The Skeleton Man

Humph appeared out of the rain at 8.00am with two fried-egg sandwiches wrapped in foil. Dryden took out the coffees and they watched the dog run through the wet grass. Laura had got herself in her shower seat and dressed by the time they went down for her, lifting her just as far as she couldn’t go herself, into the waiting wheelchair on the deck. The ambulance would call at 10.00am to take her for the regular sessions: physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and speech therapy. Dryden arranged the tarpaulin cover so that she was dry and made sure the laptop and the mobile were within reach.

‘What yer gonna do?’ he said, curling a loop of hair off the nape of her neck.

‘Lines to learn – twenty-three words,’ she said, the tongue still lazy as if she was recovering from a dentist’s needle. Dryden kissed her and refilled the coffee cup at her elbow. Then, making an effort, he knelt by the chair. ‘You can do a reading for me tonight – OK? I’ll play the rest of the cast, you do your stuff.’

He kissed her again and got into the Capri, Humph pulling away immediately, hooting the horn twice before they swung out of sight.

‘Take the Manea road, over the Levels at Welney,’ said Dryden, then he left a message on the news desk answerphone asking Charlie to send Garry to the magistrates’ court in his place. He had a story, a good one, and he’d be back by lunch with it in the bag. It was the kind of message he loved to leave.

He’d never been to Sealodes Farm. It wasn’t the kind of place that welcomed publicity. It was poor land, below the dyke which kept the tidal water out of the richer peat fen. Over the years, in the dry summers, the water had welled up in the fields, leaving behind a deadly rime of salt. Sealodes was good only for turnips and beet, not the cash crops which underpinned the fortunes of the big corporate-owned farms of the Black Fen. So twenty-five years ago Sealodes had turned to a less conventional crop: breeding guinea pigs and rats for big companies and universities.

The farm looked like a battery-hen unit. The old farmhouse, a Victorian London-brick cube, had been abandoned and cracks veined its façade, the roof sagging like a hammock strung between the chimneys. Next to it stood a tasteless Southfork-style bungalow with four garages and a bristling mast of TV dishes and aerials. An ugly brick wall encircled a garden crowded with pots, a water feature and a line of palm trees in containers. Against the ugly brick wall was a line of three ugly brick kennels, but there was no sign of the ugly dogs within.

Dryden got out of the Capri, slammed the door and listened to the echo bouncing off the distant bank of the dyke. The rain had stopped but the cloud was low and oppressive, a grey lid on a grey landscape. A large corporate flag hung limp from a flagpole, but Dryden could just discern the logo of a pale sunflower. A man in a one-piece green overall appeared from one of the battery sheds with a pet carrier in his hand. He stood his ground, waiting for Dryden to close the space between them. Up close he still had a farmer’s face despite the green wellington boots and a Mediterranean tan. He said nothing so Dryden introduced himself, squatting down to get a closer look at the black guinea pig in the carrier.

The man was nodding as he removed a newspaper cutting from a zip-up pocket. It was Dryden’s feature piece on Jude’s Ferry written ahead of his return to the village with the TA, illustrated by the picture taken from files of the nave of the church, dominated by the crusader’s tomb.

‘So I have you to thank for this, do I?’ He held it up, his thumb on the picture. ‘The name’s Peyton. Henry Peyton.’

‘Right,’ said Dryden. ‘OK. So you got the call too.’

‘Indeed. Last night actually. They saw the picture in last week’s paper, knew the range was still closed until firing started again on St Swithun’s Day, that the church was wide open, so they went in and took what they wanted from the tomb.’

Dryden made a point of never apologizing for anything he’d written unless it was inaccurate. ‘Look. I’m sorry this has happened but…’ He held out his hands, palm up. ‘If these people want to make life difficult they will.’

‘Let’s talk,’ said Peyton, walking away before he got an answer.

Dryden followed him towards a distant hut, distrusting the invitation to chat. Up close the huts were bigger than he’d imagined, crisply painted, exter ior heating- and water-pipes gleaming aluminium. When he stepped inside the heat and smell made him choke. It wasn’t unpleasant, just too close, like pushing your face into cat’s fur.

The guinea pigs covered the floor area, with a few patches of exposed sawdust. A network of pipes ran water to small troughs and automatic feeders. Dryden realized there was a noise, a multi-note high-pitched squeal.

‘’s OK,’ said Peyton. ‘They don’t like strangers. They’ll calm down.’ As they moved down a central corridor fenced off from the animals the noise died down to be replaced by a gentle cooing.