Sealfinger (Sam Applewhite Book 1)

by Heide Goody

  The Odinson waved more vigorously. Jimmy could see the man mouth the words, “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Can we trust them?” said Wayne.

  “If we pay them,” said Jimmy. “Drive, man. I’m knackered and I want this to be over.”

  Reluctantly, Wayne rolled the van forward, through the fortified wall of caravans and into the Odinson compound. There was a central open space surrounded by the clan’s caravans and huts. Free-roaming chickens flapped away, squawking, as Wayne circled and parked. The leather-jacketed Odinson closed the chain barrier behind them.

  There were numerous Odinsons already out and about in the compound. All turned to look at Jimmy and Wayne. Jimmy had met many of them before, although he would be hard-pressed to say which. Ragnar Odinson’s children and grandchildren kind of blended into one another. There was definitely an Odinson ‘look’.

  In a corner of the country where deep-fried chips with every meal came as standard, and the average person tended towards obesity, the Odinsons were conspicuously slender creatures. It was possibly down to genetics. It was more likely because the Odinson adults seemed to exist on a diet of little more than tobacco and alcohol. The Odinson men were either unshaven or badly shaven. The few Odinson women had long lank hair and did not smile.

  The exception to this was Astrid Odinson, Ragnar’s wife, who was rotund, jolly, and probably the only one of the entire tribe who knew how to use a napkin.

  The other distinguishing feature of the Odinsons was their hands. Their hands were always busy. One Odinson watched the van while cleaning car parts by the open bonnet of a probably stolen vehicle. A grubby Odinson child picked and gnawed at a bread crust while sitting in a caravan doorway. Another Odinson slouched against a vehicle shed, his hand flicking a butterfly knife open and closed like he’d seen it in a movie.

  “Okay, here goes,” said Jimmy and stepped out. “Morning!” he said to everyone and no one. You never knew which Odinson to address until one presented themself.

  An Odinson stared at him blankly and picked food from between his teeth.

  “I’ve got some rubbish that needs dumping,” said Jimmy.

  A man in a bandana appeared at the steps of the largest shed. More of a hall, really. Jimmy was ninety percent certain it was the driver he’d spoken to yesterday.

  “I’ve got something else,” said Jimmy. “Yngvar, isn’t it?”

  “Yngve,” said the man.

  “Right. Stuff that needs dumping.”

  Yngve Odinson came down the wooden steps unhurriedly. He kicked a chicken out the way as he strolled over to the van.

  “Doors, Wayne,” said Jimmy.

  Wayne jumped out and opened the rear doors to show Yngve the plastic-wrapped corpse. Yngve sucked on a roll-up and regarded the long bundle. Jimmy had already decided if the Odinsons recognised it as a body, he was just going to drop dead on the spot, have done with it.

  “What is it?” said Yngve.

  “Asbestos,” said Jimmy.

  “Is that so?”

  Jimmy thought it was an excellent cover story. Finding poisonous asbestos in old walls was a common hazard in the building trade. It was expensive to dispose of legally, and only an idiot would open a container of asbestos to check that was what it really was.

  Yngve nodded thoughtfully. “Tha wants it dumpin’?”

  “Like it never existed,” said Jimmy. “You got rid of those dolls?”

  “Capitalist Whores,” grunted Yngve. “Me dad says tha underpaid me for that job.”

  “Fifty quid we said.”

  “Underpaid.” Yngve nodded at Mrs Skipworth. “Two ‘undred quid for thee.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “If tha wants the job doing right. And I won’t say tha underpaid me.”

  Jimmy could have argued, but he’d have happily paid double to make this situation vanish. He opened his wallet.

  Yngve whistled. Two Odinsons scurried over and hauled Mrs Skipworth out. She didn’t bend at the knees or waist, or give any obvious signs she was anything other than a long bundle of building waste. None of the Odinsons gave a flicker of suspicion.

  “And you’ll do it today?” said Jimmy.

  “Like the dollies,” said Yngve, taking Jimmy’s cash.

  Jimmy and Wayne couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Mud spun beneath their tyres. Odinson children cheered and ran after the van for the first hundred yards.

  “It’s done now,” said Jimmy.

  Wayne was breathing heavily. He nodded, the folds in his fat neck wobbling. “Can we go for breakfast?”

  “We’re going to power-wash the back of the van first. With bleach. Get every crumb of DNA evidence out. Then we’re going to bin and burn our clothes. We’ll switch into some of the decorating coveralls.”

  “Not my Yeezys.”

  “Your what?” said Jimmy.

  “Yeezys.” Wayne attempt to raise his foot to show Jimmy his trainers, but he had neither the room nor the flexibility. “They were proper expensive.”

  Jimmy felt a knot of tension inside him. He wanted to argue but he didn’t need to. They had swept and mopped that kitchen floor. There were no footprints in the house.

  “Then we make sure they’re clean too,” he said. “Microscopically clean.”

  “Then can we go for breakfast?”

  Jimmy just wanted to go to bed, but maybe breakfast was a good idea. The whole episode needed putting to bed, and a greasy Full English would be a way to reassert normality.

  “Wherever you like,” said Jimmy. “My treat.”

  “You’re the best, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy didn’t feel it.

  15

  Sam stood behind the front door and watched the delivery man approach through the frosted glass. She was poised, ready, as he reached for the doorbell. As the bell dinged, Sam snatched the door open before it got to the dong.

  “Yes, I am here,” she said. “Good morning.”

  The man nodded. He had a little Sorry, you were out when we called card ready in his hand. Sam thought he looked decidedly disappointed he wasn’t going to be able to deploy it.

  “Parcel?” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  He went back down the stone steps to his van and returned with a box not much smaller than a washing machine, although clearly considerably lighter. Sam took receipt of it awkwardly and angled it through the doorway. Once she had battled it through to the hallway, she returned to provide the delivery guy with a signature and waved him off.

  She half-carried, half-shoved the large cardboard box through to the kitchen.

  Marvin regarded it with interest. “A bit of a double standard, isn’t it?”

  “How so?” she said.

  He inclined a head towards the boxes on the side, filled with his belongings. “You’re clearing out my things because you say we need the room.”

  “That’s not it exactly, dad.”

  “And then you just replace it with your things.”

  “This is a work thing,” she said and heaved it up onto the counter.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “No idea. Work sent it. Apparently I’m to beta-test it.”

  “What does beta-test mean?”

  Sam frowned. “I think it’s the testing you do after alpha-testing.”

  “So, test it again?”

  “I guess so.”

  He rolled his smiling eyes. “I do wish people would just say what they mean rather than make up new words.”

  Sam found the knife she’d used to spread jam on toast, licked it clean and used it to cut the tape seals on the flaps. Marvin leaned forward as she opened it. A small avalanche of polystyrene packing chips spilled out. Inside were sealed bags of black plastic components. Sam picked up a single sheet of paper marked with the word Instructions. The one and only instruction was to go to a website.

  “Does it need assembling?” said Marvin.

  She was about to answer when she recognised the tone
in his voice. This was the tone of a man who’d spent a large portion of his adult career creating or constructing stage props; the tone of man who still had, in his study, an Airfix model of the Supermarine Spitfire he’d glued together as a boy in nineteen-fifty-something.

  “It does,” she said, neutrally. She fetched her dad’s tablet from the living room, propped it up on the counter and told him to type in the address. “I’m going to put some of your things in the back of the van.”

  “Did you sell Consuela?”

  She had to stop and think for a moment where she had left the mannequin. When she remembered, she said, “I will be collecting her later.”

  “You haven’t just abandoned her at a bus-stop, have you?”

  “Er, no.”

  “I told you, you should try the junk shop up from the pier.”

  “Right you are.”

  She carried a box of stage magic tat out to the Piaggio on the driveway. When she returned, Marvin had got the video working and he was being lectured by a bearded Californian in an on-line video.

  “—glad to know you’ve bought a MySky smart-drone. Have you got the pre-packed tool kit ready?”

  “I surely have, Hank,” Marvin said in a bad American accent. He held up a tiny pack of screwdrivers and Allen keys that had come with the box.

  “Then let’s begin constructing your MySky smart-drone,” said the Californian. “And we’re going to have fun doing it. Because making things is fun, isn’t it?”

  “Rootin’ tootin’,” said Marvin.

  “Now, take out the body panel ‘J’. This is going to be the undercarriage of your MySky smart-drone…”

  Sam silently waved her dad goodbye. There was a grin fixed on his face as he sorted through the components in the box. Some men never grew up. Actually, in her experience, no man ever truly grew up.

  16

  Jimmy and Wayne played whack-a-croc before breakfast.

  There was a greasy spoon café near the far end of Skegness Pier. As piers went it was not an impressive specimen. There was the building housing the arcade video games, the narrower section housing the gambling machines, the tuppenny cascades and the greasy spoon, and then the boardwalk which just about got its stanchions wet when the tide was in.

  There was a whack-a-croc machine down the noisier end of the arcade, between the camel racing game and a basketball game which spewed out prize tickets if you scored enough baskets. Wayne wanted to play whack-a-croc. It was an old ritual, to be performed before they ate at the pier café. Jimmy had no appetite for games or breakfast, but if it helped draw a line under the horrors of the last twelve hours, he was all for it.

  He gave Wayne the fifty pence for the machine and then, while a jolly Cajun tune played, watched one of the planet’s slowest-reacting men get outwitted by an automated game for two minutes. Wayne whacked his foam-padded mallet frequently and hard, but the snapping green faces were still too quick for him.

  The machine spat out four yellow tickets on a strip. Wayne carefully pocketed them.

  They looked at the prize counter on the way to the greasy spoon. Even the lollipops and novelty pencil-tops required hundreds of tickets. Wayne lingered over the Xbox games console behind the glass. Fifty thousand tickets to buy that. That was a lot of games of whack-a-croc.

  Jimmy ordered Full English breakfasts for the pair of them. The café operated in a narrow galley kitchen, squashed to the side of the pier building’s final section by coin pusher cascade games and test-your-strength machines. Jimmy only ordered a breakfast for himself to keep Wayne company, surprising himself when he polished it off with ease.

  They took a brief walk along the pier. Wayne lit a cigarette and took deep breaths, like he was a man just released from prison.

  “You done good,” said Jimmy.

  Wayne just looked at him.

  “All behind us now,” said Jimmy.

  The wind farm filled the sea view end to end. There was a faint haze in the miles between the pier and the massive turbines. Jimmy could just make out a gas platform on the horizon beyond the wind farm.

  Wayne spat over the edge and into the sea. “We moving the rest of them stones tonight?”

  “When you’re ready,” said Jimmy.

  He became aware of little pink dots in the sea, some distance out. They speckled the waves, glinting in the morning sun. Sometimes, rarely, you could spot a seal head popping up. They weren’t pink, though. These were too far out, and too many to be human swimmers.

  Jimmy squinted. He rummaged in his pocket for twenty-pence and put it in the coin-operated telescope next to him. He swung it round and tried to find the dots again. A dozen fixed grins smiled at him as they bobbed on the tide.

  “Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Capitalist Whores.”

  “What?” said Wayne.

  Jimmy’s mind raced. A cargo container full of knock-off Barbie dolls; the Odinsons told to get rid of them permanently. Jimmy had assumed they’d go to landfill somewhere, but maybe the Odinson version of permanent disposal involved driving down the coast some distance and dumping the rubbish in the sea at high tide.

  There were hundreds of Capitalist Whores floating on the sea, coming in with the tide. Thousands of them.

  And then a thought that should have occurred to him much sooner walloped him, and walloped him hard. “The body!”

  “What?” said Wayne.

  “They’re just gonna dump it in the sea—!”

  He could see the unwanted dolls were going to wash up along the shore, all around. He did not want that to happen with the remains of Mrs Skipworth.

  “We’ve got to stop them!” he said and began to run back up the pier towards the promenade and the parked van.

  17

  Sam parked her Piaggio outside the Back to Life junk shop on the corner of Scarborough Avenue opposite the entrance to the pier. As she got out, there was commotion on the other side of the road. Two men in workers overalls running out of the pier building. The taller one shouted savagely at his shorter, tubbier mate to keep up. They ran to a Frost & Sons van parked at the roadside. She recognised the taller one as Jimmy MacIntyre. Were they running to an emergency building job? Or were they running away from a botched job? Sam watched them accelerate away.

  She had a bunch of her dad’s junk in the back of the Piaggio, but she needed to check out the shop first, see if it was the kind of place that could and should take her dad’s old knick-knacks. Browse casual; that was the first order of business.

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the brightness of the sunny morning. It was a larger shop than she had imagined, arranged in very broad categories. If John Lewis decided to sell second-hand junk, they would probably lay out their shop something like this. She strolled through the kitchenware, recognising crockery patterns from decades ago. There was a peculiar pull to these almost-forgotten fragments of the past – the irrational urge to get the sugar bowl matching her granny’s favourite teapot, even though her granny had been dead for some time.

  The back wall was a gallery of terrible art. Prints that were popular in her childhood made her grimace. Further along was a collection of mounted needlework, representing many hours of dedicated but terribly misguided work. Portraits and landscapes shared the odd, pixelated look that resulted from being rendered in stitches, but several had the added horror of bizarre coloration. Presumably because whoever made them had a limited pool of threads. Sam marvelled over a picture of the queen mother. If she squinted at it long enough, the blue colours of the hat and dress she was wearing dominated the composition, and the horror of the rest of it took a back seat. Unfortunately, when she looked at it properly, the face, neck and pearls had a bizarre, unblended look. As if someone had applied raspberry ripple ice cream to a canvas and then put a pair of startling blue eyes in the middle.

  “Admiring my crapestry?” said a voice beside her.

  “Sorry?” Sam turned to see a woman in a baggy
jumper.

  “Crapestry,” said the woman. “Crap tapestry.”

  She had a friendly, open face and a sharp glint in her eye, although Sam thought she looked tired. The woman’s hair was tied up in the manner of one who tied up their hair because it was easier than either washing or brushing it. Strands of loose blonde hair hung around her face. She looked like she wanted to crawl inside a giant cup of coffee and not emerge until the caffeine had done its work.

  The woman smiled. “Delia.” She held out a hand.

  Sam shook it. “Sam.”

  “It’s becoming quite collectible.”

  “Sorry?” Sam realised she was talking about the horrifically ugly needlework. “No. Really?”

  “It really is. For one thing, nobody’s making it anymore. I guess before we had the internet or dozens of telly channels you’d do this sort of thing to pass the time. You don’t see the elaborate pictures much after the seventies.”

  Sam nodded. The things did seem to be of a certain vintage.

  “So people are latching onto it as a thing. Buying the weirdest ones and putting them up in the loo or whatever. This beauty will get snapped up soon, and that lumpy cat over there. People love a slightly deformed cat.”

  “Do they?”

  “Much sought after by the crapestry aficionados.” Delia began sorting through a box of tat under a display counter.

  “I can sort of see the appeal,” said Sam. “Like collecting deliberately naff ornaments.”

  “Ah, we have a special on naff ornaments!” Delia indicated a nearby shelf with an elaborate if languid ta-da motion. “A free paper bag to hide your purchases from the taste police.”

  Sam laughed. “I wanted to ask. Do you buy things?”

  Delia nodded. “As opposed to scavenging them out of bins, where they rightfully belong, you mean?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “Joking!”

  “Right. Of course.”