The Skeleton Man

Where do I see her? I see her first sitting with the others at the back of a classroom. No proper wooden desks, just those plastic seats with the flip-over rest. She’s what? Sixteen perhaps, maybe not. There are no uniforms, no clues. Outside a vast concrete playground disfigured by puddles. I see her hair, lustrous black, under the neon light, and the small ripe mouth partly hidden by the hand.

And although I can’t see it I know her body beneath; the long limbs curled effortlessly in mine, the thin white neck arched with pleasure.

What am I to her? I’m outside looking in, a porthole meshed with wire, and then the door opens and I find the desk at the front, sitting on the edge, a lesson begun, while I watch her with peripheral vision.

So we know now what I did. And was this what was wrong?

Now the nurse comes with the painkillers. I can see her through the porthole window, like the one in the classroom door, checking, just as the others have done, waiting for me to finish. To rest.

But there is too much fear for sleep. And I still have work. I must set down what I know now to be true, even as I write it: that Kathryn is dead and guilt, like the dusk, fills my room.

Wednesday, 18 July

14

He took the call on the deck of PK 129 in the early morning rain, his voicemail ringing him back with a message left overnight. The river, cratered with big fat storm drops, gave off the exhilarating aroma of dawn.

A voice echoing in an enclosed space, cars swishing past, a whisper close up. ‘Listen.’ The menace in the word, the cruelty, made his heart freeze for a beat. ‘Jude’s Ferry, you were there. We were there too. We opened the tomb, at St Swithun’s. We’ve taken her bones. If Peyton doesn’t shut down Sealodes Farm – stop the breeding – he’ll never get them back…’

There was the rustling of paper and, approaching, the sound of a light aircraft.

‘Our aim is to inflict economic damage on those who profit from the misery and exploitation of innocent animals…’ he read on, another voice cajoling in the background. A prepared statement, larded with the stilted language of the true fanatic. Then he said it again: if they didn’t shut down Sealodes Farm, announce it in the press, then they’d ditch the bones down a sewer. There was a brief silence in which Dryden could hear the light aircraft returning. ‘We’ve told them. Now we’re telling you. We want it in the paper that they’re closing down the business. Otherwise this is just the start. We gave them a little visit a couple of weeks ago. This time no police, until it’s in the paper. Tell ’em that.’

Dryden timed it – less than thirty seconds. A public call box. He got a notebook and took the call down verbatim in case he lost it from the mobile’s memory. Then he listened to it five times, noting the double return of the aircraft, and the jittery voice, the strain of disguise audible. He wondered what they’d done on their visit to Sealodes Farm, and why they felt they needed to fool him about the voice. Did he know him – or did they think they’d trace a recording? At least he now knew why he should have recognized the name on the tomb. Henry Peyton was a well-known local farmer and owner of a highly controversial business: breeding animals for laboratory experiments.