The Last Pearl Fisher of Scotland by Julia Stuart

Author:Julia Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

11

‘Wrong entrance,’ said the receptionist. She stabbed a bitten pen in the direction of the other end of the building. ‘Staff use the door round the back.’

‘But I came in this way last week,’ said Brodie, trying a smile.

‘This one’s for management and visitors only.’

But it was different for him, didn’t she see? On countless bowel-cementing occasions he’d endured Dewi’s fondue. He’d seen him pottering around the garden in nothing but his flapping dressing gown. He even knew what the man cried out when he made love to his wife, for goodness’ sake. You couldn’t exactly call him staff, more a friend of the family.

‘Thought I’d say hello to Dewi before starting,’ he said chummily. ‘Have a cup of tea with him.’

She sat back and folded her fleshy arms, her blackbird eyes on him. ‘He’s in a breakfast meeting with the chairman. Report to Doreen, round there. The door with all the fag ends on the ground.’

Through the trampled butts he trudged, and yanked at the handle. Inside, it was just like the cloakroom at school, that other prison. Along the rows of pegs and benches was that undeniable whiff of fetid socks withering at the bottom of a laundry basket. Several blank-faced workers were feeding their hair into nets.

Brodie slipped off his jacket and hung it on the nearest peg.

‘You can’t put it there, that’s Angus’s,’ said a man with a greasy ponytail.

He moved it down one.

‘That’s Sheila’s,’ piped up a woman.

For God’s sake. He chose another.

‘Not that one, it’s mine.’

It was Andy Brady. One of the numpties who’d blown up the frogs in biology. He’d lost his hair and gained several stone, but it was him all right.

Brodie shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I’ve had it for eighteen years. Which section are you working in?’

‘Sorting.’

He pointed to a peg. ‘That one’s free. In the corner.’ From a locker he took out a navy coat and passed it to him. ‘Should fit. You’ll need a pair of wellingtons. Take the pair on the rack underneath the peg. They were Christine’s. Feet the size of Atlantic tuna.’

Brodie picked them up, and studied the sweat-stained soles. ‘Won’t she need them?’ he said hopefully.

‘No longer with us.’

‘I thought no one ever left this place.’

‘Died on the job. Face down in a pile of black-berries.’

*

He’d already caught athlete’s foot, he could tell. As he slapped his way through the puddles to the sorting table, the two women he’d seen last week looked up, pale as undertakers in the brutal glare of the strip lighting.

‘I’m Moira,’ said the really short one. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up in labelling.’

With her prominent teeth, and tiny gloved hands clutched in front of her, he couldn’t help thinking of a water vole.

‘Doreen,’ said the one with the moles and no eyebrows. ‘You’re better off with us.’

Like terriers at a rabbit hole, the women started scrabbling through a mound of frozen strawberries. From a dispenser on the wall, he helped himself to a pair of latex gloves, and started poking through the cold pile.

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