The Skeleton Man

Dryden tried another line. ‘You there the last night – at the village?’

She gave him a sideways look. The lower lip, as full as the top, jutted out.

‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I was fifteen so we got to dance in the Methodist Hall, what more could a young girl want? Orange squash all round and choccy biccies for the neat and tidy. Good job they didn’t smell the cigarettes we were smoking round the back. Most of the lads were allowed in the pub, but not the girls. That’s the crappy bit about living in a small place, you can’t lie about your age. Place was medieval.’

‘Jimmy take you to the dance?’

She laughed. ‘Nope. I was chasing him. In fact I chased him all night.’

‘Catch him?’

‘Not that night. He had other things on his mind. Took me ten years to corner him, but I got my man. Lucky me.’ She bit her lip.

Dryden would have asked the next question but Neate was walking back, kicking up the red dust with his boots. He went to the back of the cab and, down on one knee, looked under the wheel arch.

‘The exhaust is hanging loose, I could see from over there. It’ll be off soon. I could do that for you – and fill the dent.’

Dryden nodded, opening the passenger side door. ‘Thanks. But I think he likes it that way.’

Humph woke.

‘The man wants to fix the car,’ said Dryden. ‘The exhaust is gonna drop off.’

‘Let it,’ said the cabbie, firing up the engine.

As they drove off Dryden watched them in the rear-view mirror. Jimmy Neate broke away quickly, his head and shoulders back beneath the hood of the pick-up. But Julie Watts watched them go, her weight on one leg, a hand shading her eyes from the sun.

16

DI Shaw spread the pictures on the wooden trestle table, which was the only furniture in the detective’s office – the old bottle store behind the bar of the New Ferry Inn. Each print was set precisely and neatly apart, a gallery of disfigurement. Dryden sipped bitumen-strong coffee from a mug that Shaw had given him marked THE TEAM. At the firing-range gate he’d got a lift in Shaw’s car, an immaculate black Land Rover with the multicoloured sail of a windsurf board and a beach-kite furled on the roof like emerging butterflies. The interior had been unnervingly neat and well ordered, a characteristic which made Dryden anxious. The pictures made him anxious too, calling up an unspecific sense of guilt. He didn’t lean forward but his eye was drawn to that first print, which Shaw was tapping rhythmically with a ballpoint.

‘Daughter of the company’s on-site assistant chemist,’ he said. Shaw was early-thirties, white open-necked shirt and an outdoor tan, the skin like slightly creased quality leather.

‘Mary Christine’s the name. The company, Lincoln Life Sciences, tests cosmetics for the big corporates, using rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and dogs. It’s been the subject of low-level animal rights interest for some years. We knew that extremists based in the East Midlands had become interested and so security at the site was increased.’

He tapped the picture again. ‘Unfortunately that wasn’t where they struck. Mary Christine opens the post at home just one day a week – Saturday. Rest of the time she’s at boarding school. She’s thirteen years old, thirteen years and two months. So that morning there was a parcel with her name on it with the rest of the letters on the mat. A thin parcel, just the right size for the letterbox. No stamp, delivered by hand, but there’s no CCTV.

‘She sits on the doormat to open it up. She’s excited because she doesn’t get post often and when she does it’s usually a present from her gran. It’s June, but it’s Christmas for Mary Christine, until she gets the bubble wrap off. Then it explodes in her face.’

The burn covered the forehead and left cheek, the ear on the left side reduced to a trace of crackling, the upper eyelid raw.

Dryden felt sick and looked around for a chair but the room was otherwise empty.

‘Sorry,’ said Shaw. He seemed genuinely flustered. ‘I don’t seem to use chairs,’ he laughed. ‘I can get you one from the incident room?’

Dryden shook his head. ‘What was in it? The package.’

‘The chemical was phosphorus,’ said Shaw, looking at Dryden, not the picture. ‘It was mixed with various other common ingredients to create an effective incendiary. I can give you the exact chemical composition if you want. The company’s based in Sleaford, forty miles up the road.’

Shaw’s eyes were an extraordinary light blue, like falling water, creating the illusion for Dryden that he was looking through him. He had the impression he was dealing with someone with a well-ordered mind, and it was spooking him out. So far he hadn’t asked a question to which the detective inspector had not been able to give a precise answer.