“Why can’t I come with you?”
Instead of answering, I hand her £100 in cash. “Something for you to spend. Treat yourself.”
“What? Why?”
“Why not?”
She smiles. “If you insist,” she says.
“Buy yourself a coffee next door if you get bored with trying things on.”
I watch her go into the boutique. We discovered it by chance on our way home from last summer’s music camp. It’s stuffed full of the sorts of clothes and jewelry that she loves. I hope it’ll cheer her up.
As soon as she’s inside, I let the smile fall from my face and put my foot down.
Ten minutes later, I’m driving along a lane at the very edge of the town. I pass a couple of bungalows before open fields unfold on either side. At the end of the lane, I enter a small industrial yard containing a couple rows of single-story units, each as tumbledown as the next. I pass a row of shipping containers, stacked two high. They block any view of the yard from the lane.
Most of the units here are empty. Only three are occupied. One has a sign advertising lawnmower repair, the other is a garden ornament shop, guarded by a concrete dog, with a chipped ear. The third has a forklift truck and stacks of pallets outside it. On the couple of trips that I’ve made here, I’ve never seen anyone else visit.
I rented a unit that was out of sight of the others. So far as the owner knows, I’m using it to store furniture and appliances left to me by a deceased relation. To be frank, he didn’t seem to be in the slightest bit interested when I explained this to him, and I probably needn’t have bothered. He had his eyes on the lump of cash in my hand, which suited me just fine. He runs the mower repair shop. His fingertips were stained green from grass clippings.
When I took possession of the unit, I furnished it with theheaviest padlock I could find. Then I moved an industrial chest freezer in.
I access the unit with some effort and back the car right up to the open entrance. I’m about to get out when I see the forklift truck round a corner and head toward me and my heart almost stops.
I panic and back the car inside, as far as it’ll go, thinking that it’s best if nobody sees me, but realize immediately that I haven’t left myself enough room on either side to open a door, so I drive forward again until the front end of the car is protruding enough to allow me to get out.
The forklift’s gone, I can’t see where, but I can still hear it.
I almost lost my cool, then, and I’m cross with myself. It’s this body. It means so much to me. And perhaps having to collect Imogen early has disturbed me more than I thought, putting me off my game, causing my adrenaline levels to spike. I’m all over the place, jittery and exhausted.
But it won’t stop me doing what I need to do. I’m so close to being finished and I’ll never, ever need to undertake anything like this again.
I tell you murder is easy by comparison to disposing of the body.
I shimmy past the car sideways to reach the back of the unit. Before opening the boot, I take a deep breath. It swings up abruptly and I’m faced with the corpse.
It’s splayed awkwardly, limbs and head at unnatural angles. The sheet I’ve covered it with is good quality, and drapes softly enough that I can see those familiar facial features and I flinch at the recollection of the wide, staring eyes right after death, the shock that lingered in them even after the body had let go of its last breath.
I couldn’t think of it as a person at that point, or at any point since.
But that doesn’t stop me gagging now. Fortunately, it’s not productive. I haven’t eaten for hours.
Once my stomach has stopped heaving, I realize I have a problem. There’s too much distance between the freezer and the car.
I’m expecting partial rigor mortis to make shifting the body difficult and I don’t want to have to drag it across the floor. There would be no dignity in that, for me or for it. I’m going to have to move the car closer.
The car is a hatchback, which gives me an idea. Leaving the boot open, I get behind the wheel and edge it back to where it was parked originally, right inside the unit, so I can stick to my original plan of pulling the body straight from the car into the freezer. Only this time round, I misjudge and reverse the car into the freezer. Cursing, I inch forward again.
None of the car doors will open wide enough for me to get out now, but I clamber over the seats toward the boot, intending to exit the vehicle that way, though I almost lose my nerve when it comes to climbing over the body. It’s not a nice thing to have to do and I don’t think I can avoid touching it, but I try, and am partially suspended above it, my back scraping the car roof, when I hear the forklift engine again and it’s getting louder.
I scramble out of the car as quickly as I can, yelping as my foot lands on the body. I fall awkwardly onto the floor of the garage in the small gap between the car and freezer. Pain shoots through my knee forcing me to rest on the floor for a minute.
As I wait for it to ebb, I notice my freezer is sporting a big dent in the front where I backed into it. I run my fingers over the warped metal, hoping I haven’t been so stupid as to break something inside it, that the thing isn’t going to malfunction as a result. It seems to be intact, but I know it’ll be one more thing to worry about.
It’s starting to bother me that things have gone awry today. It’s hard not to think of it as a bad omen.
The engine noise gets louder. I need to hurry. I pull myself up and open the freezer. Icy air blooms into the space around me. Iintend to make use of the body’s semi-stiffness to bridge that gap between freezer and car. I start to maneuver it but it’s not easy.
