by Heide Goody
“If it’s a problem.”
Damn it. Why did he have to bring money into it and make himself appear tight?
“No, it’s fine,” he said firmly. A little too firmly. “You asked. The lady would like a Long Island Iced Tea,” he told the barman. “And a receipt.”
The barman – in a waistcoat and a vintage white shirt, like he should be tending a bar in a western saloon or a paddle steamer – silently set about mixing the cocktail.
* * *
They took a window table overlooking the gardens and fairground. Somewhere out there, in the black, was the beach and the sea. Far out there were suggestions of white and red flickering lights. Maybe the offshore wind farms, maybe a sand dredger, maybe even a container ship travelling across the North Sea to Belgium or Holland.
Jimmy raised his pint glass in cheers. Sam Applewhite of DefCon4 chinked her glass to his.
“So, tell me about yourself,” he said.
Sam stirred her drink and wriggled in the seat. She had a restless energy, like she couldn’t be still, couldn’t be contained. “What’s to say? My name’s Sam Applewhite. I live in Skegness with my dad. I came back because… Well, that’s complicated.”
“Yes?”
“I came back to be with my dad. He’s getting on a bit.”
“Dementia?” he said, in his most concerned voice.
“What? No. Least I don’t think so. He just needs a few things sorting out.”
“And you’ve always worked for DefCon4?”
“Christ, no. It’s only been a few months. Feels a hell of a lot longer. I sort of fell into it.”
“And it’s all this stuff?” Jimmy waved a hand to suggest the world of business and security. “Security guards and CCTV and stuff.”
She shook her head. Her hair bounced softly. “Hardly any of it’s that stuff. It’s a big company. They’ve diversified a hell of a lot. Health and safety checks, prisoner transport, courier services, food deliveries…”
“Really? And you do all of that.”
“Yup. It’s only me and Doug in the office.” She clutched her drink. Well, at nearly a tenner for a cocktail, Jimmy would want to hold onto it tightly too.
“Is Doug here?” he said.
“Doug doesn’t get out of the office much.”
“But you enjoy it?”
“The job?” said Sam. Another cute nose twitch, another sexy bum wriggle. “It pays. That’s definitely the main motivator.”
“Amen to that,” he said, forcing himself to smile because most days he didn’t feel like his job paid at all.
“And you do get to meet some interesting characters. There’s a lot of local … colour.” She looked out of the window. “Some people who seem to not fit in anywhere else.”
“And there’s nowhere else to go,” he said. “Skegness. End of the line.”
She slurped through her straw, made a sucking noise in the ice and immediately stopped. “Wow. That went down quick.”
“Another?” he said.
She dithered.
“Go on,” he said.
“It has been a tough day,” she said. As he reached for his wallet she added, “It’s my round.”
Jimmy downed his pint quickly.
* * *
Sam returned with drinks.
“To the end of a tough day,” he toasted.
“One of many,” she said.
“There are other jobs out there,” he suggested.
“But this job definitely has variety.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Always got to think on your feet.”
“Right.”
“It’s like…” She looked him straight in the eye. “What do you do when a seal has got into the back of your van and trashed all your deliveries while you’ve been chatting to some old dear about the ghosts she’s been seeing in the churchyard?”
That threw him. Here they were having a nice little conversation and a nice little drink, he was thinking maybe if he got a third Long Island Iced Tea into her he could call up Wayne and tell him to not bother collecting him and Jimmy could spend the night exploring what was under that sequinned top, and then she goes and asks a nonsense question like that.
“Is that a real situation? Is that something that happened?”
“Come on,” said Sam. “What would you do in that situation?”
“Er…”
He was saved from answering by her phone buzzing. She glanced at it, gave him an apologetic look and answered it. While she ‘uh-huh’ed and ‘yeah’ed, he checked the time. Seven thirty. He had thirty minutes in which to close the deal with this Sam and cancel Wayne.
She ended the call. “Sorry. My dad. One of his plums got stuck behind the fridge and he still can’t get it out.”
Jimmy winced but didn’t ask.
“He could hear I was in a bar,” she said. “Wanted to know if I was ‘courting’?”
Jimmy grinned. “And are you?”
She looked a little concerned. “Right now?”
“Generally.”
She drank while she thought. “There’s an ex. Rich. Rich by name…”
“Recent?”
She tutted. “No. Months now. Years in fact.”
“Oh, a while then…” He treated her to a half-smile, a charming little half smile that was meant to be partly sympathetic and partly an open invitation.
“I don’t have much time for a social life,” she said.
“But you’re off out later,” he said.
“Aren’t I out now?” said Sam.
“I meant…” He nodded at her top. “You look dressed for a night on the town.”
She fingered the edge of the top, lifted it away a centimetre. The woman was a tease. “This? I came straight from work.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “It’s a very … striking top.”
“Not company uniform or anything.”
He pulled a face, a magnanimous ‘I’m easy’ kind of expression. “Where’d you get it?”
“Well … I’m not sure I’ll be wearing it again. It’s actually out of my dad’s old things.”
“Your dad wears a lot of sequins, does he?”
“Ha ha. His props cupboards. He used to be a stage magician.”
Jimmy thought the name Applewhite had rung a bell. Applewhite, Applewhite… “Marvin Applewhite? Your dad is Mr Marvellous?”
“Was. He’s retired now.”
Jimmy grinned. “So that makes you … Little Miss Marvellous? Do you know any tricks?”
“I can show you the Amazing Disappearing Sam if you don’t change the subject.”
He held up his hands in submission, pint in one hand. “I like you, Sam,” he said.
“That’s good. I like me too,” she replied and looked at her drink like she wasn’t used to saying such things sober.
“I’m meant to have a work thing later,” he said.
“At this hour? You’re a builder, right?”
“Management,” he corrected her. “My lad’s supposed to be collecting me at eight.”
“Not got long,” she said.
“Unless I get a better offer.” It was a clumsy choice of words.
“Offer?” said Sam.
“You eaten tonight?”
“The day I’ve had has put me off food a bit.”
“We can skip dinner.”
She frowned at him and drew back in her seat. “I barely know you, Jimmy.”
“What do you want to know?”
She was still and silent.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was too upfront. I’m too honest for my own good.”
“No,” she said, suddenly alive again. “Honesty is good. Upfront is good.”
“Right,” he agreed, smiling. “You’ve got to know where you stand these days.”
“Right.”
“You can get into a lot of hot water over a misunderstanding. What’s said on the spur of the moment can be open to a lot of misinterpretation.”
>
“Indeed.”
“It’s all about honesty.”
“Sure.”
“Clarity.”
“Yes.”
“Consent.”
She coughed and took a sip of drink. “Consent. Yes.”
“As I say, Wayne’s picking me up in—” he looked at his watch, clicking his tongue “—fifteen minutes. But I would much rather spend the evening with you.”
“That’s really nice, Jimmy,” she said, then scowled. “Not ‘nice’. That’s a nothing word. Lovely? Just as bad. Look, I’d love to have some more drinks and…” She pursed her lips. Her hands hovered in her lap, like she was itching to shove them down her trousers. “Jimmy, I just want to get out of these clothes and into bed—”
“Okay, okay,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s see where the evening takes us, but cards on the table—”
“That’s not what I was going to suggest…” she said.
“It’s fine,” he reassured her. “Don’t be embarrassed. I like a woman who knows her mind.”
She regarded her glass, drained the last of the cocktail and stood. “This has been…” She searched around for a word. “Nope. Got nothing.”
“You’re leaving?” he said.
“Oh, I certainly am. You and Wayne have got work to do. Thanks for the drink.”
She walked off in a determined manner, a gesture spoiled somewhat when her shin collided with a low table. She corrected course and carried on, looking back to see if he’d seen her. Jimmy had seen her all right.
11
“Bloody cockteases the lot of them,” said Jimmy, getting into the van.
“Who?” said Wayne.
“Women?”
Wayne clearly gave this some thought as he drove down the parade. Jimmy could almost see the cogs turning, smell the gears burning. “All of them?” said Wayne eventually.
“All of them.”
“Wow.”
Jimmy huffed deeply. “Welton le Marsh.”
Wayne looked at him.
“We’ve got stones to move,” said Jimmy.
Jimmy let the van rock him on the night drive out of town. Two pints wasn’t enough to make him drunk, not even close, but it gave him a freedom of thought, a fluidity and lucidity that rarely came to him sober. He thought about that bloody Sam Applewhite. He thought about the other frustrations of the day. Greg Mandyke refusing to sell, Jacinda Frost’s arrogance and naivety, an access road that was half a metre too narrow to pass council planning regulations…
Welton le Marsh was in darkness when they arrived. It was too small a village to have its own street lighting. There were lights on in the pub and a couple of the cottages, but from the churchyard onwards it was dark. Wayne pulled into the building site access track. The part-finished houses on the development were just about visible, black silhouettes like castle ruins against a grey-black sky.
Jimmy jumped out, felt a moment of beer-induced wobble, took a piss off the side of the track onto Mandyke’s property, and joined Wayne at the back of the van. Wayne was fixing a headtorch on his own huge bonce and passed another to Jimmy. He glanced to the land on the other side of the track. The fence was made of wooden posts bound to each other with barbed wire.
“We’ve moved the fence posts as far as they’ll go,” said Wayne.
“Fifty centimetres,” said Jimmy. “That’s all we need. Fifty centimetres. Then we get the surveyors out, get the maps redrawn, pass planning and… Get that barrow. Pass it over to me when I…”
He carefully stepped over the fencing, holding down the wire with both hands and making sure he didn’t snag his trousers on the barbs. Wayne passed him the wheelbarrow and the shovels, and climbed over too. Wayne got his boot caught somewhere and fell over onto the thick grass.
“I’m not happy about this,” he muttered.
“You should watch where you’re going,” said Jimmy.
“Not that.” He got to his feet and brushed at his hands under torchlight. “The stones. It’s not right.”
“No one cares,” said Jimmy. “No one will notice. We’ve already done one.” He cast his headtorch along the boundary. “Four, five… We only need to move six of these.”
The stones along the boundary fence were old and weatherworn, none of them less than a hundred and fifty years old. No one cared. No one would care, as long as they didn’t break them or leave tell-tale marks in the earth.
“This one first,” said Jimmy, jabbing a spade into the earth to cut out a rectangle of turf to fill the hole the stone would leave behind.
“What if someone sees us?” said Wayne.
“What if we don’t get this done?” replied Jimmy. “You want to tell Jacinda?”
“Not me, mate. She scares me.”
Jimmy grunted in agreement as he dug. “You know that shotgun she shoots off in her office? The twelve-bore Purdey?”
“I’ve heard someone say it was the one Bob used to—” Wayne didn’t finish the sentence.
“Exactly,” said Jimmy. “Her own dad. She’s a nutter. Now, create some wiggle room round the stone. Come on. I don’t have to tell you to do everything. Show some initiative.”
Wayne didn’t move.
“Get a shift on,” said Jimmy. “Sooner we’re done…”
“There’s someone watching us,” said Wayne.
“No there isn’t.” Jimmy looked round.
In the not-quite-black of night, the outline of a person was clearly visible against the wall by the road. The figure was perfectly still. There was no telling if they were facing towards or away from them.
Jimmy reversed the shovel in his hands, holding it like a club or an axe. “Some nosey bastard,” he said to Wayne.
“I don’t like this,” said Wayne.
“You mentioned.”
Jimmy approached cautiously. “Oi, mate!” he called out as he neared.
The figure didn’t move. Jimmy stepped closer. Wayne followed.
“Oi, mate! What’s your game, eh?”
Still nothing. There was quiver in Jimmy’s guts. He told himself such quivering had far more to do with beer than thoughts of ghosts and zombies and any of the other impossible creatures of the night.
As he got nearer still, within shovel-striking range, he saw there was something odd; something very wrong. The figure – clearly a person: his headtorch picked out the glistening hair, the pink cheeks, the scruff of an unruly beard – was not moving at all. In this dark, rural spot, his mind uncontrollably leapt to images of corpses, cadavers unburied.
“Mate?”
He prodded the body with the tip of his shovel. It slipped sideways and fell to the ground with a hard thump.
“Jesus Christ!” said Wayne. “What did you do to her?”
“Her?”
Making sure Wayne was very much beside him, he approached the low wall and clambered over it into the lane. His toe clipped something hard, plastic. He looked down. He shuddered at the sight of the wide eyes, then realised they were painted on.
“It’s a dummy!” he said, almost yelled. “It’s a bloody shop dummy!” The beard around its chin appeared to be the remains of some insect hive. He remembered something Little Miss Marvellous, Sam Applewhite, had said. “Bearded lady. Shit!” Annoyed, he whacked at it with the shovel, gouging a deep gash in its solid neck. “Bloody thing!”
“Someone’s watching us,” said Wayne.
“It’s a dummy,” said Jimmy, slowly and firmly.
“Nah, mate. There.”
Wayne was pointing back across the churchyard, to a cottage on a side road. There was a bay window. A figure stood in the window, backlit by houselights. Their arms were raised, making a shield over their eyes as they looked out into the night.
Jimmy considered what they had just seen, what they might think they had just seen. A figure by the wall, struck down from behind by a man with a shovel. If they called the police, there would be questions. Even if Jimmy managed to explain away the b
usiness with the dummy there’d be questions about holes in the ground and fence posts and…
“Gotta get over there,” said Jimmy.
“What are you doing?” hissed Wayne.
“Smoothing things out.”
Jimmy had no idea how he was going to do that, but he was going to do something. He marched round the churchyard towards the cottage. He gave a cheery wave as he approached. He could see it was a woman, and from the frailty of her movements he guessed it was an old lady. She closed the curtains to shut him out as he came to the driveway.
He rapped at the door.
He waited long enough for an elderly woman to shuffle to the door and answer it, but there was no reply.
He rapped again.
“Hello?” He bent to the letterbox and lifted the brass flap. “I just wanted to check you were all right.”
Still nothing. He tried the door handle. It was locked. Worth a shot.
He stood and turned to Wayne. “Go round the back. See if we can get in that way.”
“Why?” said Wayne.
“Just need to sort this out. Don’t want the cops involved or anything.”
Wayne scurried away.
“We’re all right in here, thank you,” came a woman’s voice through the door.
Jimmy forced a laugh. “I was just worried about what you might have thought you’d seen.”
“No, no. Thank you. Goodnight,” she said.
“It was just a dummy. I think my friend, Sam, left it there by accident.”
“Sam?”
“Yes. She works for DefCon4. I think she was—”
“The meals on wheels lady?”
That’s her!” he said with relief. “Sam Applewhite.”
“Oh! Oh.” There was the click of a latch and the door swung open. The old woman blinked and recoiled as his headtorch shone in her eyes.
Jimmy whipped it off. “Sorry, miss.”
The woman, dressed in a quilted house coat, considered the mud-smeared man on her doorstep. “Mrs.”
“Sorry?”
“Mrs Skipworth,” she said. “It’s very late.”
“We didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said.
The house was cluttered, overstuffed in that way that could only be achieved through a lifetime of accumulation. Plump armchairs and piles of magazines. Shelves crowded with photographs and knick-knacks and books.
