Kill Fish Jones (2 page)

‘Four!'

‘And they'll all have loved ones. A wife or husband. Children.' Grimshaw was bubbling with suppressed excitement.

‘Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters.' Lampwick waved his arms excitedly, lurching about the crypt. ‘So much to be taken away! And homes too, don't forget. And jobs. Lives. They will all have lives.'

‘But not for much longer,' said Grimshaw. His tail swayed to and fro eagerly. ‘Not for much longer!'

‘Hah!' said Lampwick gleefully, almost dancing with joy. ‘Serves them right for tampering with my mortal remains, eh! That qualifies as bothering me all right!'

Grimshaw's cat-like face stretched into a happy, horrible grin. Once again, he had work to do.

The burly man in the hard yellow hat and the overalls glared at the red-faced man in front of him.

‘Look, Wayne,' he snapped, ‘what with the exploding dog and the falling tree, I can do without you carping on about soft furnishings, got it?' He wasn't shouting yet, but he sounded like a man who might start at any moment. His face was tight and his eyes glittered.

Wayne swallowed hard and stood his ground. ‘It's just … There are curtains … and I was thinking …'

‘Oh, thinking, were you?' sneered the burly man whose name happened to be Jon Figg. ‘Don't make a habit of it!' He passed a hand wearily over his face, then went on irritably, ‘How do I know why there are curtains? Maybe the last owners couldn't be bothered to take them down. Who cares? Just GET ON WITH THE JOB!'

Wayne opened and closed his mouth. Then he gave up and climbed aboard the bright yellow excavator.

Comfortably settled on top of the nearby postbox, Grimshaw watched with satisfaction. He was sitting in
plain view because there was no need to hide. Apart from those exceptional occasions when fate allowed a child to be born gifted with extra-special vision, humans couldn't see half-alive creatures like Grimshaw, unless the half-alive wanted them to.

Everything was going to plan. It was a month since Lampwick had been dug up and Grimshaw had been given the new Litany of Sufferers. In that time he had made good progress. Already, two of the four names on his Litany were finished.

He flicked open his notebook, looking for the page where ‘
Sufferer 3: Jonathan Figg
' was neatly written in cramped printing. Because Mr Figg was the man who helped the man who moved Lampwick's coffin, Grimshaw had added the words ‘
The Man Who Helped
' underneath the name. Grimshaw liked to be organised and proper.

Also under Mr Figg's name was a list of the things that Grimshaw had to take away from him to make him suffer. These were: dog, car, house, job and wife. When all of these were gone and the Sufferer was in despair, then Grimshaw would take away the only thing left: the Sufferer's life. Currently, Grimshaw was working on the fourth item – Jonathan Figg's job. Retrieving the pencil stub jammed behind one pointed ear, Grimshaw licked the end, then wrote, ‘
Frayed Nerves and Inconstant Temper leading to Poor Judgement
'.

By now, Wayne had started the excavator rolling forward, grinding up the neat garden path and crushing
the flower beds. An empty milk bottle wobbled, then fell and cracked, rolling down the doorstep and under a bush. The excavator went on right up to the front door. By now, a crowd had begun to gather, prevented from coming too close by the barriers put up for their safety, but getting a good view anyway.

The excavator stopped rolling forward. There was a lot of grinding as its long metal arm slowly unfurled and reached out. The huge claw-like part at the end paused for a moment, then lunged forward, smashing into the wall and pulling it down. Under the onslaught of the heavy machinery, the side of the house crumbled as easily as if it were cake, not solid bricks and mortar. The excavator went back for another bite. Bricks and tiles tumbled. Windows shattered, the harsh sound tearing into the summer day. The crowd gasped.

Moving the arm of the excavator to reach more of the house, Wayne went in for another go. And another. A central portion of wall came down and the front of the house suddenly crumbled, sliding into a sea of rubble. The air was filled with the sound of thunder. And dust. An awful lot of dust.

When the dust settled and everyone could stop coughing and open their eyes again, what they saw looked like one of those doll's houses where the front swings off to show the rooms inside neatly laid out in cross section. Upstairs revealed a newly decorated bedroom – the bed still unmade – and a blue-tiled, bathroom. On the ground floor was a hall, with wellington boots in a cubbyhole
under the stairs and a door (still standing) through to the living room. There would be other rooms at the back, but the excavator hadn't got there yet.

One or two of the crowd, the more thoughtful ones, began to look worried, but nobody did anything about anything, which was fine with Grimshaw. He knew that humans mostly thought that other humans knew what they were doing and so didn't interfere, even when it was glaringly obvious that something was wrong.

Jon Figg was looking at his watch again. In the excavator's cab, Wayne had forgotten his worries and was beginning to enjoy himself.

So was Grimshaw. He flipped to the next page of his notebook, which had the heading ‘
Sufferer 4: Susan Jones, The Woman Who Knocked
'. He smiled happily to himself. The whole event had a lovely symmetry and, frankly, Grimshaw was proud of it. He turned his all-black eyes towards the end of the road, because any minute now Mrs Jones and her weird son, Fish, were due to come home. If it qualified as home any more, which was doubtful.

Just about the time the roof fell in on the sofa, crushing it into a ruin of chocolate-brown cloth and stuffing, they arrived.

The crowd fell silent. All eyes were on Susan Jones and the boy with white-blond hair and hazel eyes.

Fish Jones had been having a really great morning, right up until he turned the corner of the road to see ruins where he had expected to see their home.

It was only three hours since he and his mother had left the house, and then it was still standing and looked very solid and not at all likely to fall down. In that three hours, they had gone into town, where Fish had spent the morning at the swimming baths with his friend Jed, while Susan had gone shopping for the new jacket she needed. Afterwards, they had visited the Star Bar, where Jed had talked happily about waterslides and jumping in the deep end, and Susan had told them all about the people she had seen in the shops. Fish, who much preferred listening to talking, ate his ice cream and watched their faces, and laughed so hard at one of Jed's stupid jokes that a spoonful went down the wrong way and they had to bang him on the back until he stopped coughing.

When the boys had finished their ice creams and Susan had drunk her coffee and eaten her doughnut, they headed back home, dropping off Jed on the way. Fish was looking forward to lunch followed by an afternoon in the park with Alice, who had promised to teach him to roller-skate. Or at least to roller-skate and still be upright at the end of it!

So when they saw the bright yellow excavator grinding forward over the wreckage of their home, it came as a horrible shock.

Fish's first thought was that they had accidentally
walked down the wrong street. Then he saw the sofa, lying mangled and broken in the middle of the rubble, and his heart turned over in his chest. He'd spent many rainy afternoons reading on that sofa and would know it anywhere.

Although he was horrified, shocked and not a little bewildered, Fish's first thought was for his mother. He looked up at her. She had turned pale and her eyes were oddly bright and shiny as she struggled to take in what she was seeing. She put one hand up to her forehead, pushing back her wavy brown hair that refused to be neat.

‘Wha … ?' she said.

Thinking that she might be about to faint, Fish took her arm supportively and looked around for help. He immediately spotted Ray Harris, who lived over the road, and waved at him. Mr Harris was already hurrying forward with a chair, which he put neatly behind Susan just as she sat down from shock, saving her from some nasty bruises.

Patting Susan reassuringly on the arm, Ray looked at Fish, sighed and shook his head sadly. Fish nodded, to show he understood that Ray would have stopped this if he had been able to.

‘I don't know, Su,' Ray was saying now, an embarrassed look on his kindly face. ‘I got home from the golf course and they were already … well … at it, if you see what I mean.'

Fish certainly did see what he meant. The evidence
was all over the place in the form of bricks, dust and the mangled remains of their belongings.

A burly man in overalls picked his way over the devastation towards them. Susan got to her feet, looking upset but composed. Irresistibly drawn to the wreckage of their life, Fish edged away towards the rubble.

‘Is there a problem?' Jon Figg asked Susan. He still sounded irritable, but underneath the irritation there was an anxious note.

‘I'm afraid there is,' Fish heard Susan reply. Her face was ashen, but her voice steady. For a moment, a puzzled expression crossed her face, as if the man in front of her looked familiar, but the thought was soon pushed aside by the awfulness of what was happening.

‘A very large problem,' she said. ‘You've got the wrong address.'

Jon Figg paled. He cleared his throat nervously. He was having the same feeling of faint recognition too, as if he knew Susan from somewhere but couldn't quite place her. He shook the feeling aside.

‘Hey, Wayne!'

Wayne, who had climbed out of the excavator, headed over to join them. When he reached Fish, he sent the boy a sharp glance and paused.

‘Oy, kid,' he said, ‘get outta there. It's not safe.'

Fish stopped in his tracks and sent Wayne a look. It was one of his special looks, the sort that made people immediately want to switch their attention somewhere less complicated. He didn't use it often, not even when
he was late with his homework, but he used it now because he was, quite suddenly, very angry that the person who had knocked his home down should now be telling him to keep out of it. Fish didn't often get angry, he didn't see the point in it, but right now it was the only feeling that fit.

Wayne's blue eyes met Fish's hazel ones for a single second, before he gave in and looked away. Blinking, Wayne cleared his throat and amended his words to, ‘Be careful, right?' before hurrying over to join the throng gathering around Susan and Jon Figg.

Fish took a deep breath, then returned to exploring the ruins, looking for anything salvageable. It was very clear by now that his whole life, or at least his life as he knew it, had just been brutally ripped away. For a moment, he felt angry again, but he let it pass and dropped to one knee to rummage in the debris at his feet.

‘What's the address on the worksheet?' Jon Figg was demanding, over on the edge of the demolition site.

Wayne hurried to a van parked nearby, dug out a clipboard and squinted at the typed notes pinned to it.

‘Trod on my reading specs this morning,' he grumbled. ‘Blowed if I know how they got on the stairs like that. Right … Number … twenny-seven … Nightingale … Road.'

Eyes swivelled to the road sign. All except for Fish's. He pulled something out of the rubble, inspected it and threw it away.

Jon Figg grinned. It was the grin of a man who was trying not to look doom in the face. ‘Right … er …'

‘Row,' said Ray. ‘This is Nightingale Row. Ar, oh, doubleyew.'

Beads of sweat broke out along Jon Figg's forehead. He tried to say something, but it came out as a meaningless croak.

‘So, what you're saying is we demolished number twenty-seven, Nightingale
Row
, when we should have demolished number twenty-seven, Nightingale
Road
, right?' Wayne was asking carefully.

‘Right.'

‘And there's, like, people living here?' Wayne wore the expression of a scorned man proved right. Which he was.

‘Not any more there aren't,' snapped Mr Harris. ‘Didn't you check the address? How on earth did this happen?'

‘I know.'

Many pairs of curious eyes turned to look at Jon Figg. A few yards away, Fish looked up from his search to listen. Seeing the movement, Wayne sent him a nervous glance.

Jon Figg had gone the colour of unbaked pastry. He rubbed an arm across his clammy forehead, pushing back his hat and leaving a grimy smudge.

‘It's like this.' His eyes went glazed. ‘I was late this morning, see, on account of the dog exploding and the tree falling on the roof and crushing the car and all that.
So what with the worry, because my Emily was in the car and got her head bashed, see, I guess I wasn't paying attention when I read the address and I got it wrong. Wayne couldn't see it properly anyway, so he wasn't able to spot the mistake. When we arrived he did point out that there were curtains up …'