The Skeleton Man

‘Jennifer Smith, the sister, backs up her brother’s story for that night, as far as she can. She says they got home together before midnight and drank in the front room. I believe her about as much as I believe her brother, but there it is. I went to see her again this morning to run through it again and told her Mark was under arrest. This produced a remarkable return of memory. Apparently, a year after her mother’s death, she got a letter from Matthew. Nothing specific, just saying he was OK, and not to worry. She didn’t keep it. There was a snapshot inside of him kneeling by their mother’s grave. She kept that. She said she’d never shown it to Mark. She showed it to me. They’re not identical twins – so there’s no doubt.’

Dryden let it sink in. ‘You might have mentioned the arrest.’

‘I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want some idiot running a story like this. It leaked from Cambridge. The News read me the story and I told them not to print it – it’s misleading at best. We have absolutely no evidence he’s a killer, and pretty good evidence he didn’t kill his brother as he was alive and well several years after the evacuation. If Mark starts talking, and more to the point tells the truth, he’ll be out by teatime. If he gets himself a decent lawyer he’ll be out anyway. So the News will look pretty stupid tomorrow.’

Dryden held out the paper at arm’s length. He didn’t care about tomorrow, journalism was about today. The story made him look like an amateur from the sticks. His stuff on Jason Imber was all over the front of The Crow while the News implied the police had already got their man.

‘A heads-up would have been nice,’ he said lamely, and cut the line. Dryden had thought about telling him what he’d learned from Fred Lake but calculated he could wait until after Shaw had interviewed the vicar the following morning.

Then his phone went. He checked the incoming number. It was Charlie Bracken, The Crow’s news editor. Looking down Market Street Dryden could see him, standing outside The Fenman in the rain, a pint in one hand and a thin wisp of smoke rising from the other. Dryden guessed he’d just read the front of the Cambridge Evening News as well and wanted to know if they were going to look second-best all week. Dryden took the call, calmed him down, and told him to wait twenty-four hours. In the distance he watched as Charlie walked happily back into the bar.

Dryden set off for the riverside and found Humph asleep in the cab by the slipway. Dryden thought again about that last night in Jude’s Ferry. The funeral of Jude Neate was the central event, and he felt convinced it was linked to the fate of both the Skeleton Man and the bones in Peyton’s tomb. He needed to know more about Kathryn Neate and the men in her life.

He pulled open the passenger-side door, the rusted hinges squealing. ‘The Stopover, Duckett’s Cross,’ he said, viewing Humph’s collection of airport mini atures in the glove compartment. The cabbie stretched out, his finger joints cracking. ‘Duty Free’s open,’ said Dryden. ‘Now, what am I having?’

28

Jimmy Neate’s girlfriend was at the pumps, splayed in a deckchair set out in the late-afternoon sun, her T-shirt rolled up from her waist to reveal the pale shadows beneath her breasts. She didn’t move as Humph parked the Capri. The stand of dusty pines around the Stopover Garage shimmered in a light breeze, and a single HGV rumbled into the distance down the long stretch of featureless tarmac. When it had gone there was silence, except for the hum of flies from a manure bin by the BBQ coal.

Julie Watts stood to meet him, her eyes running over him from the ground up. ‘Jimmy about?’ said Dryden, trying not to do the same.

‘Thought you might have come to see me,’ she said, and Dryden heard Humph snort as he made a fuss putting on his headphones.

‘Not unless you can tell me where Kathryn Neate is,’ said Dryden.

She shrugged, and Dryden saw that she couldn’t help her hands taking refuge in the pockets of her jeans.

‘She left, years ago. I never saw her after we left the Ferry.’

‘You must remember her though; look like her brother?’

She shook her head. ‘Quiet kid. Her body grew up before she did, that happens to us all, but Kathy didn’t have a chance. So she got knocked up. She was proud of it in an odd way. Like it proved someone loved her, which it didn’t, did it?’ She laughed again. ‘She didn’t deserve that, I guess.’

‘Didn’t Jimmy help – her dad?’

She laughed. ‘They loved her all right – but with them it’s the kind of love you don’t do anything about. It’s just there, and everyone’s supposed to know without anyone saying anything. That wasn’t what she needed. Adolescence is a mess, they just waited for her to survive it. She didn’t.’

They walked towards the bungalow as Dryden recalled the desperate plight of the girl described in Magda Hollings worth’s diary – pregnant, frightened, alone.

‘What about the father? Gossip says it was George Tudor.’

‘Maybe. He loved her, you could see that, but then Marion – their mum – was his aunt. I think he felt protective, especially after Marion died, and that’s not the same thing, is it? Although at the Ferry they got these things mixed up. That was always the joke they made at school in town – that the Ferry kids had family trees all right, they just didn’t have any branches on them.’

Dryden laughed, closing his eyes and enjoying the sunshine. ‘Kathryn’s mother died young, didn’t she?’

She nodded, not really interested. ‘Did for the family,’ she added, watching Jimmy Neate cross from the garage over to the bungalow in the trees. ‘You could tell something was missing; something they couldn’t put back. And Walter changed, he’d always been the jovial uncle type, but after that he just went into a shell. Kathryn looked like Marion too, so he found that painful, having her around. All he had was Jimmy really, and Jimmy doesn’t like being the centre of attention, not for anyone.’

‘They fight?’

‘That would have been healthy. So no, they didn’t. The old man’s just kinda had Jimmy where he wanted him. He lived – lives – his life through Jimmy, even when he’s stuck in some wing-backed armchair in a godforsaken old people’s home.’