When I get back, Nan’s staggering around in the kitchen in her dressing gown, so I hide the gun in the log pile. She’s insisting on tidying up, each breath rattling as she wipes the surfaces. She likes the place to be spick and span when the health visitor comes. The woman’s name is Denise and she’s always on time. When I open the door at three o’clock her hair is a frizz of orange curls, and her expression is so bitter, it looks like she’s sucked a lemon.
‘Off school again, Shane?’
There’s no point in replying because she writes everything down in her black book. I take her into the sitting room then make some tea. After I’ve delivered the tray, I wait outside, earwigging. Denise’s voice is as sour as her face, and I can hear every word.
‘It’s better to forward plan, Mrs Wilcox, that way you’re in control. There are plenty of foster parents who would take Shane if you go into a care home.’
Nan’s reply is too quiet to hear, but it must have been sharp, because Denise opens the door so fast it almost smacks me in the face. Her Nissan Micra disappears in a cloud of dust. Soon it’s a speck of metal vanishing into the potato fields, and Nan’s eyes are so black it’s like staring down a well.
‘That woman’s not coming here again, Shane. There’s no way on God’s earth she’s splitting us up.’
I can’t help smiling. This is the Nan I remember, the one who could chop wood all afternoon, and never sit down, before the emphysema began. But the fight soon fades out of her. She lies on the sofa with the fan at full blast, panting for air.
It’s five o’clock when Barry’s van pulls up. He opens the doors and lifts out a big cardboard box, and whatever’s inside must be heavy, because he staggers under its weight. I want to find out what he’s bought, but I’m making our dinner: beef burgers and oven chips, a tin of baked beans. It’s so hot it feels like the air has stopped circulating, but at least Nan’s peaceful. She eats a few mouthfuls then drifts back into sleep.
After I’ve washed up I go outside to listen to the crickets. There’s plenty to watch at the edge of the field − dormice and ladybirds. I catch a Red Admiral and feel its wings brush my cupped hands before letting it go. The air smells of dust and a hundred different types of pollen. By the time I get back, Nan’s awake again.
‘Put the news channels on, can you, Shane?’
She always makes me watch the headlines, even though they’ve got nothing whatsoever to do with me. A blonde woman talks about another war starting, then men in suits argue about why London’s run out of money. It’s only when the local stories come on that something catches my interest. I recognise the girl’s face straight away. She’s called Eva, and she’s in year seven. I’ve seen her loads of times in the playground with her mates. She’s smiling in the picture, wavy brown hair flying in the wind. The newsreader explains that she’s gone missing on her way home from school.
‘There are some sick creatures in the world,’ Nan mutters. ‘It’s time you went to bed.’
I help her upstairs then go to my room, but I can’t stop thinking about Eva. She’s been stuck in my head for weeks, because she’s so pretty, and she never calls me names. Sometimes she even smiles at me in the corridor.
It’s so hot that I lie on the bed with the window open, longing for a breeze. Something brings me round hours later. My alarm clock says that it’s three fifteen and moonlight’s flooding through the window. At first nothing seems to be moving, but when I look outside, Barry’s in his garden, digging with all his might. The hole is deeper now, almost up to his shoulder.
Barry’s so hard at work, he doesn’t notice me slipping outside and climbing over the fence. The cardboard box I saw him lift from his van is beside the compost heap, the lid half-open. I have to rub my eyes to believe what’s inside. Eva is lying on her back, naked skin pale as a ghost, and fear hits me out of nowhere. I’m still frozen when Barry grabs my arm. There’s a froth of spit on his lip when he speaks, and a stink of fresh sweat.
‘Listen to me, kiddo,’ he hisses. ‘Your gran’ll get hurt if you tell anyone. Do you understand?’
I blurt out the question before I can stop myself. ‘What happened to Eva?’
‘She wouldn’t shut up.’ Barry’s lazy eye crawls across my face. ‘Some girls are like that, you’ll understand one day.’
I look at Eva’s bruised face and reach out to touch her hair, but the punch knocks me to the ground. Barry’s hands close around my throat.
‘I could put a pillow over your gran’s face, right now. Remember that, kiddo.’
I manage to break away, and after that everything spins into fast forward. I run back to collect the gun, and my thoughts stop as I edge along the fence. My mind’s empty when I point the barrel between his shoulder blades, and he collapses forwards into the dirt. A puddle of red gushes from his chest, staining the clean moonlight. Then I sit still, too shocked to cry, but the light in Nan’s room never comes on. She takes sleeping tablets, so there’s a chance she never heard anything.
Eva’s skin is cold when I lift her into the hole. It feels wrong to make her lie beside someone who hurt her so badly, but there’s no other way. It takes a long time to pile the earth back with Barry’s spade, and by the time I’ve finished, the sun’s rising above the lip of the fen. There’s no way I can stay here, because Nan would get into trouble, and she’s too sick to go to prison, so I pick up the gun and set off down the path. I sprint until my lungs empty, and the cottage is a brown thumbprint in the distance. Then I turn away and start running again, even faster now, aiming for the wide open sky.
SKELETON CREW
Chris Simms
Chris Simms graduated from Newcastle University then travelled round the world before moving to Manchester in 1994. Since then he has worked as a freelance copywriter for advertising agencies throughout the city. The idea for his first novel, Outside the White Lines, came to him one night when broken down on the hard shoulder of a motorway. His latest series features DC Iona Khan and is set in Manchester.
The place is quiet. Always is last thing on a Friday. Guy in a Volvo estate dragging sheets of cardboard out of the boot. An old lady – sixty-five, seventy? – she’s at the railings, dropping all of three jars down into the recycling container for glass. Why drive all the way out to the edge of town for that? Daft old bat, should have used the collection-point at the local supermarket.
I look around the little cabin. These bloody things shouldn’t be here. Mutilated teddies. Heads of decapitated dolls. Action figures with missing limbs. I recognise that one – it was on the telly the other day. Stupid advert: garish and shouty and too fast. Military drums, camera swooping jerkily down from the sky to a close-up of the manikin. Transfigurer, was it? Something like that.
Next to it on the windowsill is a grotesquely-muscled wrestler, face contorted in a snarl. He only has one arm – and that’s been placed round the slender shoulders of a naked female figurine. Her legs make up two thirds of her height, pinched waist and high, jutting breasts. But she has no hair and her eyes are missing. Is it any wonder the country’s going down the pan? Kids playing with this kind of rubbish.
Need to put a message out to the site staff: no collecting items deposited in the containers. This is a council tip, not an opportunity to amass unwanted toys.
The Volvo bloke’s carrying the cardboard towards the wrong container. Imbecile. I fold the copy of the local newspaper on the article about another young adult going missing. ‘Excuse me, sir. That’s for non-recyclable waste.’
He turns to the half-open door of the cabin with a lost look. I step fully out, and zip up my fluorescent tabard. ‘Cardboard goes in number four. The one to your left.’
He’s staring at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
‘Number four,’ I repeat. ‘To your left – that’s the one for cardboard, sir.’
In the restricted-access area below us, the JCB revs its engine. The vehicle’s cabin has been raised up to its maximum height. The front of it is fi
tted with a long pair of hydraulic arms that clutch a cast-iron scoop. This allows the driver to reach over into the various containers and rake smooth the piles of debris within. But more often, he simply uses the heavy bucket like a pile-driver, smashing it down to compress everything inside.
The member of the public nods at number four. ‘This one, you say?’
A safe guess, I want to reply, judging by the three-foot-high sign marked with the word ‘cardboard’ attached to the front of it. I incline my head in agreement and he slings his armful of squashed boxes over the railing. They drop down into the container where, in due course, they’ll be battered lower by Rick, the JCB driver.
The vehicle approaches the waste-to-energy container and the scoop hits the mound of bin-liners that have built up in one corner. Plastic bursts and the shrivelled remains of carrots and potatoes tumble out. The bucket lifts and drops again, sending a chicken carcass scurrying down the slope. It comes to rest behind a fading bunch of carnations, as if it’s hiding there. The cloying smell of rotting fruit wafts up. Lorry will be here soon to ferry that lot to the incinerator at the borough’s main site.
I watch as Rick backs the JCB away. There shouldn’t be that silly registration plate propped up behind the vehicle’s windscreen. CD R1C. Not CD now, though. Not since I banned him from listening to music while working. Ear protectors? A valid item, perfectly permissible for a site such as this. Not earphones, though. That’s a safety hazard, plain and simple.
The JCB’s engine growls as he heads off to the container reserved for timber. The one for small household appliances looks a bit full, too. Get that collected first thing tomorrow morning.
The old Cortina passing under the height barrier at the entrance catches my eye. Hey up, it’s them again. Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. A right pair, these two. Quick glance at my watch: six fifty-five. Always the same. Seconds ahead of when the lorry arrives to take the waste-to-energy container away.
As I walk down the ramp to unlock the main gates in readiness for the lorry turning up, their battered old Cortina stops alongside the container for unwanted clothing. One bag goes in, but the flap isn’t able to close completely. Thing must need emptying, too.
Here comes the lorry, as I knew it would. ‘Evening, Harry,’ I say to the driver as he slows to a halt. ‘How’s things back at base?’
He gives me an awkward glance as I swing the gates open. ‘Same old, same old.’
As he steers the lorry towards the waste-to-energy container, I can see Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee standing at the railings above it. Even though one’s lost most of his black curls, they must be twins. The same jowelly-cheeks and squashed-out bottom lip. Sad, droopy eyes that are devoid of life. Open-mouth-breathers – that’s what Trevor, my ex-policeman friend, calls their type. Both are wearing hideous, cheap-looking leather jackets that end in thick elasticated waistbands. Shapeless jeans tucked into black wellington boots that are caked in manure, or something similar.
Every time they reach over to drop a shoebox-sized package into the container, the waistbands of their leather jackets ride up over their fat stomachs. Tugging them back down in unison, they turn to the boot of their car and repeat the process, avoiding eye-contact with me all the while. Something’s not right about them, I just know it.
The fruit machine lets out a burst of flashing light. Coins chunter into the tray. I look at the young man playing it and sigh. ‘Bloody thing. Why did Dave let them put it in?’
‘Brewery said so,’ Trevor replied. ‘Dave’s hands were tied.’
‘Well, even so. He could have insisted.’ I turn to my friend of over fifty years. Trevor and I schooled together. Two young lads in baggy shorts, our barm-cakes in snap-boxes over our shoulders.
I got a job with the council – or Corporation, as it was once known. Trevor went into the police. Rose to sergeant before retiring last year. Every Friday we meet for a pint, come rain or shine. You need routine in life. Everyone does.
I take a sip of Mild and adjust a beer mat before setting my glass down. ‘Another went missing this week, I see from the local paper.’
‘Another what?’ He sits back, a hand resting on each knee.
‘A lad. Or vulnerable young adult, as they like to call them. Which means one from that council care home in the town. It’s up near the old mill, apparently.’
Trevor is watching my hands. He has an uncomfortable expression on his face. I turn a beer mat over and study its underside. ‘That’s the second one in three months that’s vanished. Gone.’
‘Teenagers like that are always going missing. Dozens disappeared during my time in the job. They run away. We catch them and take them back. They run away again. It’s all a big game.’
‘I haven’t heard of these two being caught.’
Trevor sips on his beer and then passes a knuckle across his moustache, smearing a trace of foam into the bristles. ‘And your thoughts on this are?’
I stare down at my drink then reach across to the neighbouring table for a fresh beer mat. ‘There are these two men who turn up at the tip …’
‘The Glen Hill site?’
There’s an edge in his voice. I don’t need to glance up to know his right eye will have narrowed. ‘That’s correct. This pair, they always show last thing on a Friday. It’s like they wait out on the main road for the lorry that comes from the main processing site.’
‘From Shawcross?’
I nod. ‘Comes to pick up the waste-to-energy container. For the big incinerator they put in there last year.’
‘You told me all about it. Enormous thing.’
I lift my gaze. His arms are crossed and he’s examining the wall above me. ‘Well, anyway. They were there again today. Same routine. Just before the container’s winched onto the back of the lorry, they drop these packages in and are on their way.’
Trevor’s now staring directly at me. The corner of his eye twitches. ‘And?’
‘Last thing on a Friday, Trevor. That’s when staffing levels are at their lowest. Just me and the JCB driver by then – and as soon as the clock hits seven you can’t see him for dust. The main processing site will be the same.’
‘I’m struggling to see why you’re so concerned.’
‘They’re up to something. It’s not normal to have a regular routine for dropping off rubbish. Not domestic, anyway. The contents of that container will go direct into the incinerator – within hours, it’s ash. Nothing survives the temperature in that thing. Not even bones.’ I give him a meaningful look. ‘I know the lazy bunch at the main site won’t be inspecting it. Not last thing on a Friday. They’ll all be clock-watching.’
‘Peter, are you forgetting why you’re now supervising the Glen Hill site and not the main one at Shawcross?’
I feel my teeth clench. I knew he’d bring this up. ‘They were guilty. Just because I didn’t catch them red-handed—’
‘You accused your co-workers of taking backhanders. Formally accused them.’
‘And they were.’
‘But you weren’t able to produce any evidence. You hid yourself on that site for how many nights?’
I say nothing.
‘Not once did you witness them allowing commercial vehicles through. But you ignored me and went ahead with the accusation. Peter, if it wasn’t for your circumstances, you wouldn’t have got away with a formal—’
‘They were doing it!’
The young man at the fruit machine glances over, eyebrows raised. Behind the bar, Dave pauses in the act of hanging up a wine glass. I see a reflection of myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. My temples and cheekbones seem to stand out more sharply than I remember them. There’s a gap between the collar of my shirt and my neck. The knot of my tie looks too big. ‘They were doing it,’ I repeat more quietly, reaching to the next table for another beer mat.
‘Peter, are you … have you been …?’
‘Taking my blood pressure pills? Yes, thank you for asking. I have.’
; ‘You seem agitated. Was Dr Phillips happy with this latest lot when you last saw him?’
‘He was.’
‘It’s just that when you change medications, there can be side effects. I know with my brother’s blood pressure – when they tried him on a different one it triggered off all kinds of things. Itching, insomnia, all sorts …’
‘I’m fine, Trevor. I lost my wife, that’s all. She had the medical condition, not me.’ The pain of Linda suddenly going is back. ‘Would that it was me,’ I whisper, adjusting the mat’s position on the table.
Trevor places a hand across my forearm. ‘Peter?’
‘I’m fine.’
He doesn’t answer and I look up to see him regarding the table between us. At its centre are eight beer mats. I’ve arranged them in as near to a diamond-shape as possible. But I need a ninth to complete the pattern. There are no more on the next table. It frustrates me, the fact my arrangement is flawed.
Resignedly, Trevor lifts his drink and slides his mat over.
‘Thanks.’ I fit it into place and some of the tightness in my chest recedes.
Trevor clears his throat. ‘These two men who keep showing up. They’re concerning you because …?’
‘You could check with your old colleagues, couldn’t you? I noted down the registration of their vehicle.’
Trevor’s shoulders sag.
‘And there’s this,’ I continue, reaching under the bench to retrieve the plastic bag.
He sends an uneasy glance toward the bar. Dave is nowhere to be seen. ‘What’s in there?’
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