Flytipping

A Willerby Story

Someone fly-tipped Jack’s pool in the night.

David and Mauve cleared it up as soon as they could — but, while they did not know it until later, they were too late.

Jack heard.

The diesel engine of the van in the night stirred him, and the clanking and thudding of heavy things being moved around brought his pointed head to the surface.

Jack saw.

His white pupils in his black eyes found two burly figures and a skinny one moving furtively in the moonlight between his lawn and their vehicle.

Jack was pleased. It was a long time since he’d been given gifts but when he went to inspect his new treasures his mood changed.

At first, he was puzzled.

He did not understand.

Broken bricks. Ragged plasterboard. A cracked porcelain sink. A rusted radiator.

Empty cans of paint and dirty rags. Takeaway wrappers and Costa Coffee cups, all dancing in the dark in the cold January breeze.

This was not gold, silver, or jewels. Nor fine wrought weaponry. This was not beautiful cloth to strut around in. Nor was it good wine or beer. There was no meat or bread. There was nothing living for him to play with, no entrails to wind round his tree when the fun was over.

What was it all then? What were these things left in his garden?

Jack dropped from his upright stance to all fours and slid between the piles of waste and rubble. He dipped a black, leathery finger into a paint can and touched a sharp claw to his lips. Then, so fast a human would not have seen him move, he stood up and kicked the can away, smashing it so hard it crashed right through the hedge and into a field beyond.

He sat back on his sleek haunches, picked up a greasy napkin, and sniffed at it.

Food? Perhaps. But it was not good food; too much fat, wrapped in a stench of corrupting chemicals.

He dropped the napkin and - snicking together his white sharp teeth - sat and thought.

These were not offerings.

This was not treasure.

With horror and disgust, it dawned on him: it was rubbish. Useless items dumped by those too lazy and dirty to go to the midden.

He retched.

Who would do such a thing? Who would dare?

He would find out.

Jack dropped back onto all fours and sniffed. At first there was only paint and stale coffee, cement and old food, but he knew to be patient, and before long, he found clean blood in all the stench – faint but there.

He followed his nose to a yellow rubber glove and, with quick, clever fingers, turned it inside out. A plaster fell out. He snatched it between two claws before it could drop to the ground.

There was only the smallest speck of blood in it, but it was more than enough.

One man’s scent known, he tagged the second with a scrap of broken fingernail found in the rim of a paint can. And the third with a single hair trapped between two bricks.

He never needed much and there was always something.

Jack took his markers back to his pool, then, sulking, he sat on the bank, paddling his webbed feet.

He had come to accept he no longer received presents because he knew the world had changed, but when he’d seen the pile of things by his pool, he had got quite excited.

Now he felt forgotten, disappointed, and his feelings were hurt.

In the depths, Jack brooded all night long, and by the next morning he’d decided something must be done.

He would take revenge.

He would teach them a lesson.

He would teach them all a lesson.

…

Pete woke with a hangover and fragmentary memories of the afternoon and evening before.

The morning was clear enough. He’d spent it at Geoff’s new house helping him and his housemate Jamie, rip out the old bathroom and repaint the walls.

A couple of hours after lunch, they loaded up all the rubbish and drove it in the hired van to Beckworth tip, which closed ten minutes before they arrived.

This was a pain because the van had only been hired for the day, and Geoff didn’t want to pay extra just to get rid of the rubbish.

They went to the Unicorn to discuss the problem over a pint.

Which turned into two pints. Which turned into three. Then four, and more, followed by shots at the Raven, and more shots and whiskey nightcaps at the Greyhound, all topped off with a street-corner kebab.

“Just have to suck it up, mate,” Pete had said, dripping chilli sauce on his shoes, “nothing else for it.”

“Or we could just dump it somewhere,” said Jamie, swaying, “wouldn’t take long.”

“None of us can drive now,” Pete remembered saying.

“No cars around this time of night,” said Jamie, “and no police. We’ll be out and back in half an hour and then it’s all done. Come on, I’ll drive, I know a place.”

Pete was pretty sure he had said they shouldn’t, but Geoff and Jamie were game, so what was the point in making a fuss? And anyway, no harm had been done. They hadn’t seen another car, and all of their stuff was now out of the van and on the grass by the Willerby pond, without anyone noticing.

It had all worked out.

Nonetheless, he wasn’t proud of what they’d done, and decided there was no reason Charlie should know – she already thought Geoff and Pete to be bad influences, and he didn’t want to hear any more about it especially today with the sweats, his head pounding and the nagging pain of a nail he’d broken while prising open a paint can.

Sunday lunch with his in-laws would be hard enough without her in his ear the whole time.

Jamie lived on his own and thought he had it easiest. He planned to sleep off his hangover and had plans no more ambitious than a microwave-ready meal and a hot bath later.

Geoff woke groaning – he had to take back the van before nine, and there was still plenty more prep work to do on the bathroom.

He hadn’t thought his day could get worse, but it did – though he hardly had time to know.

Just as he was about to turn the key in the van’s ignition, Jack jumped from the back of the van and, with a claw sweep faster than sound, ripped out Geoff’s throat, then gleefully danced and howled his shrill old songs amid a fountain of gushing blood, as he watched his prey gurgle his way to choking death.

…

Jack had not found it hard to find his way there.

A dark entity of both depths and shallows, Jack could always travel where there was water by pinching himself small and jumping between the tiniest spots, raindrop to raindrop if needs be.

Much in the world had changed since he’d last left the village, but the shape of the land itself was mostly the same, and the blood in the plaster led him down straight lines as clearly as a compass.

There were rules, of course, but today Jack would not be bound by them.

He had not been the one to break the bargain that went “you leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.”

Times had changed.

Jack loved times of change, of upheaval and confusion.

When the Romans left. The arrival of the North-Men. The disease that swept away half the world in fever and black pus. Families pitched against each other when the country fought their king. Chaos. Old worlds dying and new ones falling like rain on ploughed land.

These were his best times.

It was change he was thinking about when, blood-soaked and joyful, he bounced between the rivers, ponds and puddles, back home to his pool, thinking of what he’d do with his new freedom.

Starting with the two other men who’d defiled his domain.

Eventually – of course – there would be new bargains and order again but until then it was time to indulge himself.

Jack settled himself into his lair beneath the still water and rested, thinking happily about all the fun to come.

…

News spreads fast in the countryside.

By lunchtime everyone in Willerby knew about the murder in Beckworth.

Julie heard from Chantelle, who heard from Clive, who heard from Francis, whose brother worked at the station, that the police were investigating county lines gangs and who Geoff, a known gambler, might have owed money to in the city.

David and Mauve allowed themselves to believe this too, until evidence that it was Jack came to the village the following morning.

…

Jamie had been wrong about having an easy day.

He spent most of it at the police station being interviewed.

Did Geoff have enemies? Had he seemed troubled recently? Uneasy? Asked to borrow money?

Jamie was not a suspect. They had CCTV of the three men in the Unicorn, the Raven, the Greyhound, the kebab shop and then Jamie swaying his way back home.

The police were kind enough, bringing him crisps, sweets and Lucozade.

He thought about telling them about the Willerby fly-tipping but held his tongue. He was sure it had nothing to do with anything and what was the sense in owning up to it for no reason?

Still, right at the end, before they let him go home, he’d almost decided to come clean.

“Jamie,” the grey-suited detective had said, looking tired and worried, “we’re turning up blanks everywhere – and you know the strangest thing? The van was locked, and the window only open a crack. You’ll get in touch if anything else comes to mind? No matter how small?”

Jamie decided to keep quiet. Why invite more trouble?

…

Later, as Jamie ran a bath, he wondered whether finishing the day in the same way he’d planned before Geoff’s death was somehow wrong – sort of inappropriate.

But everything today felt wrong – how could it not?

Tomorrow couldn’t be worse, he thought, as he slipped his head beneath the surface and let the hot water soak his hair and shrink the world.

A short time later there was an underwater dull roaring. Jamie sat up and opened his eyes.

The hot water tap was suddenly on. The water turned brown and, as he watched, the flow slowed and thickened as Jack oozed out, swelling to form his sleek plump body with its dark eyes and clever long clawed fingers.

Jamie didn’t have time to make any sense of it before Jack was on him.

He made his mouth big. With razor-sharp teeth he removed the naked man’s left foot and jumped from the bath to the sink, where, dripping and shaking his fur, he danced and sang while watching the man scream and thrash about as the bath turned crimson.

Later the screaming subsided and Jack – in his chittering, skittering way – tried to talk to the man but could make no sense of his dying moans. He wondered whether the man’s missing foot was bothering him, so he removed the other, but if anything, this seemed to make things worse.

Bored, Jack killed him and then went home, taking the feet with him as souvenirs.

He wove a neat cradle of reeds and grass for each, hung them in his sycamore and then slipped into his pool to rest.

David found the cradles at first light the next morning, and that was how he and Mauve knew they’d been too late clearing up the mess at Jack’s pool and the Beckworth murders were their responsibility.

They didn’t dare take the feet away, so instead they hid them nearby, wrapped in a torn plastic bag.

…

Julie heard from Chantelle, who heard from Clive, who heard from James, whose brother worked at the station, that two of three friends were dead, and that while the police had no idea who’d done it, the name of the third was Pete.

Mauve asked around the village and got his number from Caitlin, who got it off her parents (who lived two streets down from him).

She sent Pete a message.

“U R in Great Danger!”, it said. “Go somewhere private and call.”

Then she made herself a pot of tea and sat down at the kitchen table in front of the Aga.

She didn’t know what more could be done except calling the Burners, and she’d rather not do that.

If they knew Jack was out and going beyond Willerby, they’d send someone to deal with him, and for all he’d done, she did not want him to die. She knew Jack couldn’t be allowed to wander loose, but killing him seemed unfair.

He didn’t mean harm. He was just Jack doing what Jack did when things got out of kilter.

There was also the worrying possibility they’d try but fail.

She had a feeling Jack was something more than the Burners really understood. She wasn’t even sure he was something that could be killed.

If possible, it would be better managed locally.

So, she was relieved when, just after she’d topped up her cup, her phone rang.

“You aint got to do nothin’ but listen,” she said, “then do what I say. You did wrong by leaving that rubbish here but a steep enough price has already been paid and - if I can - I’ll save you from what happened to your friends. If you want to stay alive and keep all your parts, you’d better act fast. You upset someone here and you need to show you’re sorry. Here’s how. I’m going to send you a list of things. Go get them and then come here as soon as you can.”

…

Pete was younger than Mauve had expected him to be – smaller and skinnier too – barely more than a child and clearly terrified.

“I brought it all, everything on the list,” he said, unpacking the contents of a large travel-stained backpack onto Mauve’s table. “Sirloin steak. Corn-fed chicken. Champagne. Foie gras. Sourdough.” He paused for a moment, “Why two bottles of the scotch?”

“One is for my trouble,” said Mauve, taking it off him and putting it into the spirits cupboard, “and all from Waitrose?”

Pete nodded.

“Good. Now, get all this back in the bag and go to where you started all this trouble. Come on, I know you know the way.”

“What’s in your bag?” Pete asked as they made their way to the pool.

“None of your business,” said Mauve.

They stopped at the pool and Mauve pointed to the water.

“Put it in the pond?” Pete said. “Won’t that ruin it all? How will they even know if they’re not here to see it?”

“Don’t worry,” said Mauve, splashing her own bag’s contents into the surface, “they’ll know. They might even be watching now. You better get used to this by the way – this ain’t a one-time deposit. You’ll need to come back here regular.”

…

Jack was indeed watching.

He knew the boy by the memory of the fingernail, which he’d put somewhere in his depths with his other treasures. Somewhere. Not exactly lost. Certainly misplaced. He’d be able to find it again if he looked, but that could wait.

He understood atonement and the restoration of balance and when the presents drifted down to him, he could see he was again understood.

He decided the return of his trophy feet, along with the other gifts, was an act of respect and this pleased him too.

He decided he would let himself rest in his deep waters.

Presents again! How lovely!