The Skeleton Man

Dryden smiled, wondering how bitter he really was.

‘So Jason and I had that in common: being newcomers. We’d stick together, go down the inn, see if they could ignore us all night. Things were better that last summer because Jason was teaching at the college, so he did know some of them, even if it was just to shout at them. He said the place was pretty rough, real blackboard jungle. Loved it for some reason,’ he added, shaking his head.

Broderick looked up at the clouds. ‘We lost contact in the nineties, but I saw his name often enough: in those lists at the end of comedy shows, the writers. Then I got an invite to the wedding, so we’ve kept in touch since. He moved out to Upwell, I live at Guyhirn, so by Fen standards we’re neighbours.’

‘And the wife – Elizabeth?’

‘Yes. I’ve met her a few times, wedding obviously, and she came to the regimental fundraiser with Jason. Yeah – the wives got on, she was a nice woman, smart too.’

‘Why’d you think he chucked himself off a bridge then?’

Broderick couldn’t stop a hand wandering towards his throat. ‘God knows.’

‘Ever go back to the old house, your father’s?’

‘Occasionally. The exercises utilize all the pro -perties.’

It was an oddly cold remark, Dryden thought.

‘What about the last night?’

Broderick looked through him. ‘I visited in the morning, I think, then got back to Ely. I was on the transport, like I said – a big job.’

They had their backs to the windows and they both turned as the wind, picking up suddenly, rustled the pines ahead of them and threw rain in their faces. They found themselves looking in on a long room. At one end there was a TV showing horse racing, and at a table four men played cards. In one corner there was a patient in a wheelchair. It was Jason Imber, the neatly cut hair framing the handsome face and the well-bred jawline. Laura Dryden was in her wheelchair too, holding his hand, watching tears run freely over the expensively tanned skin.

26

Humph was waiting for him in the Capri, a piece of surgical gauze held to his arm by a small plaster. The cabbie was listening to his language tape but still managed to exude a sense of painful self-sacrifice, one hand fluttering, but never quite touching, the wound.

Dryden got in and kicked out his long legs.

Humph disconnected the earphones and flipped down the glove compartment, retrieving two bottles of sambuca, cracking the tops of both and offering one to the reporter.

‘Lunch,’ he said, adding a packet of BBQ-flavoured crisps. ‘How’s Laura?’ he asked.

Dryden flipped down the vanity mirror and looked at his bottle-green eyes. How was Laura? It was a question he seemed, suddenly, least qualified to answer. He’d seen her briefly while Major Broderick had visited Jason Imber. She’d asked him then, again, about the bruising on his face, holding his head in her hands, and he’d told her about Thieves Bridge, the animal rights activists and the woman’s bones recovered from the Peyton grave, the ribs chipped by a blade. He talked about being afraid, and about not showing it.

‘You should tell me about these things,’ she said, her lips touching his ear. ‘We talk about what you do, but we don’t talk about you and how you feel.’

Dryden knew she was right, but he went on talking about what he did.

‘There’s this copper on the case, called Shaw, Peter Shaw. He’s kind of weird really. Young, driven, knows his stuff on the science, a real high flyer too, but then his dad was a DCI so everyone probably thinks he’s had it easy. But I don’t think so – Dad got chucked off the force a decade ago for fabricating evidence. I think it’s chewing him up, driving him on. It’s frightening you know, being around someone that focused.’

They’d laughed then and he’d taken the opportun ity to tell her what he really feared. ‘Don’t get too close to Jason Imber, Laura – we don’t know what happened to him. Help, there’s nothing wrong with that. But remember he can’t – he doesn’t know what he did, who he was. That could be a shock when he does find out.’

She shrugged, but Dryden could sense the irritation. ‘I just listen. I read the messages he sends,’ she said, touching her laptop. ‘He reads mine. I tell him about us, about your stories. It helps. He’s got nothing else to think about but missing memories, Philip.’

She closed her eyes, seeing that Dryden’s antagonism was undiminished. ‘Please, my neck.’

He’d massaged her shoulders then, knowing the long silence was a reproach.

Dryden rummaged in the glove compartment for a refill. Laura’s relationship with a man who might be a murderer disturbed him. What he couldn’t admit was that what really troubled him was that she had a relationship with someone else at all.

He rang DI Shaw on the mobile.

‘Tell me you’ve caught the other one,’ said Dryden before the detective could speak.