The Skeleton Man

‘We still think he’s on his way to Coventry. He got the National Coach out of Cambridge yesterday for Nottingham, he’s on the CCTV. We’ve lost him at the other end, but he’s getting close. We know where he’s going, we just have to wait.’

Dryden inhaled some more alcohol. ‘Anything breaking I need to know about on the Skeleton Man?’

‘We’ve got a match on the gravel we found in the cellar…’

‘Orchard House, right?’ said Dryden. ‘Jason Imber’s home.’

‘Indeed. But it isn’t good enough for a courtroom – we’d be laughed out. It just helps if we get something else that puts him at the scene. And we’ll be interviewing Imber again once he’s recovered from the wounds to his hand. Forty-eight hours, perhaps a bit longer. He’s not going anywhere in the meantime.’

‘Charges?’

Shaw laughed and Dryden could hear him tapping a computer screen. ‘Imber’s keeping a secret. But the doctors say he’s genuine about the memory loss. We can’t push it, not now. Even if he did it we’re still short of a few crucial elements in our case, don’t you think – like a motive, the identity of the victim, the names of his accomplices, and any rationale at all which puts him in the river.’

‘Anything else on forensics?’

But Shaw did not intend to be pushed any further. Dryden’s deadline had gone, and with it some of his purchasing power. ‘I’m not aware I have a duty to update you in real time, Dryden – let’s have a chat after the weekend, OK?’

Dryden cut him off, angry that their deal had left him with one story he couldn’t print and another which made little sense. But the anger worked, as it often did, fusing two images in his memory – the gently turning bones of the Skeleton Man on his hook in the cellar and Humph, running a finger around the patch on his arm where the blood had been taken.

Dryden snapped his fingers, knowing just how much it annoyed the cabbie.

‘Surgical gauze,’ he said. ‘The Skeleton Man had a patch of surgical gauze on his arm.’

‘So – that’s narrowed it down, has it?’ asked Humph. ‘We’re looking for a blood donor. Is Tony Hancock the victim?’

‘Jabs,’ said Dryden. ‘When are you likely to need an injection as an adult?’

Humph tipped a packet of crisps back so that the last grains of monosodium glutamate could trickle down his throat.

‘Inoculation – a trip abroad?’

‘Correct. George Tudor was about to emigrate to Australia, so was Peter Tholy.’ Dryden recalled the tape they’d listened to on the riverside. Tudor had said he’d got a reference from the vicar of St Swithun’s – Fred Lake.

Dryden fished out the telephone number he’d dug from Crockford’s directory and rang on the mobile, letting a minute pass as he imagined the phone echoing in an empty house. Then a child answered, confident and clear, running to fetch Fred Lake. While he waited Dryden thought of the voice on the tape he’d played on the riverbank, and the more distant memory of meeting him on that final day. He recalled a disdain for tradition and the fabric of the old church, and a mildly trendy upbeat emphasis on community, and the treacly remains of that South African accent.

Dryden tried to conjure up his face from that last day in Jude’s Ferry, but the image was elusive, overshadowed by more potent images – an old woman crying on her doorstep, the men on the bench outside the almshouses watching the army clear the cottages along The Dring.

Footsteps clipped across an institutional floor. ‘Sorry,’ said Lake quickly, out of breath. ‘Summer holidays. We run a club. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s hell. Believe me, I should know, it’s my job.’

They both laughed. The accent was flatter, less distinct after seventeen years, diluted by the estuary English of King’s Lynn’s overspill estates. Dryden did his pitch, nearly perfect. He was writing a feature to run with the latest news on the body found at Jude’s Ferry. He needed a ten-minute chat, nothing personal, just a feel for the place and those last few hours in the life of a community. Community: the key word.

‘Sure. The police have called too – I’m seeing a detective in the morning at St Bartholomew’s – perhaps they’re expecting a confession.’ Dryden didn’t know if he was joking so he said nothing. ‘But like I said, we’ve got forty kids here and we’re off to the beach… packed lunches, I’m afraid, no room for a proper Cape barbie.’

Dryden let the silence deepen a few more seconds. ‘Just ten minutes.’

‘Well, all right, all right. Let’s say the pier at Hunstanton, at three. We’ll eat on the grass opposite the entrance. There’s a big pub there and they let us use the loos. Know where we are?’

Dryden knew it, had spent a childhood’s worth of summers on the wide expanse of sand, and a small fortune in pocket money in the jangling arcades. Humph drove north and they stopped for chips at a roadside van where the owner brought the food out to the cab.