Butchers and Other Stories of Crime

Fall-Out

‘I need an axe.’

Everyone in the garden shop turned to look at the man who needed an axe. He was not dressed like the other customers in blue and beige gabardine jackets and creased trousers. He was in a string vest and faded jeans. His long, blond hair was drawn back and fixed behind his neck with a leather bootlace. He had a silver earring. And around his neck a string of wooden beads.

Mr Padmore, the shop owner, believed in giving all his customers the same courteous service. He had not served the man before, but he had sometimes seen him passing up the street. ‘An axe, sir?’ I think you’ll find a good selection here. The size you have depends on the job you need it for.’

‘How much is that one?’

‘The big one? Beautiful to handle, and razor sharp. Twenty-one fifty.’

The man picked it up and felt the weight. He put his two hands on the shaft and raised it. For one petrifying moment, Mr Padmore thought he was about to bring it crashing down on a display of ornamental plaster animals. Instead he let the length of the shaft slip through his hands and examined the head.

‘I’ll take it.’

He placed the axe on the counter and took a wad of crumpled banknotes from his back pocket.

Mr Padmore grinned companionably. ‘Shall I wrap it? You might get arrested carrying it through the street.’

‘No need. I live just around the corner.’

‘Really?’ said Mr Padmore as he checked the money. ‘I ought to know you, then.’

‘You wouldn’t. I haven’t been in here before.’ He gave Mr Padmore a steady look with his pale blue eyes. ‘I’m not interested in gardening. I hate it.’

Mr Padmore was so anxious not to provoke a scene in his shop that he practically agreed that he, too, hated gardening. ‘It’s a heavy commitment. No end of work. No joy in it unless you’re dedicated.’ He added knowingly, ‘Nothing like a good, old-fashioned log fire to get you through the winter.’

The man who needed an axe stared back at him.

Mr Padmore explained, ‘I thought you wanted it for chopping firewood.’

‘No.’ The man picked the axe off the counter and walked out of the shop.

When the door closed, Mr Padmore said, to break the tension, ‘What else could he want it for, except to chop his neighbours into little pieces?’ He turned to his next customer, who was wearing tweeds, and wanted hyacinth bulbs.

On the far side of the display of garden furniture in the centre of the shop, one of Mr Padmore’s regular customers was in a state of shock. Gilbert Crawshaw happened to be the next-door neighbour of the man who had bought the axe. He had twitched with horror at Mr Padmore’s last remark.

Crawshaw was tall, which was an asset, with a narrow build, which was not. He had grey hair and black-framed bifocals. He was fifty-one, and he worked in the treasurer’s department at County Hall, where his status was senior clerical officer. But if his career had not been notably successful, he had the consolation of a marriage which was in every way satisfactory to him. Joan understood him, cared for his house, cooked well and was ten years younger than he, which was good for his self-esteem.

Theirs was a council house in Jubilee Road, a pleasant street in a good locality, close to the shops and surrounded by a private housing development that the estate agents described as exclusive and sought after. Crawshaw had qualified for a council house because of his job at County Hall, and he had made sure that the house he got was in Jubilee Road. He liked to think that he had helped to set the standard that made it harmonise with the gracious streets of private housing.

His fastidiously tidy garden typified his life. There was a square lawn surrounded with herbaceous border plants that he bought each spring at Mr Padmore’s and planted in the same regularly spaced arrangement. No weeds grew there. No slugs skulked under leaves. The garden was sprayed and fed with recommended products from the shop.

It had been a shock for Crawshaw eight months earlier when the new people had moved in next door. The old couple they replaced had lived there over thirty years — quiet, decent people who minded their own business and didn’t keep animals. Towards the end they had tended to let the garden go and turn up the volume on the television, but you had to make allowances for old age.

These new ones — their name was Stock, or his was, at any rate — were disquieting in quite another respect. They had arrived in a Transit van one Sunday morning with several friends, similarly long-haired and sandalled. Crawshaw had been trimming the privet in the front. He had gone inside to watch from behind the net curtains in the spare bedroom. His first suspicion was that they were squatters. All the furniture they possessed had travelled in the back of that small van. It included two mattresses and several cushions, but no bed. There were also a number of indoor plants of a type he had never seen in the garden shop.

The next day, Crawshaw had called into the housing department across the corridor from his office to check whether the house had yet been allocated. That was how he had learned that the man’s name was Stock. He was now the lawful occupant. He had been given the house because he was homeless and unemployed and his wife was six months pregnant.

‘His wife?’ Crawshaw had repeated. ‘I may be mistaken, but I don’t think she wears a wedding ring.’

‘Wife, common law wife, we make no distinction these days,’ the woman in housing had explained. ‘You and I may not approve, Mr Crawshaw, but those are our instructions.’

That evening, Crawshaw told his wife Joan what he had learned.

‘I know,’ she told him. ‘I met them this afternoon.’

Joan had a quiet style of speech that Crawshaw usually found congenial, but occasionally she shocked him. He was never certain from her mild expression whether she meant to shock.

‘Met them?’

‘I baked some cakes and took them round. You have to be neighbourly, Gilbert. They invited me in for a coffee.’

‘You went in?’

‘Yes,’ Joan answered matter-of-factly. ‘Poor dears, they haven’t any chairs yet, so I sat on a cushion on the floor. They’re really quite sweet.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ Crawshaw told her. ‘Sometimes I despair of you, Joan. We don’t know what sort of people they are.’

‘We never will, if you have your way,’ she pointed out.

Crawshaw’s usually pale face turned purple. ‘Joan, I forbid you, I absolutely forbid you to make any more overtures to Stock and his woman.’

He had never spoken to her like that in their fifteen years of married life, and it stunned her into silence.

In the months since then, Crawshaw had noticed other disturbing developments. There had been parties. He had counted as many as fifty-six guests on one occasion and some of them had stayed all night. He knew because he had counted everyone who had left. About one-thirty, the music had stopped and there were still at least a dozen in the house. He was sure that if there was no music, sinister things were going on. Joan told him to be grateful for the chance to get some sleep, but he was quite unable to relax.

One evening in the summer, Crawshaw had decided to walk home through the park instead of taking his customary route down Mason’s Lane and along the High Street. It had meant using the subway to cross the railway. Halfway through the tunnel, his thoughts had been disturbed by the sound of a woman singing. Her voice had a clear tone that Crawshaw found quite pleasant until he noticed who she was and who was the person accompanying her on a guitar.

They were the people from next door.

She had the baby slung in front of her on a harness and was standing beside Stock, who was sitting on the stone floor with a wooden bowl between his feet to collect coins thrown by passers-by. Stock actually nodded to Crawshaw as he moved stiffly past them without putting his hand anywhere near his pocket.

‘Can you imagine how I felt?’ he asked Joan when he got home. ‘Our neighbours, for heaven’s sake, begging for money in a public thoroughfare.’

‘It’s not really begging,’ Joan commented.

‘That’s what it amounts to.’

‘Well, at least it’s not dishonest.’

‘It’s degrading. How would you feel if I stood in the subway strumming a guitar?’

‘Certainly surprised and probably elated, if you really want to know,’ Joan answered, more to herself than her husband.

It didn’t matter, because Crawshaw wasn’t listening. He said, ‘I think the social security people ought to be told. Stock has no right to public hand-outs if he has an income of his own.’

‘Gilbert, let it rest,’ Joan urged.

He did not. The next morning, before the office was open to the public, he saw the senior administrative officer in the social security wing. She said she was grateful for the information and they would ask Stock about it next time he came in, but these casual earnings were impossible to assess with accuracy. Crawshaw challenged this assumption. He said it was no good tamely asking Stock for information. It should be the subject of a departmental investigation. He went on to mention the parties. ‘I counted fifty-six guests. Anyone with the means to entertain on that scale should not be living off the state.’

The senior administrative officer said she would do all she reasonably could to see that Mr Stock was not defrauding the department, but Crawshaw heard no more about it.

That is, until the incident in the garden shop.

‘I tell you, he bought an axe,’ he told Joan as soon as he got back, ‘and Padmore said it was obvious what he wanted it for — to attack the neighbours.’

‘He must have been joking, Gilbert.’

‘What sort of joke is that? I don’t find it funny.’

Joan sighed and shook her head. ‘People are not very tolerant. The Stocks dress differently from most of us, so it gives rise to silly comments. It’s a basic instinct, a tribal thing.’

Crawshaw sniffed. ‘I don’t need you to tell me that. I can recognise a couple of savages for myself.’

‘Gilbert, that’s unworthy of you. I took you for a tolerant man.’

‘Not much use being tolerant when there’s someone coming at you with an axe.’

‘Now you’re being melodramatic. What have we ever done to antagonise Mr Stock?’

Crawshaw turned his head and stared out of the window. He hadn’t mentioned his conversation with the senior administrative officer in social security. Joan had tried to discourage him from reporting on the neighbours. It was no use talking to her about social duty. She hadn’t progressed beyond the morality of the playground, when ‘telling’ was a crime.

Yet he was beginning to wish he hadn’t interfered.

No more was said on the matter until mid-afternoon, when Crawshaw was in the garden mowing his lawn. He favoured the conventional mower with a roller that left a pleasing pattern of stripes. He had sometimes looked at the rotary mowers in Padmore’s shop, but they didn’t give the same finish. It was while he was making his journeys up and down the lawn that he heard a sound above the whirr of the mower. He thought at first that a stone had lodged between the blades, but when he stopped, the sound persisted. It was coming from the next garden, a knock as steady as a steam-hammer.

There was a six-foot fence between the gardens, so he had to go indoors and upstairs to see what was happening.

Joan was already in the spare bedroom watching. ‘You see?’ she said, as he joined her at the curtain. ‘I told you there was nothing to get alarmed about.’

Crawshaw stared down at the spectacle of his neighbour Stock hacking with the axe at the only tree in his garden.

He said, ‘Disgusting.’

‘Oh, come, Gilbert,’ said Joan. ‘It’s a stifling afternoon and that’s warm work. A man is entitled to take off his shirt in the privacy of his own garden. It’s in no way offensive.’

‘I can see it doesn’t offend you,’ Crawshaw commented pointedly.

Joan coloured and said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘If you really want to know,’ Crawshaw said with condescension in his voice, ‘I wasn’t speaking about his naked torso when I used the word "disgusting". Obviously that sprang to your mind first. What I had in mind was the destruction of that apple tree, which I regard as an act of senseless vandalism. That tree is the last beautiful thing in their neglected garden, and there he is destroying it.’

Joan was silent, nursing her private hurt.

‘If it falls against our fence,’ Crawshaw went on, ‘he’ll be hearing from my solicitor.’

Joan said, ‘At least we know why he bought the axe.’ She waited for some response and, getting none, added, ‘He wasn’t planning to attack you.’

‘I’m going down to finish the lawn,’ said Crawshaw. ‘No, there’s no need for you to come. You carry on goggling at the ape-man.’

‘That’s unfair, Gilbert,’ Joan said, but he was already on his way downstairs.

A short while later, Crawshaw looked up from his mowing and saw the top of the apple tree shudder and lurch. He stopped to watch which way it fell. There was no damage to his fence. The tree fell the other way.

He still said, ‘Vandal,’ before resuming his work. Later, he was obliged to go indoors. Stock had started a bonfire to burn the tree. Smoke was billowing across Crawshaw’s garden.

‘That’s green wood,’ he told Joan as they stood in the bedroom watching. ‘It’s not fit for burning. It’ll smoke out the entire neighbourhood. The man has no consideration for other people.’

During that week, Stock made more bonfires, generally in the evening when Crawshaw was home from work. By sheer persistence, the wood was reduced to ashes by the weekend.

Crawshaw called at the garden shop on Saturday. He needed something to treat a patch of moss which had appeared on his lawn. Mr Padmore selected a packet from the shelves behind the counter and handed it to Crawshaw.

‘That should do the trick,’ he told him. ‘One sachet to a gallon of water. Funny you should come in, Mr Crawshaw. We were talking about you earlier this morning.’

‘In what connection?’ Crawshaw asked uneasily.

‘Nothing personal. That neighbour of yours came in. Long-haired chap. He does live next door to you, doesn’t he?’

Crawshaw nodded.

‘That was how your name came up,’ said Mr Padmore.

‘Did he mention it?’

Mr Padmore’s mouth gave nothing away, but his eyes glittered artfully. ‘Don’t you two get on very well?’ he asked.

‘We don’t have much in common,’ Crawshaw guardedly answered.

‘I can see that, Mr Crawshaw, I can see that.’

Crawshaw didn’t altogether like Padmore’s tone, but curiosity kept him from cutting the conversation short. He remarked, ‘I can’t think what my neighbour would want from this shop. He hasn’t shown any interest in his garden in the time he’s lived there.’

‘He bought a spade,’ said Mr Padmore. ‘Last week it was an axe.’ He winked at Crawshaw. ‘You keep an eye on him, Mr Crawshaw.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? What does he want with a spade if he doesn’t go in for gardening? He must be planning to bury something.’

When Crawshaw got home, he told Joan precisely what Mr Padmore had said.

‘And you took it seriously?’ she said. ‘Gilbert, what’s the matter with you?’

‘There’s nothing the matter with me.’

‘You must have a persecution complex, or something.’

Crawshaw reached out and gripped her by the arms so tightly that she gave a cry of pain. He said, ‘Listen to me, will you? If anyone is behaving oddly, it’s that blighter next door. You won’t find me scrounging off social security, or squatting in the subway with a begging bowl between my legs. I don’t hack down healthy fruit trees and pollute the atmosphere with filthy bonfires. Just think of that before you try your pseudo-psychology on me.’

‘Gilbert, you’re hurting me,’ said Joan.

That afternoon they watched Stock use the spade to dig out the stump of the apple tree.

‘Are you satisfied?’ Joan asked.

Crawshaw didn’t answer, so she went downstairs and put on the television.

The next morning, she was surprised to find when she woke that her husband was not in bed. She checked the time and found that it was not yet 8 a.m. It was Crawshaw’s invariable custom on Sunday mornings to remain in bed until 8.15 a.m., when the papers came. Joan drew on her housecoat, sensing that something disturbing had occurred.

She found him in the spare bedroom, staring out of the window, his back and shoulders rigid with tension.

‘What is it, Gilbert?’

He said in a low voice that she scarcely heard, ‘See for yourself.’

She stood at his side and looked down into the garden next door. There was no one there. There was just the hole where the stump of the apple tree had been. It had been shaped and extended into a rectangular shaft about seven feet in length and three feet wide. It was at least five feet deep.

‘There must be an explanation,’ said Joan.

‘It’s a grave,’ whispered Crawshaw.

‘It can’t be,’ said Joan. ‘Let’s get some breakfast.’

But Crawshaw remained where he was. Joan made some coffee and took it to him, but he didn’t drink it. Nor did he speak to her.

Down below, Stock had resumed his digging.

By eleven, Joan had decided to talk to the woman next door. As a pretext, she found some soft wool left over from a jacket she had knitted for her niece’s baby. She took it round and offered it for their child.

The woman was very appreciative. She invited Joan in for coffee. When it was made, she called Mr Stock in from the garden. Without Joan having to enquire, he explained what he was doing.

When Joan went back to her house, Crawshaw was still at the window in the spare bedroom. He was still in his dressing gown. He hadn’t even noticed that she had gone next door.

‘It’s not what you think,’ she told him gently. ‘I’ve been talking to them. They are very concerned about the prospect of a nuclear war. Mr Stock is building a fall-out shelter.’

Crawshaw said nothing then. Nearly an hour later, when Joan was putting the beef joint into the oven, she heard his voice behind her. She almost dropped the tin in surprise.

He said, ‘It’s idiotic, trying to build a nuclear shelter.’

‘Possibly,’ conceded Joan, ‘but it shows a pleasing regard for the safety of his wife and child. They say it should be big enough for us as well if we care to share it with them.’

‘He won’t get any help from me, if that’s what he’s after.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t expect it,’ said Joan.

Later, over lunch, Crawshaw said, ‘I don’t suppose he got planning permission for this.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. You can’t build things like that without clearing it first with the council. There are pipes and cables and heaven knows what buried underground. There’s also the danger of subsidence. He might undermine the foundations of my house.’

‘Gilbert, let’s talk about something else.’

‘Not until I’ve settled this. Tomorrow morning, I want you to go to the borough surveyor’s department and find out whether Stock obtained the necessary planning permission.’

‘You want me to go? Why me?’

‘Because they know me at the council. You needn’t give your name. Everyone is entitled to look at the list.’

‘Then why don’t you do it yourself?’

‘I didn’t tell you before, but you might as well know now that I reported them to social security. For all the good it did, I might as well have saved myself the trouble, but you see that I don’t want it thought that I have a grudge against the neighbours.’

‘You don’t want it known,’ said Joan quietly.

Crawshaw put down his knife and fork and said in a low voice that she found more menacing than a shout, ‘You will do as I say. If you choose to defy me, you must suffer the consequences.’

He had frightened her. There had been no violence in their marriage, but she knew him well enough to fear the force of retribution in his character. She knew better than to rouse it.

Next morning, she did as he instructed. She went to the borough surveyor’s department and enquired whether there was planning permission for a nuclear fall-out shelter at 9 Jubilee Road. To her amazement and relief, the clerk confirmed that there was. He got out the detailed plan for Joan to examine. It had the council stamp on it, and the signature of the borough surveyor.

She thought that her morning’s work would bring reassurance to her husband, but she should have known better. When she told him that evening, he accepted the information with a shrug and went upstairs to take another look at the excavations.

Through that summer, Crawshaw kept vigil for hours on end in the spare bedroom. Joan rarely saw him except when it was too dark to stare out of the window. Their own garden began to show signs of neglect. Daisies and dandelions flourished on the lawn. The flowerbeds dried out in the warm spell at the end of August.

Joan often spoke to the people next door. She always found them friendly. They told her that the shelter would be ready before the winter. The main chamber was complete. There was still construction work inside, to fit it out and make it habitable.

One evening in October, Crawshaw came downstairs and said, ‘You’ve been talking to them again, haven’t you?’

Joan answered, ‘There’s no law against it, Gilbert. They are our neighbours. And you must admit I don’t get much conversation with you these days.’

He ignored that. ‘What’s happening with the shelter?’

‘Well, if you don’t know, I’m sure I don’t.’

‘He’s working underground now. I can’t see what he’s doing.’

‘How maddening for you.’

‘Don’t be provocative, Joan. You’ve been talking to them. Tell me what’s going on.’

‘Why don’t you ask them yourself? It wouldn’t hurt to exchange a few civil words, Gilbert. They’re very approachable people.’

He glared at her, and said no more. She felt for the first time in months that she had won a point.

One evening later in the week, he asked, ‘Is the digging finished?’

Joan looked up and answered mildly, ‘I haven’t enquired.’

‘Have you looked inside? Have they shown it to you?’

‘Gilbert, I’m not interested in looking inside their shelter. I’m sure Mr Stock would be delighted to show it to you if you asked him.’

‘I think he’s still extending it,’ said Crawshaw. ‘He wouldn’t want me to see it.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it? You think he’s burrowing like a mole. Under the fence and under our garden? Perhaps that’s why our clematis died.’

Crawshaw’s eyes widened. ‘Has it?’

Joan was not sure what had prompted her to mention the clematis. She knew she was making mischief. The combination of a baking sun and the lack of any watering had killed the clematis. Gilbert had not even noticed its demise, but he would seize on it as evidence of subterranean invasion.

He took the next day off from work, something he had never done in his life, apart from a few days for illness. By 8 a.m., he was out there with his spade and wheelbarrow. Joan supposed at first that he intended catching up on the backlog of weeding, but it was soon apparent that he was otherwise engaged.

He was digging a hole.

He had started in the flowerbed where the dead clematis was, beside the fence separating their garden from the Stocks’. By lunchtime, the hole had developed into a trench. By mid-afternoon, the trench extended along the length of the fence. Plants and young trees that Crawshaw had tended for years were dug out and left to wither on the piles of topsoil and clay. He was working like a man possessed.

About 4 p.m., Joan went out to him and said, ‘Gilbert, you’re destroying our garden.’

Crawshaw carried on digging. He was chest-deep in the trench. ‘Better than having it destroyed by someone else.’

‘What are you doing this for?’

‘To find where the damned shelter comes out.’

‘It isn’t in our garden, Gilbert.’

‘It is. You’ll see.’

‘I saw the plans,’ said Joan.

‘Plans!’ said Crawshaw, spitting into his trench.

Joan looked up at the house next door and noticed Mr and Mrs Stock standing at their bedroom window staring down at them. They didn’t have net curtains. She ran indoors.

Crawshaw didn’t come in from the garden until after eight. By then it was dark, and raining, and the wet mud was gleaming on his clothes and body. He was standing in the kitchen doorway holding out a plug attached to a length of cable. ‘Plug that in, would you?’

‘You’re not carrying on with this?’ said Joan in disbelief.

‘It’s dark. I need a lamp.’

‘You’ll get pneumonia.’

‘Do as I tell you. I haven’t time to stand here talking.’

She sighed, took the plug and pressed it into the socket. ‘Why, Gilbert? At least tell me why.’

He laughed.

It was so unusual for him to laugh that Joan found it no comfort at all.

Crawshaw said smugly, ‘I’ve found it. I’ve found the top edge of his infernal shelter projecting nearly three feet into our garden. I knew I’d find it if I went deep enough. And now I’m going to attack it with a sledge and crowbar. It might withstand a nuclear blast, but it won’t stop me from exercising my rights as the lawful tenant of this land. Do you want to try and stop me?’

Joan answered quietly, ‘You must do as you think fit, Gilbert.’

As soon as he had gone, she went out through the front and knocked on the Stocks’ door. Mr Stock opened it. He said, ‘You look as if you could do with a drink.’

He invited her in. They were very kind to her. They produced a glass of sherry. She was grateful. She explained about the digging and said, ‘Gilbert says he has found something. He’s convinced that it must be your shelter.’

Mr Stock shook his head. ‘Impossible. It stops at least five feet our side of the fence. There’s nothing underground on your side except the conduit for the main electric cable. I saw the plans. God, if he cuts through that...’ He got up and went to the window, but before he reached it, the lights went out.

In the garden next door, the lights had gone out for ever for Gilbert Crawshaw.

And in the darkness of the Stocks’ living room, Joan Crawshaw permitted herself a sigh. No one else could have noticed that it was more a sigh of relief than regret. She was free.

She, too, had taken note of those plans.