It’s getting into my personal space now.
Tch. No consideration.
Then again, imagine minding your own business in some lush, damp forestville paradise when Brackett’s shady associates snatch you up as part of their floral supply network.
Etty had explained the deal.
Every couple of weeks a truck pulls up on a Friday evening and drops off a load of extra special delivery. We get to hang out late and make sure everything is in order, so the select, discerning customers get exactly what they need.
Oh, and we dispose of any unwanted travellers that might have made the journey.
If we can sell them to a suitable dealer no-questions-asked, it’s all to the good, right?
Which is where the special-overtime-event known as Friday Club comes in.
It’s why I’m standing waving my bucket and spade while a spider taunts me.
“We’ve not got all night,” Chas says.
“We do, in fact, have all night,” Kelvin points out.
Let’s do this, I think.
I want to move but my leaden feet won’t let me. It’s much harder than it looks to take that first big step. One booted foot at a time.
No more messing around.
“Let’s have you,” I say—a little too loud—and then I reach for the spider.
BRACKETT’S IS AN odd place.
I get that now.
I mean, pretty clear even at interview stage that things weren’t totally on the up, yeah? Not to mention meeting that nutter in the basement right after—Connor Loan, his name turned out to be; very sketchy round the edges that one. The others call him Clone; he doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t think he minds anything except for plants.
Took turning up on the first day to get the full effect, though. Took being around for a few weeks to get the measure of everything.
Even the journey in on day one was a revelation.
Taxi driver—call me Danny—took a while get his bearings. This place is a former business park at the far edge of town, but you’d think you’d embarked on an expedition to the fringes of the known world.
Still, the longer trip gave him a chance to explain the ins-and-outs of local history, didn’t it?
“Lot of roads blocked off,” he’d told me. “Built over, churned under, what have you. Follow me?”
What might have been new-build in the late ’seventies slid past as he drove down another bleak stretch of broken concrete roadway.
“Warehousing, store-rooms, workshops, even a cluster of those little art-sheds for creative sorts to carve dogs out of cheese or knit jumpers from their own hair. It’s all here. Or used to be here, anyways.”
I leaned forward. “Dogs made of—”
He looked at me and shrugged. “Modern arts, eh. Fuck is that?”
The seat belt strained against my shoulder as he hit the brakes again.
“Sat nav’s a bugger,” Danny said. “Scraping a single bar on the phone. You’d think this wide openness would help? You’d be wrong, though.”
Danny leaned forward over the steering wheel. “This looks well off-beam for a start. I need to back her out a bit.”
He stuck his arm over the seatback, staring past my head and out the rear window as he reversed the car too fast, one-handed up the road.
I tried to keep out of his eyeline, not that he seemed to be paying much attention.
“An airfield, once upon a time,” he told me. “During the war. Fighter Command. Canadian and Polish officers, I think. Lot of the old buildings dotted around that place you’re working at. Buried lumps of reinforced concrete all over the show; devil’s job digging that out, right? All just left behind, isn’t it, layer on layer.”
I nod, clutching my messenger bag, knuckles white, and hope he doesn’t regard it as a slur on his abilities.
Danny faced forward again as he swerved the car round in a fast turn, almost throwing me against the door.
“You not drive yourself, then? Or can’t afford a car, is it?”
I remembered my last time in the driver’s seat. Upside down. Under the water.
“Cars,” I started. “Not my thing...”
“Prison,” said Danny.
Avoided by the skin of my teeth, thanks very much.
“Some super-secret-prison in this very area, is what I heard. Post-war Air Force stuff, yeah? Who knows the truth of any of that? You hear all sorts down the boozer, don’t you?”
We seemed to be heading in the right direction.
“Almost there,” Danny said. “I’ve knocked the meter off. Charge the usual rate, least I can do, isn’t it? You’ll go broke doing this trip every day, mate. You want to get a car.”
He made a sound like strangling a cat. Turned out he was laughing. “Look at me, eh? Talking myself out of a fare, aren’t I? Muppet.”
More strangle-cat noises.
“Total muppet.”
Another few hundred yards of silence and Danny starts up again.
“All that out-of-town shopping stuff followed on, didn’t it? All shiny bright and new, all of them waiting for the next crash. Property collapse, dot-com apocalypse, always on the cards, wasn’t it? You never know what’s coming next. But it’s always something. Mark my words”—he tapped the steering wheel for emphasis—“it’s always something.”
“There’s a cycle of things,” I answered. “Ebb and flow, boom and bust.”
“Exactly,” Danny said. “Exactly that. Good to have a sensible passenger for a change. Average day I don’t hear two words from one end of a journey to the next. I miss the opportunity for intelligent discussion.”
It doesn’t feel much like a conversation, if I’m honest. More like he’s chairing a meeting.
“And here we are.”
I look around; middle of concrete nowhere.
“In a general sense,” Danny added. “It’s symbolic, isn’t it?”
Is it?
Danny remained silent, even as we turned onto the final straight.
I started to wonder if he had a rolling flywheel deep inside his body, some mechanism that gathered momentum until—switch flipped, gears engaged—his words ran out and on and on until the wheel ran down. Peaks and troughs. Ebb and flow.
“The decline of the capitalist dream,” Danny announced. “Written in mouldy cement and broken glass. That’ll be a tenner, thanks.”
4
“FEAR ME, SPIDERS,” I’m shouting. “For I am your god.”
Etty gives me a look. “Seriously?”
“Getting into the spirit,” I say. I set the cycle helmet and kid’s spade to one side. “Gets the blood up, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Etty replies. “Shoving helpless creatures into tiny containers is real primal stuff.”
I’ve captured five. Arranged a pyramid of buckets at one side of the makeshift arena. A monument to my glory.
“Well, when you put it like that—”
“Contact right,” Jost calls out.
“What the fucking hell is that?” says Chas.
“Yeah,” I turn to look at Jost. “What’s that mean?”
“No,” Chas continues, pointing now. “What. The. Actual. Fuck.”
I turn and look.
I wish I hadn’t.
This thing runs at me and I turn and stumble; clatter of hollow plastic, thump of compost bags sliding from makeshift stacks.
“Awesome,” Kelvin is saying. “This is incredible.”
It’s a beetle. Solid, shining black body and legs as thick as liquorice whips.
It’s the fuck-off-biggest beetle I’ve ever encountered. I’ve seen smaller rats.
“Titan beetle,” Kelvin says softly. “Titanus giganteus.”
Jost: “You want me to stomp it?”
“No,” Kelvin shouts. “Absolutely not. It is rare. Beautiful.”
Chas is clambering over the tumbled arena wall with a shovel. “Give it here.”
“Expensive,” Kelvin says. “Did I mention expensi
ve?”
Chas lowers the shovel. “You should have led with that.”
Everyone looks at me. It’s uncomfortable.
The Titan beetle is motoring around the arena floor, searching for an exit.
Chas grabs a spare bucket.
“Millsy. Pick that up and stuff it in here.”
I hear myself saying “Why me?” and marvel at how whiny it sounds.
“You’re the one wearing the gloves, hero.”
“Fair point.”
I’m not squeamish. This is an easy job. To be honest, it seems to have crossed some weird uncanny valley thing but in the opposite direction. The beetle looks ludicrous, fake. If it was smaller I’d worry more, I think; it would look less like a kid’s toy.
I remember the briefing. Scoop—and it wriggles like one of those grip-strengthening gizmos, and then hisses like it’s not happy—and drop.
It thunks into the bottom of the bucket like a stone dropped off a roof.
“Less challenging than expected,” I say.
Etty says, “Maybe this’ll do it for you.”
I look over; look at where she’s pointing, down…
That hollow plastic sound I heard when I’d stumbled away from the nightmare beetle?
That was me kicking over the arranged-with-care stack of buckets.
The pyramid is down, the spiders are loose. All that work undone by my own clumsy feet.
I sigh.
It’s a tough life being a god.
“I’M STAMPING THEM out,” Chas says.
“Keep them contained,” Jost offers. “Set the tempo. Take the battle to them.”
Kelvin is down on her knees piling heavy bags back in place. “Help me build up the barrier.”
Etty steps in quick, grabs a spider bare-handed. Places it in the nearest bucket—slow and delicate—and closes the lid down tight.
Everyone stares. A moment of shocked silence.
The other spiders run wild.
“Everyone gets a brush,” I tell them. “If you see something eight-legged, persuade it my way and I’ll take care of them.”
They grab brushes off the rack and move in a circle around me, closing in as I scan for errant spiderkind.
Teamwork.
I get one making a dash for the arena wall.
Into an empty bucket with it and back for more.
Another. Then a third.
“Wasn’t there one more?”
I look around my feet. No sign. The brushes are sweeping back and forth; there’s no escape that way.
“I was sure there were five. Did one of them stay hiding when the buckets rolled over?”
I’m not seeing it.
Chas coughs, gestures at my feet.
I’m still seeing nothing.
I shrug my shoulders. “What?”
“Take another look,” Kelvin says.
Okay. Nothing on the floor. I don’t get—
Oh.
There it is—perched on top of my left boot; pretending to be black laces and complex knots—the final spider.
“Clever girl,” I say, and then I prise the spider off and place it in a bucket.
Etty helps me arrange the stack in a slightly-less-likely-to-fall-down format.
“That was impressive,” I tell her. “Picking it up bare-handed.”
Etty shrugs. “I have a wee pet tarantula at home. They’re no’ scary at all. Nothing to it.”
“So why was I the one catching them in the first place?”
“Simple,” Etty says. “Your turn.”
5
LATER ON THE Friday night, when the fighting’s done and Man—mostly me—is victorious, Etty and I are sitting at the edge of the arena, dealing with the night’s haul.
“Air holes,” Kelvin calls across from the party area by the fake pool. She raises a tall glass of green liquid and blue umbrellas. “Dead spiders are cheap.”
Clink of glasses as the others make it a toast.
—dead spiders
—going cheap
I’m applying more tape to a spider containment—seriously, the red plastic buckets have SPIDER CONTAINMENT written on one side in Kelvin’s super-neat black script—then poking tiny holes with a pen. Getting it ready for shipping out to who-knows-where.
“How you holding up?” Etty asks me.
Good question.
Etty knows the score. Halfway through week one at Brackett’s, I’m standing outside in the rain, looking at my mobile. Not sure how long I’m standing there. If I hold my palm flat and just right, not too many rain drops hit the screen. I had to tap it now and then to stop it going dark. Tap-tap. Staring at the happy-smiley face of Jennifer under glass. I could just call and say—
“There’s no point.”
I looked up and Etty’s right there in the doorway; sneaky cigarette cupped in her left hand, right hand pushing hair back from her face.
“I can try,” I told Etty. “I mean, yes, I’ve done some bad and stupid things, but we spent two-nearly-three good years together, didn’t we? Goodish, ups and downs, you know? I think that means something. I think that’s worth another chance, don’t you? It all can’t end because—”
“Reception is shit,” Etty had said, and pointed to my phone.
Not at all awkward.
FRIDAY NIGHT, SURROUNDED by captive spiderkind, Etty says, “You look happier at least. More alive?”
I can’t figure out what to say to that.
“Chas,” Etty shouts past me. “You’re up.”
He sets his diet cola down and hustles over.
“Taxi for Boris,” he says, taking hold of the nearest bucket.
Looks at our blank faces.
“Boris. Spiders. It’s a thing,” he insists.
Still nothing.
Chas points a thumb back towards Kelvin. “Do I have to call in Special K?”
Etty waves him down. “No need, Chas,” she says. “We believe you. Don’t we, Miller?”
I nod my head, looking sincere.
“I’m not feeling the trust,” Chas replies.
I thump a closed fist against my chest. “It’s there, bro’. It’s there.”
Chas frowns. “Don’t call me bro’,” he says, gathers up the remaining buckets and plods off.
“He does that a lot, doesn’t he?” I say.
Etty apes a broad shouldered, wide-stance clumping gait. “The sour-Chas stomp, you mean?”
“That’s the one. Makes a bold statement and leaves in a dramatic manner.”
Etty mimics the stomp-stomp-stomp. “I’m no’ saying it’s his signature move or nothing,” she says, “but he does pull it out a couple of times a week.”
“Pulls what out?” Chas asks.
He’s rounding the corner past shelves of ceramic pots, still holding the buckets of spiders.
Etty shifts her mime into a faux-yawn and stretch. “Tough day,” she says, giving me a wink.
Very smooth.
I nod. “Hey, Chas. Weren’t you—”
“More importantly,” Etty says. “What you doin’ back already? You’ve not even got out the door.”
Chas stops. Thinks that one over. “Oh, yeah,” he says eventually. “The boss is here.”
“Fuck,” says Etty.
BRACKETT SWANS IN, with a young woman clutching his arm.
He’d loitered in the carpark for a good five minutes before that—marching up and down and yapping away on the phone, Jost said, whilst his companion waited in the Jag. Good of him to give us time to get the place tidied up.
Squared away, Jost calls it.
Meaning: all the drinks and snacks are dumped into an insulated picnic cooler (£23.99, Camping and Caravans department) and shoved behind the fake hedging by the shed.
I’m moving things on the counter of station two.
Etty’s up front checking a till roll at station one.
Jost and Kelvin are stacking the exotics onto the transporter and wheeling them back to the storage area fo
r Clone to deal with.
“Good to see my people keeping busy,” Brackett says on the way past. “Hives of industry.”
His lady friend giggles, though I’m not sure why.
Another minute and both of them are through the staff-only doors and away—I presume—to Brackett’s office.
“Odd time for an interview,” says Etty, leaning at my counter now. She makes a show of checking her watch.
I’m surprised she even has a watch, what with mobiles and everything. Maybe it’s part of the retro-goth-whatever vibe.
I look at the read-out on the cash register. “Gone half-two in the morning now,” I say. “Clubs are well closed.”
“I expect there are some details he wants to go over,” says Etty.
“That must be it.”
“Nothing wrong with bein’ thorough.”
“Does this happen often?” I ask her. I’ve been here just over a month and this was a first. Then again, it’s also my first Friday Club, so what do I know?
Etty stands straighter, shrugs. “Now and again. Likes to bring his very-particulars back for some in-depth aptitude testing, doesn’t he? Never the same woman twice, though.”
“And Mrs Brackett...”
I’d got the impression one existed, knew very little beyond that.
“None the wiser,” Etty tells me. “Or maybe she couldnae give a shit.”
Tap-tap of black-painted nails on the laminate counter top. “You get it all second hand, don’t you? Overheard convos, peeking through curtains, listening at doors. That’s metaphorical, right; I’ve no’ got an actual eye to the keyhole...”
I nod to reassure her.
Etty says, “I had an auld bloke come in here—good few months back, this was—big sour look on his coupon. Asking sleek and sly-dog questions, he was, about how to kill an oak tree in his neighbour’s garden.”
“He what?”
“I know,” Etty went on. “Wanted to make it ‘look like an accident.’” She throws air-quotes up at the last part. “Exact words.”
“A joke, maybe?”
“Dead serious, this one. And what I’m saying is: what series of events leads to making that kind of decision? How does that become the obvious solution to the problem?”
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