by DH Smith
The inky sky was paling to a metallic blue when they decided they were deep enough. The body was dropped in. They had a brief discussion about whether to remove the bag from the corpse, but decided that would be too messy. They could make holes in it, allowing air and bugs in, so it would rot in time. With some pushing and pulling of the bag and contents, they were satisfied, as they ever might be, that it was down in the hole as low as they could get it. Holes were ripped in the plastic with Jack’s knife. A waft of sweat and sour meat hit him as he tore.
Then the burial began. The two of them spading the earth back. Every so often, stopping to stomp in the earth, pushing soil into the crevices around the bagged corpse. And then back to the navvying effort of throwing earth on top.
There was birdsong. A blackbird, thought Jack, and others he didn’t know. The moon had long since set and the sky was lightening. He should’ve brought his thermos; tea would’ve been a welcome break. This primitive, ageless work. Graves were dug by tractor diggers these days. No wonder. He felt sorry for Maggie sitting in a huddle, resting against a tree, her knees pulled to her round belly. Digging at least kept you warm.
At one point, Jack wondered whether anyone else was in the forest doing the same. Were they alone? An eerie thought for an eerie enterprise. Three upright citizens burying a body, and maybe East End gangsters somewhere nearby doing the same.
When the hole was filled to ground level, there was soil left over. They scattered it in the woodland, taking spadefuls ten, fifteen metres away. And finally, they scraped leaf mould over the grave.
‘Would anyone know?’ said David, resting exhausted on his spade.
‘Hardly,’ said Jack. ‘And not with a bit of weathering.’
Maggie had carved a T in a nearby tree.
‘Why a T?’ asked David.
‘Why anything?’ said Jack.
They were walking back slowly, Jack and David carrying a spade each. Maggie had the torch, but had switched it off, the beam had almost faded to nothing. And dawn was well on the way.
‘I started doing an F,’ said Maggie. ‘Then I realised that would help identify him. Should he be found. So I changed it to a T.’
‘And why should we need it?’ said Jack.
‘In case we ever have to come back,’ said Maggie.
‘Not till Hell freezes over,’ exclaimed David, an arm pressing his aching back. ‘The quicker I forget the stupidity of tonight the better.’
Chapter 34
They all got in Maggie’s car for the drive back, Frank’s having been dumped in the other car park. Maggie drove, and they were quickly onto the Epping New Road, driving south, heading back to East London. They passed the junction with Rangers Road, heading for Woodford Wells. Jack knew where he was now. Not that far from where he’d been the other night with Mia and the telescope. A more innocent enterprise.
‘Suppose a cop stops us,’ said David. ‘Where do we say we have been?’
‘A night walk in the forest,’ said Jack in the back seat, striving to keep his eyes open.
‘With Maggie six months pregnant?’ exclaimed David.
‘It’s not an illness, officer,’ explained Maggie, as if talking to a police officer. ‘I’m perfectly fit and well. And exercise is good for pregnant women.’
‘I wouldn’t believe you,’ said David.
‘Got a better idea?’
‘We could have been to see someone…’ he began.
Jack interrupted him. ‘Forget that. They’d ask names and addresses. A forest walk is nice and anonymous. Keep it simple. Let ‘em think we’re crazy.’
‘We most definitely are,’ said Maggie.
‘But on a week day?’ insisted David. ‘With all three of us working. It’s stupid.’
‘They can’t check on it,’ said Jack. ‘Better than you being a taxi driver.’
‘Suppose the same cop stops us?’ exclaimed David.
Jack was picking up David’s fear. The same cop and they’d be screwed by their earlier lies.
‘Just drive below the limit,’ he said. ‘It’s not likely he’ll be about.’
‘None of this is likely,’ said David wearily. ‘But here we are. Having buried a corpse in Epping Forest, trying to come up with an alibi.’
Conversation stopped. All three caged in their dreads. The unlikely could always happen. Made the more likely with so little traffic. And what David said was so true. Unless you were on holiday, you wouldn’t go for a night walk in Epping Forest on a week night. Tell that one and they are bound to be suspicious. Bound to investigate further.
There were so many of them involved. The whole thing was nutty. One could keep a secret, perhaps. But six of them? At least only three of them knew where the body was. Make that two, he’d had no idea where he’d been in the forest.
They were back in Wanstead, running past the shuttered shops. The ink was draining from the sky, black shapes getting colour. Jack watched out for police cars. It was near here they’d been stopped on the way out. There were a few early workers walking on the pavement. And a few cars. They weren’t quite so obvious.
Turning out of the high road, they took the quiet street above the M11 link road for quarter of a mile, and then turned into Blake Hall Road. On another night, he might’ve enjoyed the ride, a trip from night into day. But he was too eager to be off the road, to not risk dodgy explanation. Lies.
They were crossing Wanstead Flats, there was a little more traffic. The trees in the middle were visible and the brick, barrack-style changing room. The world was waking up. A bus with people on came by, real people. And into Forest Gate where pedestrians were heading for the station. They were safe. Another car amongst cars.
The Co-op was open, and Greggs bakery and the paper shop.
By the time they were again at the house, it was day. And the street lights had turned off.
Maggie and David rushed upstairs to prepare for work. Jack knocked on Anne’s door. She opened up, surprisingly fresh, showered, in jeans and a blue T-shirt. She invited him in.
‘How did it go?’
He shrugged. ‘The bastard’s buried in Epping Forest. His car is dumped. Let’s hope that’s that.’
He went into the sitting room. It was tidy and organised. All the remnants from the killing removed or washed away. Bessie was asleep in the armchair, a blanket over her, her head in a corner against a cushion.
‘She was working like a Trojan,’ said Anne quietly. ‘I had to stop her.’
Jack was looking at the sofa where the body had lain. There were faint traces of blood, like the outline of an unknown country. He ran his finger round it.
‘I scrubbed for hours on that,’ exclaimed Anne. ‘Do you think that’s good enough?’
‘Good enough for me,’ he said. ‘I’d not spot it normally. But the law… if they were looking… Maybe they could get his DNA out of that.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s some on the rug too,’ she said.
She showed him a barely visible trace on the rug, just below the sofa. He kneeled down for a closer look. He could barely think, he was so knackered. And yet there was a day ahead. It had all been so continuous.
‘We should get rid of the rug and sofa,’ he said.
She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got the first kids coming in half an hour.’
‘My skip is still out there, due to be picked up tomorrow morning. Let me put the rug on it,’ he said.
‘I dumped my torn dress in it, that blood stained thing I was wearing,’ she said.
‘You’d better put anything else you were wearing in too. They can pick up the finest of traces.’ And added with a wry, ‘So my TV watching of CSI tells me.’
‘I could make you some breakfast,’ she said.
‘That’d be great.’
She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Jack.’
He flapped a hand in dismissal. ‘Don’t thank me. If you’re caught then so am I.’
‘Sorry.’
What response was there to that? He had buried a body in the forest and dumped a car. For a woman he hardly knew. Liked, found attractive. What loneliness can do.
‘Make the breakfast,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the carpet out.’
She left him.
He moved the furniture to free the carpet, trying to do so as quietly as possible so as not to wake Bessie, but unfortunately her armchair was on a corner of the rug. He tipped her chair back, pulled the rug out – and her bleary eyes opened.
‘Good morning, Bessie.’
‘What am I doing here?’ she said feebly. ‘Oh yes, I was helping Anne…’
He didn’t want to mention the burying of the body and so forth, not sure how she’d react.
She said, ‘Has he gone?’
‘Gone forever.’
‘I did it,’ she said.
Not that again, he thought. But he was not going to argue.
‘I’ve got to take the carpet out,’ he said.
‘I scrubbed it and scrubbed it. Just couldn’t get that last bit out,’ she declared.
‘The room’s very clean,’ he said.
‘We washed the whole flat,’ she said. ‘Everything. And I want to do my place. It is mine now. And scrub him out of it. Do all the sheets, specially the sheets, the duvet, throw his porny computer away…’
‘Good for you, Bessie.’
He was rolling up the rug. She got up and stretched. Then folded the blanket as Anne opened the hatch from the kitchen.
‘Morning, Bessie. Just making breakfast. Scrambled egg on toast?’
‘Only a bit,’ said Bessie.
Jack took the rug out to the skip. The street was awake with traffic and pedestrians, though this was not the busiest of roads. He was like a zombie, head scooped out in living death, merely able to do automatic things.
The skip was almost full with the brickwork from the wall. Some he’d left in the garden, to be used as rubble for fixing the fence posts in. It was fortunate he’d allowed another day for skip removal as this firm came early. He moved some of the bricks to make room for the carpet and saw the carrier bag with Anne’s dress in it. He pushed it further in.
Maggie ran out of the house, changed and showered. She stopped by the skip where Jack was.
‘Don’t know how I’m going to cope with today,’ she exclaimed. ‘David is utterly exhausted, but he’s going in anyway. Says he’ll stare at a screen and look busy. And drink gallons of coffee on the house. Must go.’
She gave a wave and swept away, surprisingly energetic considering. But then she was goal centred, had a position to keep up.
He put the rug in the skip. Tomorrow it would all go and be dumped in landfill, forever and ever. Amen. Buried under more and more rubbish, all the squalor of city living. He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck. All that digging after a day’s work, no sleep, he was tired before the day began. How much would he get done in this state?
He noted then that his fencing had come with the concrete pillars and bags of cement, all by the garden door. Too bloody efficient, that outfit. More humping and lifting. Breakfast first, before he dealt with that lot. But best not leave them out. Too many light fingers round here.
Chapter 35
Jack felt more alive after he’d eaten. Two cups of coffee had given him a charge of energy. Anne’s children had arrived and she was in childminder mode, fully occupied. Jack had decided to take the sofa away but had to get the fencing gear in the garden first. It didn’t pay to be too trusting. You could go out somewhere, come back an hour later and find it all gone.
He barrowed the fencing, posts and cement into the garden. The cement he put in the shed in case it should rain again. The rest would survive the elements. They had a ten year guarantee. Though who would remember in nine years? He’d be long gone, and so might the fence company.
Bessie helped him carry out the sofa. She delighted in being helpful, though she wasn’t that strong, and he had to go at her speed. Life was going to change for her with her old man dead. Or missing. It was complicated, her situation, too complicated to dwell on. For today anyway.
It was impossible to get the sofa up on the roof rack, which made him increasingly crotchety with each failed attempt. He was determined to be rid of the sofa and its damning stains. Bessie just couldn’t lift her end high enough, though she tried hard. And he really had to bite his tongue to stop himself yelling at her. The last thing she needed.
They’d just have to take it back in to Anne’s.
Fortunately, David came out of the house just then. And Jack collared him at once. David was wearing a smart grey suit, and at first bridled at the work offered, but, seeing the fix they were in, relented. The three of them got it on the roof. And David dashed off.
Jack tied the sofa onto his roof rack with a long length of rope.
‘Want to come with?’ he said to Bessie.
‘Can I?’ she said, as if amazed to be asked.
‘Of course.’
‘I never go anywhere,’ she said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘China,’ he said. ‘Or maybe Brazil. What about Tierra Del Fuego?’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Near Ilford.’
He told Anne they’d be a while and set off. The plan was to take the sofa to a charity shop a few miles off. Out of this area, so there’d be no connection.
Bessie was pleased to be in the van. Jack realised this was an outing for her. She never went anywhere beyond the local shops. He turned the music on for her, the CD he had already in. He couldn’t remember what it was, and as soon as he heard the first few bars he had it. Blur.
‘I like this one,’ she said.
‘The track’s called For Tomorrow, from the Blur album Modern Life Is Rubbish.’ The title amused him, considering all that had happened in the last 12 hours. And then he was la-la-la-ing in the chorus, quite light-headed. He’d had this one ages. Amazing it still worked. Amazing he still played it. ‘The first album I bought,’ he said. ‘Had to buy it. Well, I tried to nick it from Woolworths, but ended up with an empty album case. I was only a kid.’
‘I’ve heard of Blur,’ she said.
The traffic was busy, still rush hour, as they headed up the Romford Road towards Ilford. The nose to tail cars irritated him but it was sightseeing for Bessie. And she was enjoying the music. Well, why not? But he was supposed to be earning a living.
Soon as he’d dumped this sofa.
After being stuck in a jam for five minutes, hardly moving, he suggested they get a coffee at Manor Park.
Not the brightest of thoughts, as Jack had trouble parking. But he’d made the offer and didn’t want to disappoint. He found a space on a side road as a woman was leaving it. They walked to a nearby workman’s café.
Bessie had a hot chocolate, he a cup of tea. He thought, how is she going to manage with no money? Her father, monster that he was, at least paid for food and bills. And, as far as the world was concerned, still was paying. Presumably he had a bank account, owned the flat and was responsible for its bills.
But six people knew him to be dead.
At some time or other, he would become a missing person. Say a week or so. They would have to report him. And hopefully, he’d stay a missing person. In which case who would his flat belong to? And when could a missing person be legally considered dead?
He said none of this, barely understanding the complications himself. Today’s stuff to be dealt with first. He asked her about her schooling and the music she liked. School she’d hated, as for music, all the poppy stuff. She could listen when her father was out of the house.
They set off again. Headed further up the Romford Road to Ilford. The traffic had lightened, at least it was moving. They passed under the concrete span North Circular to another track from Modern Life Is Rubbish. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. Currently he wasn’t sure, as they came up the hill to Ilford.
Jack knew there were charity shops that took furniture on Cra
nbrook Road. He told Bessie to keep a lookout as he turned into it. She was eagerly watching both sides and a little way up spotted a British Heart Foundation shop with furniture in the window. They parked and Jack ran inside. It was a huge place with lots of sofas, sideboards, wardrobes, beds and so forth. He asked a young man if they wanted a sofa. The young man called the manageress. She came outside and looked at it. Jack hoped they wouldn’t reject it. That would be a hassle. But apart from the slight, barely visible staining, it was almost as new. The manageress looked at it quizzically. Jack didn’t say anything, wondering what her standards were.
‘We’ll take it,’ she said.
‘All yours,’ said Jack. ‘Can we have some help getting it down?’
She went inside and came out again with a couple of young men. Jack untied the sofa, helped them get it to ground level, and left them to carry it away. He thought about buying another one for Anne here. Then rejected it. Why would someone bring in an almost new sofa and then buy another one, probably inferior? That would be too memorable.
So they left without any further load.
And drove a little further, and found another charity furniture shop, where they bought a sofa for Anne.
Chapter 36
Anne didn’t think much of the sofa, but what could she say but ‘very nice, Jack’. She felt it such an awful green, an attempt to be foresty but too dense and artificial. And it fitted with nothing in her room. Why on earth did the idiot buy her a sofa anyway? Plainly, he had no colour sense. Well, she’d have to keep it a while now. Obligated. Yes, it was something to sit on. She could get some covers for it.
Looking on the bright side on a tired morning, the stained one had gone. This would do for the time being. It would have to. Though every time she looked at it she thought of the pretty one that had gone. She knew she shouldn’t blame Jack. He was just trying. She was in a filthy, ratty mood. Lack of sleep, obviously.