Recycled
Cecilia Peartree
Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2010
Cover picture: James T. Perry
Recycled
In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it.
He certainly did a lot of begging, but I rationed my mercy to a minimum. The screams still echoed in my ears as I began to clamber over the high fence, hoisting my burden up behind me on a rope I had brought along just in case.
I was very busy for a while with the enjoyable task of dismemberment; then I divided up the parts, throwing each one into a separate skip. Considerate of the Council to provide so many containers. I didn’t have to use the same one twice. Each time, I jumped into the skip myself and piled stuff on top to conceal the thing I had just added. Eventually it might rise to the surface again. In that case I would just disappear, walking off into the sunset without leaving any footprints.
About to leave, I tripped over something. Worried that I had left one of the parts lying around, I picked the thing up and shone my torch on it. A little wrinkled face peered anxiously up at me from under a little red hat. It was a garden gnome. I started to laugh at the incongruity of it, but I decided impulsively to take it with me for luck.
I should have known better: I should have obeyed my training, which had inculcated in me the importance of disregarding impulses. The very next evening I started to work out exactly how stupid I had been.
‘Dave and I went up to the tip today,’ said Christopher as we walked up the High Street eating fish and chips from paper bags. I had decided I was old enough to do this without worrying about my self-image.
I accidentally swallowed a chip that was still too hot, and went into the obligatory pantomime of waving hands in front of mouth, choking slightly, and so on. This distracted Christopher, but only temporarily.
‘It’s a bit weird up there. Garden gnomes all up the sides of the road. If you look at them for too long you start to think they’re glaring at you.’
Sometimes I despaired of Christopher: he really was an incurable wimp. On the other hand, at least it showed that he had a vivid imagination – for a redundant archivist.
‘Have you ever been in there?’ he added idly, crunching a bit of empty batter.
‘Does it look like the kind of place I’d hang out?’
‘Maybe not...’
‘What were you and Dave doing there anyway?’
‘We’re clearing out some of Mrs Stevenson’s stuff.’
‘Does Jemima know about this? What if the only thing that’s keeping her alive in hospital is the idea of getting home and being surrounded by all her stuff?’
‘No, it’s OK. She asked Dave to clear out the shed. It’s just old dog beds and things.’
‘Dog beds. Hmm.’
‘If you’re not doing anything tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you can come and give us a hand.’
‘Tempting,’ I said. ‘But I think I’ve got some drains to unblock.’
‘Dave could help you out there,’ said Christopher, eating his last chip and folding up the paper neatly. ‘He’s got a colossal plunger.’
‘Has he indeed?’
Christopher actually blushed, then laughed.
‘I was thinking,’ he said, making a good recovery.
‘Yes.’
‘About Jemima. Do you think they’ll catch whoever did it?’
‘They? The police?’ I tried not to sound incredulous or scornful, but I realised my tone expressed what I felt.
‘Do you think they’re even trying?’ he persisted. ‘Should we – you know – have a go ourselves?’
‘No!’
He flinched. Maybe I had been a bit abrupt. I modified my reply.
‘No, that would be pointless. We haven’t got anything to go on. If Jemima had remembered anything useful she’d have told the police and they’d have followed it up.’
‘But they don’t really care,’ said Christopher earnestly. ‘Not the way we do.’
Care? An odd word to use, but perhaps the right one: against my will and contrary to all the rules by which I had lived my life to date, I did indeed care about the fate of the old woman who lay in Kirkcaldy Memorial Hospital with a broken leg and several internal injuries just because some low-life had knocked her down and then repeatedly cycled over her.
I found my fists clenching all over again as I thought about it.
‘You could do something about it, Amaryllis,’ said Christopher. ‘You’re good at that kind of thing.’
‘I’m supposed to have given up all that kind of thing,’ I said. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
We didn’t see each other for a few days after that. It was slightly unusual for this to happen, in fact some would say we were inseparable – although they’d be wrong; but Christopher had two part-time jobs, and depending on his shifts and my other activities, sometimes our movements didn’t coincide for a while.
‘I’ve made some progress!’ he announced, running down the road to catch up with me one morning.
‘In what way?’
‘The cyclist! The one that ran over Mrs Stevenson!’
As I looked at his beaming, shiny face, for the first time since I had moved to Pitkirtly I resented the fact that it was a small town. There was nowhere to hide from your enemies – or from your friends.
‘Good,’ I said, nodding. ‘Well done.’
‘I’ve found a witness. The girl in the fish shop. She spends half her time looking out the window, even while she’s serving customers. Especially then... Or maybe it’s just me she does that with. Anyway, she was looking out the window that day, and the boy on the bike went past.’
‘How do you know it was the right boy on the right bike?’
‘She said he was in a terrible hurry and he was on the wrong side of the road,’ said Christopher. He had one of his random attacks of politeness. ‘Can I carry that bag for you? It looks quite heavy.’
‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’
I hoped he wouldn’t return to the topic of the cyclist, but of course he did.
‘So that’s why she remembered him,’ he said, walking beside me. He reminded me of a primary school age child I had seen the previous afternoon walking down the road with its mother. The mother had paid very little attention as the child skipped, jumped and chattered beside her. I was that mother.
‘Not unusual for a cyclist to be on the wrong side of the road,’ I commented to break the expectant silence.
‘She remembered the look on his face. And the school uniform.’
‘School uniform?’
‘He should have been in school,’ said Christopher, as if that proved anything. ‘It was only three o’clock in the afternoon. He shouldn’t even have been in the High Street at all.’
‘Well that’s easy then,’ I said, forgetting myself for a moment and entering into the spirit of the thing. ‘We’ll just get a list of all the kids who were playing truant that day – it’ll only be the size of War and Peace.’
I hadn’t noticed the latent smugness in Christopher’s face. He let me finish and then said, ‘It was Pitkirtly High School. Jock McLean knows the school secretary.’
‘He would.’
‘This is where we need you. We’ve got the list now, and there are only two boys on it.’
Fortunately Christopher was too impressed by his own cleverness to take any notice of my expression, which, if it reflected my thoughts correctly, was a bizarre mixture of puzzlement and panic. He rushed on further into his fantasy world. If there had been orcs in the way, he would have scattered them before him as if he wielded a magic sword.
‘Jock says he can’t get involved because of his background. And Dave’s been going to and from the hospital every day. He thinks he’s the only one keeping Mrs Stevenso
n going. He won’t take any chances on getting into trouble. So that leaves you and me. And I don’t know anything about kidnapping.’
He looked at me with big trusting eyes. Why hadn’t I noticed before how dog-like he was in his misplaced trust, his bouncy enthusiasm and his clumsy devotion? Why would anyone want to kick him?
‘I don’t do kidnapping,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t advise you to do it either.’
I turned my back on him and walked up the road a little way and into the nearest shop. It was an old-fashioned barber’s, perhaps the only one left in the world. A barber, with a disquieting resemblance – in my mind, at least – to Sweeney Todd, came towards me from some dark hinterland. He was wiping his hands on a towel. I expect I only imagined the blood.
‘Can I help you, sir – sorry, madam?’
The door pinged behind me. I turned my head to see Christopher walking into the shop. I was trapped between the two of them.
‘This man wants his head shaved,’ I said to the perplexed barber. Christopher’s expression went from his habitual vague half-smile to anxiety and then blind panic as the barber ushered him to a chair.
I laughed. If I knew Christopher, he would emerge from the shop with his head shaved rather than face the embarrassment of