by Heide Goody
“Not a problem. Look, I need some help.”
“Does it involve me moving?”
“Maybe.”
Delia groaned again. “What?”
Sue looked at a large piece of crockery on the floor. “Do you have any Meakin plates?”
“Yes, I do. What kind?”
Sam took at picture of a large fragment and sent it over.
“Ah,” said Delia. “I sense a story behind this.”
Sam sighed. “I have such a story to tell,” she said, “but is there any chance you could bring a big pile of Meakin plates, and maybe some other ones too, and meet me at Lavender Court bed and breakfast?”
“Crockery-based emergency. I can do that,” said Delia. “I can be there in five. Maybe ten. I’m slow this morning. Fifteen. May need to stop for a pee and a tactical chunder. I’ll want the full story later, mind.”
“Over a glass of wine?”
Delia groaned once more and hung up.
31
There was no work being done on the Shore View site, nothing to be done until the next containers came in, so there were no workmen about. Jimmy walked the mile down the track to buy food. He picked up chocolate bars, crisps, pasties and Tic Tacs from the corner shop. He ate two mint Tic Tacs on the walk back to get rid of the unclean taste in his mouth.
Wayne was sitting up when he returned. “Food, yay! I’m starving!” He shovelled in the food as fast as he could manage.
Jimmy thought Wayne was acting awfully chipper for a bloke who’d lost a foot and been patched up by a horse doctor. He still had that sickly sheen to his face, but his vitality was surprising.
“You used one of those painkillers patches?” Jimmy asked, looking round for the fentanyl drugs patches Sacha had given them.
“Yeah, they work pretty good,” said Wayne, shoving half a Mars bar in his mouth.
“You used just one, right?”
“Just one. Don’t want to get an overdose.”
He pulled up his trouser leg, cut off at the knee, to reveal a two-by-three grid of patches stuck onto his leg as a single slab.
Jimmy nodded. “Right. That’d be bad.”
Shit. Jimmy hammered out a rapid message to Sacha: What should I do if Wayne has put on too many patches?
Sacha replied a minute later: The Fentanyl?
Yes.
Fuck. How many?
Six.
Fuck.
Jimmy waited for a further reply before responding: Elaborate.
Sacha’s next message was longer: You had one fucking job. Wait it out my man and don’t let him sleep for at least four hours. Get him to do some gentle exercise.
Jimmy replied: I can’t take him for a jog.
Just get him to move about. Nothing too strenuous.
Okay
Worst case: if he passes out you need to release the support and drop him off at A&E.
Jimmy shuddered at that. Release the support? He had no idea how to do that, and the one thing he knew he wouldn’t be doing was diving under those dressings and looking for whatever butchery Sacha had carried out on that leg.
“Hey, Wayne,” he said cheerily. “How would you like to get out in the fresh air?”
“Bit sleepy after that food,” said Wayne. “Might have a nap first.”
“No,” insisted Jimmy. “A trip out will do you the power of good. You need to make sure your bionic leg is up to scratch in the real world. Am I right?”
“What, like in a running race?” asked Wayne, swaying gently.
“What? No!” Was he stoned? Yes, he probably was. “No running races for a while. Just a bit of light exercise. We’ll do something fun.”
“We’ve got work to do,” said Wayne. “I know that, Jimmy.” He was slurring his words, his head lolling.
“Work, yeah. We’ve got a body to dispose of you know. It’s pretty urgent. Come on, walk with me.”
Jimmy inserted himself under Wayne’s meaty armpit, which was pretty rancid with stale sweat. He pushed up and Wayne tottered lumpily along for a few steps and out the door.
Wayne giggled at the sound of his metal peg-leg crunching on the building site hardcore.
“To the van,” said Jimmy, struggling slightly under Wayne’s weight. “Let’s just get some practice. One, two, three.”
He marched Wayne to the van, desperate to keep him moving.
“Lean here.” Jimmy propped him against the side of the van. “I need to clean this out.”
The passenger footwell was still mired with Wayne’s blood. Some of it had dried. Much of it was still a thick, uneven soup. Jimmy washed it out with water from the site office. It cascaded over the door sill, pink with congealed lumps of dark red.
“S’like the fountain in the ghost train,” slurred Wayne.
“What?” said Jimmy.
“Ghost train. At the fairground. I could…” He blinked and staggered but kept upright. “Should I be in the ghost train?”
Wayne’s mind was off somewhere else, but as long as he was awake Jimmy didn’t care. The floor of the van was sort of clean. The white hard core stones were now stained a rosy pink.
“The rides, Jimmy, when can we go on them?” murmured Wayne.
“In a minute buddy, in a minute.”
Wayne levered himself away from the van and stumbled several steps, ungainly but upright. Jimmy couldn’t believe he could actually walk with that thing on, but Wayne was built like an ox, and hardly seemed to notice the impediment.
“Hey Jimmy, I had the best idea,” said Wayne.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What was your idea, Wayne?” When he was firing on all cylinders, Wayne’s ideas were not the greatest. Whatever drivel he was about to suggest, while high on horse tranqs, was going to have to be filed under ‘not on your life’.
“You know we have to get rid of a body, yeah?”
“Yes, we do. You remembered well, Wayne.”
“And you know how we’re gonna ride the ghost train because it’s my favourite, yeah?”
“Ri-ight,” said Jimmy, really not sure where this was going.
“Well how about we unwrap the old lady, take her with us on the ghost train and leave her in there! So when people go round on the train they just see a creepy-ass lady looking like she’s a dead person. Because she is a dead person.”
“Wayne, that’s—” Jimmy thought for a moment. It was ridiculous. It was definitely not a long-term solution, but it could get her out of the way. What was the saying? Hidden in plain sight. Cold Jimmy, the creature in the dark of his brain, stirred.
“That’s not a terrible idea,” Jimmy heard himself say. “Let me think about how we’d get her over there.”
Wayne grinned goofily; whether it was at the idea of going on the ghost train, or that his idea had been deemed a good one, wasn’t clear.
32
Sam had tidied the smashed crockery. Her phone rang.
“Where are you?” asked Delia. “I’m at Lavender Court.”
“Yes. I’m coming to the door.”
“I’m already in. I even made them let me see the kitchen.”
“No, no, I’m…” A new fear gripped Sam. A dawning realisation crept towards her, but she pushed it away. “Can you just go to the front door?”
She slipped through the house. There was still no sign of the teenager. She peered out of the front door and saw Delia, two doors down. She came round to join her, a weighty cardboard box in her hands. “This is Lavender Court House,” she said pointing at the sign. “That one there is Lavender Court!”
Two doors down people waved.
Sam nodded back wordlessly. “That’s just stupid.”
“I can see how a person might get confused,” said Delia. “A hungover person.”
“Can’t blame everything on alcohol.” Sam looked at the box. “Plates?”
Delia handed her the box and Sam retreated to the kitchen. Delia followed her and Sam indicated the bag of smashed c
rockery and the empty dresser.
“You did a proper number on these, didn’t you?” she said, removing plates from the box and slotting them onto the dresser with practised ease.
“In my defence, anyone could have made the same mistake,” said Sam.
“They could have broken into the wrong house, decided to drag the furniture around and smash up all their plates?”
“When you say it like that—”
The kitchen door opened and a man with a bushy moustache walked in. “Hello. You’ve come about the turkeys?”
He held out his hand and Sam shook it without comment, trying to process what was going on. Delia shook his hand as well.
“Turkeys, of course,” said Sam. “Baby turkeys.”
“Just a couple of poults, aye. My son let me know you were here. Wish he’d use the damn phone rather than a text. I didn’t see it for a good three parts of an hour. Did he show you the birds at all?”
“No,” said Sam. “It’s not a problem, really.”
The man made mildly exasperated noises about the uselessness of his son while he bent to the oven door.
“Been keeping them in here. How my gran used to do it. Incubated them in the oven. Though these ones are ready for the garden.”
He plonked a bird into Sam’s arms and another into Delia’s. The bag of smashed crockery hanging on Delia’s arm made a rattling noise with the movement.
“Sorry,” said Delia. “My shopping,”
They spent a few minutes looking over the birds. Sam tried hard to think of a sensible-sounding question to ask, but she had nothing. Eventually she knew she had to bring this to a close.
“It’s very kind of you to show these to us, but I think I’ve decided turkeys are not for me.”
The man nodded. He took the birds and addressed them solemnly. “Not today my lovelies.”
“I’m sure you’ll soon find their forever home,” said Delia with an indulgent smile.
“Forever home?” The man’s eyebrows rose. “Ready for slaughter in another ten weeks I’d say. Though they’ll be fine till closer to Christmas.”
“Wait a minute,” said Delia. “Let’s not be too hasty, Mr….?”
“Vamplew. You think you might like to take them?”
“How well do they get along with cats?”
33
There were three places providing mobility equipment hire in the local area. Two were legitimate businesses which catered for tourists, and the third was run by the Odinsons. It was situated on the coast road running down from Anderby Creek, through the Chapel St Leonard sprawl of caravan parks. It looked like the dodgiest biker-run chop shop in the whole of Lincolnshire, but instead of cars or bikes they dealt with second-hand mobility aids.
With Wayne in the front and Mrs Skipworth still in the back, Jimmy pulled up out front. One of the Odinsons sat on the step of the low building. He had no idea which one it was. A son? A grandson? A nephew?
“I need a wheelchair or a scooter,” said Jimmy, popping a Tic-Tac. “It’s for someone pretty, er, heavy. What have you got?”
The Odinson took the cigarette from his mouth and ground it out under his heel. He beckoned Jimmy into the building.
It was a workshop-cum-showroom, looking every bit as dreadful as the outside. Whether they dragged them out of skips or found them unattended outside shops, the equipment arrayed came here to moulder and die. Or be bought by desperate mugs like him.
Jimmy moved towards the least disgusting items. There was an old-fashioned wheelchair which looked as if it had been stolen from a hospital. There was a lighter-weight wheelchair that was definitely designed to fold, but looked as though it had been retired from a rich career of off-road wheelchair rallying and nobody had bothered to rinse off the mud, or repair the many buckled struts since its last outing. It was unlikely to take the weight of the slenderest person without collapsing. He turned his attention to an electric scooter. It was one of the folding ones with what looked like a motorbike seat. It was possible to imagine how you might fit two people on there.
“That one,” he said to the Odinson. “How much?”
“Five ’undred.”
“Not a chance.”
The Odinson sniffed.
“I’ll give you seventy five if you can prove the battery’s not dead,” said Jimmy. “That’ll be the most money you’ll make out of all this worthless junk in a month.”
Odinson walked back outside and lit up again. Jimmy waited, biding his time.
“’Undred,” called Odinson from outside.
Jimmy paused. “Done. If the battery’s good.”
Jimmy wheeled it outside and lifted it into the back of the van alongside Mrs Skipworth’s corpse.
A hundred quid for a scooter. That on top of the money he’d paid to have her body dumped, and the extra he’d spent getting her undumped. His wallet was starting to look thin. If this was how much Britain’s ageing population was costing it was no wonder the country was in trouble.
34
The Piaggio was the ideal size for one person. One. It might have had two seats but in terms of elbows and knees, one was the preferred level of occupancy. Four was definitely pushing it. Two of those might have been turkey poults in a box on Delia’s knee, but two humans and two birds – scratching, warbling little birds – definitely felt like over-occupancy.
Sam had to gently push the box away so she could indicate right for the Welton le Marsh turning and a second time to turn the indicator off.
“And this woman?” said Delia.
“Wendy Skipworth,” said Sam.
“The plan is just to knock on her door and when she answers say, ‘Oh, you are here, that’s all right then’?”
“Pretty much.”
Sam steered into the side road running alongside the church and the new housing development. Frost and Sons. She grunted in recognition and the memory of her brief meeting with Jimmy MacIntyre.
“That’s Consuela.” She pointed at the naked mannequin laying down next to the wall.
“Poor girl looks cold,” said Delia.
“You’re worse than my dad.”
Sam pulled round the corner and onto the short gravel driveway of Mrs Skipworth’s cottage. Delia slid out from under her rattling, babbling box of turkeys to join her.
Sam went to the door and knocked, then went to the bay window. “Curtains are drawn.”
“People draw their curtains sometimes,” said Delia.
Sam hummed doubtfully. “She liked to have good view of the churchyard and the ghosts.”
“Ghosts. Right.”
“What she said.”
Sam looked across the garden at the line of sight from the lounge window to the church and the edge of the building beyond. “Probably just workmen.” She knocked at the door again, louder now. “Could be in bed.”
“Could be dead.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Sam sarcastically.
She tried the front door. It was locked. It had been unlocked when she’d previously visited, although that in itself signified very little.
While Delia stepped back and shielded her eyes from the sun to scan the upper windows for signs of life, Sam circled the house. All the downstairs curtains were drawn, the roller blind pulled down in the kitchen. She tried the back door: also locked. The back door had a grid of Georgian-style window panes. The one nearest to the door handle was broken, the pane replaced by a piece of cardboard taped into place. Sam didn’t remember it from the previous visit, but it was a minor detail and not the kind of thing she would necessarily have noticed.
She weighed up the pros and cons of housebreaking for a moment, then tried to push in the cardboard cover. It was stuck down well, but with increased pressure at one corner it slowly levered away to allow her hand access.
“What ya doin’?” asked Delia cheerily.
Sam gave a little start. “Breaking in.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sam felt her way inside, angled her
hand down, found the door handle and the key and twisted it.
“And just to be clear, this is entirely your idea and I’m only here because you were giving me and my turkeys a lift.”
“Yes, if it bothers you that much…” Sam saw Delia had her phone held out. “What are you doing?”
“Videoing it. So when it goes to trial, they know none of it was my idea.”
Sam sighed and looked directly at the phone. “Yes, dear jury, this was all my idea. We’re going to check that Mrs Skipworth is still alive.”
The door opened and they entered. It was the same kitchen Sam had been in previously, delivering and preparing meals on wheels – the same shelf of cat mugs, the same antiquated oven – and yet, somehow, it now felt different, as though the act of entering through a different entrance with a different purpose made it alien and strange.
“Mrs Skipworth!” Sam called. “It’s Sam from Meals on Wheels!”
There was no reply and Sam moved through into the lounge. Things were much as they were when she had last been here. The cluttered neatness of a sole occupancy home.
“Post on the mat,” said Delia.
She stood in the tiny hallway. There were a few letters and a couple of Daily Telegraphs in their shrink-wrapped packaging. Sam looked through them. The oldest was from Friday, the day after Sam’s visit.
“Wendy!” she called up the stairs.
They progressed upstairs together. Two bedrooms and a bathroom, all empty. The beds were neatly made. At the bedside of one was an old alarm clock with a luminous dial and a fading colour photograph. The photograph was of a family on a beach, half a dozen people clustered around two deck chairs. It was possible one of the people in the photograph was Wendy Skipworth, maybe one of the dark-haired women in swimming costumes, but the quality of the image made it impossible to tell.
“That’s nice, that is,” said Delia.
“Her family, I guess,” said Sam.
“I meant the clock. Ingraham folding travel clocks. Worth a bit.”
Sam tutted. “She’s not here, is she?”
