The Skeleton Man

his eye.

Downstairs copies of The Crow had still not arrived so he cut down High Street Passage and into Butcher’s Row, stopping outside the display window of Foster & Co., Land Agents. There were fifty properties in the window, none of them matching the cottage next door to Paul Cobley’s he’d seen in the snapshot his mother had shown Dryden. He went in and a yob-in-a-suit, who was about to shut up shop, gave him an oily smile. Dryden liked estate agents, largely because they saved journalists from being listed as the country’s most despised professionals.

‘I was looking for a property someone said you had for sale – a cottage, one of a pair out on the fen. Victorian, I guess, red-brick, in need of work.’

The smile never faltered. ‘Right. You know, that’s so unlucky. I think we’ve just taken an offer on that and the vendor has accepted – so we’ve had to take it off the market.’

Dryden shrugged and headed for the door, wondering how long it would take for the prospect of a bigger commission to bend the rules.

‘But… you know. If you’re interested, I can ring the vendor now because nothing’s been signed.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Bit of gazumping eh? Can I see the details?’

He got the file from a pile by a cappuccino machine.

Albert Cottage was on Sedge Fen, a bleak farming district close to the edge of Thetford Forest, about ten miles from Ely. Dryden read the details and noticed the broadband internet link, the double garage and the access to the A12. Then he memorized the address and tossed the file back.

‘Actually I’ll give it a miss – a deal’s a deal after all, and if I offer more you’d probably stitch me up too, eh?’

He didn’t deny it, and Dryden left him fluttering around a new customer.

Back on Market Square Skeg was now at his pitch by the mobile tea stall, a fresh pile of papers on his trestle table. He pasted on a smile for Dryden but couldn’t hide the anxiety which made his narrow, childish body shake slightly as he handed Dryden a copy of The Crow.

Dryden looked into the wide brown eyes and guessed he was a few shillings short of a fix.

‘’Nother good week,’ said Skeg, dipping the waxed hair like a cap, forcing a smile beyond its natural life. He cradled a plastic cup of weak tea and a toasted cheese sandwich lay beside the papers, oozing grease. As well as the pile of first editions of The Crow there was also the Cambridge Evening News. Dryden read the banner headline and froze:

ARREST IN HUNT FOR VILLAGE KILLER

He grabbed a copy, threw some coins in Skeg’s tray, and read the first paragraphs, scanning the lines in a few seconds…

By Nikki Reynolds

Detectives have made an arrest in the hunt for the killer of the ‘Skeleton Man’ found hanged in a cellar in the abandoned Fen village of Jude’s Ferry.

The 37-year-old was taken to Midsummer Common police station, Cambridge in the early hours of this morning.

The man, who is understood to live in the Cambridgeshire area, had been interviewed on three occasions before being arrested at his home. It is understood no charges have as yet been made.

‘We are close to identifying the victim in this case, who we now believe may have been murdered by a lynch mob,’ said one detective close to the case.

Dryden scanned down the rest of the story and found nothing else that was new – and none of the details in his story.

But it was still a better story than the one he’d run. ‘Shit,’ he said, walking quickly away from the market-day crowd around to the back of the fish stall, where he stood amongst the discarded plastic crates still half full of crushed ice. He hit the automatic dial for the detective’s mobile.

Two rings. ‘Shaw,’ said the DI.

‘Dryden. Cambridge Evening News – front-page splash. They say you’ve made an arrest on the Skeleton Man case, which makes me look like a tosser. Anything you’d like to say?’

DI Shaw’s voice was low, and Dryden could hear the crackle of police radios in the background. He guessed he was still in the incident room at the New Ferry Inn.

Again, the maddening pause, time to work out exactly what he wanted to say.

‘It’s Mark Smith and he is under arrest for obstructing our inquiries, OK? That’s it. He has not been charged with murder and there is no intention to charge him with murder. His version of events on the last evening, when the brothers fought, is full of holes. We’ve interviewed him three times and got a different story each time. I think the fight was about something else, something a lot more important than money, but he won’t give an inch. This might convince him we are serious about finding out the truth.’

But Dryden wasn’t giving up. ‘And what if it turns out it was his brother on the end of that rope in the cellar? What if the News has called it right? You don’t know for sure, do you – unless the DNA analysis is back?’

‘The lab has not got the results yet, that’s true. But I do know it wasn’t Matthew Smith in the cellar.’

‘You do? You going to share that information?’

‘Sure. But I don’t want it in the paper.’

A shower of rain had begun to fall and Dryden edged under a shop awning, watching the crowd run for cover. ‘OK,’ he said, realizing he had little choice.