The Skeleton Man

High Street was damp, steam rising from puddled pavements as the sun broke through. Dryden cut down Chequer Lane, around the back of the Indian takeaway, and out into Market Street. The Crow’s reception was crowded with people placing late adverts in the paper. Jean, the paper’s long-serving front office dogsbody, caught his eye as he slipped through and up the bare wood stairs to the newsroom. Splash, the office cat, ran a figure of eight round his legs as he climbed.

Other than a trapped wasp lying dead on Dryden’s keyboard, the room was empty. He felt a pang of loss for the News, his Fleet Street home for more than a decade. Its newsroom had held 200, and was wired by adrenaline. The Crow’s newsroom rarely held double figures and had been on Valium since the death of Queen Victoria. Dryden checked his watch: 2.35pm. He’d put money on Charlie Bracken being in The Fenman with the rest of the production team, and checking the diary he saw that Garry Pymoor was still in court, marked down for the committal hearing for a fraud trial involving a local accountant. Embracing the rare silence Dryden got a coffee from the machine by the news desk and sat at his PC, trying to think. The attempt failed and instead he booted up the screen and began tapping his thoughts out as copy, a favourite ploy which seemed to work.

What have I got?

Two stories.

The Skeleton Man and the grave robbers.

Three stories – the man in the river.

What do they all have in common? Jude’s Ferry.

Are they linked?

We know the link between the Skeleton Man and the grave

robbers because they saw the picture with my story about the

village and spotted the Peyton tomb – an opportunity they felt

they couldn’t miss.

But the man in the river. Coincidence? Hardly.

Dryden drank some more coffee and read what he’d got. Then he deleted the lot and started again.

Where next?

The grave robbers. I wait for the call.

The man in the river. We check to see if the TV appeal

works.

The Skeleton Man.

Who is the Skeleton Man? I started with eight possible victims. Jimmy Neate is still alive. Ken Woodruffe is still alive. Shaw is on the case of the Smith brothers – one of whom may be our man. I can use that, but I’d have to be careful. I could probably contact another two at least before deadline tomorrow. George Tudor, the farm labourer, said on the tape he’d got the vicar to sign his emigration request. Then there’s Peter Tholy. Not that common a name – I’ll hit the directories just in case he’s back.

And I’ll nag Humph to track down the Cobleys – if they’re still in the taxi business they can’t be that hard to find.

Dryden stopped typing and, standing, stretched. The plastic click in his back brought relief and he walked over to the shelf behind the subs’ bench and retrieved a copy of Crockford’s Clerical Directory. He sat on the bay window seat and flicked through until he found the ‘L’s.

Frederick Rhodes Lake. Rev. St Bartholomew’s, Fleetside, King’s Lynn.

‘Right. So that’s where you’ve gone. Very downmarket.’ He made a note of the telephone number and returned the book.

He read what he’d written on screen and remembered someone else who could help him write about the Skeleton Man: Elizabeth Drew. She was a valuable witness to the death of Jude’s Ferry because she wasn’t an insider, but stood outside the close network of family and friendship which seemed to wrap the village in a cocoon. Her workmates had said to try the cash ’n’ carry on the edge of town – an MFI-style double box the size of an airport terminal.