May was looking over his shoulder.
‘He was tired,’ she said.
‘I’ve got a tonic for that,’ said June.
‘A natural remedy?’ asked Bastian.
‘And what else would it be?’ she snapped, on edge after reading her tealeaves again with the same unfortunate result.
‘He don’t mean anything by it, do you, Bastian,’ said Malthus.
Bastian sighed.
‘I’m sorry, June, but Nabulus knows the truth about your drug dealing,’ he said.
‘Get me a chair,’ she screamed, and Malthus went to grab one from the kitchen.
June collapsed into the seat at the foot of the stairs with the old door shut and the letterbox permanently sealed. There was no postal service, no utility bills, parking or speeding fines, credit card flyers, loan brochures, nor demands for payment hitting your Welcome mat. And the government tribute replaced all of the old taxes.
‘It was Eliza, wasn’t it,’ murmured June, the blood drained from her face.
May went to get her a glass of cider, which June gratefully knocked back, so fast some of it spilled onto her shirt.
‘I don’t know who it was,’ said Bastian, ‘but it wasn’t her. She doesn’t need medicines.’
‘Mum, it doesn’t matter who it was,’ said May. ‘She’s not the only one who could have reported you. I warned you to be careful.’
Malthus reached for the handkerchief in his shorts and began to wipe his brow.
‘I’m sorry, Bastian,’ said June. ‘Let’s go into the lounge.’
Malthus and May helped carry her into the room and they sat on the new giraffe skin sofas currently all the rage, although there were supposed to be no followers of fashion. But that didn’t stop the trade in flamingo feather duvets either, for the nights when the clouds disappeared and the heat evaporated.
‘How long has Nabulus known?’ June asked.
‘A couple of days, I found out this morning,’ replied Bastian.
He was sitting on the single seater, the one with the lion mane trim, but June was barely listening.
‘Get my books and medicines,’ she mumbled.
May traipsed upstairs and returned with a large carpet bag. June grabbed it from her and opened the clasp with trembling fingers. She slipped her hand beneath the rattling pots of pills and pulled out a bottle of syrup for Malthus.
‘You can have this one on me, vicar,’ she said. ‘Please pray for me.’
‘For my migraines,’ Malthus said to Bastian. ‘Another malady on the banned treatment list.’
‘Sorry,’ said Bastian.
‘Don’t be, it encouraged my curiosity. Without it my only illness would be blindness.’
June removed a small book from the bag and began to thumb through the pages.
‘May I?’ asked Malthus, stretching out his hand.
‘I’ll take out your entry,’ said June.
‘But handing in the others won’t help you.’
Reluctantly, she handed Malthus the book.
‘I’ll burn it,’ he said of her notes.
‘Then you might as well take this too,’ said June, handing over the British Natural Formulary of prescribed medicines.
‘I thought all of those were destroyed,’ said Bastian.
‘It will be now,’ said Malthus.
‘June, where do you get all of your drugs?’ asked Bastian.
‘You remember that night you surprised us in the jungle?’ she said with a smile lighting up her face.
‘It was you?’
‘And May. There’s an old tin mine in that there hill where the last town pharmacist hid the village’s medicines. I was the only one to see him, would have killed me if he’d known.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But what becomes of me?’ she asked.
‘I’ll pray,’ said Malthus.
‘And I’ll put in a good word with Nabulus,’ said Bastian.
The night was still hot and some villagers were cooling off outside, sleeping over the cold stones. A vampire bat flew overhead towards June’s small herd of cattle as Bastian and Malthus left the dairy maids to talk.
‘You gonna report me?’ asked Malthus, carefully looking for any spies camped outside June’s house.
‘Of course not. There ain’t enough room in my jail for all the names in that there book you got from June. But tell me, what do you know about FA892?’
‘They dropped a clanger,’ said Malthus on the road full of potholes. ‘They told us it was new retirees leaving the mainland in bad weather, but I found a shirt on the beach with the name already stitched in.’
‘Of course, they sew them in before the journey,’ said Bastian.
‘This one belonged to Harold Stokes.’
‘The spider racer. He retired last year,’ said Bastian.
‘Exactly. So that ship wasn’t going to Scotland at all, it was leaving, and retirees never come back.’
‘They could have been on a pleasure cruise blown off course in the storm,’ said Bastian.
‘Then why the secrecy?’
‘I want to see the ship for myself,’ said Bastian.
‘It’s anchored a mile out to sea.’
‘I’m a good swimmer.’
‘There’s sharks in them there waters, and the stingers.’
These were the poisonous jellyfish that had killed three along the coast this year. They were protected but could be destroyed if they washed ashore, unlike the man-eating sharks which were hunted by the militia on a daytrip to the coast.
Not much later Bastian and Malthus parted company at the beach showers. Two young men waved at them and ran back to the village jumping over the sand dunes with Bastian hoping his name wasn’t about to do the rounds with the village gossips.
Bastian dipped his toe in the water and prayed there were no sharks waiting to take a bite out of him. He checked the sky for militia in hot-air balloons then quietly submerged himself in the warm ocean keeping an eye on the bobbing lamplights far ahead.
There were either no guards on FA892 or they were waiting for him inside. He hauled himself over the side and on-board, determined to take his chances and unsure if he was about to become fish-bait. There was no noise and his confidence picked up. He grabbed a lantern hanging from the remains of the broken mast and lit with slow burning oil.
A careful search down below revealed only empty cabins. Clothes with the labels ripped out were strewn over the broken bunks.
The demented guy in church had screamed, ‘It’s not real, don’t believe them.’ But believe who, the STP, the
