Raven and Skull

by Ashley Lister

  He shook his head. ‘No. That’s just coincidence.’ The acoustics in the boardroom stopped his words from carrying any real conviction.

  ‘Nicola asked me what was in the parcel,’ Moira continued. Her low and raspy voice was now a flat monotone. There was no inflection of remorse or upset in the way she spoke. She was either mechanically reiterating facts or she had simply stopped caring. ‘Nicola thought the wool I’d used on Chloe’s jumper was lovely. It was a lilac cashmere. She asked if I had any left and, when I said I had a little, she asked if I could knit a beret for her.’

  Tony shifted uneasily in his chair.

  Moira’s level gaze remained fixed on him. ‘I finished knitting that beret on the Monday night. Do you know what time I finished?’

  ‘I really think you’re making–’

  ‘Do you know what time I finished? Do you know what time I cut her thread with my abhorrèd shears?’

  Tony thought, ‘Stop saying those words!’

  Aloud he said, ‘Nicola died at six o’clock. She was hit by a train and died instantly.’

  ‘That’s when I finished her beret.’

  Her lips parted and the corners twisted upwards. Tony saw that she was attempting a hideous parody of a smile. The result made him nauseous.

  ‘Are you starting to believe me, Mr Wade?’

  He coughed and cleared his throat. ‘This is foolishness, Moira.’ He tried to inject an appropriate note of authority into his voice but it refused to ring with any real conviction. ‘This is nothing more than coincidence and, if you sat down and thought about it, you’d realise that I’m right. You’re not these Greek gods–’

  ‘Fates!’

  ‘–Fates. You’re not these Greek Fates. You’re just Moira from accounts who enjoys knitting in her spare time. You’ve obviously been upset by the death of your colleagues. We’ve all been upset and we’re all grieving. But I think you could use the help of a counsellor. I’m going to recommend to human resources that they arrange for–’

  ‘I figured it out with Nicola,’ Moira told him.

  Her words killed everything Tony had been about to say.

  ‘When Nicola died at six o’clock, the same time I was cutting her thread, I knew my knitting was responsible for her death. I found out about it on the Tuesday. I was sick to the stomach thinking that I’d done that to her and I wondered how I could prove it and how I could try to make amends. That was when I started to knit a scarf for Shaun.’

  Tony simply stared at her.

  ‘You can write a reprimand for me if you like,’ Moira went on. ‘But I didn’t bother doing any work for the office that morning. I simply picked up my needles and pulled out some black wool I’d brought with me. I thought about Shaun because – well…’ Her level gaze skewered Tony to his seat. ‘…I’m sure you can understand why I chose Shaun.’

  The smile had disappeared from her face. She now wore an expression of cold intensity. ‘I saw him smirking at the water cooler. He’d just made a crass remark about Nicola catching the train. He was talking to that nice girl Heather and she looked appalled by his insensitivity. That’s why I picked on him. I told him I was going to knit him a scarf to keep himself warm now winter was approaching. He said he wanted one as long as his cock, so he suggested I should go out and get some more wool. Then he laughed in that cruel and nasty way of his. It made me more anxious to knit the scarf for him. I’ve never done any knitting as industrious as that. If I had any sense for the fanciful I’d be telling you that sparks were flying from the tips of my needles as they clashed together. I really was working at a blistering speed but I think, if anyone had seen me, they would have just noticed an old woman with her knitting, making a rather formal scarf. I cut his thread exactly at noon. Do you remember what time Shaun died, Mr Wade? I think you do remember because you were the one who spoke to the police about the incident, weren’t you?’

  ‘The lift malfunctioned at noon,’ Tony said, quietly.

  ‘Noon,’ Moira repeated. ‘I cut his thread at noon and I killed him.’

  ‘No.’ Tony shook his head. ‘I refuse to accept that this is anything more than coincidence. You’re just–’

  ‘Would you like me to knit you something, Mr Wade?’

  4

  ‘Oh-mi-God!’ Becky said. ‘What did you do?’

  Tony took a swig from his pint and grimaced at the bitter taste. The light outside the pub windows hadn’t changed since he began his story. The world still seemed to be painted with the prospect of a terrible dawn.

  ‘What else could I do?’ he asked. ‘If I’d told her not to knit anything for me, that would have been as good as admitting she was right. That would have been like saying I believed her stupid story about Clotho, Lachesis and–’

  ‘What did you do?’ Heather asked.

  ‘I told her to go ahead.’ He stared at his friend defiantly. ‘I told her to knit me a woolly hat, or a scarf or a jumper or whatever it would take to prove to her that I didn’t believe she was the Fates.’

  The silence around the table was stifling.

  Even Cindy and Richard – usually so absorbed in each other, constantly passing whispered confidences back and forth – sat silent. They watched Tony expectantly.

  ‘She knitted you one?’

  ‘Is that the one?’ Becky asked, pointing to the black scarf draped over his jacket in an empty seat. ‘Is that the scarf she knitted for you?’

  ‘She’s knitting me one,’ Tony corrected. He stared at the scarf, puzzled, and wondered how it had found its way there. ‘I told her there was no rush.’ He raised his wrist and glanced at his watch. ‘She agreed to have it ready for Friday night or Saturday morning, so that means…’ He shook his wrist and then slapped the heel of his palm against the watch. ‘Damned thing’s stopped working,’ he muttered. ‘Batteries must have gone. Or–’

  ‘Which one is Moira?’ asked Geoff.

  ‘Yeah,’ Becky agreed. ‘I don’t remember any Moira in accounts. I thought the only woman there was that Muslim woman.’

  ‘No,’ Geoff argued. ‘There’s no Muslim woman in accounts. It’s all men–’

  ‘Except for Moira,’ Tony interjected. ‘She’s the one who…’ His voice trailed off. He had been about to point out that they all knew who Moira was. She had knitted the black scarf for him and the gloves for Geoff and the matching cardigans for Becky and Cindy. He wanted to say those things because he felt sure they were true but something stopped him. Voicing those thoughts would be tantamount to heresy and would destroy an illusion.

  ‘I don’t even think–’

  ‘Another story,’ Heather said. ‘I want another story.’

  Cindy and Richard groaned.

  ‘Go on, Becky,’ Heather said. ‘Tell us about a time when you nearly died…’

  5

  Becky raised her freshly replenished glass into the air. ‘I need to dedicate this story to the memory of Shaun,’ she announced.

  ‘To Shaun,’ they muttered, in mildly drunken unison. Heather’s wine glass connected with Geoff’s bottle of Löwenbräu. The sound was as shrill as a smashing windscreen. Cindy and Richard giggled instead of repeating the toast. Everyone took a sip of their drinks before coaxing Becky to continue.

  ‘I need to dedicate this story to his memory,’ Becky explained, ‘because I think it’s important we all remember what a despicable and loathsome piece of shit the bastard was. I know it’s not the done thing to speak ill of the dead, but Shaun was one of those bastards who deserved his death and should have had it come a lot sooner.’

  ‘Let’s get that engraved on his tombstone,’ Geoff suggested.

  ‘I was planning to use the same phrase in his obituary,’ Tony grinned.

  Becky said, ‘I’m only sorry he didn’t suffer more. It was Shaun who was supposed to be looking after me when I started doing overtime…’

  6

  As soon as the clock shifted past five-thirty, Becky’s stomach clenched and her bowels grew tight. It
was hard to explain why, but being in the office after normal hours seemed somehow strange, different and wrong. In the minute between the clock creeping from five thirty to five thirty-one, Becky could feel the shadows lengthening and the room’s light changing to a more sinister hue. She thought the effect was like being in an empty house without the owner’s permission, or being in a cemetery when there wasn’t a funeral.

  ‘This is the biggest and best skive going,’ Shaun said cheerfully. He was a broad-shouldered office boor. With a shock of dark hair contrasting with his pale complexion, and sharp dark eyes appraising her in an overly familiar fashion, he managed to appear both attractive and repulsive in equal measures. ‘We get to sit around doing fuck all and we get paid time and a half. What could be better than that? Apart from sex?’

  Becky tried to match his enthusiasm but the knot of unease tightened in her belly. The effort of smiling was an arduous strain and the urge to grab her coat and bolt from the offices of Raven and Skull was almost irresistible. It didn’t help that Shaun’s language was offensively colourful – richer than she cared to hear. It also added to her discomfort that he was blatantly leering at her breasts whilst he spoke. She was a cuddly size sixteen, blessed with a chest size that was not disproportionate for her large frame, and Shaun was staring at her cleavage as though her breasts were tattooed with next week’s winning lottery numbers.

  ‘The only thing you’ve got to watch out for is Harry Shaw,’ Shaun told her breasts. ‘He’s got a habit of trying to get his hands on every new recruit to the overtime gravy-train and you’ll probably be prime pickings for him during this first month.’

  Becky nodded and said nothing. She didn’t consider herself worldly but she had heard enough stories in her time to be aware that Shaun was building up to some sort of fib. She also wasn’t sure that either of her breasts wanted to hear about Harry Shaw, whoever Harry Shaw might be.

  ‘Right,’ she agreed. ‘Harry Shaw. I’ll watch out for him.’

  With that, said she took off from Shaun’s desk and joined Nicola and Chloe by the water cooler. She knew the two girls as casual acquaintances from her days in the office and from the occasional girls’ night out with the rest of the office staff.

  Nicola looked to be the taller of the two women but that was only because she was so anorexically thin. Outside the office, Becky had seen Nicola wearing a pair of hipster jeans that were no larger than a size two and cut low enough to reveal a stomach that was so childishly flat it was almost concave. In the office, she wore the traditional uniform of a black skirt and white blouse but she made the clothes look as though they had been tailored to fit her stick-like figure. Chloe, big breasted and blessed with the sort of curves that made Nicola look like a boy, wore identical clothes. Despite their Laurel and Hardy size difference, Becky knew the two women were inseparable friends. Outside the office, seeing them together was more common than seeing them apart. Inside the office, it was unheard of for them to be away from each other.

  Chloe and Nicola welcomed Becky with obvious sympathy when they saw she was trying to escape from Shaun. Nicola made a hospitable gesture whilst Chloe snatched a fresh plastic carton from the water cooler’s dispenser and began to pour Becky a drink. They chatted easily for a moment; Chloe explaining that they had to drink water during overtime because the use of a kettle wasn’t allowed; Nicola saying that the only unlocked lavatories in the building during overtime were those situated in the basement. Becky took all this in and grimly accepted that the world of overtime was drastically different to the normality of the office life that she had grown to know and understand.

  ‘What’s Captain Creepy up to this time?’ Chloe asked. ‘I saw him getting an eyeful of your rack.’

  Nicola threw a disdainful glance in Shaun’s direction and said, ‘He’s not trying to show you his cock again, is he?’ She shivered theatrically and said, ‘How any man can be proud of three inches of spotted dick is beyond me.’

  Chloe handed Becky a carton of water. ‘I’ve spoken to Tony about that arsehole. I swear, if he doesn’t do something soon, I’m going to put in an official report to human resources about sexual harassment. I might even go to Roger Black about the situation.’

  ‘He wasn’t trying to show me his… his… anything,’ Becky whispered. Although she didn’t like Shaun she didn’t want him to know she was talking about him. ‘He was just telling me to watch out for someone called Harry Shaw.’

  Chloe rolled her eyes.

  Nicola cast another disparaging glance in Shaun’s direction.

  ‘I swear,’ Chloe began, ‘if that cock-focused pillock isn’t taken off this overtime rota I’m going to get my boyfriend to sort him out properly.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Nicola sounded surprised and enthusiastic.

  Becky watched the exchange with growing bewilderment.

  ‘Your Kevin is pretty tough,’ Nicola went on. ‘He’d snap Shaun into small pieces.’ She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and said, ‘I’m serious, Chloe. Your Kevin could genuinely kill someone like Shaun.

  Genuinely.’

  ‘And wouldn’t that be a great loss,’ Chloe muttered.

  ‘Who is Harry Shaw?’

  Chloe and Nicola exchanged a glance. ‘Get sorted with your work for the night,’ Chloe said. ‘Let Captain Creepy go through the process of telling you what you’re supposed to be doing. Me and Nicky have a water break every hour or so and one of us will come and find you. Then we’ll fill you in on Harry Shaw.’

  Becky thanked them both.

  ‘Go on,’ Nicola said, nodding in Shaun’s direction. ‘Go and give him his fifteen minutes of glory as he explains that overtime is just playing catch-up for the constant backlog of paperwork that comes from customer services.’

  ‘And,’ Chloe broke in, ‘if he starts off with his Harry Shaw bullshit, tell him you’re not arsed about his fucking ghost stories and you just want to know what you’re supposed to be doing.’ She said the words in such a loud voice Becky knew they would be carrying across the office towards Shaun.

  Glancing at him, poring over a ream of paperwork, she saw his smile tighten to an unpleasant grimace. His eyes were small, dark and mean. His fat fingers clutched tight around a thick pen.

  ‘I’m so fucking serious,’ Chloe told Nicola. ‘I’m so tempted to get Kevin to meet him in a dark alley one night.’

  ‘If Kevin wants an alibi,’ Nicola said, ‘I can always get Don to say he was round at The House of Usher.’

  Becky remembered that Don was the head chef at a restaurant called The House of Usher. She smiled at the way Nicola always managed to slip the name of her boyfriend’s restaurant into every conversation.

  ‘All we’d need to do is get his credit card there and, with Don and his waiters backing up the story, it would look like he’d spent the night at the restaurant.’

  Becky stepped away from them. She couldn’t decide whether their planning was serious, or whether it was just typical overtime bravado and banter. Sauntering back to Shaun, sipping at her carton of water, she asked, ‘What am I supposed to be working on?’

  ‘You want to be careful hanging round with those two bitches,’ Shaun sniffed. ‘They’re a pair of poisonous cunts.’

  Becky swallowed. She couldn’t think of how to respond to such a vitriolic exclamation. ‘What am I supposed to be working on?’

  Shaun pointed at her desk. ‘There’s a night’s work in your in-tray. Geoff Arnold wants us to do some work getting his department’s books ready for the year-end but he can suck my big fat cock. The stuff in your in-tray comes from a Customer Services backlog. Get started on that. If there’s anything you don’t understand go and ask one of those whores.’ He flicked his head towards the water cooler where Chloe and Nicola still stood. Raising his gaze from the work on his desk he glared at Becky and said, ‘If you end up getting caught by Harry Shaw, don’t bother asking why I didn’t warn you about him.’

  Who the hell is Harry Shaw? />
  Becky didn’t ask the question. Instead, realising Shaun had dismissed her, she started towards her desk. It was only as an afterthought that she made the grim discovery that the strangeness of working overtime was now a minor consideration. The shadows had stretched to breaking point. The office windows were darkened to a deathly pall that overlooked the grey remnants of the world’s end. And, with other considerations to worry about, the environment now seemed terribly normal.

  7

  ‘Here,’ Chloe said, handing Becky a carton of water.

  Nicola pulled a chair from the neighbouring cubicle and the two women settled themselves on either side of Becky.

  ‘How’s the work?’ Nicola asked.

  Becky shrugged. ‘Mind-numbing.’

  Chloe laughed. ‘Has that arsehole been troubling you?’ She glanced towards Shaun’s desk as she spoke. She made no attempt to lower her voice or disguise the fact that she was talking about him.

  Becky shook her head. ‘He just pointed at the workload and told me to get on with it.’ As she said the words, Shaun glanced up and glowered at the three of them. Becky lowered her voice and said, ‘You two don’t like him much do you?’

  ‘And you do?’ Chloe challenged.

  ‘He’s a bit abrasive,’ Becky allowed. ‘But that’s probably just his way.’ She tried to toss a sympathetic smile in Shaun’s direction but he wasn’t looking. She became aware that Nicola and Chloe were staring at her with wide-eyed disbelief.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Do you know what he did to Chloe?’

  Chloe made shushing sounds but Nicola seemed determined to make her point. Her cheeks were flushed with angry colour. ‘I’m surprised Shaun didn’t get sacked for that. I’m mightily pissed that Tony never pressed charges. That was genuine harassment.’

  ‘I don’t want you talking about this,’ Chloe warned Nicola.