Extreme economic logic…
Everyone was at work pulling bodies off the carts, cutting off clothing and chucking it onto the floor, slicing and easing off sheets of skin, hefting fresh hides, laying them out, pulling them straight. They did these things as if the place was a laundry. Ugly Toes separated a thigh muscle from the bone and swept it into a stainless-steel tub. He glared at Lawrence.
“No passengers here, Big Stak. Pick up your tools and work.”
Lawrence sighed. In that sigh was the resignation he had not slashed his throat with a dagger. He was doomed to suffer this place of abomination. An infantile, frustrated rage flared; in that moment, a vow took root in his mind, a vow that he was going to escape this hell and kill everyone who enabled it to happen.
Stooping, dreary with exhaustion after the spasm had passed, he got behind a tub and pushed it out, following other value to the cold rooms and bringing it back empty. The Separation Shop sizzled with energy. Somehow, it turned the work into something positive to be part of one big machine, catching hold of an awkward skin, or retrieving an errant steak from the floor. Time dissolved into the flow of work. The other value joked and sniggered. Spiderman proved to be a wag of especially dry wit. Even Lawrence found himself managing a weak huff of a laugh, whilst value all around him were swaying with laughter and cutting away. So this is how my life is going to be, he thought, swapping jokes while cutting up bodies. Christ, what kind of a lunatic would dream this place up? And why?
By way of making amends for the fight, he helped Spiderman drag a body off a cart. The body’s head was wrapped in blond hair. Spiderman smirked at Lawrence’s blond crew-cut
“Well, Big Stak, I hope this is no relation of yours.”
He swept away the hair to reveal the face. It was so crushed from being under bodies that it was impossible even to guess what the living human had looked like. One side was flat as an iron from being pressed against the bed of the cart. Spiderman explored further, pulling the skirt up and the fine, silky undergarments down. This revealed a child-like penis and a scrotum that was just a wrap of crinkled skin.
“A spay,” Spiderman said. “This’ll have been the fancy of some other lump of meat in here. Do the honours?”
He passed over a knife, which Lawrence took as a peace offering and got to work, cutting as he had seen the experienced value do it. Spiderman watched with his dark, intense eyes and took the knife back to work on his side.
“You’ll survive here, Big Stak. You’ve done this kind of thing before. Your dad a whaler or something?”
“A judge.”
“Really?” He laughed into a wry jeer. “I bet The Captain gave you a good slagging about that.”
“Does he sneer at everyone?”
“You bet he does. That’s his big joy in life. He’s a cold, callous bastard, notwithstanding which I wouldn’t under-rate him. He built this place from nothing to eighteen hundred head of value—and it’s still growing. Fuck knows where it’s leading.”
Spiderman cut down the front of the eunuch’s torso, whilst Lawrence eased the skin off to reveal sugar-white subcutaneous fat.
“Careful, eunuch hide is highly prized,” Spiderman said. “It’s soft and strong. That’s better. Were you stupid, or unlucky?”
“Stupid. I denounced a corrupt superior officer and I got court martialled for corruption.”
“You should have known better than that, Big Stak.”
“He was such a smarmy non-entity. It bugged me to see him pocket a hundred ounces every month for doing nothing but turn a blind eye.”
“You should have got his action, you twat. You’d have a nice house, a car and a pretty wife. Instead you’ve got life in this place.”
Lawrence fell silent. The face of Sarah-Kelly floated before him, right there, so close and so real, that he could feel the warmth of her skin and smell the perfume she made from cinnamon and lemons.
“Well Big Stak, you learned your lesson,” Spiderman said. “The pity is, that lesson is a one-way trip. Hold it up will you?”
Lawrence held up the skin from the torso of the eunuch.
“Lovely piece that. No moles or sunburn. No tattoos.” He smirked at Lawrence. “You’d make a nice piece too, Big Stak, with your snowy white skin.”
“I’m not a eunuch.”
“Better gay than spay, or so they say.”
“I’m not gay either.”
Spiderman turned and held up the hide to Yip-Dog, who slipped his hands under it and carried it over to a tub with other skins for the Bating Shop.
“We’re nearly done,” Spiderman said. Most of the gang were idling, watching other value pull the last bodies from the bottom of the last cart. “Ratty can’t complain about our performance, we must have done the best part of three hundred head. I reckon there’s still half an hour left. Come on, we’ve got to wash our tools and leave them for counting. The only cock-up now would be if they miss a tool. They’ll keep us here until the end of time if there’s a knife missing.”
Chapter 5
A cost-centre lieutenant ambled into Oban railway station and posted a letter denouncing Account-Captain Second Class Peterson-Veitch as the kingpin of a smuggling network stealing exotic tusks and animal skins from the Loch Sunart nature reserve, a private garden of the Krossington clan. The denunciation was done without second thought, yet in posting that letter, Lawrence had thrown his life away. Afterwards, he dined with Sarah-Kelly at a restaurant owned by Rackland, one of the merchants who later testified against him.
He was arrested the following Wednesday. He never saw or heard from Sarah-Kelly again, as no communication was permitted. She probably never even knew of his arrest. These things happened discreetly,
