Sealfinger (Sam Applewhite Book 1)

by Heide Goody

  “Doug? No, I don’t think so. He’s in the office pretty well all of the time. It’s worth trying now, definitely.”

  “The door’s locked. I rang.”

  The woman shrugged went back behind the counter.

  Jimmy left a fiver on the table and went out. He had the keys to the office. If Doug wasn’t going to come out….

  * * *

  Sam had quickly run up against the limits of Wayne’s vocabulary and spelling. She had failed to guess the word that began with ‘b’ and Wayne had taken great delight in telling her that it was ‘pagoda’.

  Sam was genuinely lost for words for a few moments. “An actual pagoda?”

  “Yeah, it’s a big one as well.”

  Sam couldn’t think where there was a pagoda in the Skegness area. There might have been a small one, little more than a model, in the ornamental gardens by the boating lake. Nothing that would have been visible from a distance.

  “Like a helter-skelter?” she suggested. “Or a lighthouse?”

  “No, silly.”

  “Not something you see every day. Describe it for me.”

  “Right. Well it’s big.” He illustrated with some hand gestures, indicating largeness.

  “Uh-huh. What else? What’s it made of? What colour is it?”

  Wayne hobbled over to look, causing Jacinda to look up from her work.

  “What are you doing, Wayne?” she called.

  “Looking out the window,” he replied.

  “Well, don’t.”

  He went back to his chair and flopped into it. The perspiration was more than a sheen now, it had started to drip off him and pool underneath him in his chair. “It’s made of wood. It’s wood-coloured.”

  “Right,” said Sam. She wanted to believe there genuinely was an oversized exotic tower outside that she had not noticed when she was being bundled in here – that would give her a strong clue as to her current location – but she was starting to suspect Wayne just had the wrong word. “Has it got a plant growing up it, Wayne?”

  “Yes, a blue one.”

  “A pergola,” murmured Sam.

  Jacinda stood up, smoothing her dress, and stepped clearly into Wayne’s field of vision. “I am going to Carnage Hall now,” she said in a slow, contemptuous tone.

  Wayne nodded. “Yes, Miss Jacinda.”

  “I’m going to the awards ceremony. Jimmy will be back here before long.”

  “Where’s he gone?”

  “To talk to a man.”

  “About my bionic eye.”

  “Until then, Wayne, it’s your job to stay here and make sure she doesn’t move from that spot.”

  “That spot?”

  “That spot.”

  “Or do anything at all. If she tries to leave…” Jacinda made a complex and not very clear mime of murdering someone and stabbed a finger in Sam’s direction. “Is that clear, Wayne?”

  Wayne frowned.

  “Is it clear?” she demanded.

  He nodded.

  “You know, it might be better if you refrained from speaking to her as well,” said Jacinda over her shoulder as she left the room.

  Sam watched her go out the door. Less than a minute later she heard the soft purr of an engine, then even that was gone. There was only Wayne now. And no more than ten feet from her, a desk with a telephone and a scissors and all manner of potentially useful things on it.

  “Does that mean no more I-Spy?” said Wayne.

  “Yeah. I believe so,” said Sam. She looked at the smart speaker on the desk. If Jacinda hadn’t unplugged it, maybe she could have shouted to it to call for the police. Thoughts of phones and smart devices sparked an idea in her mind. “You know,” she said, “if you’re bored, I do have a drone.”

  “A drone?”

  She nodded slowly, enticingly. “A drone. You just need to download the app on your phone.”

  Without a question, Wayne followed Sam’s instructions on downloading the MySky drone app. “A hundred percent!” he declared in delight. “And then I can bring it here?”

  “Once you’ve logged into the app with my ID.”

  “Right, right. It’s here.”

  “My login is Sam dot Applewhite at DefCon4 dot net.”

  “Sam dot….?”

  “Applewhite. A. P…”

  64

  Jimmy stared round at the large open-plan office. There were four desks but no people. It was clearly not a paperless office, as a multitude of wire trays and upright folders held printed sheets and brochures. Jimmy picked up the top sheet from a nearby tray. It had the DefCon4 logo at the top and the address of the central office in London.

  Memo: From 5th September, all timesheet codes will need to be prefixed with the location identifier of the primary contact for the appropriate cost centre. A full list of identification codes can be downloaded from MoSD.

  The acronym was underlined, and the rest of the sheet was taken up with handwritten notes where someone had attempted to unpack what it meant.

  Manager of ???

  Ministry of ???

  MOSSAD?

  He put the sheet back. There was a line of folders labelled reference material. Many of them looked like user manuals for software from several decades ago.

  Then there was the only desk with a nameplate. Doug Fredericks. Doug was not at his desk. The desk was oddly empty, apart from the nameplate and a tall spiny cactus. He’d heard no sounds from the rest of the office, but he walked through to see if perhaps Doug was in the toilet, or in a store cupboard or something. It turned out there was no store cupboard, only a tiny kitchenette. The toilet cubicle was empty.

  Back in the main office, Jimmy looked around. If there were personnel files, then maybe he could find a home address for Doug. He pulled open a filing cabinet. He flicked through brochures for contract services of every kind. He wondered who else worked in the office. Clearly somebody was providing crowd control and prisoner transport. He couldn’t picture Sam Applewhite doing those things, capable as she was.

  * * *

  “I’m in!” exclaimed Wayne, jigging so excitedly in his seat it sent him off-balance and he crashed to the floor. Sam craned forward. It would not be a massive shock if he was in a coma or dead. What was more of a shock was how on earth he kept going in his ravaged state. He levered himself back up off the floor.

  “Can’t wait until Sacha gives me my bionic eye,” he said apropos of nothing. He frowned at his own words, as if remembering something that troubled him. “Can we make the drone come here?”

  “I reckon so,” said Sam. “There should be a set of commands available and one of them is ‘return to base’. That will bring the drone to you.”

  “I can turn its lights on and off!” yelled Wayne.

  “Er, yeah. Good. But the ‘return to base’ thing…”

  Wayne hobbled rapidly over to the window and scanned the skies. “Where is it?”

  * * *

  Delia rang the bell at Duncastin’. After a minute, the door was answered by Marvin.

  “Delia,” he said and didn’t get much further, apparently entranced by her dress. “That’s…”

  “Pauses generally aren’t a good thing,” she said. “Is it too much?”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “It’s intriguing. That’s what it is. Come in, come in.”

  Delia followed Marvin through into the kitchen.

  “I made it to represent my business,” she said, giving him a bit of a twirl and a swish. “It’s very practical and down-to-earth at its core, which is why the base of the dress is made from agricultural feed bags.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Yes. Then I wanted to show it also involves a lot of creative flair and recycling, which is the reason for the Capitalist Whore utility belt.”

  “Yes, that was the part which caught my eye,” said Marvin, eyeing the row of naked plastic dolls. “What is in your utility belt?”

  Delia reached down and patted the woven tape forming the
pockets. She’d found that if she made a loop of the correct size, she could slide in a Capitalist Whore, and the unfeasibly large breasts would stop it sliding through any further, neatly wedging it into place. She pulled one out.

  “We have here the bottle-opening Capitalist Whore,” she said, holding it upside down to demonstrate that its lower half had been supplemented with a metal bottle opener. “There’s another one that is a corkscrew.”

  “It’s ideal for a party then? Or an awards ceremony,” Marvin said.

  “Yes, but it’s so much more than that. I have a hammer, a screwdriver and a set of pliers in here as well.”

  “In case some minor DIY needs doing while you’re there.”

  “I’m hoping that I might whip up a frenzy of demand tonight, so that people come by the shop, wanting to buy one for themselves.”

  “What will you charge?” Marvin asked. “You must remember to factor in all of the time it took you to make them.”

  “Well, in that case, we’re looking at around four hundred pounds, all in,” said Delia with a laugh.

  “Sam will love that,” said Marvin.

  “Is she here?” Delia said, realising with a jolt she clearly wasn’t.

  “No. She’s not been here for a while. Work, I guess.”

  “But we’ve got an awards ceremony to go to.”

  “Maybe she’s been held up?” suggested Marvin. “If you’re planning to wait for her, perhaps I can show you something?”

  “Ooh, is it a magic trick?” said Delia, pulling her phone out.

  “Well, if there’s time, maybe I’ll show you the everlasting jug. You’ll like that one. No, it’s something else. One moment.”

  Marvin disappeared and Delia checked her phone. It was odd that Sam hadn’t sent a message if she was delayed. Maybe they wouldn’t make it to the awards ceremony after all. Delia really wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was clear she was out of her depth with other business people, but she’d gone to all the trouble of making a Capitalist Whore Utility belt now, and it was unlikely she’d ever get another opportunity to wear it.

  “Here we are,” said Marvin, dumping a large box onto the counter. “I’ve sorted out some of Linda’s old outfits. I wonder if you might take a look and see if you think they might be worth selling?”

  Delia pulled a garment from the top of the box. Sequins and cutaway panels with flesh-coloured inserts featured heavily. The one in her hand was an elaborate body suit decorated with a peacock design. Up close it was impossibly gaudy, but Delia knew it must have looked wonderful to a theatre audience.

  “I’ve seen some interest in things like this,” she told Marvin. “I’m sure someone found one of Mary Wilson’s outfits in a French flea market and she paid a lot of money to get it back for her collection.”

  “Mary Wilson from The Supremes?” Marvin asked. “I think I might have danced with her at a London Palladium after-party. Lovely girl.”

  “It’s the story that goes with it,” said Delia. “It’s part vintage outfit, and part social history. “Where is Linda now? I bet she has tales to tell.”

  “Oh, I’m not at all sure about that,” said Marvin. “She moved to the States years ago. We probably shouldn’t be bothering Linda with things like this.”

  “Whatever you say.” She was momentarily distracted by an arrhythmic tapping and a faint buzzing sound. In an older house like this, it was probably just the heating system. “Well, let me take these with me and I’ll do a little bit of research,” she said. “Then I can let you know what I think about selling them.”

  “It’s a win-win situation,” said Marvin. “Sam will be delighted to see me getting another box of theatrical gubbins out of the house. The Swedish have a word for it.”

  “For what?” said Delia, picking up the box.

  “Döstädning. Death cleaning.”

  “Eh?”

  “Getting rid of all your clutter before you die to make things easier for your family.”

  “I’m sure that’s not what this is about.”

  Marvin raised a silver eyebrow at her.

  “I’ll just go and put them in my car,” said Delia uncomfortably.

  Delia carried the box outside, pausing briefly when she heard the tapping sound from another room again. She dumped the box in the boot of car and, noting the lateness of the hour, gave Sam a call.

  65

  Jimmy was taken off guard when Sam’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d checked every folder in the filing cabinet, but there was nothing relating to personnel. He was currently standing on a chair, so he could drag a box off a high shelf. All it contained was workwear in varying sizes, embroidered with the DefCon4 logo. He pulled out the phone and answered the call.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Oh,” said a woman’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. I was looking for Sam.”

  It was that Delia woman, Sam’s friend.

  “She’s not here,” he said.

  “She’s at work. Is that Doug?”

  Jimmy needed to think of some way he could use this call to extract more information about Doug, without giving away anything was wrong.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  He stepped down off the chair, scanning Doug’s desk for any personal items that might provide a useful discussion point. He stepped forward and his foot snagged on something. It was caught under a loose carpet tile. Automatically, he attempted to lift his foot up to rip it free but it was unexpectedly gripped by the tacky underside. He found he was observing himself in slow motion, making moves that were almost balletic. Stymied, his raised foot could only come down. This unbalanced his back leg and his knee buckled. He automatically pushed himself forward to try to stay upright and he pivoted over his trapped foot. His mouth opened to scream and the small, detached part of his brain watching this weird, slowed-down movie realised he was about to slam into the desk surface, face first. Except there was a cactus there.

  His mouth was suddenly filled with cactus. Not just his lips – his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his tonsils, his uvula – until he felt the rounded tip touch the fleshy back of his throat, and his lips kissed the soil of the plant pot. He instinctively rolled aside as he impacted, bringing the plant with him, the pot poking out of his mouth like the handle from the world’s most bizarre sword-swallowing act.

  He tried to scream at the fucking horribleness of it all. Nothing would come but a strangled squeak.

  His mouth was jammed around the enormous bulk of the cactus, as if he’d taken on the mother of all gobstoppers, but this was so much worse. How the hell was he going to get it out? He sobbed at the thought of the extra pain that would bring, but then sobbed at the thought of choking on a cactus. Could he breathe? Was he breathing now? He didn’t even know.

  “Hello?” said a distant voice on the phone. “Hello?”

  He pushed himself to his knees, drooling spittle and blood on the floor, and found the phone. He pressed the button to end the call. He did not want anyone witnessing this appalling agony. He looked for the phone’s camera feature. He held it up to his face and turned on the front camera. It was so much worse than he’d imagined. He stabbed at the phone to turn it off. He heard the sound of it taking a picture instead. He threw the phone up the wall. He’d seen an image of his face horribly distorted, like that painting The Scream. It wasn’t just that his mouth was filled with a fucking plant though. The bottom of the pot was congested with emerging roots from the plant, and it looked as if alien tentacles were emerging from the cavernous maw that had replaced his face. It was fucking horrific. He had to try and pull it out. He gave it a tentative tug. It hurt so much that he sobbed again, but he had to do it.

  He pulled much harder, and – yes, thank god! – it came away in his hand. He looked down in bewilderment. He was holding an empty plant pot. He had only managed to pull the pot off the plant. He still had a face full of cactus. He put his head in his hands, ready to die, but cold distant J
immy told him to pull himself the fuck together. He raised his head. He could do this. He grasped the soil ball. It crumbled in his hands until there was nothing to hold onto. He had no choice. He grasped the cactus itself, spines driving into his palms. He pulled, howling with pain, ripping the insides of his mouth and shredding his lips until he ripped it out. Dragging it free of his mouth with a half-scream, half-vomit. The cactus was flung away, many of its remaining needles tipped with blood.

  Whether it was the sight of blood, or the initial surprise passing, but the pain came anew. The pain of a mouth pinpricked from front to back with agonisingly fine needles.

  “Haaaaaooooaaaagggghh!” he hollered in pain, coughing and ejecting dozens of bloody needles in the process.

  He retched, he spat, he rolled around screaming, but nothing would shake it. Every movement of his mouth brushed needles against each other, wormed them deeper. His throat burned and his mouth drowned.

  * * *

  Delia wasn’t sure what to make of that call. It didn’t sound particularly good. Sam was obviously preoccupied in some way, but whoever had answered the phone was making no sense at all. Hanging up had just been plain rude.

  “Marvin,” she called as she went back into the house. “Have you ever spoken to that Doug person?”

  “Pardon?” said Marvin from the kitchen.

  She went through to repeat herself but stopped at a door just off from the front. The tapping sound she had noticed earlier was louder and more definite now. She recalled this door was an old-fashioned cloakroom with nothing more than coats and shoes.

  “You got an animal in here?” she said and opened the door.

  A black shape flew out at her. For a moment, she thought she was being attacked by a trapped bird of prey. Before she actually shrieked in alarm, she realised it was Sam’s drone. Delia stepped back hurriedly as the drone glided out of the cloakroom, into the hallway, and headed directly for the front door.

  “Er, Marvin?” Delia watched the drone. She could accept one weird thing, maybe even write it off. Someone else had answered Sam’s phone. While there were multiple reasons for that not to mean anything odd, or anything at all, now there was this. “Marvin!”