No surprises there.
“Yesterday and today. Whole lotta nothing going on. I think we had two customers after lunch Saturday, and that includes the inevitable Mrs Tennyson.”
Everyone knew Tennyson. Three hour convo just to buy a couple of plant pots or a packet of weed killer.
“Where’s Sally and Drama?”
Francis takes a long look out of the window before he opens his mouth to speak.
Jangle from the doorway as Chas arrives at Brackett’s.
“Where the fuck is everyone?” he says.
“We’ve done that sketch,” Etty replies. “Franco here was just giving us the good news.”
We all stand and stare at Francis.
He’s got a great rabbit-in-the-headlights expression going. Impressive mimicry.
“Have I done—” he starts. “Have I done something wrong?”
Chas thumps him on the back. Laughs.
“All friends together, big lad,” Chas says. “Tell us what you know.”
IT TAKES A cup of tea and a few chocolate biscuits to get the whole story.
Not many surprises.
Garden World had been exerting strong gravitational pull over the customers of Brackett’s.
By Saturday lunchtime they just weren’t making it past the bright, glowing welcome signs across the street.
And it wasn’t only the public who heeded the siren call.
“Sally went first,” Francis explains. “Just-for-a-looky-look, she said. That was about half one. She’s not been back.”
“What about Brackett? What happened with the bit of skirt from over the road?” Chas wants to know.
Francis nods. “Yeah, she took Brackett over there, giving him the full tour. That’s what I heard her say, right, on their way out. He’s not been back, although I don’t see his car, so”—he shrugs—“who knows? Andrew left about an hour after that, I think.”
“Andrew?” Chas says.
“Drama,” Etty explains.
“Learn something new every day,” Chas says.
“Whether you want to or not,” I added.
“Fucking hell, you’re a jaunty bugger, ain’t you?”
“Guys,” Etty butts in. “We should stick to current circumstances, aye?”
Chas grunts, checks his watch.
“Where’s Jost and Kelvin?” I ask before Chas does. Score one for me.
“They should be here by now,” Etty agrees.
Jost’s all about military precision, Kelvin’s got her own particular brand of excellence in time-keeping, organisation, general attention to detail.
“Those two never left,” Francis says.
A trio of stares.
“I reckon they’ve been here all night,” he says.
Chas lets out a chuckle. “Bit of a dark horse, that one, isn’t he?”
Etty scowls. “It’s nowt like that, I can tell—”
“Oh, yeah? What would you know about it? You his special friend or...”—another thought takes him—“...oh, oh, is that it? Have you and Action Man been—”
The two of them are still bickering when Jost and Kelvin wander out from the back rooms and Jost says:
“What’s the situation?”
Chas is about to continue, then blinks a bit, smirks.
“I was just wondering...”
He’s being as arch and leery as possible at this point.
“...if you two have been, you know, if you and Special K have—”
“Been monitoring the Garden World site?” Kelvin asks. “Yes, yes we have.”
Chas looks lost.
“I was just about to gather you together to give a report,” Kelvin goes on.
Etty mouths the word ‘report’ in my direction.
“We’ve got chairs, refreshments, a display board and other stuff set up over here,” Jost explains, and starts leading the way.
Even Chas follows without comment.
15
JOST’S NOT KIDDING.
There’s cola and crisps, bars of chocolate, a flask of—I presume—boiling water, surrounded by tea bags and individual packages of coffee. A few mugs and cups arrayed in neat lines beside all of that, set on a little table flanked by two lawn chairs and the previously mentioned chart.
This has been placed, with some care, on the irregular sloped rectangle of fake grass that surrounds the display-only-not-for-sale garden shed at one corner of the shop floor.
“Take a pew,” Jost is saying. Sets out a couple more chairs facing the flip chart; old-fashioned wooden folding jobs that remind me of church fetes.
“You still with us?”
Etty’s at my shoulder.
“Funny how stuff takes you back, isn’t it? Makes me think of bran tubs and tombolas.”
Etty frowns. “It’s making me think of Glenbrook Primary.”
A fair amount of shuffling and muttering as people get drinks or whatever.
I almost trip over some electrical equipment bundled up on the floor near the shed.
“Bit of a health and safety concern, that is,” I point out, peering at it. “What the hell is this thing?”
It looks like a big hand-held radio taped to something like a nineteen-seventies oscilloscope.
“I’ll get to that,” Kelvin says, brisk and official.
Now I’m getting that school vibe that Etty mentioned. Or flashing back to Open University programmes on BBC2.
We’re all sorted, seated.
Jost sets up another folding table, plugs the electronic gadget into a trailing outdoor extension cord. Places the device on the table.
“Over to you, Laura,” he says.
Kelvin takes centre stage. Although in this case the stage is a strange mound of artificial turf and she’s a couple of steps off centre thanks to the kids’ pool.
“First,” she says. There’s expectant silence. “Anyone hear that?”
Silence continues.
“What are we—”
Kelvin places a finger over her lips.
I’m not getting anything.
Francis raises a hand. “There’s a buzz,” he says. “Faint. Kind of annoying.”
Kelvin claps her hands together, points. “Yes. We have a winner.”
She steps over to the folding table and switches on the oscilloscope, twiddles with the settings on the radio. There’s a little wavy line doing its thing on the screen. Bright white against faded green gridlines.
“That,” Kelvin says, “is a sonic teenage deterrent.”
“Now there’s a name for a band.”
Everyone looks at Chas.
“What? I’m not wrong.”
“Pay attention,” Jost suggests. “This is important.”
“I’ll not bore you with the fine detail,” Kelvin begins. “What is it, Francis?”
His hand is raised again. “I could stand to hear a little more detail.”
Kelvin nods. “Okay. Short version. There’s a range of human hearing. There’s a range of animal hearing as well, but I doubt that’s relevant to this discussion.”
Some of this seems familiar. There’s a limit to what the average man in the street can hear, and beyond that you get dog whistles and stuff like that, yeah?
Turns out it’s more complicated than I thought.
“Recent studies have shown that teenagers”—she indicates herself and Francis—“have a wider range of perception than...”
Awkward pause.
“...well, older folks.”
She’s polite enough not to point right at us.
“I’m twenty-three,” Chas says. The old grump.
Kelvin ignores the heckling. “As with most scientific discoveries, the next step was figuring out how to make money off it.”
She explains how you can buy special equipment to broadcast annoying noises at any youths who might want to hang around outside your shop.
“There’s even a special mobile ringtone that teachers won’t hear.”
“I’m no’
sure about that,” Etty says, smiles at me. “They seem to get younger every day, don’t they?”
“Point is,” Kelvin says, “Garden World is broadcasting a high frequency signal.”
“So what?” Chas asks. “So they want to harass scummer teenagers who’ve no cash anyway.”
“Signal’s much too high for that. Barely detectable.”
“We did some ranging tests,” Jost explains. “Turned the gain way up. It’s edge-of-the-envelope stuff.”
“So they want to scare off bats, mice, I don’t know.” Chas shifts and shrugs in his chair. “It just sounds like bollocks to me. Okay?”
“If it was just that, I’d—”
“Here,” Chas interrupts, “how come you can hear it? If it’s so high and all?”
“Some people have sensitive ears,” Francis tells him.
“Fair enough, then,” Chas says. He waves expansively at Kelvin. “Continue.”
“Okay,” Kelvin says. “Now we’re going to talk about logistics.”
16
KELVIN HAS BEEN putting in the work since yesterday, for sure.
Stands to reason, what with her being some sort of superbrain whizz kid.
I’ve not talked to her much, last few weeks, but that’s part of her thing, isn’t it? A standoffish kind of intelligence, radiating brilliance, operating on a whole other level; that’s the impression I get, anyway.
Helped me out with the electronics, my first week. Talked me through the tills, scanners, price-checkers, stocktake gadgets; explained how it all worked, how to check for mistakes, fix freezes and that.
“You’ve used EPOS before, yes?” is how she started the conversation, as we stood at station one with a pile of stuff-and-wires on the counter.
My blank response told her all she needed to know, I guess.
“Electronic point-of-sale,” she said. “Fancy words for a cash register. This is the Epic forty-six”—she tapped the colourful screen in front of me—“at original prices, a lot more expensive than the forty-five model, and differs in one major respect.”
She pointed to a worn metallic sticker: forty six.
“That’s pretty much the only difference.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Let’s get you started,” she said, and followed it with a very long hour of extensive be-prepared-for-anything instructions.
I didn’t get much of a chance to speak, but in a rare pause to let my mind cool down, I did manage, “Where did you learn all of this?”
“Couple of months ago when I started work here,” she said.
“Isn’t this—I mean. You’ve got better options than—”
“I can take a break,” Kelvin said. “It doesn’t all have to be cramming exams and burning the midnight, does it?”
Kelvin fiddled with the raggedy cuffs of her Brackett’s sweatshirt, rolling twisted threads between her fingers.
“I guess not,” I replied. “I just figured—”
“Stocktaking tags,” she said. “We’ll talk about that next.”
Held up a bulky plastic gun, started reeling through the technical specifications.
UP ON THE makeshift stage, at the head of the class, Kelvin’s looking very much at home. It suits her better than behind the counter of a scrubby shop.
There’s graphs, statistics, a couple of careful, hand-drawn diagrams of eighteen-wheeler truck interiors—showing loading volume, height, width—a long list of words most of which I did not recognise.
“So that’s five of the big boys,” she was saying. “Refrigerated—which is a serious level of cold storage for an operation this size. They arrived on the Friday night and didn’t leave. Still parked out around the back. Justin took a look—”
“Here.” Chas raises a hand, seems to realise what he’s doing, and lowers it again. “Have you two been ninja-ing about all day or something?”
Jost fields that one. “We’ve been conducting a co-ordinated surveillance operation against the Opfor, yes.”
“Opfor?”
“Opposing Force,” Jost explains. “The red team. The enemy.”
“It’s a fucking garden centre.”
Kelvin says, “Is it?”
Chas has stood up by this point, is starting to walk off, but he stops at that. Stares at Kelvin.
“I took these earlier,” Jost is saying. He’s pinning blown-up pictures on the side of the shed. Real grainy stuff. What looks like the backside of the Garden World building; some angle from far away and a couple of storeys up? There’s some blur of darker colours at the edge of frame, like the picture was taken from a tree and using maximum zoom.
The first image is a cluster of the long white-sided lorries that Kelvin’s been talking about. Second image is off to the left of the first; bulky silver-skinned cylinders being dragged into the closed-off end of the building, a scrum of workers using a crane or a block and tackle. The cylinders are big, towering over the people shifting them around. No idea how heavy they might be.
“They’ve brought in a few jennies as well.” Jost pins up a shot of a Garden World staffer shoving a flat-bed hand truck weighed down with a pyramid of portable petrol-driven power units. “Whatever they’re doing takes mucho juice and they’re getting some of it off-grid.”
“You’re reading all that from some blurry holiday snaps of the back end of warehouse?” Noting the lack of support, Chas shifts a little in his chair. “I’m just saying. It’s a bit of a reach, no? I mean, yeah, they might be up to something, but look at this place.” He waves an arm to indicate Brackett’s and environs. “It’s not like Brackett’s raking in the readies from old Mrs Tennyson buying a petunia a week and an annual grow bag, is it?”
Some shuffling and muttering.
“This so-called nursery and garden centre is just a cover,” Chas says, “for a parade of sketchiness as long as your arm.”
I try to disagree, but I can’t quite manage it.
Chas continues: “Like Police Constable Bri’s been telling me, there’s plenty of inspector’s wives would do anything for a glance at an exotic bulb.”
“Is that a euphemism?” someone asks.
“It’s definitely sexism,” Etty says.
Chas smirks. “My point is, who cares?”
“We could be out of a job—”
“Monkeys,” Chas says. “As in, couldn’t give one.”
“Not everyone’s in your shoes, Chas,” Etty tells him.
“Too right,” Chas replies. “Couldn’t afford them, could they?” He looks around, and the smile fades a bit as he seems to better gauge the mood of the room. “What? Everyone picking on me now, is that it?”
Stares and scowls.
Chas raises his hands. “Okay, okay. I’ll help you save your shit jobs. Protect you from the Big Bad Garden Meanies over the road. Happy now?”
Jost ignores all this, goes on with the presentation, “I didn’t spot any weapons.”
“Plants,” Chas says. “Potting compost. Those tie things for fastening up your tomatoes. Any of this making sense?”
“Why would they have weapons?” I ask. “I mean, I can understand what Chas is saying here. It’s a shop opened over the road, isn’t it? It’s not a... That is. I don’t know. Being honest, I’ve no idea where you’re going with this.”
“Drug cartel,” says Kelvin.
“Terrorists,” says Jost.
“That’s it.” Chas stands up, digs out his mobile phone. “I’m dialling nine-ninety-nine, right now. You people need help.”
He stares at his phone for a bit. “No signal,” he says. “Bastard.”
He stabs a finger in the direction of Jost and Kelvin. “I’m away to find a landline,” he tells them. “Don’t be going nowhere.”
He wanders off.
“I’ll try and calm him down,” Etty says, getting up to follow him.
Francis and I are left behind, still trying to absorb what Jost and Kelvin are saying.
“We set up a camera,” Kelvin expla
ins. “Covering the road, monitoring the general activity.”
“We should head over there,” Jost says. “Find out what they’re up to whilst they’re just getting started. It helps us to set the tempo of—”
“They’re a garden centre.” I don’t want to be agreeing with Chas, but there it is. “I expect they’re up to selling plants and stuff?”
“And then there’s this,” Jost says. Sticks up another picture. Closer shot, this one. The ink must have been running out on the Brackett’s printer by this stage, because the image is striped and faded in places. No missing the subject, though. It’s Dram and Sally. Fresh faced and smiling in their brand new Garden World duds.
“Cults,” says Francis. He blinks a bit. “Y’know. End-of-the-millennium? Gathering the flock?”
“They kind of missed the boat on that date,” I tell him.
“Always changing their tune, aren’t they? Claiming their first prophecy was wrong or God has changed his mind or whatever.”
True enough. How many times have folk been led up a mountain and then left with abandoned homes and families when the world failed to explode?
“So,” Francis says. “Maybe a charismatic cult leader has dragged them over there to be his slaves?”
“It’s possible,” Jost nods agreement. “Or maybe Garden World just pays a living wage?”
A fair point, that.
Etty comes back, Chas wandering along behind her.
“Phones are dead,” she says.
That’s no surprise. The landline is intermittent at the best of times. Pain in the arse for folk who use credit cards and need their details checking; half the time we’re back to using those manual slide-rule gadgets with the carbon copy slips. Very nostalgic, that is. Part of Brackett’s end of the road charm, isn’t it?
We should run that as a service. Like a holiday to the nineteen-seventies. You too can be cut off from civilisation for miles in every direction. No mobiles, spotty television signals, and the best of luck to you if you plan on ordering a pizza...
“We’ve got stuff to get on with.” Chas, a little calmer now. “If Kelvin’s finished with her show-and-tell, we should get back to doing what we’re badly paid for, yeah?”
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