The Skeleton Man

Dryden crawled towards the stairwell. ‘I think it was you and Walter who didn’t want the child,’ he said, the room dense now with dust and debris. ‘She might have given him the poison; did she? Perhaps. But you were holding her hand, because it’s what you thought Walter wanted. And it’s what she’d said she’d wanted, so she couldn’t escape. But what I can’t work out is why you wanted it, Jimmy? Why did you want Jude dead?’

The wind blew through the shattered window, and Dryden imagined the guns being reloaded, the hot shell cases smoking in the grass.

‘And then, when the funeral was finally over, she’d made that appointment to see her social worker. You found out about that when Lake came to say she couldn’t have a lift. She was going to tell them what you’d done, what you’d helped her do. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?

‘And Magda Hollingsworth had called as well. She knew about the rumours that the child had been killed. She’d put it in her diary and my guess is she was going to tell the police, to clear her conscience before she left the Ferry. And if they’d interviewed Kathryn she’d have told them the truth, that you and Walter had helped her kill the baby – to kill Jude.’

Neate stood, staggering to the blown-out window and looking out over the village.

‘Magda,’ he said, spitting the word out. ‘We told her to go, to keep out of other people’s lives, told her she didn’t belong, that she’d never belonged. An outsider. A gyppo. A fucking pikey. She didn’t like that, didn’t like it one bit. Coming round sticking her nose in our business. We told her to go – she wouldn’t be missed. She cried.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘Said she wanted to do right by the baby, said it over and over again. The police tracked me down after she went missing – they’d seen the diary and worked out it must be about Kathryn. I told them the truth – so did George – that we turfed her out and that was that.’

Suddenly blood trickled in a stream from the wound. He raised a hand but it had reached his eye, so he sank to his knees, cradling his skull.

‘I found Kathryn on the towpath.’ His voice thick with the phlegm and blood in his throat.

‘We’d started searching when she didn’t come back from Tholy’s cottage. I took a knife, I knew there’d be trouble. She was sat on the bank, the bruises on her neck black in the moonlight. So I asked her who’d done it and she said it was Tholy. Another lie.’

‘So it was a perfect opportunity to kill her,’ said Dryden, knowing time was running out. ‘But she had to die with Peter’s hands round her neck, not from the knife. That’s why you hid the truth about her wound. What you didn’t know was that it wasn’t Tholy at all – but Jason Imber.’

Neate blinked, and Dryden thought he was trying not to see something, something which had haunted him for seventeen years.

‘She said I’d killed the child. That she’d been ill, depressed, and that we’d tricked her into it. She was going to tell – that she’d told Tholy already. It’s true I showed her the stuff, the poison, that it was quick.’

Dryden risked the accusation again. ‘So you killed her with the knife – and then led the mob to Tholy.’

‘And Jason Imber stood by and watched,’ he said, some spit showing white by the corner of his mouth. He touched the wound again. ‘He was waiting for me, in the garage. I was packing the stuff. I’d fought with Julie so she’d taken some pills and gone to sleep. He hit me with a wrench before I’d realized it was him. But I got hold of his hand, then his arm. I dragged him to the vehicle well and got a tyre chain round his legs. He said I’d killed Kathryn, and stolen his son’s bones. Said I’d stolen his life too, making him believe for all those years that he’d strangled the life out of her. He wanted to know why I did what I did. I told him, then I hit his head on the floor, against the concrete, hard until I heard the bone crack and then I poured petrol over him. It was a way out, the only one I could see – if the police found a body, burnt out, then they might not be sure it was me. I could have just faded away. So I lit it – but he wasn’t dead.’

Matter-of-fact, devoid of emotion.

‘He ran to the woods, blindly, and then he saw the water beyond the wire and tried to get to it. When I got there he’d stopped climbing and the body was still, so I let him burn.’

‘And then you cut the wire,’ said Dryden. ‘Where did you go?’

Neate’s hand returned to the wound on his head. ‘I took some food and clothes. There’s an old sheepfold out on the mere where we played as kids. I wanted this to heal, but it won’t.’ He dropped his hand and examined the blood on his palm.

Dryden nodded. ‘What you didn’t know was that he’d set light to the trees as he ran through, the fire spread to the bungalow.’

Dryden watched Neate’s eyes; a single blink, a slight jerk of the chin.

‘She’ll live,’ he said. ‘But no thanks to you.’