by Michel Faber
‘Can you not push through!’ he shouted up at the invisible driver. No answer came, except the murmurous hubbub of a gathering crowd. The horse had stopped snorting and jingling its harness; indeed, there was no evidence that the carriage was any longer attached to the animal; it might have been unharnessed, abandoned, marooned in a moat of human refuse. Mr Clark slammed the window shut against the stink, cautioning himself to resist the fears that might unman him.
But there! There on the window-pane! That was without doubt a hand, a female hand, sliding its wet fingertips along the glass – and was that a cackle of laughter? Another hand! Another slide along the glass, another cackle! Did these women not understand that this intrusion was no joke? No wonder they could find no better work than the tannery, if their manners were as coarse as this!
Clark shut his eyes tightly, reassuring himself that the procession must be almost over; he could not believe that his employees, numerous though they were, had bred so profusely as to constitute a larger swarm than had yet passed. They were finite; they had their wretched little homes to go to and their wretched little children to feed; their work, if it was half as arduous as they were wont to plead to his foreman, ought to have given them an appetite for sleep. But no! To his horror, the cabin began to rock back and forth; the walls creaked and the floor swivelled beneath his feet. He opened his eyes, to see a face at the window: a girl’s face, pale and pretty, lips parted, breathing vapour. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with rain; her eyes were as dark as holes. For an instant only he saw her, and then she slipped below the range of his vision, as the entire carriage was lifted up like a vessel borne aloft by rising floodwaters.
‘Set me down!’ he shrieked. ‘Set me down!’ But they did not set him down.
Remembering his knife, he clutched it in his fist, swung open the door and leaned out into the gaseous, swirling dark, ready to slash without compunction at whatever flesh, bone or sinew squirmed beneath him. Before his blade could make its first incision, however, a powerful hand sprang out of the murk, pink and vicious like a stoat flayed alive, and seized hold of Mr Clark’s oily black beard. One merciless tug sent him toppling into space.
The body of Ashton Allan Clark was not found until seventy years after his disappearance, by which time the descendents of the poor girl he’d murdered had long since given up hope of bringing him to justice, and his tannery had succumbed to arson, its unpeopled contents roasted to ash and fed into the sky above.
According to the testimony of the man who drove him through Altchester on his final ride, Mr Clark had begun the journey in a state of bloodless pallor, exhaling noxious chemicals with every panting breath; the cabman had presumed his destination was a doctor’s surgery, with all possible urgency. But barely half-way, just as they were crossing the narrow bridge over the river Alt, Mr Clark flung open the door of his cabin and, evidently maddened by delusions, leapt into the inky waters.
His body (it was later determined) drifted into the mouth of a large cast-iron pipe, one of several such provided to channel effluvia from the tannery direct into the River Alt. Mr Clark’s corpulent physique allowed him to lodge as a sort of plug in the interior of the pipe, a plug which, as he swelled up in death, became unshiftably snug. The blockage was noted, but funds for public works were notoriously limited in Altchester, and it was some months before any action was taken, and this consisted merely of a man in a diving suit poking a primitive tool into the aperture, scraping and scooping out as much of the mysterious obstruction as he could before exhaustion overcame him.
Finally, in 1931, when the town of Altchester was being wholly rebuilt, renamed and refurbished, the Alt was diverted and all the land around the former tannery dug up. It was then that the cast-iron pipe was dredged up and spent some months drying in the sun. Upended by a crane, it disgorged a strange creature indeed: a perfectly cylindrical, otter-like beast, with vestigial legs and a wide-mouthed frog face, hollowed out like a lady’s hand-muff. It was kept in the Natural History Museum until 1989, when an undetected flaw in its storage conditions resulted in its becoming, at long last, irredeemably corrupted.
LESS THAN PERFECT
Lachlan was a detective. Eighteen years old, no educational qualifications, two big bony fists. He’d tried stacking pallets, but it didn’t suit his nature. So he was a detective. The pay wasn’t great, the hours could be better, but he had no dependants and a sleek new car with automatic windows and a CD player. Criminals watch out: Lachlan’s about.
Of course, criminals never suspected Lachlan was about. That was the whole point. They were always amazed when he caught them, as if they would’ve expected a detective to look like Columbo, with a raincoat and a cigarette. Which just proved how stupid they were. Smoking wasn’t allowed, for a start.
The golden rule of being a detective was: Trust No One. Criminals came in all shapes, all ages, all sizes, all sexes. Both sexes, that is.
From a distance, through a dawdling cluster of other
bodies, Lachlan saw Mrs Weymouth coming towards him. She was immaculate as always, her dyed auburn hair held in place by spray and metal clips. She hadn’t seen him yet; her attention was on a sheaf of papers she held in her hands as she walked. Despite his grudge against her, he had to admire the way she could move so confidently, even on high heels, with her legs constricted in a tight knee-length skirt and a matronly bosom that made her top-heavy. Her ugly square face was uglier for frowning as she read the papers in her hands, yet she moved like a model.
When she was close enough for him not to hit any innocent bystanders, he shot her in the chest with the Magnum. The impact lifted her out of her strapless black shoes, tossing her body through the air like a string bag of fruit. She landed with a smack on the polished floor, chest pumping blood, a burst container. He shot her once more to make sure, and her flaccid body slid along the floor on its own juice.
‘I’d like a word with you, Lachlan,’ said Mrs Weymouth, drawing abreast with him near the fresh fruit and vegetables.
‘Yes?’ Lachlan responded, his voice a discreet murmur. All around them in the supermarket aisle, the mass of humanity was shambling by, in weary pursuit of all the good things in life. Reluctantly Lachlan took his eyes off them, knowing that for some, the lure of low cost was not as attractive as no cost at all.
Mrs Weymouth seemed unconcerned by what evil misdeeds might be going on behind her back. Instead, she reached down into Lachlan’s shopping trolley and fetched out a single banana, one of several he’d only just put in there. She held it up in the air between them and squeezed its yellow shaft with her hard, crimson-nailed fingertips.
‘Yes?’ he prompted her.
‘It’s soft,’ she told him, squeezing the day-glo skin over and over. ‘See? Soft inside.’
‘I don’t examine them,’ Lachlan protested mildly. ‘I just chuck ‘em in.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Mrs Weymouth, her voice tight with irritation. ‘You throw them into the trolley. I’ve seen you do it. Bananas. Apples. Peaches, even. Then later when you put them back, they’re bruised. Next day, they’re history.’
Lachlan wished she’d talk quieter. It would be just like her, unfair bitch, to blow his cover and then expect him to improve his detection rate.
‘Are you saying,’ he dared to challenge, ‘that all the fruit here is perfect until I touch it?’
Mrs Weymouth sighed ostentatiously, her eyes halfclosed. Her eyelids had about a hundred wrinkles on them: she was as old as his foster-mum – older, even.
‘We do our best,’ she said.
‘So do I, Mrs Weymouth,’ said Lachlan, turning his face away from her, in a gesture he hoped might remind her of the unsupervised multitudes overrunning the store. ‘I’ve got to keep my eyes on everybody. Sometimes maybe I’m looking so hard, what I’m putting in the trolley gets a bit of a bump.’
But Mrs Weymouth wasn’t finished with him yet.
‘I saw a packet of chocolate rollettes you put
back on the shelf yesterday,’ she said, ‘half-squashed. The damage was caused by the sharp edge of a tin or suchlike while in your trolley. No customer is going to buy those rollettes now. They’ll choose a packet that’s perfect. The damaged one will end up in the clearance racks, and we’ll lose money on it.’
Lachlan leaned on the cross-bar of his trolley and stared her straight in the eye.
‘So sue me,’ he said. Then, aloud: ‘Sorry. It won’t happen again.’
She nodded and turned on her ridiculous heels. He let her go; she wasn’t worth the ammo. He had work to do.
All day, Lachlan walked the aisles of the supermarket, taking items off the shelves, loading them into his trolley, moving on; then, one by one, he would put the items back, as if he’d changed his mind or discovered he couldn’t afford them. All day, as he played this mindless game of selection and deselection, he watched the shoppers, appraising their clothing, scrutinising their hands, reading their faces. In this fluorescent fairyland of unbeatable offers, friendly service and loyalty schemes, hordes of would-be thieves were in constant motion, sniffing for their opportunity. Lachlan couldn’t hope to catch them all, but he could catch some.
As soon as he had a suspect, he would follow at a discreet distance. It was easier to spot someone who was thinking of stealing something than someone who’d already done it, so usually when he followed someone, he could expect to catch them in the act.
He’d been in this game a long time now, and he knew a thing or two. No one ever stole suddenly, on impulse, innocent up until the moment temptation whispered. They all came into the store intending to steal, it was just a matter of what and when. You could see it on their faces. Guilty as sin, from the word go.
Like any detective, Lachlan found the wiles of his quarry both impressive and pathetic. There really was no limit to what people would try. He’d had a guy with half a watermelon dangling between his legs, in a special sling pinned to his trousers and hidden by a long overcoat. He’d had an old lady with a pair of raw trout in her handbag. He’d had plenty of women hugely pregnant with disposable nappies, rustling as they moved. He’d had a guy with combat trousers, all the pockets bulging so hard with Pilsner cans he could barely walk. He’d had a guy nudging a frozen Christmas turkey along the floor to the cigarette kiosk, then kicking it like a football towards the exit.
Mostly, people would attempt smaller thefts with subtler gestures: a tin of herrings slipped into a coat pocket, a tiny bottle of vanilla essence hidden in a palm, a chocolate bar up the sleeve. There were signs everywhere saying DETECTIVES PATROL THIS STORE but it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Maybe no-one read those signs, the same way they didn’t seem to read anything else in the store – prices, labels, instructions, opening hours, the lot. People never seemed to have a clue where anything was even if they were right underneath a sign telling them. They would stand for ages next to a sign saying BUY TWO GET ONE FREE, and then they’d put two into their trolley anyway. At the checkouts, they’d offer loyalty cards from other supermarkets. Or they’d say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve just realised I don’t have any money.’
Thickos. Liars. Trust No One.
There was a girl in his sights now, and she was going to steal something for sure. She was only young, with a thick mop of unkempt golden hair and tight jeans. Her grey polyester top was loose though, ideal for concealment. She had big eyes and lips, no make-up. Like him, she had a few pimples here and there.
She was roaming all around the store, pushing her trolley down the middle of the aisles. She wasn’t examining the products on the shelves, she was examining the aisles and the people. Was she looking for someone? No way. There was a look people got on their faces when they were searching for someone they knew, someone they’d agreed to meet up with. This girl didn’t have that look. She didn’t care who any of the other shoppers were, he could see that. She was looking for an empty aisle.
Round and round the store she went, like a rat in a maze. He followed her, half-a-dozen steps behind. Despite his awkward gait, which used to trip him up when he’d been younger and less experienced, he pushed his trolley swiftly and smoothly. The girl was never out of his sight for longer than a few seconds. Sometimes she entered an aisle, sometimes she just glanced into it and passed it by for the next one along. The aisles she didn’t bother with were always the ones that had several other shoppers in them.
She came to rest at last in toiletries. Lots of people stole stuff here, mostly the more expensive brands of toothpaste, deodorants, lip salves. Lachlan used lip salve himself, because his top lip was prone to cracking, and his choice of brand was the same one that he’d caught several people stealing. Thieves went for quality. But quality cost them dear, if Lachlan was on the case.
This girl wasn’t interested in toiletries, however. She already had what she wanted, in her trolley. It was a long narrow refrigerated dessert, some sort of blueberry or apple Danish packaged in a silver tinfoil tray. She fetched it out, holding it vertically in her fingers. Held like that, side-on to his gaze, it looked like a musical instrument – like one of those recorders he’d been excused from playing at school.
The girl looked right and left, slowly enough for him to melt out of eyeshot at the crucial instant. Then she leaned close to the shelves, as if straining to read the minuscule guarantees printed on a packet of something-or-other. If not completely satisfied, blah blah blah. This does not affect your statutory rights. What were statutory rights? The right to remain silent, the right to one phone call … Yes! She was doing it now – a gyration of both elbows and a backward thrust of her pear-shaped buttocks.
Lachlan pushed his trolley round the corner, letting it squeak all it liked. The girl turned to face him, her face blank and arrogant, like a Hollywood movie actress.
She’d done a good job with the Danish, he had to admit. It wasn’t poking out through the fabric of her top, although her breasts certainly were. He’d seen plenty of people with products falling out of their clothing as they walked, smack onto the floor at their feet. That wouldn’t happen to this girl. She’d stowed the Danish inside her jeans, inside the waistband, right next to her flesh probably. Her sex parts were liable to go numb if she didn’t make her getaway pronto.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said. ‘Would you mind coming with me for a minute?’
She stiffened, folding her arms across her front.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘I think you know why,’ he said, without emotion.
Leaving her trolley, she walked beside him along the aisle, her face ghastly pale. He took her to the storage bay behind the delicatessen, and into a little windowless room. There was a desk, a chair, a telephone, a filing cabinet, and a fire extinguisher. The bare essentials. Lachlan closed the door.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I think we both know what you’ve got inside your trousers.’
Sullenly, the girl reached inside her clothing and pulled out the Danish.
‘Have a seat,’ said Lachlan, indicating the desk, ‘while I phone the police.’
‘Please, no,’ she begged in a small voice.
Lachlan looked her up and down. She had the classic gun-to-the-head expression, and sweat glistened on her clasped hands.
‘There’s one thing you can do to make me forget the whole thing,’ he said. ‘I think you can guess what that is.’
In silence she undressed, pulling her top over her head, exposing her white midriff slightly marked in red by the sharp tinfoil edges of the Danish. Her breasts, barely contained in a faded flesh-coloured bra, were as big as Mrs Weymouth’s, a strange sight on such a young body. She left the bra on, but took her jeans and panties off in one motion, hooking her thumbs into the two sets of waistbands. Her pubic hair was golden.
‘The bra too,’ he said.
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Do it,’ he said.
She unhooked her bra, and finally her breasts were revealed, round and perfect like pale pink melons.<
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‘Turn around,’ he said, ‘and put your hands against the wall.’
He grabbed the cheeks of her bottom and exposed her slit. His erect penis slid in easily, and he ejaculated in about two seconds.
The girl was wheeling her trolley towards the checkouts now; he’d better close in fast or she would get away. It was company policy not to apprehend shoplifters at the checkouts, to save other customers embarrassment.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said.
‘What for?’ she challenged him, sullen like in his vision of her.
‘Would you mind accompanying me,’ he said.
She frowned and bit down hard on her lower lip. She was much better – ooking than he’d thought. She had long blonde eyelashes which were only visible at close quarters. Her eyes weren’t a standard colour, and they shone with feelings he couldn’t identify. Then, suddenly, awkwardly, she smiled, and reached inside her clothing. The stolen Danish was yanked forth, momentarily distending the fabric of her top like that alien baby bursting out of somebody’s stomach in that Alien movie.
‘Here,’ she said, holding the somewhat buckled package out to him. ‘Sorry.’
Nonplussed, he took hold of it. The tinfoil part was chilly and damp, but the cardboard lid was already warm. Warm from the heat of her flesh.
‘Look, I’ve given it back, OK?’ she said, nervously, tossing her hair off her forehead. ‘Let’s just forget all about it. I can’t afford it anyway.’
Lachlan examined the Danish at a glance.
‘No one will want to buy this now,’ he informed her. ‘Its edges are all crumpled. It’s as good as wrecked. We’ll lose money on it.’
Anger and anxiety flashed across the girl’s face.
‘Jesus, what does a crappy frozen dessert mean to you?’
Lachlan tossed it back into her trolley, unmoved.
‘It’s for sale. You didn’t pay for it. That’s theft. My job is to hand you on to the police. I’m just doing my job.’