Free The Skeleton Man by Jim Kelly Page B

something that wasn’t inside her. I think what she really wanted was to go back on the road, to take the comfort of motion, which I can really understand,’ she added, looking fondly around the mobile library. ‘The comfort of just being on the way somewhere, without the disappointment of ever arriving. But she stayed for us. Have you heard of an organization called Mass-Observation, Mr Dryden?’
    Thunder rolled out on the Fen and the rain came in gusts, rocking the suspension under them and clattering on the metal roof.
    ‘Sort of. Wasn’t that during the war – people kept diaries of everyday life and then sent them in to a government department as part of a sort of national chronicle? Morale, crime, sex, families, grief, all of human life.’
    ‘Indeed. Well, it wasn’t a government department actually. It’s all held at the University of Surrey now and they started again in the eighties. Mum applied to be a correspondent and they accepted her. She wrote well, with a real eye for detail. So every day she chronicled village life – no names, just initials for all the characters. They insist on that because they want the entries to be as candid as possible. Then she’d make a copy and send it in.’
    Dryden finished the coffee, crunched the cup and checked his watch.
    ‘Have you read the diary?’
    ‘Bits of it. In fact, I’m working my way through thewhole thing right now. The police asked if I would read it and see if there might be anything which would help explain what happened in the cellar.’
    She waited for him to ask. ‘And is there?’
    ‘Nothing and everything. The diary is full of tales of the kind of petty maliciousness which marks out a small community – little feuds, stifling marriages, secrets which are interesting only because they’re secrets. And the prejudice against us, against the family, which was always there but which faded I think, as the years went by.’
    ‘But no names,’ said Dryden.
    ‘No. Just initials. And this is all – the bits I’ve read so far – back in the early eighties, so I can’t even guess the real identities. I was a teenager, all I was interested in was other teenagers.’
    She closed her eyes for a second. ‘It’s very good, the quality of her description. I thought I might put it all together as a book, and the people at Mass-Observation are ready to release the material for publication. So who knows.’
    She raised her cup to her dry lips and let her eyes run along the bookshelves. Dryden wondered if that had been what had drawn her to the library – the prospect of writing a book herself.
    ‘She loved books?’ asked Dryden.
    ‘It was the only thing she brought to this country – that and the clothes she stood up in. A Magyar Bible, some poetry and a blank notebook from her father. Books were almost sacred.’
    ‘And she filled in her diary… well, religiously?’
    They laughed together.
    Dryden watched the rain bouncing on the tarmac outside. ‘The police looked at the diaries when she disappeared, didn’t they?’
    ‘Yes. Mum didn’t send everything she wrote to MO, the stuff about her own thoughts and the family she kept separately. The police did look briefly and I think she’d been honest about how she felt, how the prospect of leaving was like a kind of death approaching – but they had to admit she never mentions harming herself. Not once.’
    Dryden stood and climbed down the metal steps, letting the cool rain wash against his face. He took out his card and handed it over. ‘If you do find something of interest you might call? I know there’d be no names, but let me know if you can.’
    She nodded, reading the card, and Dryden thought she’d never ring. He imagined her mother, working diligently at her diary in the bedroom above the shop, listening perhaps to the life of Jude’s Ferry outside – a dog barking, a voice raised in anger, feet running home.
    ‘Did anyone know she kept this diary while she was