The Skeleton Man

He tracked down claims for the other names on the list. George Tudor and Peter Tholy both entered similar amounts for loss of earnings as general farm labourers. Neither gave a forwarding address or made any attempt to get compensation – except a joint request for £360 for storage of household goods and furniture. Lastly, Dryden found Jason Imber, listed as the sole occupant of Orchard House. His profession was not listed. Removal costs to an address on the edge of Ely were given as £1,300, and there was no claim for compensation. Imber was not a common name, so perhaps he might be found quickly too.

There was a special entry for the old sugar beet factory which had closed in 1988. On site there was still a watchman – Trevor Anthony Armstrong – with the address given as The Lodge. He, his wife June and their son Martyn were shown as residents in those last few weeks, but their forwarding address was marked ‘unknown’. For the first time Dryden understood that, for many residents, holding out to the final day at Jude’s Ferry had not been a choice: people like Trevor Armstrong didn’t have anywhere else to go. Removal costs were a paltry £58, the address for shipping the TA barracks in Ely – no doubt a temporary measure to keep families like the Armstrongs off the streets.

Back with the list a name caught Dryden’s eye. On the edge of the village a nursery had been included, the business description being retail cut flowers. Lost earnings were a hefty £14,000 – due to lost sales from flowers which would be ready for market in the late summer. Personal removal costs were given as £360. The company was called Blooms and business removal costs were £3,500, the new address given as Ten Acre House, near Diss in Norfolk. The proprietor, and the only occupant of the house – The Pines – was given as Colonel (Retired) Edmund John Broderick. Dryden heard a footstep above on the drill-hall floor and thought of the picture on the major’s desk; the professional soldier standing proudly for the camera in the last year of the war. Dryden respected privacy, understood its humane values, but he wondered if there could be another reason the young Major Broderick appeared to have kept his links with Jude’s Ferry to himself.

12

Humph was waiting in the car park, the Capri broadcasting the final notes of a Faroese folk song. The cabbie had a brochure on his lap outlining the attractions of Tórshavn, the capital. After the song came a recitation of endangered fish which inhabit the waters around the islands, to which Humph listened while consuming double cod and chips. A warm wrapped packet lay on the passenger seat, and Dryden unfurled the paper to eat the steak and kidney pie within. They sat watching the sun slowly reduce the puddles of rainwater still lying on the tarmac. Dryden considered the cathedral’s Octagon Tower, and wondered what chance there was he could whittle his list of eight down to one by the time he next went to press.

‘Slim,’ he said, and Humph ignored him, thinking it might be an instruction.

The cathedral bells chimed the hour.

‘We should pick Laura up,’ said Dryden, balling up the greasy paper.

Humph swung the Capri in a languid arc and set off towards the town centre. Shops were dropping shutters and taking up awnings, a tradition of early closing having survived the influx of household names along the high street. A sunlit siesta was descending, and the rooks clamoured to roost.

A mile and a half north on the old main road to the coast stood the Princess of Wales Hospital, its buildings crowded around a Victorian water tower. The hospital, originally run by the RAF, had specialized in the treatment of burns victims during the Second World War, serving the pilots who flew bombing raids from the airstrips of the Isle of Ely. Now it was a general hospital, with one specialist unit: the Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. Laura Dryden was a regular outpatient, and received private additional sessions paid for by the Mid-Anglian Mutual Insurance Company, which had agreed a schedule of care for Dryden’s wife after her accident.

The unit was in one of the old convalescence wings at the back of the hospital, an elegant two-storey 1930s art deco building with views over neat lawns still tended by the RAF Association. Dryden always imagined the wartime pilots within, swaddled in bandages, listening as their comrades flew overhead towards Germany.

He could see Laura at one of the metal-framed picture windows now, on the second floor, resting after her regular session of physiotherapy. The difference in her posture in the last few months was startling. In the years after the accident she had been held in her wheelchair by supports, her limbs at ugly angles. Now she sat elegantly, her neck held straight, one ankle hitched over the other, her tanned legs stretched out in the sun, her feet bare on the window ledge.