The Skeleton Man

When he reached it Dryden climbed up to the road and looked east, then west. Nothing moved on the arrow-straight tarmac, which stretched out of sight like a runway. Dryden saw a holdall lying on the raised footpath which took pedestrians over the water, so he walked towards it, painfully aware of the sharp tap of his footsteps in the night.

The voice, when it came, was above him. ‘You don’t need to check it.’

He’d climbed up one of the girders and was sitting in the superstructure, ten feet off the ground, his back against the studded steel. His body was crooked, bent to blend with the metalwork, and Dryden wondered if Shaw’s team had spotted him at all. No balaclava, just a black woollen hat pulled down low and something rubbed into his skin so that it was dark and blotched.

‘We didn’t think you’d come – alone.’ Dryden didn’t speak, and in the silence heard the knocking of a light boat against the bridge support below.

‘Got a tongue?’ He thought he recognized the voice from the phone but couldn’t be certain.

‘Sure. What d’you want me to say?’

Dryden leant against the steelwork looking upstream where, across the moonlit water, he could see one of the pleasure boats edging out, letting the current take it downriver.

He was down quickly, and Dryden didn’t have the nerve to back off as he came forward and grabbed him by the shirt front. Up close he could see the eyes now, and where they caught the moonlight Dryden could see how scared he was. He stuffed a piece of paper into one of Dryden’s pockets. ‘That’s a statement. We want that in the story too – along with something from Peyton saying he’s packing the business up. We’ll watch developments and keep the dogs, just for insurance. When Sealodes closes down he gets ’em back.’

Up close Dryden could actually smell the fear, laced with nicotine. He was just a few feet away now and Dryden tried to memorize the face: an oversized jaw, and small, flattened nose which looked broken.

‘Let’s go,’ a second voice, this time from below, where an outboard motor suddenly burst into life. ‘There’s a boat coming.’

The grip tightened at Dryden’s neck and the face came closer. ‘I hope that’s nothing we should be worried about, Dryden. Betrayal is a very ugly word – disfiguring.’

The engine below screamed and at the same moment a searchlight thudded into life from the deck of the pleasure boat upstream, blinding Dryden, so that he didn’t see the punch coming, the knuckles cracking against the orbital bone above his eye. He went down on the tarmac, his cheekbone hitting the ground with a thud which made him lose consciousness. But as he drifted into an internal silence he heard a loud hailer, although the words made no sense, each unrelated, evading meaning.

When he came to he didn’t know how long he’d been down, but the side of his skull was numb and pitted with grit. In the distance he could see headlights approaching along the drove, a blue flashing light above. Overhead the thwup-thwup of helicopter blades was close enough to move the night air, while a spotlight burned down, illuminating the bridge around him. In the silvery light he saw a rat panic, zigzagging over the tarmac.

They’d left the holdall, just a few feet away. So he crept towards it, the pain in his head oddly distant. He was kneeling when he got the zip down and the helicopter was making a second run, the blazing halogen-white light suddenly electrifying the scene like a flashbulb. Inside there was some heavy mater ial, like rotted carpet, which he prised apart to reveal bones and a skull. He took the head out and held it level with his own, and looking into that lifeless face he could see the glitter of a single metal filling, so that he knew one thing only as he heard footsteps running towards him – that these were not old bones.

So now I know. I have a life, complete of itself. A name, a wife, a gift – apparently – to write. She came with the policeman this morning while I worked in the gym. Elizabeth. I call her Liz, that’s what she told me. I always have. She’s beautiful, and I can see why I might have loved her. But she’s a stranger to me now, and I wonder if I’ll ever remember what it was we had together.