Decay Inevitable

Sean persisted. “It’s still happening, what Vernon is doing. He’s still collecting. Sometimes he takes... sometimes it’s unborn babies. Did you know that?”

Now Kev swivelled on the stool. His eyes were raw and flat: oysters on the half-shell. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“He needs to be stopped. I think he killed a girl I used to know. Or someone working with him did. I want you to help me.”

“How?”

“You know all about him. You’ll have seen things. You know his weaknesses.”

Kev shook his head. “It isn’t Vernon you should be worried about.”

“Oh really?”

“Why don’t you just leave me alone? I don’t want to get back into that nonsense. I’ve got too much to do.”

Sean hitched around on his seat to get a view of the allotment. “Yeah. You’ve got a hole in your wheelbarrow needs mending and a rake to clean.”

“It suits me,” Kev said, quickly.

“I heard you were a good guy for Vernon. He rated you, I heard.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care any more.”

“I heard you were loyal and wouldn’t ever lie down for anyone. Hundred per center. Hundred and ten per center.” Sean leaned over and picked at the dried mud on a trowel. “Will you at least tell me what you know? And tell me why you bailed out? It wasn’t the gunshot wound, was it? At least tell us what happened with that.”

Kev sat across from him, staring at the younger man while Emma stood by the doorway, looking out at the pockets of mist in the rowans and the hawthorn. Chickens in a coop squabbled among themselves for a few seconds. The smell of the bonfire drifted through the open door. Kev’s stony face broke open to reveal a smile.

“Have a drink,” he said, pulling open a drawer and removing a half-bottle of whisky. “A nip, to keep out the cold.”

He poured three measures into three mugs and passed them around. They took sips. They nodded at the agreeable flavour, the migration of warmth through their bodies. A robin landed six feet away from the door and eyed them coolly.

Kev said:

I first met Vernon while I was working on the docks. I was doing anything I could for money back then. Seventy hours a week I’d be breaking my back loading or unloading ships. Fruit, textiles, meat, sometimes arms, although that was often midnight stuff. And never at the docks. Very naughty. Vernon was on one of the boats bringing in an illegal shipment of pistols from the Americas to sell on to Europe one night when I was helping out. I didn’t know much about his operations but I’d heard he was just about the best smuggler there was. I’d heard about him long before I met him. He was a bit of a legend.

We went down to a boathouse on the river and helped take the boxes off this boat while Vernon sat on a chair smoking cheroots and watching us working. When we’d finished, he called me back and thanked me, told me I put my back into it more than any other dogsbody that he’d seen. He was looking at me strange, like I had something green on my face. The others were in the boathouse by this time, divvying up the booty and loading it into the backs of stolen cars for delivery. They gave me filthy looks as they walked back and to.