The Skeleton Man

‘Well – on a purely personal level, Mr Dryden, I’d like to see you suffer like some of the animals do: perhaps a few days of enforced smoking, or a quick course of detergents applied to the eyes? Revenge – an unsavoury human emotion, but what the hell, eh? And then we’d very much like to persuade you that giving evidence in the forthcoming legal process – which I think is now inevitable – is something we’d like to ask you to reconsider. But we’ll ask nicely, when the time comes.’

That smile again, and laughter outside. He took out the bolt quickly, a small phial with a feathered tail, and slid it into the gun. ‘We use these to upset our fox hunting friends,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought a horse down with this – very effective. The fall broke the rider’s leg – an excellent outcome.’

From outside there was a low whistle. The man raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Dryden watched the bolt fly, in slow motion, turning like a winning dart from a TV replay. He felt the thud in his thigh and looked down to see the dart hanging out of his flesh. He lunged towards the open window and tried to raise his arm to the sill but found it disturbingly heavy, unresponsive to the repeated electrical orders he was frantically sending from his brain. He could see the pool outside, and the still reed heads, but they seemed to be at the end of a tunnel, drawing away from him, the sound of the dull bird singing beautifully fading quickly. His knees buckled and he slumped to the floor, his head thudding without pain against the bench on the way down. He could see a man’s boot close up, and the small desiccated corpse of a mouse, and then nothing.

36

When Dryden awoke he thought at first he was still on the floor of the bird hide. Just a few inches from his face he could see another corpse – but it looked like a rat this time, the two incisors protruding over the dead black lips. His cheek lay on sawdust and bare boards and there was hardly any light, so if he was in the hide it was dusk. He closed his eyes tight and listened. It didn’t sound like the reserve – that deep well of whispering silence was gone, replaced by the numbness of thick walls. Outside somewhere, he could hear something flapping, not a bird’s wings, a sheet perhaps, out to dry on the line. And there was the rain, St Swithun’s rain, clucking in drainpipes, trickling in a gutter.

And there – a seagull calling.

But otherwise the silence of being alone. At first he thought his arms were tied behind him but as he flexed the muscles he realized they had been starved of blood, folded under him where he’d been dumped on the floor. Slowly they came to life, and when he kicked out he found his feet were free too, and so the dark edge of the panic withdrew. He rolled over quickly and saw that the light was stronger and that he was in a room of whitewashed bricks, with heavy wooden-shuttered windows held fast by iron stays. His face, when he touched it, was cold and despite the addition of a fresh graze where his cheekbone had been broken there was no pain, so he wondered if he’d been drugged again.

And then he saw movement, in the corner where the deepest shadows had fled. Something moved on the floor there in a kind of random way, milling, but completely silently. He pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes to clear them and looked again. This time the fur caught the light and he knew: rats, behind a crude little metal fence, swarming at a water bowl as if they were feasting on the innards of some unseen victim.

DI Shaw had said the animal rights people had a base, an old airfield near Coventry, a few buildings left over from the war. A place to keep their gear, and perhaps some of the animals they’d liberated. He heard the wind again outside and imagined it sweeping over the forgotten runway, buffeting the weeds between the cracks in the concrete. And the sheet in the wind, a windsock perhaps.

Dryden wanted to shout now, but decided to wait. Something about shouting might bring back the panic, so instead he put his head against the wall, brought his knees up under his chin and stood. Pain, like a dead-leg, ran down his right side, an electric current that made his knee give way. He slumped against the wall for support and took the time to breathe deeply and look around. He was in a brick-built hut, perhaps fifty feet by twenty. There was a rich smell of petrol and the concrete floor was stained black by decades of spills and leaks: a fuel store, perhaps. They’d left him a chair and, chillingly, an upturned feeding bottle at head height attached to the wall.

‘I’m an animal now,’ he said, out loud to calm himself. The thirst was desperate so he licked the aluminium tube, trying to get the water to run freely.