Tales from Parker Road (Death Barbecues and a Toast Rack)

Tales from Parker Road

  (Death, Barbecues and a Toast Rack)

  By Lance Cross

  Copyright 2013-2014 Lance Cross

  No animals were harmed in the production of this book.

  Table of Contents

  Not In My Back Yard

  Rack & Ruined

  Get Off The Grass

  Fluffy Rides Again

  Not In My Back Yard

  Simon forgot to buy toilet paper.

  He always forgets to buy toilet paper. It’s probably deliberate. Simon’s the sort of loser who would keep a hidden stash. Probably one of those super-sized rolls stolen from a pub.

  Before Simon, it was Jenny and me sharing. Two people, two bedrooms, one house.

  ‘Can my friend Simon crash on the sofa for a week while he’s between flats?’ said Jenny.

  Flutter, flutter.

  I could agree to anything watching those lashes.

  Four months later we were three people, two bedrooms, one house and zero toilet paper.

  Simon only left the house to buy cigarettes and lager so I put the hard word on Jenny about his living arrangements one day when he was at the off-licence. She’d been far from happy and wanted rid of him too so promised to broach the subject of leaving. A week passed and Simon didn’t give the impression he’d been broached and it looked like I would have to confront him myself.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ Jenny said, leaning over a kitchen chair and staring at the floor. ‘I was slicing cheese and he sort of fell on my knife.’

  I gawked at the puncture marks covering Simon’s limp body as it lay spreadeagled in front of the oven.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘How many times did he fall on the cheese knife?’

  ‘A few.’

  Flutter, flutter.

  At this point I had a choice. A choice to do the right thing or the stupid thing.

  Flutter, flutter.

  Hiding a body in a rug only works if the carpet is man shaped and I suggested using the large rug in Jenny’s bedroom, but she’d had to visit three IKEAs to find it so wouldn’t give it up. I would have thought as Jenny was the one holding the bloody cheese knife she might have considered a minor personal sacrifice was warranted, but she was having none of it.

  Simon’s corpse rolled in a hall runner from the bathroom landing reminded me of the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausages at my company’s Christmas party. I wouldn’t be eating them again.

  That wasn’t going to work so I wrapped him in my Arsenal duvet. Simon was a Chelsea supporter. He would have hated it.

  ‘And what are we going to do with this?’ I said, pointing at the duvet.

  I tried to sound blasé, as if deciding where to place a lamp or painting, but squawked like a man trying to figure out how to dispose of a body.

  ‘In the back of the car when it’s dark, then to Epping Forest.’

  Jenny was remarkably calm.

  I scowled at her.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Mike. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I should hope not.’

  That was all I could think of to say that didn’t involve the words ‘police’, ‘murder’ or ‘prison showers’.

  We sat opposite each other in the lounge waiting for night to fall. I thought about asking what had actually happened, but Jenny was still clutching the bloody knife.

  ‘Why don’t we bury him in the garden?’ I said.

  ‘Because we live here, Mike. You don’t bury bodies at your own house. Are you mad?’

  Yeah, you stabbed someone repeatedly with a cheese knife and I’m the mad one.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve never done this before.’

  It was her first time too, apparently, but she’d watched enough TV to know if you don’t own a pie shop or a wood chipper it’s a drive to the forest.

  ‘Aren’t people going to notice he’s missing?’

  ‘Who?’ she said. ‘The man at King Street Wine and Spirits?’

  I asked about his family.

  Jenny shrugged. She didn’t know if he had any. I asked how long she’d known him before he came to stay.

  ‘I met him the night before,’ she said.

  ‘The night before!’

  Jenny told me I was a glass-half-empty person and life was too short so I should live a little.

  I stared at the man-sized lump under my duvet in the middle of the room.

  ‘Walking through a forest at night carrying a dead guy sounds risky,’ I said. ‘There’s that patch behind the shed that would be about the right size.’

  ‘Mike, I am not living somewhere with a body rotting thirty feet from my bedroom.’

  ‘We could move.’

  ‘But I like this house. All the furniture in my bedroom fits the gaps. I’m not going to IKEA again, Mike. I’m just not, okay?’

  I held my hands up. ‘I get it. We’re staying, but no dead bodies.’

  We sat in silence.

  ‘I like this house, too.’

  No reply.

  We sat in more silence.

  ‘We should get rid of his DNA,’ I said.

  Jenny wasn’t the only one who watched TV.

  ‘Yes. You deal with the blood and I’ll deal with his stuff,’ ordered Jenny before disappearing into the lounge.

  Thanks. I’ll clean up your gory mess while you stuff two T-shirts and a Pulp Fiction poster into a bin liner.

  One thing I’ve learnt from watching forensic teams in Las Vegas, Miami and New York on TV is that bleach kills everything. Plan A was to douse the house until the fumes became overpowering, but we didn’t have bleach. Plan B was to douse everything in a mix of pomegranate dishwashing liquid and citrus burst refreshing shower gel with a healthy squirt of fresh and minty toothpaste.

  When darkness came we struggled to the car with the duvet and managed to cram Simon into the boot. Parker Road was deserted and there didn’t appear to be any curtain twitchers. Not even Roger, the road’s resident weird guy, from number 22.

  Plain sailing.

  I sat in the passenger seat and looked about nervously as Jenny put the key in the ignition and turned.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Nothing’s happening, Jenny.’

  She whacked the steering wheel.

  ‘Bloody car. Start you bastard, start!’

  The rusting yellow Clio refused to be threatened by Jenny’s ranting and sat smugly outside the house, so we were left sitting in the living room with a corpse on the floor.

  ‘Of all the times for your car to break down.’

  Jenny shot me a glance.

  If looks could kill…

  ‘Mount Pleasant Road,’ I blurted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was a fire on Mount Pleasant Road in that derelict house.’

  ‘And we just carry Simon through the streets before breaking in to a burnt-out wreck to do some midnight gardening?’

  Was that sarcasm in Jenny’s voice?

  ‘No, we jump over a few back fences,’ I explained as I waved in the general direction of Mount Pleasant Road.

  It sounded easy once I’d said it.

  ‘So we only have to sneak through people’s back gardens with a body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jenny leapt up and grabbed my collar. No flutter, flutter.

  She explained that this wasn’t a game and if we got caught we’d be toast.

  When did it become my responsibility to be the man with the plan? I didn’t kill anyone.

  I told her we weren’t calling a taxi so unless she wanted to cut him into pieces and eat him we
didn’t have many options.

  Jennie was silent as she contemplated the hand sticking out from under the duvet pointing towards Mount Pleasant Road.

  The first fence was easy. Only three feet high and the back of the Keppels’ house was obscured by Hammersmith’s biggest camellia bush. The second fence wasn’t as straightforward. It was six foot, and an abundance of apple trees forced us to sneak to the Johnson’s back door for a spot clear enough for cadaver shot putt.

  I was pumped on adrenaline. I had superhuman strength and every sense was heightened.

  In the next yard a bathroom light came on and we had to stand frozen, listening to our layabout neighbour Pete abusing his toilet.

  Another low fence. I repositioned the dead weight on my shoulder when the yappy chihuahua that belonged to Roger the weirdo ran straight at us and sank its teeth into Simon’s protruding left foot.

  ‘Let go, you bald rat,’ I hissed, trying to shake it loose with my boot. That was when Jenny smashed it over the head with a shovel.

  Excellent. Now we had two corpses to bury.

  With four steps and one immense heave, Simon was over the next fence. Jenny followed carrying a shovel, a torch and a dead dog.

  The final fence. A tall one. Jenny swung his legs and I had his shoulders, but we didn’t make it on our first attempt and a fuchsia bush paid the price. I balanced Simon’s neck on top of the fence and we threw our weight behind his legs, sending him cartwheeling into 13 Mount Pleasant Road.

  Jenny casually tossed the canine cadaver over the fence, then I boosted her over and finally I scrambled up, damaging more of the native flora.

  The adrenaline was still flowing through me like cheap Rioja as I stood wedged between the fence and shed digging a grave.

  I did all the digging.

  Jenny was supposed to be acting as lookout but she got bored and twisted locks of red hair around her finger while contemplating her feet. Although she looked upset I didn’t offer any ‘It’s all right’ speeches as she’d killed a man and we were burying the fact as deep as we could on land that didn’t belong to us, so it really wasn’t all right.

  Once we’d covered Simon and Sugar Puff (according to the collar), we piled burnt chairs and the remnants of a table next to the shed to impede access to their final resting place.

  It only took two minutes and five fences to be back in our lounge, sitting in silence amidst a fug of minty pomegranate as dawn approached.

  We’ve never spoken about that night and no one has come looking for Simon. I’m okay with being an accessory, 13 Mount Pleasant Road remains a burn-out ruin and the neighbours have a new chihuahua.

  It’s just me and Jenny again.

  Two people, two bedrooms, one house.

  And toilet paper.