by Heide Goody
Mrs Skipworth rolled out onto the fake rocks by the pool, her face mottled and her eyes wide. Jimmy took an involuntary step back and sat on the short poolside wall. He stared at her face, felt himself melt away in her presence until only detached clinical Cold Jimmy remained.
Wayne picked Mrs Skipworth up by her shoulders and flipped her into the pool. It was a deep splash, far bigger than her bird-like frame warranted.
“Come and get it, seals!” called Wayne. “Nom nom!”
The seals remained on their rocks, with only the briefest of glances to indicate they had even noticed the disturbance.
Jimmy shook his head silently. He could see it was a terrible idea, born from desperation and tiredness, and fuelled by fear and bad whisky. Mrs Skipworth lay at the bottom of the pool, a shadow, rocked slowly by the currents.
That’s me, thought Jimmy. That’s me. He wished himself into a cold, dark, silent space and unconsciously held his breath. To disappear, to sink beneath the surface and be gone from things, felt like the best possible thing in the world at that moment.
Of course, he had to breathe again, and when he did, he spoke. “We need to get that body out from the bottom of the pool. The seals won’t even be able to smell it down there.”
Wayne jumped into the pool and ducked down. He re-appeared a moment later with the old woman’s body in his arms, like the most careless romantic hero who’d almost let the love of his life suffer a violent and bloody death before rescuing her from the water. He plopped her down on the side and considered the problem.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said.
“Another one?”
Wayne took a folding handsaw from his pocket. Without warning he sawed off one of the woman’s fingers.
“You’re out of your fucking mind!” said Jimmy.
“Nah, this will work.”
Jimmy bit down on further words, unwilling to dwell on the sight any longer, in the very real belief that he ran the risk of puking. He looked away. When he looked back, Wayne had pulled one of the fish from his Morrisons bag and was ramming the woman’s finger into its mouth. This was worse, this was definitely worse.
“Come on then! I know one of you will eat this!” shouted Wayne. He threw the fish over towards the reclining seals and it plopped into the water. Jimmy watched as the seal closest to them finally slid bonelessly off its rock and disappeared under the water. Two seconds later it surfaced, gulping down the fish.
“It worked! Did you see that?” crowed Wayne.
“Just wait up for a second!” said Jimmy. “I don’t know how many fish you’ve got in that bag, but I’m willing to bet it’s not enough for us to hide a whole body inside. We’ll be here all night just chopping it up.”
“Nah, it’ll be fine.”
“Fine?”
“We just need to give them a taste for old lady, then they’ll come and finish the rest. You watch.”
From anyone else, that might have sounded like callousness or outright sadism. From Wayne it was just a bear of very little brain working on a solution to the current problem.
Wayne repeated the fish trick with another two fingers, then he sawed off three toes to push into the last fish in his bag. The seals ate the fish hungrily, before retiring to their rocks to sleep off the excitement.
Jimmy looked at his phone. He’d been looking at it intermittently all day, automatically checking for texts or calls from Jacinda, but without a SIM the phone remained predictably silent.
“Wayne, it’s nearly ten o’clock. All you’ve got rid of are a couple of fingers and toes. I know fellas down the Ship Hotel who’d have guzzled that down without a thought if you doused it with chilli sauce and handed it to them on a kebab.”
“Oh, good idea! Closing time is—”
“—That’s not an actual suggestion! We’re not doing that!”
Wayne’s face fell.
Jimmy looked across at Elton, Kylie and Beyonce. He wondered which was which, and who had eaten the most of Mrs Skipworth. He decided the seal on the rock must be Beyonce. There was a lot of attitude in its expression, and it definitely had a curvy booty. Beyonce and her backing singers looked at Jimmy. He could feel them judging him. Fucking celebrities.
“I need you to wrap this back up and put it in the van,” Jimmy told Wayne, pointing at the body.
“But the plastic’s all ripped now.”
“We’ll look around. There’s sure to be a store room with some bin bags or whatever.”
Jimmy stepped back over the wall and walked across the public spaces to the nearest building. Night had fallen, but even out here, miles from proper civilisation, orange light pollution gave a shape to the darkness. Wayne got ahead of him and found a light switch as he went inside. There were leaf patterns on the wall and a musty, humid quality to the air. An ambiguous sign invited them to come look at Frogs, Etc.
“Reptile house,” said Jimmy.
Seconds later, Wayne shouted. “Hey, Jimmy, you’ll never guess what they’ve got in here!”
Jimmy ignored him, but Wayne’s voice continued in excitement.
“Apparently it’s a myth that piranhas strip the flesh from a skeleton in seconds. They are mostly scavengers.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Jimmy ran. “Wayne! Don’t mess with those things! I don’t care if it says they’re tame as fuck and they use them for a kiddies’ petting zoo! Stay right away from them, do you hear?”
Jimmy burst through plastic hangings designed to keep the heat in, and into an exhibit area that was a lazy designer’s idea of a rainforest. Uneven fake stone flooring, a bamboo bridge, several deep pools crowded with waxy-leafed plants. Wayne was over the far side on the rocks between two pools.
“Get out of the piranha pool, Wayne,” said Jimmy calmly.
Wayne waved his hand. He was holding a roll of black bin bags. “Cleaning cupboard back here,” he grinned.
“Good, now come on.”
Wayne walked back between the two pools. “It’s okay, I’m staying well away from them,” he said.
“Good.”
Three things happened. Jimmy noticed that the non-piranha pool had a stubby dark log floating in it. The stubby dark log moved independently towards Wayne. Wayne walked too far from one pool and too close to the other, and his foot slipped on the fake rock slope. Jimmy could not rightly say which of those events happened in what order. But the log opened a hinged jaw and lunged at Wayne with a sickening speed.
Wayne screamed.
Jimmy saw its eyes, yellow ovals, and the glimpse of a triangular tooth or two as it clamped down on Wayne’s shin.
“Jimmy!” screamed Wayne.
Jimmy was just about processing that the thing was an alligator, or a crocodile, or something.
“Help me!”
Jimmy’s first instinct was to run. His second was to stand and watch. After the day he’d had, his concern for his fellow man had almost trickled away entirely.
Wayne flopped down, half-in and half-out of the pool, the alligator worrying at his leg with the tenacity of a terrier at a bone. Another alligator stirred at the bottom of the pool. Five feet long, maybe more.
“Jimmy, shoot it!”
“I haven’t got a gun.”
“Shoot it!”
“I haven’t got a gun!”
The situation was bad. It was worse than bad. Yet Jimmy, whilst stunned, was oddly unmoved. Wayne had killed a woman. They had concealed her death. They had fed a number of her digits to the local seals. Now, Wayne was having his foot eaten by an alligator. It seemed to be part of the natural order of things.
By the far safer path, Jimmy ran round the pool to the cleaning cupboard Wayne had found. It was a storeroom; there was nothing useful like a taser or a tranquiliser gun. Jimmy picked up a net but put it down again. It was more suitable for scooping up tiddlers and would definitely not hold an alligator. He grunted with frustration at the quality of equipment and picked up a broom instead.
“Wayne, you’re
going to be all right,” he said, approaching the pool.
“It’s trying to drag me over to the deep bit,” said Wayne, tearfully. “I’m not sure I can stand up for much longer, I feel funny. And it really hurts!”
The alligator – and now, looking at the thing, it was no more than four feet long, probably only a baby – thrashed and back-pedalled and tried to haul the big fat man in.
“Right, first things first then,” said Jimmy. He held the broom out to Wayne. “Haul yourself up.”
“Yes, Jimmy,” snivelled Wayne.
He managed to claw himself onto the pool edge, drawing the alligator along with him.
“Now, sit down while I have a think.”
“You kidding me?” said Wayne. “I’m supposed to sit here and watch while this thing eats my leg?”
“Wayne. Sitting down will stop you falling into the water. If you fall in the water then it will chomp on your neck, or drown you, or whatever.”
“Oh, Christ, Jimmy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did to the old lady’s fingers.”
“Shush. Now let me think. Is it alligators where you can prise open their jaws?”
“That’s sharks, isn’t it?”
“No, you hit sharks on the nose.” Jimmy was momentarily and unhelpfully put in mind of the whack-a-croc game on the pier. “Why don’t you prise open its jaws?”.
Wayne reached down, his hands shaking. “Oh, its eyes! I can’t look!”
“It’s best if you look. You can do this.”
Wayne grasped the alligator’s jaws. “It’s wet!”
“Of course it’s wet. It lives in the water.”
“Are you sure about this?”
Jimmy considered lying. “No. But try it anyway.”
The alligator reacted to the attack by writhing swiftly and violently. It turned out Wayne’s bulk wasn’t enough to hold him in place. Wayne slid into the water and Jimmy wasn’t sure what was happening for a long moment. Then Wayne powered towards the edge, propelled by his giant arms, the alligator giving chase.
“Get away!” yelled Jimmy, using the broom to bash the thing on the head.
Wayne made it to the edge, hauling himself onto the pathway, panting fiercely.
Jimmy looked at him. There was a ragged stump where the lower portion of his leg had been. The alligator sank into the shallows, presumably to feast upon Wayne’s foot. Jimmy finally gave into the urge that had been bubbling under for a while, and vomited copiously on the tiles.
“Jimmy,” said Wayne, woozily, as blood leaked from his severed leg. “My Yeezys…”
“Your what?”
Wayne waved a weak hand indistinctly towards the pool and his missing foot.
“Yes, sure,” said Jimmy. He didn’t want to break it to Wayne that he was unlikely to be using that trainer again. Jimmy certainly had no plans to fight an alligator for it. “I need to stop your bleeding, get that body back in the boot, and get you some medical attention.”
He stopped short of mentioning the clean-up tasks that needed to be completed before morning. He also didn’t dwell too much on the fact that the medical attention wasn’t going to be from an orthodox practitioner. No way was he taking a one-footed man to A&E while they still had a body to dispose of.
Jimmy’s mind retreated further into the merely functional. His life became a list of tasks.
It reminded him – reminded that small section of conscious, feeling human – of the time a mate had entered them both for a half marathon. Thirteen miles was an impossible distance for the casual jogger to comprehend, impossible when he got stitch after the first two miles, and his shins started to burn after three. The only way to survive it was to break it down, mile by mile. Get to the next mile marker, get to the next drinks station. When all the body wanted to do was cry out in anguish, and the brain could no longer remember how things had come to this – why it had seemed like a good idea at the time – it was all about dividing the torture into manageable chunks.
* * *
Put a tourniquet around Wayne’s calf to stop him bleeding everywhere.
Tell Wayne to shut the fuck up.
Wrap up the old woman’s body in plastic again.
Drag the body to the van and load it in the rear.
Get Wayne to the van.
Discover that Wayne can’t hobble round the gate post in his condition.
Break the lock on the gates and open them up.
Put Wayne in the van.
Tell Wayne to shut the fuck up.
Check the crocodile or alligator or whatever it was is still in its damned pool.
Use a mop and pool water to wash away the worst of the blood in the reptile house.
Check that the cleaning cupboard is shut and the break-in covered up.
Double-check on that alligator. That’s right – alligator. There was an information sign.
Use the hose reel by the side of the seal pools to hose down any blood Wayne had trailed across the Seal Land compound.
Wind in hose. Wipe down any possible prints.
Go out, closing the gates.
Get in the van with Wayne.
Tell him to shut the fuck up or, Jesus Christ, he was going to be left to bleed out on the roadside.
Reverse round and drive towards Roman Bank and the main road.
Head towards the riding school in Hogsthorpe and Sacha’s clinic.
Search for Sacha’s number.
Call Sacha and tell him it’s an emergency.
When Wayne asks if the Sacha on the line is the same Sacha who is Jacinda’s horse vet, tell him again to shut the fuck up.
25
Sam was awakened by the slamming of the front door.
She was drunk and tired, but the sound of exterior doors in the night cut right through to the cavewoman centres of her brain. She was up before her body had time to protest, padding through the long house. She would have picked up a heavy ornament to use as a weapon on a potential intruder, but probability dictated the person she’d be most likely to brain with it would be her dad. Besides, all the decent heavy objects had been moved to the junk boxes for reselling.
She entered the front lounge and found the sofa where Delia had drunkenly crashed was empty. There was a note scrawled on the back of the drone assembly instructions.
* * *
Thanks for a great night. Got to go. Bloody husband!
Delia
* * *
Sam re-read it, decided there was nothing further to be gleaned from it, and went to bed. On the way, she stopped at the kitchen for a much-needed glass of water, stopped at the toilet for an even-more-needed pee, and checked her phone.
There was an alert from the DefCon4 app.
An alarm had gone off at a property where DefCon4 managed the security: Seal Land at Anderby Creek. A perimeter alarm had been triggered. In her limited experience, most alarms were false alarms – technical faults or human error. The package Seal Land were signed up to meant the same alert would be sent to the property owners and the police. There was nothing for her to do. They’d call her if she was needed.
Sam went back to bed and dreamed of a drone, flying over dark waves for eternity.
26
Jimmy helped Wayne hobble over to the vet’s office. By all rights, Wayne should be in a wheelchair, but Jimmy didn’t have one in the van, and vets had no use for them. Wayne had lost a lot of blood, in spite of Jimmy’s best efforts at a tourniquet, and much of it was pooling in the van’s footwell. Jimmy had tried to staunch it further by wrapping duct tape around the stump, but the loops of tape just became a baggy sock to carry the blood in.
Sacha’s veterinary practice was next to the stables he part-owned with a farmer, out Market Rasen way. It was a decent distance from Hogsthorpe village, far from any prying eyes. It was the middle of the night and the world was comfortingly dark. The light of the vet’s surgery was a beacon.
“Hey, Sacha,” said Wayne with a pale, giddy grin. He tried to wave and nearly fell ou
t of Jimmy’s arms.
“Wayne, you aren’t looking so hot, my man,” said Sacha, standing in the light of the doorway. He had a crisp, cultured accent. Jimmy didn’t know what country the vet was originally from, although Sacha had told him it was one that no longer existed, but never revealed more than that.
The two men hobbled in. In the clinical light of Sacha’s workspace, Jimmy realised his own legs were as soaked in blood as Wayne’s. More clothes to go in the fire.
Sacha looked at the extent of the damage in alarm. “You should be in the hospital.”
“I told you on the phone,” said Jimmy through gritted teeth. “We don’t want any attention. We can’t do the hospital.”
“Yes but this…” Sacha waved a hand over Wayne’s ragged stump. “This is bad. If we get complications, I don’t want to be—”
“It’s fine,” said Jimmy. “None of this will come back to you, and we’ll make sure you’re compensated.”
“Jacinda knows?”
“We’ll see you right.” He was deliberately vague on who ‘we’ referred to. “If anything goes wrong nobody needs to know you helped him.”
“Yes, but I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Exactly. You’ve treated horses with bad leg wounds, right? This is just like that. Tidy up the wound. Fill him full of antibiotics and pain killers and we’re all good.”
“I shall decide on the appropriate course of treatment,” said Sacha with a sniff. “He is not a horse and this injury… Let’s get him up on the table.”
With some difficulty Jimmy and Sacha lifted him to the table. Wayne whimpered.
“We will soon have this sorted out for you,” said Sacha. Jimmy thought it must be strange for Sacha having to explain what he was doing to his patient, as they weren’t normally human. He’d heard someone say that Sacha liked to sing opera to the horses when he treated them, especially when inseminating the breeding mares. He wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe that’s what they did in his country which no longer existed.
Wayne struggled to sit up. Sacha pushed him gently back down.
