by C. J. Skuse
I can’t be the only one who feels this way about taking life. Everyone has their madwoman in the attic, don’t they?
Daisy was positively buzzing when she came back from the quarry after lunch.
‘Why did you go up there?’ I asked, floating past her to put some black pieces of paper in the file behind her desk. ‘I thought Claudia and Paul were covering it?’
‘Oh, my god, Rhee, I had to. It’s him again! It’s The Reaper. He killed those men in the quarry. It’s the same place where they found Julia Kidner!’
I have to admit I was a little disappointed she’d gone with The Reaper as a moniker. ‘Is that what you’re calling him? The Reaper?’
‘Yeah. I talked it through with Linus and Claudia and they said it fits the area quite well. You know, with all the farms around here. A reaper harvests…’
‘Yeah, I know what a reaper is,’ I said, slamming the filing cabinet drawer. ‘Have the police confirmed it was him then?’
‘They don’t have to, I know it was! It’s a midnight-blue Ford Transit, part-registration BTY. There were two guys in it – they’re going to need dental records to identify them but I KNOW it’s them!’
‘The same ones doing all those rapes you mean?’
‘YES!’
‘Oh, my goodness, Daisy, that’s AWESOME! You totally called this, girl!’
‘I know! God, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? I mean, he’s targeting sex offenders. It’s sort of… I don’t know, like, reassuring in a way. Still horrible and ghastly how he’s doing it – the quarry foreman reckons at least one of them bled right out before he was put in the van – but wow. What a guy, eh?’
‘Totally. What a guy.’
She had the same look on her face Michelle Pfeiffer has at the end of Grease 2 when she’s looking up at the ghost of her mystical motorcyclist.
‘You fancy him a bit, don’t you?’
‘The Reaper? Don’t be daft! No, of course not.’
‘Yes, you do,’ I sing-songed. ‘You’ve got the hots for this fly-by-night do-good pest controller.’
Her face changed. ‘Well, it remains to be seen if he raped that poor Julia Kidner woman, doesn’t it? But if he hasn’t and he really is doing what I think he’s doing and cleaning up the streets of rapists and kiddy fiddlers, well, then, yes, I think you can put me down as being a little bit in awe of the guy.’
We sniggered and giggled like two Beliebers and I made her a ‘celebratory coffee’ for being such a gosh-darnit mega-good journalist.
Small boo-boo though. We were just talking and Daisy was getting excited about potential journalism prizes and promotions and I was sitting there listening to her dribble on when suddenly she reached out and hugged me in thanks for listening to all her theories on the subject. Why do people feel the need to hug me so much lately? Who am I? Huggy Bear? Anyway, she hugged and I winced. Loudly.
‘Oh, my God, what?’ she said, recoiling in horror.
‘Sorry. I… played netball the other night and fell arse over tit. Got a really tender face.’
She looked me up and down.
‘Yeah, that’s why I’ve got so much make-up on today.’
‘I didn’t know you played netball?’
‘Yeah, most weeks.’
‘Which team?’
I raced my mind through the last few months of copy I’d had to type up for Jeff. ‘Just a local ladies’ side. We meet on a Wednesday night.’
‘Oh, right. What position are you?’
‘Wing Attack.’
Her face said it all. She was putting things together, working things out, weighing things up. And what it amounted to was that, though my lie was comparatively little, she did not believe it.
Clever girl, I thought in a Bob-Peck-seeing-the-velociraptors-kinda-way as I sipped my latte. Clever, clever girl.
At the library, all the staff were either out the back seeing to a late delivery or milling about in the stacks. There was a fairly cute guy I’d seen with a lanyard on saying TRAINEE and it crossed my mind to inveigle him into my affections so I could snag the address.
‘Oh, hi, my granddad dropped his library card in here, has it been handed in at all? Yeah, his name’s Derek Scudd. Can I just check you’ve got the right address on your system because he moved recently…’ Pauses to bat lashes.
But again, too risky. If I ever did find out where Scudd lived, I did not want any kind of trail back to me and that included Hot Library Guy, who could tell the police I’d been asking for his address. No trail – that was the rule.
I finally know how those fan girls feel when they’re waiting for their fictional beloveds to come through Arrivals at Heathrow, screaming and holding placards and Sharpies out for some kind of contact. Any kind of contact. Even if the guys just spit in their faces. At that age, you just want to frame the spit.
Or do you? I am brain-damaged. It’s possible that I’m just talking shite.
Saturday, 13 April
1.Women who wear bodycon dresses
2.The old woman who stood in front of the chickpeas in Asda today and hadn’t moved by the time I’d come back from Sweets and Biscuits. And she didn’t even buy any arsing beans!
3.People who cough incessantly without leaving the room/restaurant/cinema/planet
4.People over twenty-one who say ‘amazeballs’, ‘totes’ and ‘totes amazeballs’
5.People over ten who do cosplay – did you bump your head when you fell into your nursery school dressing-up box or something?
6.Mrs Whittaker – our new jar of Nutella has gone walkies
Me and Craig had quite a nice day today. I took Tink out in the morning over to Victory Park – no blood on the path any more – then did some shopping in town. Bought some bath bombs in Lush, some proper coffee (Craig had bought the cheap shit again) and I almost bought a clown fish in the pet shop – a black-and-white version of Nemo. I was going to call him Jeremy. In the end, Craig talked me out of it. ‘Tropical fish tanks are well expensive and they need special food and blah blah blah blah.’ Plus, the guy behind the till had coke nails and his hair stank of cheese.
The local daily is all over the van in the quarry story. They’re calling it a double homicide and appealing for witnesses. A mugshot has flashed up of a man – definitely a man – wearing all black with a face scarf over his jaw. I don’t know where they got that idea from. There was no one about, no one. A few cows in the corner of one of the fields we ran through. Maybe one of them is the rat? A cow-rat.
There’s some big comics event on over at the convention centre so town is full to the rafters with grown human beings dressed as Iron Man and The Joker and gliding along wearing capes and waving wands. Craig joked about digging out his prized Stormtrooper outfit and going over there – I said if he did, he’d be on his own. He begged me to dig out the Harley Quinn outfit from last Halloween and I said that if he made me, I would amputate both his ears. He thought that was funny for some reason. Luckily, AJ has got the baton to cover the convention for next week’s Gazette. We flipped a coin – the joke one I keep in my desk that only lands on Heads.
I looked out for Scudd in town but it’s like looking for a rat in a sea of mice.
And then this evening I cooked us some pasta thing from scratch and we cuddled up watching the Royal Variety Performance. Bedtime sex was thankfully brief because I’d eaten too much and almost vommed up my puttanesca. He fell straight to sleep meaning me and Tink could watch Ramsay’s Hotel Hell in peace without all his usual comments. Connecticut’s oldest inn is saved – Gordon Ramsay clap – done.
Tink still won’t do Shake a Paw.
Sunday, 14 April
I really needed to not be around people today – it was one of those days. I slipped in the shower, banged my toe on the sodding Henry vacuum and burnt my bagel. By lunchtime even my own fingernails were annoying me.
Craig was out all day – ‘starting early on a job fitting out a new bathroom showroom on Abner Street’ (seeing to Lana�
�s plumbing) so I took Tink out early then decided to tidy up some of my Sylvanian rooms – I’ve been thinking about redecorating the children’s bedroom with itty-bitty Beyoncé posters – when my fucking heart stood still – I noticed some things were missing:
1.The little yellow block of soap from the bathtub
2.The hamster baby – Peaches – in the yellow bib
3.The grandfather clock from the dining room
4.The miniature copy of Great Expectations from the lounge bookcase
5.The older sister’s red shoe
6.Three croissants
7.And the pig dad, Richard E. Grunt
‘The actual fuck!?’ I shouted, making Tink jump and start barking because she thought we had visitors. I’ve spent YEARS collecting all that stuff and Klepto Whittaker’s been coming in here and meddling with it. There was a little tray of chocolate eclairs I always kept on the coffee table that the pig dad is reaching for and that had gone too, but I found it had been moved to the fridge.
And that wasn’t the only thing that had been moved around – the one remaining baby was in the bath, instead of his cot, the mum was doing the ironing instead of having a lie-down and the boy rabbit was doing his homework at the dining table, instead of skateboarding along the landing.
‘I’m going to kill her,’ I blurted out, trying to concentrate on my breathing but my chest was too tight to co-operate. ‘Think, think,’ I said. ‘Maybe she’s just moved things. Maybe nothing’s actually been taken.’
And so I looked. And, sure enough, I found things. The soap was in the fridge. The hamster baby in the yellow bib was in the conservatory on the slide. The grandfather clock, for reasons best known to someone else, was in the bathroom. The little Dickens had been tucked into the boy rabbit’s school satchel. The sister’s red shoe was in the mum and dad’s wardrobe and the three croissants were in the toilet, bizarrely – who shits croissants? I was almost sane again.
But the pig dad, Richard E. Grunt, was nowhere to be found.
‘She’s had him!’ I seethed and, with that, I stormed out of the flat, and down the stairwell to number thirty-nine. I knocked sharply on the door four times. She didn’t open until the seventeenth knock.
‘Hello, Rhiannon.’ She beamed, false-toothily, ‘I was just boiling the kettle…’
‘Where’s Richard E. Grunt?’ I said, keeping a lid on my voice as best I could.
‘Where’s who, love?’
‘Don’t give me that. What have you done with it?’
She smiled, like it was a joke. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rhiannon. Who’s Richard…’
‘He’s the dad in my doll’s house. And you’ve taken him. Where. Is. He?’
She frowned, bloody Oscar-winning. ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen it, Rhiannon. Are you sure Tink hasn’t…’
‘Don’t blame Tink. She knows not to touch my doll’s house. And so does Craig. The only other person who goes into that flat is you because you’ve got a key. And I know you take things from there, don’t deny it. And normally I don’t mind but when it comes to my doll’s house I mind, so WHERE IS HE?’
Her eyeballs were wide now, because I was shouting. ‘Love, I haven’t taken your doll, I haven’t touched…’
‘Haven’t touched?’
‘Well, I have a little look at it, now and again. It’s such a pretty house, I didn’t think you would mind.’
‘I don’t mind people looking at it, as long as they keep their mitts off.’ I had my hands on my hips. I meant business and I wanted her to know it.
‘I just had a little play in there the other day, when I was looking after Tink.’
‘We pay you to look after Tink, we don’t pay you to play with my Sylvanians. I’ll give you one more chance – where’s Richard E. Grunt?’
She swallowed and opened the door a little wider, so I could look inside her flat. I barged past her. Nothing too untoward at first glance. Same beige and brown furnishings, still the soft aroma of old woman perfume and ammonia. Still the tidy rack of old woman slip-ons in the corridor.
And then I saw it – or rather him – Richard E. Grunt, sitting on her mantelpiece, next to a carriage clock and some birthday cards. I marched over and grabbed him.
‘Oh, you found him, good,’ she said, back with the smile. ‘I don’t know what he was doing in there, I’m sure.’
‘He was “in there” because you put him “in there”, you thief, and don’t play the old card. You were a klepto long before Old-Timers Disease crept in. Don’t. Take. My. Things.’
I almost left it at that but she had to go and put her big fat Dr Scholl in it. ‘Do you want me to have Twink again tomorrow?’
I marched back down and faced her in the doorway. I held out my hand. ‘Key.’
‘Pardon?’ And yet again, with the smile. I wanted to tear her whiskery lips right off her face.
‘I want my key back.’
She reached behind her and took our door key off the hook by her coats, handing it to me.
‘I don’t want you to look after Tink any more. I can’t take the risk.’
‘I won’t touch it again, Rhiannon, there’s no need to be silly.’
I got right up in her old, creased, hair-tufted face. ‘Damn right you won’t touch it again, you old cunt. Because, if you do, I will gut you like a fucking pig and wear your entrails as a belt.’
And then I went. And it wasn’t until I got back inside my flat that I realised I shouldn’t have said that. ‘Guts’ would have been a much better word than ‘entrails’. More punch to it. But at least I had Richard E. Grunt back. I put him back on his armchair and wedged the two sides of his Telegraph back in his trotters.
Sylvan peace restored.
Monday, 15 April
1.Derek Scudd
2.Wesley Parsons
3.That window company who keep phoning my mobile and asking if I’m ‘ready for us to quote you on your mum and dad’s patio doors’
4.People who have body odour (aka Paul in our office) but who have absolutely no idea. What are you nose blind as well as filthy?
5.People who look anywhere but at you when talking (aka Mike Heath). Also, get away from me with those homemade cakes, Mike. There’s no way you wash your hands after you’ve used the bathroom – I’ve timed you
Craig took Tink to work with him today, now we don’t have old Whittaker to rely on (I told him she’d been the one stealing his pot so we clearly couldn’t trust her any more).
Everyone in the office is acting like they’ve all been administered with electric shocks – I’ve never seen them all so alive, so animated. Not only have the Blue Van Men been stopped in their rapey tracks in the most grisly of ways, but it looks as though we have a serial killer on our patch. Everyone’s SO happy. AJ’s flirting has gone off the charts – winks, smiles, compliments, risqué gestures using poster tubes, you name it. It’s wonderful. And everyone else is being courteous and enthusiastic and giving me not-so-shit jobs to do like interviewing wrongful arrest victims and local Olympians. It’s almost an enjoyable place to work again.
I did that.
But I couldn’t enjoy the new atmosphere for long today as I was sent to do a report on the local arts festival at the community hall – or the community fuck-all as I call it.
‘It’ll be a great scoop for your column, won’t it, Sweetpea?’ said Claudia as she marched out to the editorial meeting. At least she smiled as she said it. One day, I’d like to see that smile face up in a frying pan.
The rooms in our community hall still stink of the same biscuits and farts it did when I did my ballet exams there in Year 6 and everyone who attends one of these community events is so old they need an oxygen tank to move around. I felt like an extra in the Thriller video. In the first room were the art installations where local ‘artists’ had installed their, well, art. ‘Art’ these days seems to be lumps of chicken wire wrapped in bandages and a pile of copper pipes arranged interestingly on the floor.
In the room beyond that was a live watercolour class, so people could stand about literally watching paint dry. Upstairs, things got slightly more stimulating – the chocolate master class was underway. A man on the door was holding out a tray of samples.
‘They’re free, my dear,’ he said in a ‘don’t be shy’ tone of voice. ‘Have as many as you like. We made them with our own fair hands.’
I spotted a couple of members of the White Ankle Sock Brigade in the class and decided against it. ‘I’m actually allergic,’ I told him.
Yeah, to snot and dingle berries.
Now I have to put together a ‘light-hearted and enthusiastic report’ to accompany my experience. Oh Lord, will all this pleasure never end?
*
I’VE SEEN HIM. I’VE SEEN SCUDD! HE WAS GOING INTO THE ARTS FESTIVAL AS I WAS COMING OUT! I’m SURE it was him! Will report back later.
*
UPDATE: I lost him. In the crowds. He’s like a fucking ghost. But at least he’s a ghost who I know is still alive. It’s made me all the more determined to kill him.
Maundy Thursday, 18 April
1.In jokes – keep them in then
2.People who say ‘a million per cent’ and overuse the word ‘awesome’. Time was people used that word only for moon landings or cancer cures. Now it’s used if there’s a well-risen soufflé on Bake Off
3.Overusers of the word ‘amazing’ – normally the same type of people who say ‘a million per cent’
4.Judgy dieters – aka Joy in our office. I’ve learned this week that corned beef, mayonnaise and chocolate ‘will put you into an early grave’ and that cooking with olive oil will ‘definitely give you cancer’. ‘Bring it on,’ I said. Turns out, her aunt had just died from cancer. ‘Was it olive oil related?’ I asked. ‘Or did Popeye do it?’ She pretended she hadn’t heard
