The Skeleton Man

Broderick brought his hands round and held them up against the sky. ‘Well, strictly speaking, we can’t. There’s a perimeter fence, and the MoD’s spent a lot of money in the last few days catching up on repairs, but animals get through, so I guess people could too. There are regular warning boards on the fence, and the old roads are all gated with signs. Quite a bit of the perimeter is bordered with open water – there’s the Sixteen Foot Drain, Whittlesea Drain and Popham’s Eau. Red flags fly at various points on the fence and there are several over today’s targets in the village. Frankly, you’d have to wilfully ignore all that to get into danger.’

The shells began again and Dryden flipped over onto his stomach, his eyes closed, counting, until finally there was silence, and for the first time the distant hiss of a wind over Whittlesea Mere. When he opened his eyes he found Broderick still beside him, making some wild heather into a small bouquet using silver cigarette paper, and trying to fasten it to his tunic with a pin. Dryden could imagine the major chasing butterflies along the trenches of the Great War.

For the first time Dryden looked ahead, south, towards a low hill crowned by a medieval church. Beyond it a cluster of rooftops and the pencil-thin chimney of a long-abandoned sugar beet factory marked the site of the old village. And to the east another low hill, this one dominated by a Victorian water tower in brick with a black metal tank crowned by a whitewood dovecote. The village of Jude’s Ferry: a community of not much more than a hundred souls, abandoned seventeen years earlier to accommodate the army and its allies, keen to train for foreign wars.

Artillery had rained down on the targets ahead and smoke rose from a point west of the village itself, while occasional fire flickered amongst the ruins of a house about a hundred yards east of the church, which Dryden took to be the old vicarage. Somewhere automatic gunfire crackled like a party-popper.

‘OK?’ said Broderick.

Dryden nodded, lifting himself up on his elbows. ‘I’m always surprised there’s so much left,’ he said. ‘I guess…,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You’d think after ten years it would be like Baghdad. Looks more like Camberwick Green.’

‘Yup. That’s what we need. It’s about skills for urban warfare,’ said Broderick, and Dryden sensed that this was a subject that failed to make the major’s heart sing as sweetly as the wild heather.

‘You might as well have one of these,’ said the soldier, handing him a map.

It was a large-scale plan of Jude’s Ferry, each building etched in, complete with ground-floor windows, doors, yards and gates.

‘Only you and I have one of these today. The red dots show the exact positions of the defending targets – the cutout soldiers. That way, hopefully, you can see if these guys can do their job. The dotted lines mark cellars, and they’ll need to flush out targets during house-to-house searches. Clearing, entering and making safe, that kind of thing – all vital skills.’

He scanned the horizon ahead with binoculars. ‘So you can see that the last thing we want is to flatten the place. Artillery targets today are the old vicarage and the factory: not for the first time. Ordnance is light, even if they hit they won’t wipe anything out. Plus the engineers go in every few months and replace basic structures – nothing fancy, just so the cover is there. And there’s a network of water pipes which were fed from that water tower, so we’ve always been able to fight fires.’ He licked his upper lip. ‘We’ve got a new pump now, by the river, so the water tower’s redundant – which is a good job coz the water stank. The rats up there are the size of dogs.’

He scanned the village with the glasses again. ‘When you get up close you’ll see that the years have taken their toll all right. It ain’t Merrie England, believe me.’ He turned aside, adding quietly. ‘Never was.’

A radio operator ran up, bent double. A request had been made for permission for another bombardment. Broderick surveyed the line of men along the dyke and the village ahead before giving his OK and sending a command along the ditch to sit tight until the signal to advance was given by word. Then he knelt down in the grass and gave Dryden his field glasses.

‘Try looking – the shells can spook people out, but watching helps.’

Dryden smiled, accepting, studying the outline of the village church, the distant rooftops beyond down by the river. Above them the maroon thudded a third time. Broderick rolled over and lay on his back, checking his watch, a pair of swifts engaged in a dogfight high above them.

‘So,’ he said, finally. ‘This is big news, is it?’