by Lee, Frazer
“Too salty.”
The fire crackled and Tom glanced across at the pub’s only other diners; an elderly couple with a combined age of a couple of centuries if they were a day. Tom frowned as he watched the old man slurping soup through his thick moustache, a process that generated a sound not unlike a suction pump. The old woman opposite him pecked at her food like a bird. He watched her taking tiny morsels of bread from her plate, which she then rolled between her fingertips until they were little pellets.
“It’s like feeding time at the zoo over there,” Tom whispered, vaguely disturbed.
“What? Oh,” Dieter said, noticing the old couple as if for the first time. “Date night.”
“Jesus,” Tom sighed, hoping he and Julia would divorce before they ever ended up like that.
He knew in his heart there was every possibility that would happen, a feeling that gave him little solace so he turned his eyes back to the glow of the fire.
“Think I should call again?” Dieter asked.
“No, when he gets our voicemail he can decide how to play it. Let him chase us now, but if we don’t hear from him by lunchtime tomorrow…”
“Call again, got it.”
Holly emerged from the kitchen carrying two large plates of food. She held them both with a napkin in each hand to protect her fingers from the heat.
“Careful the plates are a wee bit hot,” she chirruped as she placed the plates in front of Tom and Dieter. “Can I get you gents anything else?”
Dieter smirked and winked at her and she turned and smiled at Tom.
“He’s a cheeky one your friend,” she said, polite as ever.
Oh, he’s not my friend, was what Tom really wanted to say, but he chose instead to return Holly’s smile.
She held his gaze for a few seconds and Tom felt his cheeks flush a little. It was like they were sharing an intimate joke, a feeling Tom had not experienced for some time. It felt nice.
“All good, thanks,” he said.
Feeling suddenly bashful, he rearranged his napkin in his lap.
“You devil,” Dieter chuckled as Holly walked away, “I think she likes you.”
Tom filled his mouth with roast potato, avoiding a riposte. Then he winced as the unmistakable charcoal taste of burnt food assaulted his taste buds. He turned one of the other potatoes over on his plate and was shocked to discover it was jet black underneath.
“What’s wrong? Not cold, is it?”
There was raw panic in Dieter’s voice; the naked fear of a man who loved his food almost as much as his women.
“Burned, look,” Tom said, tipping his plate up slightly so Dieter could see.
Dieter checked his own plate and found his to be the same. He sliced open one particularly char-grilled specimen and prodded its insides with his finger.
“Stone-fucking-cold inside,” he said, looking around for Holly.
She was no longer behind the bar, so he got up and stomped over to the doorway leading to the kitchen, calling her name. A few moments later, she reappeared. Tom noticed how she straightened her apron and hair as she stepped out from the kitchen doorway. Dieter led her to their table, pointing at his plate like he was a cop unveiling fresh evidence at a crime scene.
“What is this?” he said. “It’s cold, and burned.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine how that happened, let me take them away and get you something else. How about fish and chips?”
“I don’t want fish and chips, lady. I want the roast, preferably cooked today, not resurrected from the dead tomorrow.”
“It was freshly prepared, I assure you…”
“Don’t try that crap with me.”
Dieter picked up a black-bottomed potato and held it aloft.
“These aren’t fresh, they’re leftovers from yesterday or God only knows when. They’ve been reheated, but all that’s done is burn them on the outside and leave them cold on the inside.”
Holly’s mask fell for a moment and she looked at Dieter as though he had just described himself. She looked down at Tom.
“Is yours okay, sir?” she asked.
Tom just shrugged, placed his knife and fork on his plate and wiped his clammy hands with his napkin.
Dieter glowered at him, waiting for backup. Holly looked back at him with an air of disappointment. Tom had a sudden and overwhelming urge to go upstairs to bed.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience, gentlemen,” she said. “How about the fish and chips, they won’t take long and they’re cooked from fresh, I assure you.”
“I ordered the roast.”
Dieter was like a bull with a red rag in its sights.
“I’m afraid the roast is finished, it would take too long to make another and I don’t want to keep you waiting…”
“You’re out of leftovers you mean,” Dieter snapped. “Let me talk to the manager.”
“Please, just let me get you something…”
“The manager.”
Holly looked flustered. She forced a smile at the elderly diners, who had taken an interest in the impromptu cabaret unfolding before their rheumy eyes.
“I’m afraid, he’s not—he’s not here,” she stammered.
“Not here?!”
“So it’s?” Tom said.
“Just me, yes.”
Holly looked crestfallen.
An uncomfortable silence ensued as Dieter realized he had few options to claw this one back. Holly’s eyes widened and Tom thought she might burst into tears any moment. Then, she steeled herself and cleared their plates from the table.
“I’ll just have some dessert,” Tom said, in as diplomatic a tone as possible.
Holly nodded at him, looking almost thankful. Hearing Dieter groan, she scurried away as quick as her legs would carry her.
Dieter flopped back down in his seat.
“What kind of operation are they running here? Sandwiches for lunch, burnt offerings for dinner, only one member of staff in the whole building, no wonder the place is up for sale.”
Tom gestured for him to hush, eyeballing the elderly couple.
“Oh don’t worry about them, they’re probably deaf as posts,” Dieter said.
He sat back, and he and Tom watched Holly as she returned from the kitchen wheeling a huge trolley laden with cakes and desserts. Each confection was housed beneath its own glass dome, like a laboratory specimen. A bizarre, drawn-out ritual ensued, as the girl placed each and every dish atop the table beneath the picture window. Then she stood back behind the line of cakes and puddings, tiny hands clasped together, awaiting further instructions. Agonizing moments passed, before the elderly man cleared his throat and spoke up.
“The bill, please.”
His voice had that same musical lilt as the landlord’s. Holly hurried away and came back with the couple’s bill, which the man promptly paid, in cash. He stood and helped the woman into her coat, before thanking Holly for their meal.
“Keep the change,” he said, looking directly at Tom and Dieter.
The man whispered something into the old woman’s ear then left the dining room.
Then, to Tom’s surprise, the elderly woman approached their table. She cleared her throat and addressed them in clearly enunciated repetition of, presumably, what her companion had just whispered to her.
“Mr. Lithgoe thanks you for a most enlightening evening and requests that you see him at his office nine a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. Holly has the address…”
Holly stood quietly beside her display of cakes and puddings, a slight smile at play on her lips.
Tom stood up, bolt upright, on reflex.
“Wait a minute, you’re telling me that was…”
“Mr. Lithgoe, yes.”
The old woman stared at Tom like he was plankton in a petri dish before she turned and walked to the exit.
“And you are?” Dieter ventured—brash as ever.
Pausing at the door, the woman fixed Dieter with that same hard stare.
“
Mr. Lithgoe does not wish to see you tomorrow, just Mr. McCrae here. Do I make myself quite clear?”
Dieter did not respond to her rebuke.
The old lady looked at Tom once more, her eyes shark-like. He nodded in swift agreement; looking and feeling for all the world like a scolded schoolchild. Apparently satisfied for the moment, she swept from the room with a swish of her overcoat and left them to consider the desserts in silence.
Chapter Fifteen
Tom lay awake in his room, listening to Holly’s sobs through the paper-thin walls. The argument, something about the burnt food and the lack of takings in the restaurant, hadn’t lasted long before Tom had heard the unmistakable sound of the landlord’s hand striking her. At that point he’d struggled to stop himself from marching next door to confront the old man. He had refrained of course, knowing any argument between father and fully grown daughter was their affair entirely and nothing to do with him. Tom winced as he heard the old man slam the door and stomp past his on his way to the stairs, and the bar below.
Hell, Tom would have only made it worse if he’d tried to intervene; at least that was what he was telling himself. Lithgoe’s ruse to conceal himself while Dieter stomped about like a G.I. on steroids was a savage enough indictment of their current form on the Scottish business stage. Still, something good had come of it at least—Tom would take the meeting in the morning alone. He felt sure he could handle things better without Dieter’s swagger getting in the way. The CEO had instructed him to cosy up to the locals; a tall order, taking into consideration their shaky start, so Tom had his work cut out for him. As Holly’s sobs showed no sign of subsiding, Tom abandoned his plan to get an early night and turned the bedside lamp on again.
He cast his eyes around the drab room, which looked like an expressionist re-imagining of a hunting lodge. He rather missed the airport hotel with its air-con and neutral, almost nonexistent decor. His new digs were decked out like a set from a 1970s British sitcom, with the predominant color being dark brown, right down to the flecks in the well-trodden carpet.
Feeling the urge to empty his bladder, Tom climbed out of bed, rooted through his luggage and fished out a sweater, which he pulled on over his pajamas top. He crossed to the en suite bathroom and clicked the light on. The cord pull had been knotted in several places along its length, where it had clearly snapped and been patched up by the frugal landlord.
Under the harsh light of a single bare lamp the en suite bathroom was an eyesore, decorated with what Tom could only think of as pea soup green. The bath, sink and toilet fittings were the exact same sickly green hue as the walls and tiling. Adding to the grim effect the same layer of dust that coated every surface Tom had encountered after checking in had even taken hold in the bathroom. As he relieved himself, he had noticed an elderly toilet brush lurking behind the crapper. He frowned at the yellowing plastic of the brush holder, trying not to think of the bacteria making a home there and vowing not to touch the thing for the duration of his stay.
The bedroom itself was small, and had looked cosy upon first inspection, but now night had fallen so too had the temperature. Compared with the precise microclimate of his Mountain View apartment back home in the States, his room at The Firs was testicle-shrinkingly cold. Folding his arms and rubbing his hands across his body, Tom saw the curtains rise and fall slowly, as though a specter had moved right through them. He reached out and pulled back one of the curtains. It was cheap fabric, dark brown velour, and felt flimsy in the palm of his hand. No wonder it was having a tough time keeping the draft from the aged leaded windows at bay. He could feel icy air blowing through the gaps between the window and its frame—no double-glazing here like there had been at the airport hotel. But the view was infinitely superior to the street lit parking lot the chain hotel had offered.
Tom pulled aside the yellowing lace curtain to reveal the moonlit treetops beyond the glass. His breath fogged the windowpane as he moved his face closer to it, peering out into the night. Beneath the wash of moonlight, the trees appeared fused together like an impenetrable dark wall of interlocking branches and spiky needles. Clouds drifted across the moon and, as the light dipped across the lower branches, Tom saw something lurking at the foot of one of the trees. He squinted closer to the window, feeling the cold glass kiss his forehead. It looked like a person—a male from the figure’s stature, though he could not be sure at that distance—was standing there very still, gazing out from the edge of the forest. But gazing at what?
Tom quickly crossed to the bedside table and killed the lamp, hoping that by extinguishing the glow he would be afforded a better view of the unexpected stranger. He returned to his lofty vantage point and peered out once again, cursing as the cloud layer thickened and cancelled out the moonlight completely. By the time the clouds had cleared and the trees were once again painted silvery white beneath the moon glow, the figure had disappeared. Tom glanced up and down the ranks of trees, checking to see if the stranger had simply moved off, but he was nowhere to be seen.
If I saw him at all, Tom thought, yawning.
Tiredness could play tricks on a mind already fatigued by an overseas flight, not to mention an interminable drive with Dieter. Holly’s sobs had subsided next door and Tom was contemplating climbing back under the sheets to give sleep another try when his cell phone vibrated on the desk, scaring the very breath out of him. The phone’s screen flashed, illuminating the room with its electronic glow. He picked up the smart phone and looked at the screen to see who could be messaging him so late in the evening; Number Withheld was displayed there. He unlocked the device and navigated to the incoming messages window. A little green speech bubble filled with gibberish popped up on his screen; xmKYsFighjkzx.
Must be a glitched attempt at a spam message, he thought. But he still had that nagging voice at the back of his head. If it is just a spam text, then why is it making you feel so damn uncomfortable, the voice asked, is someone fucking with you, maybe?
But where had “they” gotten his number from, and why the garbled message—why not get straight to the point? He thumbed the touch screen and deleted the message. The little speech bubble diminished from the screen like a deflating balloon being popped by a pinprick.
His thoughts returned to the figure he had seen—or had thought he had seen—on the tree line moments earlier and he crossed to the window again to take another look. The clouds were moving faster across the moon’s reflected brightness, casting dizzying shadows on the ground at the foot of the tree trunks. The shadows undulated like a weird black tide, an impenetrable swirl cast by the shapes of the branches that were silhouetted by the flickering moonlight. That was explanation enough for Tom; he must have imagined a figure amidst the dark dance of the shadows. Even now, the trees were swaying slightly in the wind, which had picked up so much that the net curtain flapped slightly from the imperfections in the elderly windows. Tom felt instantly cold, as though a ghostly breath had enveloped him. He drew the flimsy brown curtains and, shivering, climbed back into bed, taking his phone with him as a makeshift flashlight.
Huddled under the covers, he activated Silent Mode on his phone so he could still receive messages but not suffer a coronary in the event that he got one—especially if it was another gobbledygook waste of time glitch of a message. Reeling through lines of random text characters in the way that some might count sheep, Tom’s eyes finally rolled back into his skull and he fell asleep.
As he began to snore, the wind blew a chink in the curtains, allowing a sliver of moonlight in. The curtains fluttered in a whisper of wind, the moon’s light making new shadow shapes that spread across his bedclothes like tendrils.
Tom’s eyelids flickered as he entered dream sleep and his subconscious mind conjured an old familiar melody.
“Jack Frost nipping at your nose…”
Chapter Sixteen
When Jupiter awoke, he felt like he’d been on the business end of a ten-ton truck. He opened his eyes and winced at the sharp pain tha
t flashed behind his eyelids like a lightning strike to his nervous system. Instinctively, he touched his right temple and felt a jolt of pain so severe he thought he might pass out, or vomit, or both.
He heaved himself up into a partially seated position, letting his body weight rest on the hard, lumpy object just above his rib cage. As he moved, he felt a tightening in his sternum, like someone was pressing a booted foot against it, and the details of the assault started to come back to him. His addled brain pieced together the vicious sequence of punches, kicks and taunts he had suffered at the behest of Bill, that two-faced bastard. Pulling his legs up around him so he was kneeling on his side, his groin burned where they had kicked him repeatedly in the nuts. Sensation returning to his body with the flow of his blood, he could feel his left ear—sopping wet with blood after they had kicked him in the head. A sudden polarizing thought gripped him and he panicked.
What if I’m brain damaged, what if I can’t walk, or talk anymore?
He clutched his head, the contents of which now felt like a stockpot boiling over, and tried to speak. Nothing came out but a pitiful moan. His voice sounded like the slurred dumb show of a boxer who had gone a few too many bouts in the ring. They had made mincemeat of him. He felt like crying, and would have done so if he didn’t suspect it would hurt too much.
He placed his hand on the ground next to him. It felt rough and unyielding beneath his palm. Trying to focus, he peered down at his hand and squinted. His surroundings sharpened a little with his concentration and he realized the hard object that he was leaning on was the barrier at the edge of the car park. He looked up, expecting to see Mama Cath’s bus, but only the painful glare of the floodlights greeted him. He quickly shut his eyes to cancel it out and, dizzy, he slid sideways across the curbstone until he was almost horizontal. His ribs screamed as he rolled over onto his front. Gasping for air, he crawled onto what felt like dirt and gripped a rough, springy plant. He was on an intersection planted with shrubs. The smell of manure repulsed him, but he lacked the energy necessary to push himself any farther. Collapsing facedown in the stench, Jupiter moaned and kicked his feet out with the last of his strength.