‘It’s a tiny flat,’ explained Dalby. ‘There’s hardly room for the two of us.’
‘They took our last home just about a year ago,’ said Gladwys.
‘Just confiscated it. We’d worked for years to make it nice.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the strength to move again. And, besides, where would we go?’
‘We’ll help you,’ promised Dorothy. She looked at Tom. He nodded.
‘We’ve got a heavy saucepan,’ said Dalby with a nervous smile.
‘And a frying pan,’ said Gladwys.
They all sipped their potato wine.
‘Why are you doing this for us?’ asked Dalby eventually.
‘Because we have to stick together,’ said Dorothy. ‘We have to help one another.’
‘But you’re putting yourselves at risk.’
‘If you don’t take risks to help your friends then there isn’t much to life is there?’ said Tom. ‘We’ll come over with the trailer in the morning.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I might be able to get hold of a bigger one. I know a chap who has one of the allotments. He’s getting old and his trailer is too big for him. It’s heavy but strong. Too big for his needs. I’ve seen him eyeing mine rather enviously. I’ll see if he wants to trade.’ He paused again and then looked at Dalby. ‘Are you still catching rats?’
Dalby nodded. He had earned a living catching rats for a long time. The areas where suspects lived were thick with them.
‘Can you get a couple of dozen of dead ones by tomorrow?’
‘No problem.’
‘More if you can manage it,’ said Tom. ‘We might need quite a few.’
Chapter 20
The sprouts who turned up to question Dalby and Gladwys were both Turkish. They spoke English very slowly and deliberately, having to weigh each word before delivering it. One of the sprouts was very short and very fat. The other was shorter and even fatter. The thinnest of the two wore a thin black moustache. The fatter of the two was clean shaven and bald. The thinner was a keen collector of barbed wire. He had 79 one metre stretches fastened onto heavy corkboards and fixed to the wall in his bedroom. The fatter was a collector of car numbers. He had filled eight notebooks.
‘Who is these persons?’ demanded the sprout with the moustache, looking at Tom, Dorothy and Tom’s aunt who was holding her cat.
‘Just friends,’ replied Dalby.
‘Visitors,’ said Gladwys.
‘We came to help with some cooking,’ said Tom, holding up the frying pan he was holding. Dorothy held up a heavy iron wok she’d found. They were both still shocked by the circumstances in which their friends were living. The tower block where Dalby and Gladwys had their flat was worse than anything they’d ever seen before. It was, thought Tom, like something out of the sort of science fiction movie that was popular back in the 20th century.
‘You are not to be having visitors when we are coming,’ said the bald sprout. ‘Even when they are also old.’ He had clearly put on weight since he’d been given his suit. It bulged, threateningly, in all the usual places. He wagged a plump finger at Dorothy, Tom and Tom’s aunt. ‘These are all suspects, no?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom. To his own surprise he did not feel in the slightest bit nervous. It occurred to him, in a fleeting instant of comprehension, that it is confidence which wins battles but that in the end it doesn’t much matter whether the confidence is based on the solid rocks of knowledge and accomplishment or the shifting, tremulous sands of hope and expectation.
The bald sprout looked them up and down contemptuously and then looked away, ignoring them now. ‘I am a Residential Placement Officer,’ he said pompously. He looked around, allowing time for this information to sink in.
Gladwys started to cry.
‘I thought you would be Scrutineers,’ said Dalby.
‘Not us,’ said the bald sprout, delighting in Dalby’s obvious discomfort. ‘You expect them so we come instead.’ He looked around him. ‘You have much rooms in here.’
‘It’s a very small flat,’ said Dalby. ‘Just two rooms.’
‘Plenty of spaces for refugees,’ insisted the sprout. ‘Six I think.’
‘No!’ cried Gladwys. ‘You can’t! Where can we put six extra people? We have one bedroom and one living room.’
The bald sprout shrugged. ‘This is my decision,’ he said. ‘They come to you Saturday. You will be responsible for providing food and other needs of theirs.’
‘We hardly have enough to eat ourselves,’ said Dalby.
‘You will have six refugees,’ the sprout said again making it clear that this was a statement of fact and not a potential subject for discussion. He turned and beamed at Gladwys. ‘All men I think. Then you have seven men to live with. Maybe you make them very, very welcome?’ He reached out and squeezed one of Gladwys’s breasts. ‘Small but nice,’ he said. ‘Very strong.’
‘Firm,’ said his colleague, correcting him. ‘You mean ‘very firm’?’
‘How do you know? demanded the first sprout. ‘Have you felt?’
‘No,’ admitted the second sprout.
‘Can we appeal this decision?’ asked Dalby, who was red-faced with anger.
The baldest sprout laughed and turned to his colleague. He said something in what was presumably Turkish, though no one else in the room knew that for sure since Turkish was merely one of many languages they did not understand. The two sprouts both laughed. ‘You have no appeal,’ sneered the one with the moustache. ‘You are just scum. We alone decide.’
The other sprout shrugged again, to show that none of this was really of interest to him. Followed by his colleague he headed into the tiny kitchen. And as he did so Tom, who was standing by the door which led into the kitchen, hit him hard on the head. The sprout sank to the ground without a sound. His colleague, who was following him a pace behind, started to say something but before he could get any words out he too collapsed; felled by a blow from the heavy iron wok wielded by Dorothy. Because the wok had no proper handle Dorothy had to grip it by one of the small handles built into the edge. The wok wasn’t the best of blunt instruments but, being made of solid iron, it was very heavy and effective.
‘Yes!’ cried Tom’s aunt excitedly. ‘Now it’s my turn!’ She grabbed the wok from Dorothy and used it to batter the fallen sprout just as Tom delivered a second blow to the head of the first sprout.
The killing was all over in less than two minutes.
‘Are they dead?’ whispered Gladwys.
‘I think we should help a little,’ said Dalby. ‘I feel guilty about letting you do everything.’ He took the frying pan from Tom and smashed it down onto the first sprout’s head. Then Gladwys took it from him and used it to smash the second sprout’s skull. Tom’s aunt was still clutching the wok and seemed unwilling to give it up.
‘Now we are all in this together,’ said Dalby. He was breathing heavily, though this was probably more from anxiety than physical effort.
‘Are they both dead?’ asked Gladwys again.
Tom bent down and felt for pulses. ‘They’re both dead,’ he said. He thought he sounded much calmer than he felt.
‘That was damned good fun!’ said his aunt. ‘Are there any more?’ She lifted up the wok and brought it crashing down onto an imaginary third victim.
‘No, auntie,’ said Tom, putting a soothing hand on her arm and gently taking the wok out of her grasp. ‘That’s enough for today.’
‘Oh bugger,’ said his aunt, obviously disappointed.
‘Now we have to get rid of the bodies,’ said Dalby. He was very pale.
‘Shall we take them to the hospital?’ asked Gladwys. ‘And get rid of them the way you got rid of your two?’
‘No,’ said Tom. He was bending down removing identification papers from the two men’s pockets. ‘I think the hospital is too risky to use a second time.’
‘Should we keep those?’ asked Dalby, pointing to the papers and roaming licences Tom held.
; ‘No,’ replied Tom. ‘It’s far too risky. Do you have a fireplace? A stove?’
Dalby nodded.
‘Show me,’ said Tom, who wanted to see the papers burn. Dalby showed him their stove. ‘It’s out. We don’t have much wood. We only light it when the weather is freezing.’
Tom put the papers into the stove, took out a cigarette lighter, and set fire to them. When they’d finished burning he used a fork to break up the charred paper and stir the ashes.
‘So what are we going to do with the bodies?’ asked Gladwys.
She sounded a little panicky. ‘We can’t keep them here!’
‘We could get some acid and dissolve them,’ suggested Dalby. ‘Or take them to a EUDCE rubbish tip.’
‘They’ve got dozens of different sectors there,’ Gladwys pointed out. ‘Where do you put human bodies? You can hardly toss them in the Green Bottle Bank or the Used Sandals Bank.’
‘We’re going to strip them and toss both the bodies and the clothes down the rubbish chute on your landing,’ said Tom. ‘Then we’ll go downstairs, put the bodies into the trailer on the back of my bicycle and move them somewhere else.’ Earlier that day Tom had acquired the bigger trailer for his bicycle. It was plenty big enough to carry two bodies.
‘Where to?’ asked Gladwys.
‘Dunno yet,’ said Tom. He turned to Dalby. ‘Where are the rats?’
‘In a sack in the hall cupboard.’
‘How many?’
‘Eighty or so.’
‘Strewth. You killed that many rats in one evening?’ Dalby nodded.
‘Do they ever empty the skip at the bottom of your rubbish chute?’
‘No. It’s been overflowing for years.’
‘Do you get any scavengers?’
‘Occasionally,’ said Dalby. ‘But not even scavengers can get much out of the rubbish thrown away here.’
‘OK,’ said Tom. ‘So, we push the two sprouts down the rubbish chute and then we go down and pick them up. Bring the rats with you when we’ve dumped the two bodies.’
‘Where did you leave your bike and the trailer?’ asked Dalby. He’d opened their front door and was dragging the first sprout towards the rubbish chute. ‘You didn’t leave it outside did you? If you did it will have gone long ago.’
‘I hauled it up to the second floor landing,’ said Tom, who was dragging the second sprout.
‘I hope it’s still there,’ said Dalby. ‘This is a rough neighbourhood.’ He paused, pushed open the hatch to the rubbish chute and looked inside. He could see nothing but the remains of the rubbish that had been dumped down it most recently.
‘It will be,’ said Tom confidently. He heaved one of the bodies up to the chute and, with Dalby’s help, heaved it through the hatch. They did the same with the second one.
And then they headed for the door which led from the landing down the stairs to the ground floor.
Chapter 21
The staircase, gloomy and lit only by light corning through occasional glass bricks set into the wall, was strewn with litter, rags and the bodies of flea-ridden homeless vagrants who had set up their pathetic homes on almost every landing. Tom wondered how long it took for people to notice when one of the vagrants had died. And who removed the dead body? And what did they do with it?
Minutes later, when they arrived at the second floor landing, Dalby, who was carrying the sack full of dead rats, was in the lead. He approached the bicycle and trailer which were almost blocking the landing. Tom, Dorothy, Tom’s aunt and Gladwys were all following him.
‘Stay away from it. Don’t touch it!’ said Tom sharply.
Dalby turned, startled.
Tom moved past him, turned off the switch which had operated the light above their heads, in the long since gone days when there had been a bulb in the socket, and then unfastened the end of a wire which was connected to the light socket. The other end of the wire was fixed to the metal frame of Tom’s bicycle. In the gloom of the landing the wire was hardly visible. No one who didn’t know it was there would have seen it.
‘I see what you mean,’ said Gladwys quietly. ‘No one was going to steal your bicycle were they?’
‘No one ever will,’ said Tom firmly. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’
Downstairs, the bodies of the two sprouts were lying on top of a stinking mixture of household rubbish. The area around the skip was littered with spilt rubbish, rotting food, unusable rags and ashes dumped from wood fires.
Tom and Dalby climbed up onto the rubbish pile and heaved out the naked bodies of the two fat sprouts. The two of them, helped by Gladwys and Dorothy then lay the bodies down in the trailer.
‘What about their clothes?’
‘Leave them where they are,’ said Tom. ‘Now the rats,’ he said, nodding towards the sack that Dalby had carried down the staircase.
Dalby opened the top of the sack.
‘Sprinkle them on top of the bodies,’ said Tom. ‘Do it so that they cover up everything human.’
‘What do you usually do with these?’ asked Dorothy, looking in horror as the layer of rats grew.
‘I sell them,’ said Dalby.
‘What for?’
‘As food. Usually for dogs. But sometimes for suspects who can’t afford anything else. And for the skins. A woman I know skins the rats, dries the skins and uses them to make jackets. They look surprisingly good. She sells the skinned bodies to a few of her neighbours who use them to feed their dogs.’
‘You can sell these when we’ve finished with them,’ said Tom.
Dalby shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘There are plenty more.’ He put the last few rats into the trailer.
‘Take Gladwys and aunt back to our place,’ Tom said to Dorothy. ‘We will see you there as soon as we can.’
‘Where are we taking these two?’ asked Dalby, when the three women had gone. Tom had climbed onto the bicycle saddle. Dalby was walking alongside him.
Tom looked around. ‘Over there,’ he replied, pointing to a high rise building about half a mile away. It was as tall as the block where Dalby lived and, from a distance, looked just as dirty and uninviting. The road which connected the two was potholed and littered with the broken down, rusted remains of long abandoned vehicles. Scroungers had taken every item of possible use. There was very little motorised traffic. Anyone who needed to go somewhere travelled there on foot or by bicycle.
Chapter 22
Tom and Dalby had travelled about half the distance to the block of flats for which they were heading when a Europol security patrol, two men riding mountain bicycles, came up behind them.
‘Where are you two going?’ demanded the older of the two. He was in his fifties. He had a pockmarked face and lank, greasy hair poked out from underneath his peaked cap. He wore the same blue uniform as all the sprouts but, because he was a security agent, he also wore a flak jacket and had silver buttons on the cuff of his jacket sleeves. He carried a Mauser pistol in a holster on his right hip and an extendable baton on his left hip. A portable taser gun was strapped to the cross bar of his bicycle.
‘Over to those flats,’ said Tom.
‘What for?’ asked the man with the pockmarked face.
Tom pointed behind him to the rats in the trailer. ‘To sell these,’ he said. He looked at the two agents in turn and wondered where they came from. Traditionally, most of the Europol rank and file officers working in what had once been England came from Germany, Poland and Latvia. Recently, Tom knew, some of the newer, lower grade sprouts had been recruited from Malta and Cyprus.
The two Europol agents looked into the trailer and saw the rats piled on top of one another. They both recoiled, backed away and shuddered. ‘Who buys those?’ the younger one demanded.
‘Lots of people buy them,’ replied Dalby. ‘They make good eating.’ He selected a plump rat from the pile, picked it out by the tail and held it up to the Europol agent. ‘Would you like this one? You can have it as a present if you like.’
The older, pockmarked security agent shuddered and shook his head. His colleague laughed. ‘We eat well every night,’ he boasted. ‘Proper food. Fresh lamb, steak, salmon steaks.’ Tom wondered if the sprout knew that Russian communism had started to collapse after Lenin had authorised a special restaurant for bureaucrats. That had been the final straw for the peasants left queuing for turnips.
‘Identifications,’ demanded the first agent, holding out a hand.
Tom, too wise to self-destruct, said nothing about Lenin but took out his wallet and removed his roaming licence. All suspects had to carry their roaming licences at all times. It was a serious offence not to be able to produce one when asked to do so. He handed his card to the Europol agent who scrutinised it, wrote down some details in his notebook, and then handed the card back to Tom. Dalby handed over his card and the procedure was repeated. Both Tom and Dalby still had machine readable cards but these days the Europol agents didn’t carry the machines to read the cards. The Europol chiefs claimed it was part of a programme to make their agents more approachable and less mechanistic. It wasn’t of course. No one in EUDCE gave a damn about approachability. The simple truth was that Europol agents didn’t carry card readers solely because EUDCE couldn’t get them. Most of the Europol agents didn’t even have mobile telephones or two-way radios. At the end of the day the Europol agents were expected to type all the information they’d collected during the day into one of the desktop computers they still had in their offices. But most of the Europol agents were only barely literate in their own language, let alone English, and there were far too few computer keyboards for all the agents who needed them. The result, as most suspects knew, was that nothing was ever done with most of the information that was collected.
It was just bad luck that as Tom pressed down on the pedals to ride away from the two Europol agents, one of the trailer wheels caught on a piece of stone that was lying in the roadway. And it was also bad luck that the two Europol agents had not yet turned away as the trailer overturned and spilt some of its contents onto the roadway. The rats fell out first. And then one of the two naked sprout bodies half fell out onto the roadway.
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