Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2)
Page 26
I put the goggles on, whipped the protective cover off the blade and started her up. The engine spluttered into life, chug-chug-chug, the blade all still and quiet, like it was asleep. I held it up, the sun shining on the blade, the cutters sparkling like a lady’s jewels, then squeezed the trigger. The saw jerked in my hand, a blade spitting out a thick shot of oil, like he’d just had his bollocks squeezed. A little gasp went out. It was like those sex shows they used to have in Denmark. Everyone’s been waiting to see me take it out and wave it about, and there I was, doing just that. It was a big bugger too.
They sat forward, not knowing what to look at, the chainsaw or me. They wanted to see me prance about with that thing in my hand but they also wanted to see it get to work, work its wonder on that motionless block underneath, watch it turn something plain and ordinary and lifeless into something beautiful and alive and bursting through. Just like it had happened to them, when they were once alive and beautiful and bursting through.
I started off. It wasn’t difficult. I’d done it hundreds of times, do the rough shape of the body first, cut in deep before sweeping out for the fins, then work the tail, leaving the head and the all-important mouth until the end. To tell the truth, that afternoon my mind wasn’t strictly on the business in hand. Becky behind the bar didn’t care for Johnny much, not after his wife showed up at their wedding, but he was a tricky customer. Give him time, and there was no telling what he’d get her to do. Consequently I was in a bit of a hurry. Fifteen minutes in and I was smoothing out the dome of chummy’s head. Plenty of material left for the mouth and whatever she wanted poking out.
‘What do you say to a nice pair of Gerald’s legs?’ I said. Mrs Durand-Deacon rattled her head again.
‘Head and shoulders,’ she said. ‘Eyes wide open if you can. I want him to suffer to the very end.’
I swung the chainsaw in the air and locked the trigger down so that the blade was running free. Ten minutes and we’d have Gerald over the side, and I could get back to the tournament.
‘The head it is Mrs D-D. It might not be a true likeness you understand, considering I never set eyes on him.’
‘I got a photo,’ she shouted.
Then it happened.
A little wind came up from nowhere, like they do when you’re at sea, without any warning. A sudden squall, they call it. Not a cloud in the sky, not a ripple on the water, but there it was there, up from nowhere, fluttering the deck chairs and the sunhats, rolling my can of beer onto its side, and lifting that newspaper from Mrs Durand-Deacon’s lap, sending it sailing across, its pages flapping like a young swan what’s just learnt to fly. Over it came, landing slap on the shark’s head, covering it like a shroud, like there was a mystery on him. I raised the chainsaw high in the air and put my left hand out to peel it off. Then I saw it, the photograph, spread all over the inside page, staring out at me. I wasn’t ready for that. Nor for the headline underneath. I put my hand on it to hold the paper steady and stepped forward to read up close. I’d forgotten about the chainsaw, forgotten it was screaming in my hand. I couldn’t hear anything save the blood pounding in my head. It was then I let the tip of the chainsaw drop, not much, just enough for the blade to catch the handle of the fire extinguisher and for the whole caboodle to whip up out of my hand, and fall, spinning blue murder, onto the deck.
I don’t know how many of you have experienced a chainsaw running amok on a highly polished surface, but it’s a bit like those old jumping-jacks fireworks I used to play with as a kiddie on bonfire night. Marvellous fun they were. Light the touch paper, chuck them in on a bus, a supermarket queue, even a doctor’s waiting room and BANG-BANG-BANG. Watch everyone jump out the way. No one was safe. Every which-way they went, first one way, then another. The chainsaw was like that, only with a revolving set of teeth. It chomped through one of the legs of the nearside trestle, then made a bee-line for the deckchairs. Christ those women didn’t half hop up on their feet quick. Just as well, cause those deckchairs were like matchsticks to a machine of that calibre. They were good at jumping though, the old dears. I guess all that skipping they must have done in the playground all those years back was finally paying off.
And then, the chainsaw did a funny thing. It seemed to set its eye on Mrs Durand-Deacon. It sounds ridiculous I know, cause it was only a lump of non-sentient metal, but believe it or not, there it was. It was like I was up on the farm watching Stan Colley’s collie single out one of his sheep. Whichever way she went the saw followed her, right, left, back, forwards, it just wouldn’t let her alone. If she tried to go right it would lunge left, if she feinted left it would leap to the right, cutting off her escape routes, forcing her back onto the railings. Emily began screaming at me to catch it, do something, but being an artist herself, she should have understood my hesitation. I mean, our hands are our livelihood, right? Closer and closer it got, until Mrs Durand-Deacon was pressed up again the railings, unable to move, the blade weaving backwards and forwards ready for the kill. It was going to chew her feet off, clear as daylight.
It paused for a moment, like a snake ready for the lunge. We held our breath. The whole deck held its breath, the ship balanced on the crest of a wave. It could stayed there forever. Then it lurched forward. Mrs Durand-Deacon did the only thing left to her. She put her hand on the railing and vaulted clean over the side, arm straight, body parallel, legs out. Bloody perfect. The chainsaw sank its teeth into the metal rail stanchion, spluttered and died.
Em and I ran over. Mrs Durand-Deacon was a quarter of a mile away, thrashing about in our wake. Someone at the far end of the pool had chucked her a lifebelt. A klaxon had gone off. The ship was slowing down. I held onto the railing, shaking like a leaf.
‘It’s all right,’ Emily was saying. ‘We’re turning back.’
‘What do you mean, “It’s all right”?’ I walked her back to the shark. The newspaper was still stuck to its face.
‘See that picture there?’ I said. ‘That’s my first wife, Audrey.’
Em looked at me. It was the only thing we’d disagreed on the three and half years, the marriage thing.
‘How many wives have you had Al?’ she said,
‘OK. OK. My only wife. See the headline underneath? Go on read it.’
She read it, out loud.
LOVE CHILD KILLER ESCAPES FROM PRISON
‘Crikey,’ she said.
‘Crikey indeed, my own. Give us the rest then. I’m having difficulty seeing straight.’ She smoothed the paper down.
Audrey Cutlass, formerly Audrey Greenwood, sentenced to twenty years four years ago for murdering her husband’s love child has escaped from an open prison in Hertfordshire, it was confirmed today. Police warn the public not to have a go.
‘Crikey’ she said again.
‘With bells on,’ I said. ‘You better tell Johnny I concede the match. I need to lie down.’
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There were still some loose ends in Fish Tale, some unanswered questions. Al wasn’t finished with me yet. So there had to be Book Three. It’s called, Ship Ahoy! Look out for it.
Al has a new life. Part of the year he works on a cruise ship with his new love. Back on dry land he makes sculptures with a chain saw, while she paints quaint pictures of fishing boats and fishermen. Peace reigns. Nothing can go wrong. Then he reads the latest newspaper headline; Audrey has escaped from jail. Life is about to bite back.
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nbsp; Hope you liked the first two, hope you like the third. If you feel like writing a review, that would be great. And if you really, really like, tell your friends. They deserve a laugh.
Thanks.
T.J. Middleton is the pen name of Tim Binding, acclaimed author of In the Kingdom of Air, A Perfect Execution, Island Madness, On Ilkley Moor, Anthem, Man Overboard, and The Champion. He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
A publisher for over thirty years, Tim Binding was Editorial Director of Picador, one of Britain’s leading publishing house (where he introduced their now famous hardback imprint) and then from 1986-89 was appointed Editorial Director of Penguin and Chief Fiction Editor for Viking. After a gap of ten years, when he wrote his first three novels, he was asked by Ian Chapman to help start up the UK arm of Simon and Schuster, one of America’s largest publishers. He worked there for three years, and while there worked closely with the late Robin Cook on the publication of his diaries Point of Departure.
He now works for Peters Fraser + Dunlop in an editorial capacity, and has been responsible for a number of worldwide bestselling books, most notable 33 Miners, the story of the Chilean miners. He has enormous editorial experience, working with the widest range of authors. In his time he has worked with Booker Prize-winning novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Hilary Mantel; travel writers such as Mark Tully and Jonathan Raban, Grant Naylor; authors of the bestselling science fiction series Red Dwarf; and published Simon Nye’s Men Behaving Badly before it became a smash TV hit. He also wrote with Simon The Last Salute, a TV sitcom which ran for two series on BBC1 featuring a 1960s AA patrol team. He also unwittingly helped write Bob Dylan’s blurb for his masterful autobiography, No Direction Home, of which he is inordinately proud.
If you’d like to hear more from T.J. Middleton, follow him on twitter, @TimBindingBooks, or check out his website – www.tjmiddleton.com
This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © T.J. Middleton, 2010
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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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