The Chop

by Graham Hurley

  I was leaving Doff’s groceries in a pile at the gate at the end of her drive when I heard a car coming. I thought at first it was Doff but it turned out to be a man in jeans and a T-shirt. He was very friendly. He had a foreign-sounding accent and he said his name was Dimitar. He looked young, younger than me. The first thing he did with the groceries was to find the Warka beer. That meant he was Polish. He offered me one but I said no because I don’t like beer. When I asked which part of Poland he came from he said nowhere. He wasn’t Polish at all. He was Bulgarian but liked Warka because he’d been in Poland once and drunk a lot.

  Nowadays, he said he worked in the factory over near Framlingham where they pack loads of stuff for the supermarkets. Before that he’d been sprout picking in the winter but he hated the job because it was so cold. When I asked about Doff and Mrs Bellamy he said that Mrs Bellamy was very old and spent all her time in bed and never came downstairs.

  Doff was his real friend. He’d met her in town. He’d been living in a terrible place with lots of other Bulgarians and she’d mentioned about Mrs Bellamy’s place, and how she needed someone to help with the old lady in the evenings (stuff it was hard to manage by herself), and in the end he’d got all his things and gone over there to live. He lived in a barn next to the farmhouse. The barn was made of really old wood which had come from the Spanish Armada when there was a big storm off the Suffolk coast and lots of the ships had got wrecked. He said the barn was full of rats and mice and little birds. He said that sometimes it was like living in a zoo.

  When I got back home, mum was looking especially happy. The supervisor from the supermarket had asked her out but in the end she’d said no because these days there’s nowhere to go. She pulled a bit of a face when she said this because she’s getting a bit fed up with so many people dying all the time. We watched the news together after tea. They might have to start closing some of the power stations because it’s dangerous just to have skeleton staffs. Skeleton staffs?

  Next day was a special day, thinking back, because next day was the beginning of when everything went wrong. The first thing that happened was a phone call from Gramps. He sounded out of breath. He said he needed a bit of help but wouldn’t say why. Mum was going to have a word but he rang off. I got on my trike.

  When I got to his cottage, the door was locked. I went round the back, looking in the windows, but I couldn’t see him. I was wondering about getting a ladder and climbing up to his bedroom window when my phone went. It was Gramps. He must have been watching me. He was hiding in the bit of wood up behind the cottage.

  There were loads of brambles and nettles and everything in that wood and I was stung all over by the time I found him. He’d made a little house for himself under a bush. He had some blankets, and a stove, and bread and milk and tea, and he’d dragged up the big tarpaulin he uses to keep the chopped logs dry in case it rains. I thought he’d gone potty to begin with, the way that old people do, but when I asked he said he’d never felt less potty in his life. It was at that point I saw the shotgun. It was half-hidden under a fold in the tarpaulin.

  “Bridgeman’s a gonner.” He said. “And about time too.”

  Gramps had been out with the gun, looking for rabbits. This was last night. He was over on the edges of another wood, about a mile from the cottage, when a couple of pheasants flew over. Gramps loves pheasant but he was slow getting the gun up and anyway the light wasn’t very good so he didn’t even pull the trigger. A couple of seconds later he heard another gun, really close, bang-bang, both barrels. Thinking he might get to the pheasants first, Gramps went into the wood. He didn’t find the pheasants but he did find Bridgeman. Bridgeman told Gramps he was trespassing.

  Gramps didn’t like the sound of that. He said the wood belonged to another farmer who didn’t mind him being there. Bridgeman just laughed. He said the other farmer had gone out of business. He kept thousands of chickens for the supermarkets but they’d all been slaughtered because of the virus and Bridgeman had just bought the wood for virtually nothing. Unless Gramps got off his land he’d call the police.

  Gramps said he wasn’t going anywhere until he got the truth about his pigeons. Bridgeman had shot them. Wasn’t that what had happened? Apparently Bridgeman said yes, then he started laughing again which was a bit of a mistake because Gramps did the same to him.

  Both barrels. Bang-bang. Chopped.

  At first, I thought Gramps was joking but then he reached under the tarpaulin and showed me Bridgeman’s shotgun. It was brand new. It must have cost loads.

  “So where is he, Gramps?”

  “Still in the wood. Where I shot him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Very. He was a big bloke, Bridgeman.” He pointed to his own chest. “You couldn’t miss.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone been to look for him?”

  “Maybe they have. Probably not, though, because he’s been living alone since his wife went. I just thought you might help out.”

  “How?”

  “We need to bury him. Get rid of him.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  Thursday nights I usually go to flower-arranging class, because mum loves flowers done a fancy way (especially roses), but these classes have all been cancelled because of the virus.

  Gramps said he had a spade. That time of year it got dark about nine. I could phone mum and say I was staying over at Gramps and then Gramps and I could go up to the wood a bit later and see about Bridgeman. I was still thinking about the spade and the size of the hole we’d need when I had an idea. Gramps was watching me.

  “Who are you phoning?”

  “A friend of mine. His name’s Elmore.”

  I asked Elmore about the Muslim he’d dug up at Bassington. Was the grave still open? Elmore said it was because he and Maddie had been on three bird poo jobs and these jobs had taken all day. I told him about Gramps, and about Bridgeman, and he was a bit iffy at first but then I thought of Gramps’ pickle jars – the ones he was going to use to buy the cottage – and after I offered to pay him with some of the money Gramps’ had saved up, Elmore agreed to put Bridgeman in with everyone else.

  Elmore came over a couple of hours later with his camper van. There was a track that went off the road and into the wood and Elmore was able to get quite close to where Gramps thought he’d killed Bridgeman. It was quite spooky in the wood and all we could see was Gramps’ torch. Then the torch stopped and Gramps gave his owl hoot (which sounds really good) and me and Elmore got out of the van to help him.

  Bridgeman was really heavy, and quite slippery in places. We dragged him through the wood and back to the van. Getting him into the van was quite tricky because it was full of all Elmore’s bird poo equipment but after we’d managed it Elmore came up with a brilliant idea.

  The thing about Elmore is he reads lots of books, especially thrillers and crime stuff. He said we ought to cover our tracks and he had just the thing. He messed around in the back for a while and then got out with a bucket. He said it was full of this really powerful disinfectant. It would hide all the blood and DNA and stuff we’d left in the woods and no one would ever know. Then he borrowed Gramps torch and walked off into the trees, the way we’d dragged Bridgeman, splashing all this disinfectant around.

  Gramps and I were still in the front of the van. When Gramps wanted to know what DNA was, I said I didn’t know (which is true because I don’t).

  When Elmore got back, we drove off. Gramps was in the back. We had Bridgeman hidden under a blanket, and Gramps was sitting on top. It’s about ten miles from the wood to Bassington church where Elmore had un-buried the white Muslim and we were nearly there when Elmore said there was a police car behind us. It had the blue lights going and after Elmore let it overtake a sign came on in the back of the police car telling us to stop.

  Two policemen got out. It was very dark. They both had torc
hes. Elmore wound down his window. That time of night, they wanted to know what we were doing. Elmore said about the bird poo jobs, and how one had been really tricky, lots of big bird poo, really dangerous stuff, full of the virus, and it was funny watching the policeman step back from the window.

  Then he shone his torch in the back of the van and asked about Gramps. Elmore looked at me and I said Gramps had been at the last house we’d done and as a favour we were taking him to hospital because he kept sneezing and stuff. This happened to be true. Gramps had been at the cottage all day, sneezing and coughing fit to bust.

  The policeman wanted to know whether we had vaccination certificates. Elmore showed his but said it was pretty useless because everyone knew the virus had mutated now that the Flu Czar had died. The policeman gave him one of those long looks. Then he nodded, and took all our names and addresses, and said it was OK for us to carry on.

  After the police car had gone, we got going again. We parked up by the church in Bassington and waited for at least an hour before getting out. It was very quiet around the church. It was a bit away from the village and there was a thick hedge around the graveyard. When we had a look at the grave Elmore had opened, it was perfect. There were the five coffins at the bottom of the hole and plenty of room for Bridgeman on top. We dragged him out of the van and dropped him in the hole. No one cared which way he faced, which I found a bit casual, but then we shovelled all Elmore’s earth back in and trod on the top to get it flat. When we’d finished, Elmore asked Gramps whether he was certain Bridgeman hadn’t been a Muslim. I think it was a joke but Gramps definitely didn’t get it.

  We went back to Elmore’s place that night because Gramps wasn’t keen on sleeping at his cottage. The police had the address and as soon as someone called them in about Bridgeman going missing, they might come round and give him a grilling. Gramps said he needed somewhere to keep his head down for a while.

  Elmore’s place is tiny so me and Gramps slept downstairs on the floor. Gramps snores a lot, which didn’t make it any easier, and as well as sneezing he began to wheeze. I got up at five o’clock and put the kettle on for tea, thinking where else Gramps could hide. It was when I was looking for the sugar (which Gramps likes a lot) that I had my next brainwave.

  I phoned Doff. Could she put Gramps up in the barn? She sounded a bit surprised to begin with, then said we ought to meet. I triked up to the farm. The old barn where Dimitar lived was on the right hand side before you got to the house. It was sagging in the middle, like someone had sat on it, but there were tiny windows in the side and Dimitar (or maybe Doff) had put red curtains up and from the outside it looked quite cozy.

  Doff met me outside the house. She wasn’t wearing a mask and neither was I because it gets in the way on the trike, especially on hills or against the wind. When I asked again about Gramps, she put her hand on my arm.

  “He’s really your Grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s in some kind of trouble?”

  “A bit.”

  “No problem. You’ve been kind to me. These days, that matters.”

  She said that Gramps was welcome to move into the barn for a while. Maybe I could help sort things out. She had a spare bed in the house and a pair of pyjamas that had once belonged to Mrs Bellamy’s husband. We carried the bed across to the barn and she went off to look for blankets and sheets and stuff.

  The inside of the barn was brilliant. There were bales of hay up at one end and all kinds of old farm stuff hanging on the wall. I looked very hard but I couldn’t see any rats or mice but maybe they only came out at night.

  Dimitar lived at the other end of the barn. He’d hung sheets across to make a kind of wall. There was coconut matting on the floor, and a chest of drawers, and a table to eat from, and a pile of paperback books in a funny language, and a big wardrobe where he kept his clothes. There were bits of candles on saucers everywhere and a couple of cats asleep on his bed, which explained all those tins of Munchy Morsels.

  Doff said Dimitar was a kind of refugee, a bit like her. He’d come into the country hanging onto the underneath of a lorry, which doesn’t sound at all right. The cats belonged to Dimitar and had Bulgarian names. I won’t even try and write them.

  “So when can Gramps move in?” I asked.

  Elmore drove Gramps over that same evening. I could tell he loved the barn. Doff had made it really nice since I left and he had a whole bit to himself. He said he was a bit tired after helping bury Bridgeman and he lay on his bed while I told him about mum and the supervisor at the supermarket who was so keen on her and it was nearly dark before I realised that Gramps was asleep.

  It was true. There were lots of mice in that barn. If you were really quiet you could hear them up the other end, snuffling around in the hay. For a while I did my best to point the cats at them but then I realised that all the Munchy Morsels had made them really lazy. It’s the same with our cat at home. She gets one tin a day (not Munchy Morsels) and afterwards she’s always asleep.

  Dimitar came home from work just before I left. I was going to introduce Gramps but he was still asleep. I think it was at this point that I realised that something had gone wrong with his breathing. It was like he had bubbles in his throat. I didn’t say anything because Gramps often got a bit of a chest but I know Dimitar noticed because he said he’d keep an eye on him. This worried me a bit. It didn’t seem fair to Dimitar if Gramps was sick with the virus. Then I had another brainwave. Why shouldn’t Dimitar stay at Gramps’ cottage?

  I put this brainwave to Doff. Just in case there was something really wrong with Gramps, it would be better for Dimitar not to be so close. She thought about it, then said she needed Dimitar around to help in the house sometimes. In that case, I said I’d be Dimitar.

  Doff agreed. She drove Dimitar across to the cottage and when she came back I helped her with Mrs Bellamy. She was really old and lived in a huge bed in a panelled room with a lovely view from the window. She was a tiny woman with a nice smile and I helped Doff turn her in the bed and do some other things to make her comfortable.

  Mrs Bellamy wore a little hat that Doff had knitted specially and afterwards I fed her barley soup from a little silver spoon. Mrs Bellamy had no teeth but she liked bread soaked in the soup. I wasn’t very good with the spoon at first and soup kept spilling down her front but she didn’t seem to mind. Doff made me an omlette afterwards and it took me until next day to wonder where she got the eggs.

  By then, Gramps had woken up. He seemed a bit better, though he said he had a pain in his chest. I made him some tea from the stuff Dimitar had left and Doff gave me half a loaf of bread that was still warm from the oven. She asked me about Gramps and when I said about the pain in his chest and all the wheezing she gave me a funny look and said it was better that I didn’t come in the house any more, just in case. I was going to ask how she’d get on with all the heavy jobs without me but I didn’t get the chance because she’d run indoors.

  I put butter on the bread and Gramps smiled when it went all gooey. He didn’t eat very much of it but he said it tasted nice, like the proper bread he used to get in the olden days. I borrowed one of Dimitar’s chairs and sat by Gramps’ bed all morning while he told me a bit more about the way things had been when he was young.

  For instance, how they all used to eat just bread and jam and potatoes and swedes. And how he started working in the fields as a stone picker for something called two shillings a day. After that he said he used to pull up dock weeds with his three sisters and later, when he was older, he used to take the cattle to market in Ipswich. Ipswich is nearly twenty miles from here, which is a long way, and then he had to walk back. All this time he didn’t once mention Bridgeman and getting stopped by the police and getting rid of the body afterwards. Thinking back, I think he must have forgotten.

  Much later that day Gramps started getting bad again. He said his throat was ver
y sore and that he couldn’t breath properly. I thought about phoning the Flu Hot Line to check about whether he might have the virus but I hadn’t got much money left on my mobile and I thought I ought to phone Mum first. I told her what had happened, and how Gramps was, and she sounded really worried. They’ve got a system now where you can call a nurse out, because there aren’t enough doctors to go round, but I told her I’d already asked Doff about a nurse and she wasn’t keen because of Dimitar’s stuff still being in the barn, and him being illegal. In the end Mum said she’d come out herself first thing tomorrow if he was still bad.

  That night, I started getting really worried. The wind was blowing stuff around in the yard and I went outside to where my trike was and rummaged around in the little box where I keep my prayer flags and found the one I keep specially for when things get serious. It’s called The Victorious Banner. It’s got lots of writing on it and sometimes I think it’s a bit muddly, but Maddie swears by it. She says the writing is to protect against really bad stuff. I phoned her to check if that included the virus and she said yes so I tied it to the pole and put the trike out in the open where the wind was blowing hardest. Then I went back to Gramps and lit a couple more candles.

  Gramps’ breathing seemed a bit better. I sat on his bed and stroked his hand very softly so as not to wake him up but after a while he suddenly pushed back the blankets and got out of bed. I tried to stop him but he was really strong. He was trying to find his trousers. When I asked what the matter was he said the moles were back.

  Ever since he broke his ankle, Gramps has always hated moles. They make tunnels under his little lawn in front of the cottage. One time he got a load of empty beer bottles and buried them in a kind of slanting position with only the necks of the bottles showing, all pointing the same way. When I asked him why, he said they all pointed west to catch the wind, and when the wind blew the bottles made a special noise that makes the moles go crazy. When that happens, they all climb out of their tunnels and then Gramps does the rest. He has a big old stick and he chases them round the lawn. As soon as he’d found his trousers, he was off to kill some more.