The Skeleton Man

‘My wife’s a patient,’ said Dryden, trying for empathy if not sympathy.

Still nothing. Dryden stretched out his overlong legs. ‘You never said what business you were in.’

Broderick ran a finger along the peak of the cap. ‘Wholesale flowers. We import exotics, distribute within eastern England from local growers.’

Dryden nodded. ‘So it runs in the family – or is it the same business? Blooms Nursery, if I recall correctly. You didn’t mention your father’s business in Jude’s Ferry,’ he said. ‘Which was odd, wasn’t it?’

Broderick turned slightly in his chair so that he could look Dryden in the eyes. The reporter didn’t like what he saw. Nor did Broderick. ‘You been in a fight?’ he asked.

‘Fell downstairs,’ said Dryden. ‘So what’s so secret about you and Jude’s Ferry?’

‘Sorry, but you don’t really have a right to ask these questions.’

‘Really? It was a free country when I got up this morning – did I miss the coup? I think you’ll find I can ask what questions I like – and you have the right not to answer them. Subtle difference, often lost on the military mind, if that isn’t an oxymoron.’

Open hostilities were interrupted by the nurse at the desk. Cupping a hand over a phone she tried to catch Broderick’s attention. ‘Mr Imber will be free in about ten minutes, Major.’

Broderick nodded, blushing.

‘He’s still with the police,’ she added, replacing the receiver soundlessly.

Dryden let the silence lengthen, sensing Broderick’s acute discomfort.

The major stood abruptly. ‘I’ll take a walk,’ he said, heading for the doors.

Dryden joined him uninvited, the rain covering his face in a refreshing layer of cool water almost instantly. The 1930s design of the hospital included a covered walkway which skirted the building at ground level. Broderick took refuge there, and Dryden followed, matching the immediate brisk pace.

‘So…’ he said.

‘I visited,’ said Broderick.

Dryden had lost the thread. ‘Sorry?’

‘I didn’t live in Jude’s Ferry. I visited. Although, as I have said, it is none of your business. I was brought up near Stamford, my mother’s house. She runs a garden centre, flowers again – it was what they had in common; as it turns out about the only thing they had in common. My parents were separated. I was in the TA at university – Cambridge – and as I said we dealt with the transport for the evacuation. But that was in Ely. Father left home when I was three and moved, took half the business with him, and again in ’90, but he’d really lost interest by then – he couldn’t do the heavy work at all and he didn’t really like relying on other people. He spent a lot of his time in a wheelchair. He died in ’96. I inherited the business, diversified, merged it with Mum’s. We don’t grow ourselves any more.’

They stopped where the building came to an end, with a view out over a soaking field of carrot tops across which tiptoed a black cat with a tail like a question mark.

‘He must have missed you, when you were away. I’ve spoken to a few of the villagers and they said he liked having… you know… a boy around.’

It wasn’t very subtle and Dryden had the good grace to blush. Broderick laughed. ‘Village gossip, Dryden. Father’s weaknesses were far more conventional – which is why my mother threw him out. She threw him out several times in fact, and each time it was over a different woman. So your thinly veiled aspersion is wide of the mark.

‘He liked having young people around – although I can’t say that was ever that obvious when his only son visited.’

Broderick looked away, embarrassed by the sudden intimacy.

‘My visits were pretty stilted affairs, I’m afraid. I tried to make him happy.’ Broderick’s hand wandered to the sharp edge of the military cap. ‘He seemed to find happiness in other people. It’s as simple as that, sometimes life is, although people like you might find it hard to believe.’

Dryden didn’t bite, he’d been equally judgemental about soldiers.

‘And Jason Imber? What did you have in common?’ He looked up at the curving façade of the unit. ‘What do you have in common?’

‘Father knew the Imbers. They had the big house – Orchard House. It was what passed for a social set in Jude’s Ferry; that, the doctor and her husband, and a couple of old biddies out on the Whittlesea Road, and that was polite society. Jane Austen would have struggled.’

They laughed, walking round the end of the old hospital block and into the lee side out of the rain. Through the plate glass window they looked into one of the lounges set aside for patients. Several sat reading, but few turned any pages.

‘You’ve kept in touch?’ prompted Dryden.

‘Yes. When I did go to Jude’s Ferry it was often university vacation and Jason would be at home too, and that last year he was teaching in Whittlesea, up the road. We hung out together a bit. Jason’s funny – that’s why he writes comedy so well. The village wasn’t a very welcoming place for us, well, for anyone who hadn’t been born there. Being the son of a retired colonel and a Cambridge undergraduate didn’t seem to help – odd, eh?’