by Heide Goody
Sam looked at her dad. “Have you got the time and the energy for that, dad?” she asked.
The answer was written across his face. He’d already trotted through to the kitchen and rummaged in the box for something to work with. “Is the camera rolling?” he asked.
Delia wasted no time. She pulled out her phone and pressed a couple of buttons. “Ready when you are, Marvin.”
“I want to show you one of the most basic magic tricks. Of course, I can’t reveal how it’s done, but with the right equipment and a little research, you’ll be able to work it out. Watch carefully. I take these four rings. You can clearly see that they are solid, separate and very strong, yes?” He chinked the rings together and clattered them between his hands. “Now, if you have studied the magical arts, you can do some very special things with these rings. How is this possible?” A ring dropped, linked to one of the others. Another dropped and another. He held them up, all four of them linked together. “Is this magic? What else can explain the change? Can we transform them back into solid and separate rings?” He gathered them up in his hands and presented them one by one. “Yes! Yes we can.”
Delia stopped the video and applauded. “Bravo, Marvin!”
“Very good, dad,” said Sam. It had been ages since she’d seen him perform a magic trick, and it seemed to have put some colour in his cheeks. “What are your thoughts then, Delia?”
“I have an online shop already – extends my physical shop’s reach, or footprint, whatever. I think I could create a sister site for this, make it more specialised. If we made some more of these videos and split the profits fifty-fifty, how would that be?”
“Sounds great,” said Sam.
“Sixty-forty,” her dad said at exactly the same time.
“Deal,” said Delia.
Sam laughed. She was amazed at the idea they’d get any money at all, but her dad had an eye for an opportunity – always had done.
“Oh, I’ve got an idea!” said Delia. “Have you got some plastic tumblers or pots?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Sam, bending to look in a cupboard. “How many?”
“Three,” said Delia.
As Sam stood up with three plastic beakers in her hand, she saw Delia had taken off her necklace and was unthreading a doll’s head from it. She put the head down on the kitchen counter. “What about it, Marvin? Can we do ‘find the lady’ with an actual lady?”
Marvin took the beakers from Sam with a wink. “Can I do that? What do you think? Nothing easier than making a woman vanish, is there?”
22
Jimmy stared blankly at the maddeningly flat landscape.
“We could bury her here,” said Wayne. “We’ve got shovels in the back.”
Jimmy felt his chest tighten. “Did you not hear the bit about the unexploded bombs in the ground?”
The look on Wayne’s face suggested he wasn’t afraid of those odds. “Then somewhere else—?” He clicked his fingers.
“Don’t,” said Jimmy.
“What?”
“You’re going to say the graveyard in Welton le Marsh.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You want us to bury the dead woman in the graveyard next to her house.”
“It’s full of dead bodies. It’d be like camouflage.”
“Old bodies. Ancient graves. You turn over six feet of fresh soil, someone is going to notice.”
Wayne fell silent.
“And don’t suggest the building site either,” added Jimmy. “Not Welton le Marsh, not Shore View. That’s just pointing the finger at ourselves. We get rid of Mrs Skipworth, we do it right and we do it permanent. I don’t want someone in Welton digging up their garden for a patio in twenty, thirty years’ time and finding our handiwork. We need a permanent solution.”
“We could get a boat and dump it out at sea,” said Wayne.
“And have it wash up again? No.” Jimmy tried to compose himself. “What do they do in films? Come on. We must have seen a hundred different ways to dispose of bodies.”
“Well,” said Wayne, “how about Dexter? He takes the bodies out to sea and throws—”
“Different ideas from films,” snapped Jimmy.
Wayne was quiet for a minute. “What about dissolving it in acid like in Breaking Bad?”
Jimmy nodded. “It needs quite a bit of time, space and specialised equipment that we don’t have. Can’t pop down to Homebase and buy a hundred gallons of acid. Anything else?”
The working of Wayne’s mind was a ponderous affair, one Jimmy often thought he could almost hear, like the grinding sound an old car made climbing a steep hill.
“Pigs.”
“What?”
Wayne turned to him. “Pigs, like in that gangster film where they all talk in daft accents like they’re off EastEnders. Grind the body up and feed it to pigs.”
“We don’t know any pig farmers,” said Jimmy with a sigh. “Not any who will let us feed a body to their animals.”
There was a shimmer on the horizon. The tide was coming in out there, fast and low.
“Come on, let’s turn this around and go home,” said Jimmy.
“Seals,” said Wayne.
Jimmy looked over his shoulder, in the irrational belief Wayne had spotted something. “What?”
“Seals are a bit like pigs. We’ve got them round here.”
“And do we know any friendly seal … farmers who will let us feed them a body?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Seal Land.”
“You’ve got contacts?”
Wayne shook his head. “I did a job for them a while back. On the side, while we were laying hardcore for Shore View. Concreted in their gateposts on the big front gates. Heavy things. Bolts, padlocks, the lot.”
“And you’ve got keys?”
Wayne shook his head again, but he was smiling. “There’s a big gap round the back of the gateposts. It’s all show really. Can’t drive a vehicle in without the keys, but you and I and the old lady can get in.”
Jimmy considered this. “Those fuckers’ll eat anything,” he said. “Heard one tried to eat a cop yesterday.”
“See?” said Wayne.
Jimmy nodded. “Drive.”
As the vehicle bumped up the rough track, Jimmy sat back and let the motion rock him. He tumbled into the dark cave of his mind, let something else do the thinking for a while.
23
Sam watched the video now uploaded to YouTube.
“Watch carefully as I put the lady beneath one of these cups,” said Marvin. “You can clearly see which one it is, yes?” Hands on the table tilted the middle cup to reveal the head of the Capitalist Whore, staring petulantly. He moved the cups around, slowly, so it was easy to follow which cup had previously been in the middle.
“At this point, if I were running a street hustle, I would ask you to put some money on the table and point to the cup containing the head.” The camera angled up to his face and he gave a conspiratorial wink. “But since we’re on friendly terms, I’ll just ask you to tell me which one you think it is.”
Delia’s hand came into shot to point confidently at the cup on the left.
“This one?” Marvin lifted the cup to show that it was empty. “So sorry. It appears that you’re wrong.”
The video ended.
Delia re-entered the living room, phone in hand. “That’s it. The husband is in charge of bedtime duties tonight.”
Bedtime duties? It had barely gone five o’clock. Sam guessed Alfie and Millie were children; young ones at that.
“So, you’ll stay for another?” said Sam, jiggling the pitcher of homemade cocktail.
“You can twist my arm,” said Delia, flopping into a chair. She gestured at Sam’s phone. “What do you reckon? Nice little trick demonstration.”
“It’s not quite Sunday Night at the Palladium, but yeah, it works.”
“Then I think we have a new product for the store. Find
the Lady kits! It could be popular. I just need to get hold of a few more of those dolls.”
Sam poured Delia’s drink. “And that’s your job, is it? Turning tat into things you can sell?”
“Upcycling,” Delia enunciated slowly. “It’s a good thing. And what exactly is it you do? You a magician’s assistant? His agent?”
“Dad and agents…?” Sam scoffed. “I work for DefCon4.”
Delia’s brow creased. “The armoured van people?”
“That’s some of what they do. You’ve seen my van. I don’t get to transport gold bullion around the place, or anything.”
“So, what do you do?”
“Whatever this thing tells me.” Sam waggled her phone. She scrolled through the days ahead. “Health and safety inspections. Supervising community service workers.”
“You run a chain gang?”
“Not quite. It’s a broken job for a broken company, with just me and Doug Fredericks to mind the office.”
Delia sipped her drink. “Doug. Doug. That’s not a young guy’s name, is it?”
“I’ve no idea how old Doug is,” said Sam honestly. She wasn’t sure what the lifespan of the average cactus was. Nonetheless, she caught the drift of Delia’s question. “I am currently a single lady.”
“Happily single?”
Sam swirled her drink and said nothing for a while. “My ex,” she said eventually. “My last ex – God, that makes it sound like there’s been a lot – Rich, his name was. It ended when it should have done.”
“Right after you took all his money?” Delia joked.
Sam gave her an exaggerated look. “Thereby hangs a tale. It’s not an exciting tale, but it’s one where the ex becomes extraordinarily wealthy not long after we split up.”
“Ouch.”
Sam shrugged. Money would have made very little difference to that story. “And you?”
“No, I’m not extraordinarily wealthy,” said Delia.
Sam rolled her eyes. “You’re not single. There’s a husband somewhere.”
“Currently reading Funny Bunny’s Magic Show to our litter and granting me a little time off.” She stretched to emphasise the point, put her feet up on a coffee table, remembered herself, and put them down again. “I’m sorry, they don’t let me out much.”
There was a sudden wordless shout from the kitchen.
Sam shot up, realised that a glass and a half of lazily assembled cocktail had gone straight to her legs, and made her way to the kitchen. “Dad! Everything okay?”
Marvin stood at a distance from the drone on the counter, his arms spread as though waiting to catch a beach ball. He didn’t appear to be hurt.
She looked at the drone. “You finished it?”
Marvin found his voice. “Hank and I together. Team effort I should say.”
Delia crowded in behind Sam. “That is a big helicopter,” she noted.
“That is a MySky smart-drone,” said Marvin proudly. “Three kilograms of high speed, self-directing drone technology. With a top speed of forty-five miles per hour, wind resistance of twenty-six miles per hour and a maximum operating ceiling of five thousand metres above sea level. Four lithium batteries provide over ninety minutes of flying time, guided by an on-board intelligent navigation system controlled by your secure app.” He pointed at the tablet on which a control program was open.
“And it’s a very shiny helicopter,” added Delia. “And DefCon4 want you to have it because…?”
Sam checked the instructions on her phone. “Just to beta-test. Build it, fly it and maybe they’ll roll it out for surveillance jobs or something.”
“Fly it as in…?”
Sam looked out the window. There was still plenty of light. It had been a clear calm day weather-wise.
“We should fly it,” she said. “To the garden, dad?”
Very much like a boy with a brand new kite, Marvin picked up the drone and followed Sam and Delia out of the house. It might have been lightweight, but it was a wide thing, and Sam had to steer her dad around the corner of the house to avoid a minor collision.
“Wow,” said Delia upon seeing the rear gardens.
It was a common reaction, Sam had discovered. Duncastin’ had more land attached to it than the average school playing field. Sam was never sure if people’s surprise was at the size of the garden or its state of wild abandonment. It was certainly varied. Conifer trees down one side, the struggling remnants of several palm trees and tropical fronds down another. In between, grasses, wildflowers and encroaching dunes fought over the ruins of what deliberate landscaping there had been.
“Careful,” said Sam. “There’s a fishpond somewhere. Rumours of a tennis court somewhere over there. Possibly lost tribes of indigenous people as well.”
“She exaggerates,” said Marvin.
“There was a party here in the late nineties,” said Sam. “A conga line went in there and never came out again.”
They followed the natural path through the least overgrown sections to a grassy hillock just before the dunes. Marvin set the drone down reverently. Sam swapped the glass and pitcher of cocktail in her hands for the tablet under Marvin’s arm.
“If you don’t mind, dad,” she said.
He looked at the cocktail. “No, not at all.” Then he saw the tablet. “Oh, no, not at all. I’m merely construction crew. You’re the boss.”
Sam explored the app briefly.
“How do you control it?” asked Delia.
“Um – you don’t. You program in a flight route and off it goes. Automated. Like CCTV but in the sky.”
“Just what we need.”
Sam inputted a route. “Something simple to start. Straight up, circle for a hundred metres, and … go.”
The drone’s four rotors buzzed into life. Delia gave a little start and then giggled at herself. The three of them stepped aside as it rose, wobbly at first and then with confidence. It tilted and flew off towards the dunes and the sea.
“A hundred metres?” said Delia.
“Hmmm.”
The drone was flying on in a straight line. It had reached the shoreline and was carrying on.
“Did I build it wrong?” said Marvin.
Sam stared at the tablet, which was of no help.
Evening seagulls scattered as the drone flew out over the shallow waves.
“Where’s it going?” said Delia.
Marvin looked about and tested the wind with his finger. “Norfolk. Possibly.” The drone was little more than a black dot now. “If the batteries last that long,” he added. “It’s supposed to head back to base when its batteries are low, but it might be too late by then.”
Sam sighed and began mentally composing the explanatory e-mail to her faceless superiors.
Marvin poured a glass of cocktail and sipped it. He pulled a face. “What is this?”
Sam tried to recall. “Cointreau, crème de cassis, gin, more gin, lemonade. It doesn’t have a name.”
Marvin took a further reflective sip. “All Glory Is Fleeting,” he suggested.
“That’ll do.”
24
Jimmy and Wayne pulled up outside Seal Land in the dusky light of evening. They had spent the intervening hours doing a great deal of nothing, apart from a brief stop at Morrisons to buy some snacks, and Dutch courage in the form of half a bottle of cheap whisky. Now, at eight o’clock, the whisky had been drunk, the Seal Land staff were long gone, and the few shops in Anderby Creek had shut up for the night. Jimmy wanted to have some daylight to help them gain entry. He didn’t want to spend another night stumbling around in the dark.
Wayne hopped out and went round the side of big double gates that looked like they should be the entrance to Jurassic Park, not a poxy local zoo. He came back a moment later and waved to Jimmy.
Jimmy opened the back of the van. Wayne, nineteen stone of flab and muscle, hoisted Mrs Skipworth over one shoulder. She wasn’t heavy anyway. The body was disturbingly light, like something had physically vani
shed from her at the moment of death.
Wayne led the way round the gatepost. He was absolutely right: there was a two feet wide gap, half hidden by a gorse bush and a ragged end of chicken wire. They walked past the admin centre towards the main attraction.
“I think I came here as a child,” Jimmy said.
“Did you like it?” said Wayne.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Do children like anything for more than ten seconds?”
“I like it,” said Wayne as though that settled the matter.
Ahead, in the gloom, were the seal pools. The smell of the seals and their fishy meals was unmistakeable. Jimmy realised at least some of it was coming from Wayne.
“What have you got there?” he asked, pointing. Wayne had the old woman’s body over his shoulder, but a Morrisons carrier bag swung from his other hand.
“Brought some fish,” said Wayne proudly. “It was reduced, so I thought it would help us get them seals’ attention.”
“Jesus Christ, Wayne. We’ve brought them a fucking body to eat. If you fill them up with cut-price cod so they don’t want to eat the old lady, you know I’m going to make your life not worth living, don’t you?”
“I like seals,” said Wayne quietly.
They walked down a concrete ramp and entered the pool area. There were three seals in what looked like a sizeable pool. They all reclined on fibre glass rocks on the far side. Wayne opened a little gate to give them access to the poolside. For hopefully man-eating creatures, the security measures were fairly flimsy.
“There’s only three of them. Where are all the others?” Jimmy asked.
Wayne read from a chalk board. “‘Elton, Kylie and Beyonce remain in the sanctuary pool, while most of this year’s rescues have now been released at the nearby shore. Visit our website for a chance to—'”
“Fuck,” said Jimmy. “Can three seals eat a whole body?”
Wayne dropped the body to the floor and started to remove the wrapping. “Let’s try it,” he said.
