Dryden let that hang in the air.
Neate shrugged, taking the picture from Dryden and, replacing it in the hall, he brought back another – a large black and white picture of a man standing in front of the old garage at Jude’s Ferry.
‘Dad,’ said Jimmy simply.
Dryden nodded, taking the picture, sensing it was an icon. ‘You’re gonna look like him,’ he said, knowing it would work.
Jimmy smiled. ‘I miss her. Dad missed her – but it’s too late for all of us now.’
Dryden thought he was trying to reassemble a memory, studying the picture himself as if it was new to him, but then he asked, ‘Forensics, you said?’
‘Yeah. It’s all in the paper. They’ve found a grave.’
Neate picked up the beer can in a single fluid movement. ‘Where?’
‘In the cellar, where we found the Skeleton Man,’ said Dryden, taking a last gulp of beer.
Neate leant forward, elbows on the newspaper. ‘And I bet I know what they found in the grave,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
Dryden could see he wanted to say it but that the calculation was complex, and for a moment he hesitated. ‘Bones,’ he said, finally. ‘Old bones.’
‘And whose old bones would they be?’
‘Ask Ken Woodruffe, it was his cellar.’
A woman’s bones. Dryden recalled the picture behind the bar at The Five Miles from Anywhere, the oval face at the upstairs window.
Neate licked his lips. ‘Ellen Woodruffe, Aunt Ellen, was dying – she’d had a couple of strokes and her heart was failing. Ellen begged Ken, begged everyone, to end it. She wanted to die in her own home. I know for a fact she asked Dad to do it – give her some pills or something. Ken told everyone there was no way she’d leave, he reckoned they’d have to drag her out, or she’d do it herself. And there was the pain. You could hear her some nights, upstairs at the inn, trying to stop herself crying out. It tore Ken up because he wanted her to die then, but the doctors said it could go on for years. She was a strong woman, Ellen, and it was like her body wouldn’t give up, even when she wanted it to. So I wouldn’t blame him if he did it for her, I’d have done it. After we got fixed up in business here Dad rang the home Ken said he’d put her in – out on the coast – but she wasn’t there.’
Neate leant back in his chair, tilting it on to two legs. ‘But like I say, good luck to him…’
Dryden finished the can. ‘Actually, there was nothing in the grave. It had been dug, then filled in. Not a chicken bone, nothing.’
Neate didn’t miss a beat. ‘So where did Ellen go?’
In his mind Dryden was back on Thieves Bridge, cradling the skull in his hands again, the dark sockets lightless.
29
The North Sea was a grey slate, ruffled only by a squall of rain moving in from the east. The cab had cruised the front twice already but still they’d failed to see the sign. Perhaps it had long closed, perhaps it had been renamed, perhaps the picture had been a fake all along.
‘Remind me,’ said Humph, winding down the driver’s side window to clear it of the droplets which obscured the view.
‘The Royal Esplanade,’ said Dryden.
It was dusk and the promenade lights flickered once then came on, somehow adding to the gloom. At sea a single trawler headed in, its green and red lights hinting at a subtle swell.
They reached the miniature clock tower by the marine gardens which was the centrepiece of Lowestoft’s sea front.
‘One more time,’ said Dryden, wishing he’d done some research before they’d undertaken the trip.
Humph swung the cab in a circle and headed south.
Dryden was looking at the double-bayed fronts of the B&Bs with their winking ‘Vacancy’ signs when they came opposite a small park set back from the prom. Trees, heavy with summer leaves, obscured the buildings beyond.
‘Take the next right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go round the square.’
And there it was, behind elegant Edwardian railings – the Esplanade.
Dryden fished a tie out of the glove compartment and ran a hand through his hair, examining his face in the vanity mirror.
‘I need to look like an accountant,’ he said.
Humph was biting the top off a pork pie. ‘Thank God you’ve failed,’ he said, wriggling his backside down into the seat.
‘Thanks for the support.’
A female nurse in uniform answered the door, ushering him inside beneath a chandelier which failed to provide enough light. A long corridor led off into the heart of the building, the lino reflecting institutional lights, a distant wheelchair being pushed across from one room to another.
