The Skeleton Man

Dryden left Humph enjoying a nightcap from the glove compartment and found Woodruffe in the bar reading the Licensed Victualler. A barmaid moved to serve Dryden but Woodruffe waved her back, pulling the reporter a pint and then helping himself to a large whisky delivered direct into the pottery mug.

Dryden looked around. There were half a dozen customers at one table and two teenagers at the bar talking about Top Gear. Woodruffe’s hands, trained by a lifetime behind the bar, effortlessly rearranged the bar towels and respaced a row of glass ashtrays.

‘I’ve just been out to Lowestoft for the day,’ said Dryden, dropping his voice to conspiratorial. ‘Had a chat with one of your mother’s old friends; a close friend actually. That’s the thing about old age, it loosens the tongue, sweeps away inhibitions.’

Woodruffe walked to the barmaid, slipping a hand around her narrow waist, whispering in her ear. It was an intimate gesture and Dryden looked away. The publican flipped up the bar top and led the way to the patio doors which opened onto the riverside. There was a short jetty here for cruisers to use during the day. They walked to the end and Woodruffe stood at the rail, sipping his drink, his back to the water. The night was silent but for the ducks in the reeds and the rumble of generators from the cruisers moored on the bank.

‘You dug the grave for her, didn’t you?’ said Dryden, looking downriver towards the cathedral. ‘In the cellar.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ A denial without enthusiasm, Dryden sensed that Woodruffe was already aware how weak it sounded.

‘Right. Spain always a favourite holiday spot, was it? That’s when you started smoking Ducados? When’d you give up? The day you read about the forensic evidence they’d found in the cellar?’

Woodruffe shook his head. ‘This is crap.’ He turned round, looking out into the night. On the far side of the river a flock of birds rose off the distant fen and crossed the moon.

‘But they’ve asked for a DNA check, haven’t they – so they’ll know soon. They’ll match you with the stub. That puts you in the cellar digging the grave. What was it going to be: pills? A pillow over the face?’

Woodruffe looked away but in the darkness Dryden could see the moonlight reflecting off the tears.

‘You’d promised her, promised that if it came to it you’d end her life there, in Jude’s Ferry, to save her the pain, and to give her the peace she wanted. So you got it all ready – the grave in the cellar, the concealed trapdoor, the booking at the Esplanade in case anyone asked where Ellen was going. You’d always planned to cancel it. But then you lost your nerve. What was Spain – a holiday to buy her off?’

He tried to gulp the whisky but fumbled with the mug so that it fell into the river without a splash.

‘I bought a bar, back in the eighties. Sitges, down the coast. I’d always planned a long break and I said she should come too. I’d arranged nursing care, everything. If we liked it we could stay, flog the licence on this place.’

He bowed his head. ‘But she wanted me to end it for her, then, at the Ferry. Her whole life had been in that village, she was born down along The Dring, moved to the pub when she married Dad, I was born there. It’s like the place was part of her, like a limb. She used to say she could close her eyes and see it all, every door, every tree, and all the people who’d been there, even the ones who were dead.

‘But I couldn’t kill her. That’s what it is, even if she said it wasn’t. When I told her about Spain she cried all night, begged me to end it. She said that Dad would have done it for her, which I guess was true. Next day she started packing, and we never mentioned it again.’

He held a hand wet with sweat to his forehead. ‘And it was a new life, a new life for me. Mum had her own flat and everything, a balcony, the sea near by, the nurse was good, the doctors. I said she could stay and I’d come out every month, see her, check on the bar. Winters it wasn’t too hot, I said she’d get used to it; she said she couldn’t take the pain, that she was just sick of living really and why didn’t she just go home, see England again. She said if I wanted a new life why didn’t I just stay in Spain.’

He knelt on the boards, fishing with his right hand in the dark green water for the mug. Then he stood, black strands of weed curled round his elbow.

‘So you came back,’ echoed Dryden. ‘And the years went by and nobody found the Skeleton Man. But the police aren’t going to stop asking questions, are they? Not if it is your DNA on that butt. And they’re gonna keep asking you. They need to find out who killed George Tudor. Perhaps they think you helped. Kathryn was your cousin, if the family turned on George they’d expect you to back them up, right?’