Grundig Fletcher wiped his bloody hands on his white apron. ‘Two-pound seventy-five, m’dear.’

  Betty Sharky handed over a dogeared five-pound note with a shaking hand, riven with blue veins and mottled with liver spots. Fletcher rang up the old girl’s change and wrapped her frying steak in greaseproof paper, securing it with a strategic application of sticky tape he tore from the dispenser on the countertop. He picked up the package of meat in his pudgy hand, ready to pass it over the chiller, when he made a show of an idea occurring to him. Betty Sharky’s arm quivered with age, straining to get her purchase. She jumped as Fletcher clicked his fingers.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, Betty.’

  Betty frowned and lowered her arms. ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ he said walking through to the back, rattling the beaded fly-curtain. ‘You’re wasting away.’

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ the frail old lady said, voice quavering.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s on me. It’s been a tough year. We’ve got to look out for each other,’ Fletcher called through.

  It was cold back there. Had to be. Only way for a butcher’s shop to be. Keep the meat nice and chilled, keep out the rot. Well, keep it out for a time. Nothing could hold back the tide forever or stop meat rotting. We’re all meat waiting to rot off the bone, Fletcher thought. It’s the way of the world. Maybe the truest thing there is.

  ‘Any plans for the day, Betty?’ Fletcher said. He pulled back a dirty, waxed sheet. A few flies, drunk from their gorging, hummed and settled.

  ‘I’m too old for plans.’ The old woman’s words were as soft and dry as smoke. ‘I heard Lord Lorimer is back.’

  ‘Ach, nonsense. You’re as fit as a fiddle. Outlive us all, you will. Lorimer? Time to put on your best hat, Betty.’ Fletcher stuffed both hands into the meat at the bottom of the plastic trough he’d set on the wooden counter made of two great beams lashed together with iron and scarred from the whack of a meat clever. Thin and tiny, like the pus from an old pimple, white worms wriggled through the festering meat, twisting and falling over one another. Yes, the rot had set in, not only in the meat but the land too. So, Lorimer is back. That got Fletcher thinking.

  ‘Is he alone?’ he called through.

  ‘Alone? I...’ Poor Betty wasn’t connecting the dots. ‘What do you mean?’

  Fletcher savoured the sweet stench of the meat. ‘He’s been away for a long time. Was a boy last I saw him. Thought he might have a wife or even a son.’

  ‘A son?’ Betty hadn’t thought of that, and the possible implications thinned her returning question to a papery whisp, barely strong enough to flutter through the beaded curtain.

  ‘Not to worry. It’s a good omen.’

  Fletcher dug his hands to the bottom of the trough. When Davy Pike brought them for slaughter, these pigs were riddled with the parasites. Already mad, they were, eyes rolling, mouths foaming, bowels out of control. But by the surgical slash of his knife, Fletcher saw those pigs for what they were. Davy wasn’t the first in the past year to bring tainted meat to Grundig Fletcher’s butcher’s shop. He could well be the last, though. Time would tell and Fletcher would be ready, doing his part. Fletcher knew the signs. Lady Lorimer had died last year. Herne rest her soul, most of the locals would say. But not Fletcher. Herne could have the stuck-up bitch, like all the Lorimers. And the rest of them, more like mutton than people, doffing their forelocks and waiting for the lucky bastards to return. No, Grundig Fletcher was no whelp, content with the scraps of life. He was a man of fine cuts: the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the heart and oh the marrow. Things were on the turn, for sure. Plain to see for those with an inclination to perceive it. Time to pick a side or have the side picked for you. That was another truth as sure as old dogs die and Lorimers return to cross the dunes.

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  Fletcher hefted handfuls of festering meat into the grinder. He turned its nickel-plated handle, and it spewed out pink mince. With an artisan’s deft swiftness, he scooped it up, worms and all, into the sausage maker and wiped his hands down his apron again. Seconds later, a snake of sausage wriggled into being, piling up in shiny coils.

  ‘I’ve got to get going,’ Betty said, out front.

  ‘Thought you didn’t have any plans?’ Fletcher said, taking the serpent of ground meat and twisting it into links of sausages. ‘Besides, I’m all done.’

  The beaded curtain rattled in his wake, and he held the sausages aloft on his palm for her to see. ‘I’ve got these beauties for you. Promise me you’ll fry them up for your breakfast.’ He wrapped and sealed them as he spoke and handed them over the counter.

  ‘I don’t eat breakfast,’ Betty said, reaching out a tentative hand.

  Fletcher waggled his eyebrows encouraging her to take them. ‘Thing about a sausage is they’ll square you away any time of the day. It’s lunchtime, after all. I know because my stomach is telling me.’ He patted his round belly as Betty took the gift.

  ‘Lunch?’ she said a little confused. The old dear had been getting doddery these last few months. Could be age. Could be the season for it. Lorimers returning, sand in the soil, the wyrm in the meat of the land, and all that.

  ‘Yes, m’dear. Sausage butty and a cup of tea for you, me thinks.’

  Betty stowed the tainted gift into her tartan pull along trolly. ‘Think I might do just that.’

  ‘Lovely to see you, m’dear. You take care now,’ Fletcher said, flashing his broadest smile and following her to the door of the shop. He watched the old dear totter down the road a little before closing the door, locking it and turning over the sign to say “closed”.

  He’d had to be careful with his gifts up to now, but with Lorimer being back that changed things. Brought the storm closer. How close, well, Grundig Fletcher might have to stretch his legs down to the Stag and Serpent and see what the jungle drums were beating out.

  Behind him, the beaded curtain rattled.

  ‘Thought I might be seeing you, Cribb,’ Fletcher said turning around.

  A policeman leaned in the doorway behind the counter, tapping a cigarette on the side of its packet. He had jet black hair, with the parting centred between a short, curtained fringe, undercut by a widow’s peak that elongated his forehead. A couple of angry pimples blemished his sunburnt neck, and there were faint signs of acne scars on the cheeks of his long face. The roughened averageness of his face was undermined by a delicate sloping nose that made him seem oddly girlish. Oddly girlish and at that moment also smug.

  ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve just seen,’ Constable Cribb said.

  Fletcher folded his arms across his white apron and took a guess. ‘Would it be a Lorimer, by any chance?’

  With a cigarette half-way to his mouth, Cribb’s smugness wavered. He lit the cigarette with a flick of a silver lighter, considering his reply. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked and then blew a plume of smoke from the side of his mouth. The act did nothing to make him seem older. Quite the opposite. It momentarily transformed him into a spotted teenager stealing away for fag at break time. Between drags he regained some of that original smugness.

  ‘Ah, but do you know which one and where I saw them?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Fletcher said, scratching the moustache on his lip. ‘Can’t be Lady Lorimer—may Sugnar piss on her grave. And if it isn’t that spoiled twat, Michael. Then my guess is he has a son. And by the look on your face, he isn’t no nipper.’

  Cribb nodded and took a draw. ‘Lanky looking git, he is, like the rest of them. But where did I see them?’

  Fletcher had had enough of this tedious little game, though he did like where he thought it was going. All those little packages he’d been giving out to people, doing his part to upset this eternal pantomime, were clearly well timed. ‘You win, Cribby. Spill it. I want a pint and pork pie.’

  ‘Not one of your special ones, I hope,’ Cribb said.

  ‘Course not. Now, spit it out, there’s a good lad.’

  Cribb shrugged, rattling the beads resting against his back. ‘Suit yourself. I saw him with none other than that little Tunstall tart. Looked like she was dragging him off for a bit of hows-your-father. Luck of the Lorimers, eh? Although, I’m not sure having her bouncing on your balls is worth a trip to the dunes, not for him anyway.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be that reckless. Tink of all people would know that,’ Fletcher thought out load, before his eyes darted back to the policeman and hardened. ‘And call her a tart again and I’ll gut you.’

  The young constable spread his hands wide. ‘Sorry, I forgot. But I’m only telling you what I saw, is all. Having a right little chat on the playground swings, they were. Thought I’d better come and pass on the news. You don’t think the Tunstalls have been preparing without us knowing, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Fletcher said, untying his apron. ‘But I’m going to stick my beak into the pub and see what I can sniff out.’

  Stepping out of the butcher’s way as he headed into the back, Cribb asked, ‘What should I do?’

  Fletcher pulled on his sports jacket and pocketed his keys. ‘I suggest you get ready for the storm, just in case.’