The Skeleton Man

disorientated, trying to clear the grogginess by shaking its head. When it saw Dryden its lips rolled back in a snarl. It tried to jump but its legs failed to respond and it slumped instead. Then its aggression overcame its bewilderment with frightening speed, and scrambling to its legs, its nails clattering on the concrete floor, it edged down the room until it stood before him, swaying slightly, one of its back legs occasionally buckling.

All its teeth now showed, and it began to drop its shoulders preparatory to an attack. A second dog was standing, while the third whimpered and struggled to rise.

Dryden knew what he had to do and knew he had to do it with authority and timing. He crossed his legs, placed either hand on the arms of the chair, and said the word as calmly and clearly as he could.

‘Saverne.’

The effect was miraculously instant. The dog’s eyes left his and began to wander listlessly. Relieved of its duty it staggered to the edge of the floor and slumped down, its chin on its forepaws.

‘Good dog,’ said Dryden, and regretted it instantly as all three dogs barked, building on the noise level and until they were baying in time. Dryden sat still, hoping the police might hear, and noting that no other dog answered their call.

Outside the only noise was the snapping of the windsock and, a long way off, an aircraft, the engine note switching as it prepared for some distant landing. And then he heard the maroon and a second later felt a jolt through the earth. He imagined the purple smudge in the sky overhead.

Part of him knew then, but his conscious mind tried to hold on to the world he had constructed around himself since coming round. A signal flare on a commercial airfield? Why?

The answer was chillingly simple. Because it wasn’t a commercial airfield. And it wasn’t a windsock flapping in the wind, it was a target flag. And he wasn’t near Coventry, he was in Jude’s Ferry, in the heart of Whittlesea Mere. But if it was Saturday, why the warning? And then he remembered something else, a fragment from the long drug- induced sleep. This room, half seen at night, moonlight at the shutters, a plate set down, an apple, some biscuits.

A voice: ‘Eat.’

And then he knew. He’d slept for two days. Yes, he was in Jude’s Ferry. But it wasn’t Saturday, it was Sunday, the day the army was due to begin live shelling again.

Sunday, 22 July

38

What had the army statement said? That there would be two signal maroons – one at 9.30am and one at 9.55am, then the first bombardment of the chosen targets would begin at 10.00am. He had thirty minutes. He checked his watch: he had twenty-seven.

He walked to the iron door and taking off his heavy boot crashed the heel into the unyielding metal – a stone stuck in the tread producing a single spark which, together with the noise, reignited the dogs’ chorus. Dryden repeated the blow ten times and then, his heart racing, returned to his seat to listen for a response.

He searched the silence, finding again a distant aircraft, and now perhaps the sound of other flags – signal flags for the distant artillery, which he imagined flying over the village, from the church, the factory chimney, and the roof of the Methodist Hall. The flag that he could hear was close, very close. Was the old fuel store a target? What if there was another wayward shell?

Suddenly the bars of sunlight were gone, and the sound of rain plashing on the sills filled the building. The light dimmed and the dogs, still confused by the drugs in their blood, flopped down together. He closed his eyes, trying to bring relief to the tension in his shoulders, but the nerve signals from his joints seemed to buzz in time with the ticking of his wristwatch.

‘So this is their punishment,’ he thought. ‘My torture.’

When he heard the footsteps he thought he was hallucinating; they were at the door almost before he had accepted that they were real. But the clacking of the metal key in a heavy padlock was too crisp to be imaginary, and then the door swung in and he was blinded by the light around the silhouette – the figure short, stocky, with spiky hair making him look shorter still, and at his heels a wispy-haired terrier.

And before the Alsatians could react: ‘Saverne.’ He stepped in and closed the door. He looked at the docile dogs. ‘You knew the command word? Lucky man. They’d have scared you to death otherwise. They don’t bite, but you didn’t know that, did you?’

Dryden recognized the cruelty more than the face. ‘Skeg,’ he said, suddenly seeing what he should have seen. The lapel badges, the maudlin affection for the thin-ribbed dog.

‘I talked about my fear of dogs to you, didn’t I? Shared the confidence. Thanks for passing that on to your friends.’

Skeg was nodding his head as the terrier whimpered and slunk behind his heels away from the silent Alsatians.

‘Look. I do what I do because it’s right. I need to do it.’ The tight-wired frame was strangely animated, releasing emotion. ‘And Skeg’s not my name, all right? It’s Martyn, Martyn Armstrong. I like to be called that now, now I know who I am.’

Dryden didn’t move, sensing his position was no longer as precarious as it seemed. Why was he being rescued? The door was unlocked, why did he need anyone’s help to escape? And the name hit a note which made him see Elizabeth Drew hunched over her desk in Goods In.

He had it. ‘Armstrong – you were born here. Your father was the caretaker at the factory.’ And then he understood him. ‘And you didn’t like seeing animals caged up, did you?’

‘No. I didn’t like that, I’m proud of what I did, what I do.’

He rounded up the dogs and carefully attached their collars to a set of leads.

Dryden knew then why he’d come for him.