Dan Abnett - Border Princes

‘We’re there. He’s clean.’

Owen paced on the path beside the garage. Birds twittered obliviously in the wet trees above.

‘Come on,’ he called. ‘Are we done yet?’

‘Owen?’ Jack replied, after a pause.

‘Yeah.’

‘Get the carpet cleaner and the scrub-packs from the SUV.’

‘How does that end up being my job?’ Owen complained.

They put the couple to bed, and wiped the place down. Owen grumbled as he went to work with the mop.

‘This is disgusting,’ he said.

‘You should have been here earlier,’ Gwen said. She’d made the rehydrating drinks as per Jack’s recipe: salts, glucose, antibiotics, warm water, plus a subtle cocktail of drugs that wiped short-term memory. Gwen wasn’t fond of using those.

‘You want me to strip out the pattern monitors?’ James asked.

‘We’ll come back in a week and do that,’ said Jack. ‘Better keep them under watch for a few days more.’

They bagged up the soiled macs and gloves and disposable towels in waste sacks, and locked up after them.

Later, when Mr and Mrs Peeters woke, tucked up in bed, they were both feeling very much better.

As the team got into the SUV, Gwen’s cellphone rang. She checked the display. RHYS.

She pressed ‘reject call’.

Sometime around four o’clock, after a bout of late rain, Davey Morgan heard voices outside the shed.

He’d spent the morning on the allotment, then gone in for his lunch. Some vague urge had brought him back out in the mid afternoon, some desire to potter around the shed, sorting through old seed packets and polystyrene bedding trays.

Davey had chattered away. The thing in the wheelbarrow had hummed once or twice. Davey wondered if the humming was actually his imagination. His hearing was not as good as it had once been.

He heard the voices well enough. He went outside and pretended to check on the brazier. It was just turning dark, the very edge of dusk. Three or four of the boys, the yobbos, were having a kick-about on a patch of waste ground in the corner of the allotment area. They were shouting, and calling each other all colour of filthy words. Davey prodded the brazier, trying to look as if he wasn’t watching.

The yobbos ignored him, or didn’t see him. There’d be a broken shed window or two, by the morning, in all probability. He worried about the thing in the shed. After a while, he went back into the shed, laid the thing down in the barrow, put a piece of potato sacking over it, and wheeled it out. He locked the shed, and carried on down the path towards the gate with the barrow. Its wheel squeaked annoyingly.

He heard the dense, pneumatic thunt of a ball being kicked, and flinched slightly as it soared past him and bounced across Mrs Pryce’s plot, snapping fronds of kale, and throwing aslant a nice head of white celery.

Driven by jeers, one of the yobbos flashed past Davey, laughing, on his way to recover the ball. His trainers did more damage than the ball had managed.

Davey couldn’t contain himself. ‘Standing on the bloody veg!’ he exclaimed.

Scooping up the ball, the youth glared at him with a mystified look.

‘What?’

‘You’re trampling all over the bloody vegetables!’ Davey cried.

The youth looked down. He was a thin, whippety man-boy, long of neck and ping-pong balled of Adam’s apple. Eighteen or nineteen years old, stupid two-tone hair, and a narrow, pimpled face. Davey recognised him. He had a feeling his name was Ozzie. This Ozzie, looking down at his muddied feet, grinned, and hoofed another head of celery out of the black soil. Bits of it scattered on the path.

Davey looked on, expecting verbal abuse. He sometimes doubted they could do anything but swear.

The youth, Ozzie, stared at Davey and took a step or two forwards. He held the football against his chest, with a hand on either side of it.

A few feet from Davey, still staring at him, the boy suddenly fired the football at him, two-handed. Davey grunted in surprise, and jerked backwards.

It had been a feint. The boy hadn’t actually thrown the ball, just pretended to. But it was enough to overbalance Davey. He teetered, and fell sideways into a patch of cow parsley. Going down, he banged his knee on the corner of a galvanised water tank.

Ozzie howled with laughter, and trotted off with his ball. His mates were laughing too, shouting and whooping.

They called Davey some choice names. He waited, prone, feeling the throb in his knee, divided by rage and fear. He waited until the voices fell away and his breathing steadied, then slowly heaved himself upright, using the edge of the tank for support. The boys were moving away along the south path, lobbing the ball to each other, their interest in him evaporated. He felt like shaking a fist and yelling, but knew that would only start the cycle again.

He didn’t want that.

He waited a while longer, leaning on the butt and lifting his sore leg to rotate the foot gingerly. Bloody bastards. Bloody, bloody bastards.

The surface of the syrupy green water in the metal tank began to pucker and dimple. The rain picked up again. Davey buttoned up his digging jacket, raised the handles of the barrow, and started on his way again.

More slowly, this time, limping.

He unlocked his backdoor, and wheeled the barrow into the kitchen. It left muddy tracks that he’d have to mop over later, but there was only so far he could carry the thing. It was heavy.

He wondered where he should put it. Where would it be safe? Where would it be comfortable? Upstairs was out of the question, and the under-stair cupboard, where the Hoover and the gas meter lived, seemed inhospitable. He finally decided on the tub in the little downstairs bathroom. He moved the soap dish and an ancient spider plant that he’d somehow kept alive since Glynis’s time, and laid the thing in the worn bath, propping it back against the calcified snouts of the taps. He adjusted it carefully, made sure it was steady.

Then he took the barrow back outside, set it handles up against the yard wall, and came back in. He put the kettle on.

‘Cup of tea?’ he called.

The cat appeared, and looked at him expectantly.

Davey took off his digging jacket and hung it on the peg.

‘Well, I’m certainly never eating cheese fondue again,’ said James.

‘I didn’t know you were fond of fondue,’ said Gwen.

‘I wouldn’t say I’m unduly fond of fondue,’ James replied, smiling.

‘Give it a rest,’ said Owen. His scowl was particularly pronounced, a weary look, though he half-smiled at the banter.

‘Decent enough result, though,’ said Toshiko. ‘Mucus notwithstanding.’ She looked tired too.

‘Not exactly how I’d choose to spend a Monday,’ said Gwen, ‘but yeah. Decent enough. Least we didn’t balls it up this time.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Owen. ‘If I had a drink…’ He looked up.

Half six. The small, cellar bar off the Quay was filling up. A herd of suits from investment firms, insurance brokers and the rest of Cardiff’s big, anonymous plcs were flooding into the watering hole.

‘I’ll help Jack with the drinks,’ Gwen said, getting up. James watched her disappear into the crowd.

He looked back at Toshiko and Owen. They were smiling at him.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Need a hand?’ Gwen called over the chatter.

‘Thanks,’ said Jack, turning to hand back a couple of drinks from the bar. He waited for the barman to bring him his change.

‘More to your liking?’ Gwen asked.

‘What?’

‘Today. Performance more to sir’s liking, was it, then?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think we did all right.’

‘What, are you writing your own pep talk now?’