to the first open drawer of the desk. ‘People don’t understand about communities like that. Everyone was part of a network, you see, part of the place, and it held them together, the village, and it held them apart, far enough apart that they could live with people they sometimes didn’t like, people they might even have hated. In small communities that’s what they learn – how close to get.’
‘And then they had to leave,’ he said.
‘Yes – so all those networks fell apart. I’m not surprised someone died. It was a trigger – the evacu ation. I could feel the tension in those last few weeks.’
‘Did you know any of the villagers well?’
She shook her head, tapping a finger on the desktop. ‘Not really. Once they all sold up in the eighties to the MoD it was almost impossible to get new investment to come in for any project.’
She leant back, covering her eyes with the hand that didn’t hold her cup. ‘I tried to get some development fund money behind a project to put start-up units in the old beet factory, small manufacturing enterprises. I know one of the micro-brewers was interested. But you couldn’t take it forward because there was always that question: what if the Army cuts the lease? So you couldn’t blame the banks, although we did, of course.’
Dryden nodded, setting the cup down on a coaster with a picture of a barn owl.
She looked towards the internal window and Dryden guessed she was looking at her own reflection. ‘My only real contact with the village was through SEN.’
‘Special needs?’
‘Yes. That was part of my remit. I had to make sure any children in the village who needed support got it. So we had to coordinate social services, education, transport, the lot. You’d be surprised at the kind of problems you find in a place like Jude’s Ferry.’
Dryden looked her in the eyes. ‘I was born on Burnt Fen,’ he said. ‘We had a farm.’
She had the good grace to look down. ‘Sorry. I guess you wouldn’t be surprised then. I took the accent for London.’
Dryden, sensing he had the advantage, pressed forward. ‘In those last few months a baby died in the village, do you remember that?’
She shook her head. ‘If it was natural causes that’s not our bag, the health trust in Whittlesea might have a record.’
Dryden made a note. ‘So, SEN kids – how many were there at the end?’
She buried her face in her hands trying to remember. ‘Two I think. There was Peter Tholy of course…’
‘Right,’ said Dryden, recalling his list of eight potential identities for the Skeleton Man.
‘He went to Australia after the evacuation,’ she said.
‘Are you sure? I thought George Tudor was the one who emigrated.’
‘Both of them, friends of course, so it was a joint project. We helped with Peter’s application because there were obvious difficulties. He had quite severe learning difficulties, dyslexia, and some communication problems, some dysfunctional speech patterns, although his IQ was actually very high. Didn’t stop everyone treating him like the village idiot, of course – that’s a rural tradition I’ve never tried to protect. The only friends he had were amongst the girls, who mothered him, and George.’
‘Why were they friends?’
She shrugged. ‘Workmates, I guess; landwork and the flower fields. They both got decent references from the vicar, and from Blooms, the wholesale nursery business.’
‘So you knew Colonel Broderick then?’
‘Yes. One of the few local businesses with any kind of potential. Broderick generated a lot of local employment, it was a good thing it was there in those last years.’
‘What was he like – Peter?’ Dryden thought of the Skeleton Man, wondering if Peter Tholy had ever really left the village in which he was born.
‘I met him once, twice perhaps, most of the hands-on stuff was done by social services. But, you know, cute I guess. He wasn’t your typical farmhand – strong in the arm, thick in the head. He’d taken some hard knocks growing up in the village, but he’d come through.’
Looking through him she remembered another face. ‘And there was Martyn Armstrong. He’d have been about fifteen when the family finally left – well, I say family, there was the father, the watchman at the beet works. The mother was still officially resident but in fact she’d walked out. Which was one of Martyn’s problems. They had a
