The Skeleton Man

‘Good God,’ said Dryden, trying for irony, and reflecting that a career as a part-time soldier seemed to have aged Broderick well beyond his thirty-something generation.

Broderick bristled. ‘Still. Seemed to know what he was up to. No tie, mind you, which was a bit sloppy. I bet he makes his DS wear one.’

There was a long silence into which a kettle whistled somewhere on the ground floor above.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said the major. ‘Clearly, you can’t take anything away, and I’d ask you to use a pencil to take notes. Sounds like my corporal is making tea – I’ll get him to bring you some.’

Dryden wondered if he was being nice to head off a bad press over the Jude’s Ferry bombing.

‘The paper’s out,’ he said, handing him the copy he’d bought from Skeg.

Broderick took it, snapping the front page flat. ‘Right. I’d better sit down and read this.’

‘Help yourself.’

The major closed the door crisply behind him and Dryden settled at the table with his back to it and the rest of the room. The hair on his neck bristled and he kept hearing the tiny shuffle of paper creaking in the box files, so he pulled out the table and took a seat on the far side. Under the crude, unshaded lights dust drifted like blossom in May.

DI Shaw had indeed made his job simple. The documents had been sorted into four separate sets, the first being the questionnaires the villagers had filled in to assist the engineers in mapping Jude’s Ferry. Dryden flipped through until he found the New Ferry Inn, Woodruffe, Ellen – Licensee. Tick-boxes and sketches indicated the position of rooms, attic spaces, main services, building materials and, finally, cellars. Those beneath the inn were clearly shown, three rooms, with electric and water supplies. No cellars were marked for the outbuildings. The signature was Ellen Woodruffe’s, although the hand was shaky and irregular.

The principal set of documents was a census of Jude’s Ferry taken after the MoD gave the villagers notice to quit three months before the evacuation. The announcement was made on Friday 20 April – each household receiving a letter that day. A copy was on the file. Dryden took a shorthand note of the key line:

While there is a pressing military need for the village to be evacuated to allow unhindered use of the surrounding firing range there is every expectation that the international situation will allow a return of the civilian population in due course.

Dryden’s tea arrived, a half pint in a tin mug, ferried down by a sullen corporal.

Alone again he considered the details of the first census. The number of inhabitants was listed as 112, including forty-six women and eight children. These were distributed in fifty-one households – including the four single-occupancy almshouses on The Dring. There were sixteen commercial properties, including the then defunct beet factory, which still had a watchman/caretaker on site. It took Dryden only a few minutes to work out that there were just twenty-one men aged between twenty and thirty-five in the village at that point – early May 1990. Any one of them could have ended up on the end of a rope in the cellar.

The second census narrowed the search. It had been taken six days before the final evacuation. It listed all those people from the first document, but most had left by that point and were marked as NON RESIDENT. The total population was given as just forty-three – of which only seven were men in that age bracket. Dryden took the names down:

Paul Cobley, Mere Taxis, Bridge Street

Jason Imber, Orchard House, Church Street

James Neate, Neate’s Garage, Church Street

Mark Smith, 14 The Crescent

Matthew Smith, 14 The Crescent

Peter Tholy, 3 The Dring.

Ken Woodruffe, New Ferry Inn

Seven names, a few quick phone calls and, with luck, he could have an ID for the victim. But it was hardly ever that easy, and Dryden suspected that this time would be no exception.

The police had said the estimation of age could be stretched, either way, due to the state of the remains. He checked the file again and found one other to add to the list.

George Tudor, 8 St Swithun’s Cottages, Church Street

His age was listed as thirty-six.