The Skeleton Man

Only the pain was real. It cut down along my arm and across the knuckles of my fingers. So I raised my right hand to the grey sky and saw that the top of each finger had been sliced off. Skin hung from one exposed bone, the fingers white and bloodless.

I felt some disgust then, but distantly, as if on behalf of someone else.

And then I knew two things. I knew I was dying there in the water. And I remembered a voice I’d once known telling me something I’d always feared to hear.

‘They’ve found the cellar. Ring me.’

Tuesday, 17 July

7

It had been two days since that wayward shell had crashed beside the New Ferry Inn but Dryden knew less now about the skeleton in the cellar than he had in those first minutes before its bones had finally fallen to the floor. Which was not a good position for any reporter to be in two hours before his final deadline. The Crow’s downmarket tabloid sister paper the Ely Express went to bed that morning. Most of the nationals and all the regional evening newspapers had carried the bare details of the story already. He needed a new line, and he needed it fast.

Dryden sat at his desk in the newsroom. He’d opened the central sash in the bay window. Outside he could hear the bustle of Market Street; a dog tied up outside the post office yelped rhythmically while a bell tinkled as customers came and went at the haberdasher’s opposite The Crow’s offices.

He forced himself to look at his PC screen. He’d knocked out his eyewitness account of the events at Jude’s Ferry, but that was already old news and strictly inside-page material. That left him with the opened grave in the church, details of which the police had not released, but had now confirmed in response to his inquiry.

What he needed on the grave-robbers story was some background, some colour to flesh out what little he knew. He went online and called up Google, putting ‘Peyton’ and ‘Jude’s Ferry’ in the search window. He clicked on peytonfamily.com, a US website, and his screen began to fill with coats of arms and an elaborate family tree, as well as links to chatrooms, an annual convention home page, and a visitors’ site.

Dryden read the welcome note: ‘Thank you for logging on to the home page for the Peyton family here in the United States. We are one of the nation’s oldest families, tracing our roots back to the Pilgrim Fathers and the founding of the Republic. If you are a Peyton, or just interested in one of the country’s noble “first families”, please read on, or e-mail our online editor, John Peyton Speed, who will deal with your questions. We hope you are as fascinated as we are by the story of one of America’s great dynasties.’

Dryden skimmed the history page, finding a society dedicated exclusively to the genealogy of the family and, in particular, its origins in the east of England. Annual trips were organized to visit significant sites in the UK – Battle (apparently the point of arrival for the Peytons with William the Conqueror), the Tower of London and the three parish churches holding the remains of the Peyton ancestors – St Winifred’s, Lincoln; St John’s, Boston; and St Swithun’s at Jude’s Ferry. Dryden hit the link for Jude’s Ferry and swore…

SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

So he hit the e-mail link for John Peyton Speed and set out briefly the events at Jude’s Ferry, including the damage to the church and the evidence of grave robbery. He explained who he was and asked for a prompt reply, but with the time difference it would have to be a storyline he’d develop later in the week.

Which just about took him back to square one. Compared to what had been dubbed the ‘Skeleton Woman’ by the tabloids, a bit of grave robbing was a sideshow, especially as there was no evidence it was linked directly with the corpse found hanging in the cellar.

He needed a new line on the main story and his one hope appeared to be Magda Hollingsworth, the missing shopkeeper. None of the other papers had yet mentioned her, and the police seemed to be keeping that line of inquiry discreet, presumably to help shield the family from having to relive their grief. Dryden had done some research in The Crow’s archives on her case, which had been briefly covered in the nationals but had then been relegated to a local cause célèbre, warranting only a brief mention on the first anniversary of the evacuation of the village.