The Dying Fall

Chapter 2: Inspection

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Chapter Two: Inspection

The babble of the market drifted around Carrie as she moved through the crowd with her shoulders hunched, her hands in her pockets and her collar turned up against the ruffling breeze. The ache in her arms and legs protested at the brisk pace, but her desire to get back home, out of the cold, kept her moving, weaving through the stalls and early morning shoppers, bumping elbows and scuffing her boots over the uneven ground. She swore as she snagged her toe on a bump in the concrete and caught herself from falling as she rounded the end of the aisle. Ahead of her, she saw the log van and headed straight for it. A chalkboard sign informed her that prices had risen since last year.

Carrie clutched the notes her mother had given her in her fist as she pulled them from her pocket, and eyed the two heavy-set men who were standing either side of the van. There had been raids on the van in the past, and with the increase in prices it was no surprise the authorities had installed security. As she joined the back of the queue behind an elderly man with a tatty, fabric, pull-along trolley, Carrie glanced across the way where she could see the old railway bridge spanning across the end of the market, its arches obscured by a line of stalls and seller’s vehicles. As she watched, a scrawny figure with a hat pulled down over their brow and one hand in the pocket of their jeans, shuffled from behind the oatmeal van, took a look up and down the aisle, and then strode hastily away. Carrie grimaced to herself; was she that obvious when she left a deal with Nano?

Carrie’s attention was drawn to the elderly man in front of her as he muttered irritably whilst handing over his money to the log man. He counted his change twice before trying to squeeze his sack of logs into the top of his trolley with trembling hands. His efforts toppled the trolley and Carrie caught it before it hit the ground and spilled its contents. The man muttered again under his breath and glared at Carrie as if it had been her fault. Without ceasing his grumbling, he finally worked the wood as far as it would fit into the trolley—leaving the top end of the sack sticking out a good six inches—and then yanked the rickety frame around on its wheels and trundled off into the market crowd.

“What can I get you?”

Carrie looked up at the log man as he crouched just inside the open doors of the van, squinting at her with an amused smile.

“One medium sack, please,” Carrie replied, failing at a smile but managing a brighter tone than came naturally to her.

The log man hauled a medium sack to the front and Carrie handed over the notes. She slipped the change he gave her into her back pocket and, grabbing the sack in both hands, turned back into the main drift of the market. She stopped after a few feet and readjusted the bundle in her arms to get a better grip with her numb fingers. As she did, a voice hailed her from a nearby clothes stall.

“Carrie!”

Carrie half-turned to see a petite young woman, with dark hair tucked into a patterned scarf wound tightly around her chin, walking towards her. The young woman’s cheeks dimpled as she smiled and gave a wave with a mitted hand. It was just over a year since Carrie had last seen Belle Lightfoot, and that had been on a sweaty summer’s day when they had collected their final exam grades. The heat of that day had been compounded by the air of anticipation as they’d held their futures, wrapped in brown envelopes, in their damp palms. Carrie felt a little sick as she recalled the disappointment the piece of paper in the brown envelope had held for her—how it had left her with a choice she had hoped would be plucked out of her hands. Belle, she remembered, achieved some of the top grades in the year, securing her a scholarship for a degree with the Eco Ministry. Belle was easy to like without knowing well: the sort of person everyone found agreeable but no one would name as a close friend.

“Hey,” Belle said, touching Carrie briefly on the arm as she reached her. “Long time, no see! How are you?”

“Not bad, thanks,” Carrie replied quickly. “How are you? How is the Eco Ministry?”

“It’s amazing! Hard work but really interesting. I can’t believe I’ve been there a year—I’ve learnt so much already!”

“Sounds great,” Carrie said, adjusting the sack of logs again and wondering how fast she could end this encounter without appearing horribly rude. She could tell that Belle was keen to talk, and if Carrie had been able to find her gloves, and the wind wasn’t cutting through her, and she could guarantee that Belle would talk only about herself, then she would have been happy to feign interest for as long as was necessary. Instead, her fingers were cramping and her body was wound tight against the cold and the stream of questions that were inevitably on their way.

“Oh, it is,” Belle continued, her cheeks pink and her eyes shiny. “You don’t realise how important the Ministry is until you see all the stuff we do behind the scenes, and the things the State Services have to deal with. You wouldn’t believe the black market stuff that goes on.”

“Black market?”

“Yeah. Some of it is pretty serious. At the moment there’s a big crack down on unlicensed timber.” Belle nodded at the sack in Carrie’s arms. “There are organised gangs who go into the protected woodlands and cut down trees to sell as fuel—untreated wood of course.”

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “Sounds bad.”

“Lots of it is political—everyone knows most of the black market funds these insurgent groups...”

“Right…” Carrie shifted the weight of the sack and the movement seemed to check Belle’s speech, as she suddenly shrugged her shoulders and scrunched up her nose.

“Anyway, what are you up to these days?” she asked.

It was Carrie’s turn to shrug. “Not much. Just work mostly.”

“Where are you working?”

“At the Plant.”

Belle didn’t quite manage to catch her look of surprise before it flickered over her features. “Uh-huh,” she said with a vague nod. She paused for a fraction of a second before asking: “Didn’t you get a degree scholarship?”

“No,” Carrie lied. “I didn’t get the grades.”

“Oh…” Belle offered a smile of uncertain sympathy. “Well, it’s handy to have a job that’s local. I bet your mum is glad to have you at home.”

“Yeah.” Carrie gripped the logs harder and angled her body away from her companion. “Speaking of which… I have to go—Mum’s waiting for me.”

“Of course!” Belle exclaimed. “It’s freezing, isn’t it? I’ll let you get home. See you around sometime!”

“Sure. Nice to see you.” Carrie gave her a nod goodbye and started back into the crowd without glancing back. Hugging the logs close to her chest, she wove deftly through the market until she spotted her mother at a veg stall, paying for her purchases. Carrie waited on the edge of the path for her mother to join her. She hoped they were going home now: the aching in her arms was getting worse and she really didn’t want to risk bumping into any more old school friends.

“Did you get change?” her mother asked, hooking one grocery bag over her arm as she held out her hand.

Carrie cradled the sack in one arm as she dug into her pocket for the coins and placed them in her mother’s open palm. As her mother carefully counted the money in her purse and consulted her shopping list, Carrie let her gaze drift beyond her to the crowd. As if drawn by a magnet, her eyes locked on Nano, bouncing nimbly between stalls and shoppers, his hood up and his hands in his pockets. Carrie was relieved that her mother had her back to that half of the crowd so she didn’t see Nano catch her eye and give her a wink before he disappeared behind a marquee. A second later, there was an instinctive parting in the crowd as a pair of Patrol officers in their black uniforms appeared at the end of the aisle and sauntered up the concrete path. Despite the cold, a hot flush rose to Carrie’s face and she automatically diverted her gaze.

“They were out of cauliflowers again, so I got cabbage instead,” her mother was saying. “We’ve got to get soap and then we’re done.” She frowned as she looked up from her list. “You look frozen. Where are your gloves?”

“I can’t find them.”

“Have you lost them?”

“I just can’t find them. They’ll be at home somewhere.”

“Well, let’s go home then,” her mother said, putting the list in her bag.

“Don’t you want to get soap?”

“I’ll get it next week—we’ve got enough to last until then. Come on—” She stopped as the Patrol officers passed by them.

Carrie saw her mother’s gaze fire with dangerous emotion for a second, and then it died as quickly as it had flared, and she turned abruptly in the opposite direction, signalling impatiently for Carrie to follow her.

They walked home in silence, Carrie’s mind adrift on illicit melodies, whilst her mother… 

Carrie slid a glance at the figure beside her. Where were her thoughts? On budgets, chores and shopping lists? In the pain of the past or the disappointment of the future? Or nowhere at all—disengaged from the cold air, the sagging clouds slung pale, grey and dismal above them, and the uniform houses stretching before them as they turned into their street?

Carrie’s pace slowed as they walked down the road, her attention fixing on the houses that lined it. A number of them had their front doors open and she glimpsed a bustle of activity in each one she passed. Several people were hurrying along the pavement and ducking in and out of houses with boxes or bags.

“Oh my Earth,” he mother said beside her, “It can’t be! It’s too early!”

She quickened her pace as much as the shopping bags would allow. Carrie strode along behind her, panic twisting in her chest.

“Orla!” her mother called to a woman who was standing on her doorstep and glancing nervously up and down the street. “What’s going on?”

“Molly!” The woman exclaimed. “They’re coming! They’ve been on Harris Street and they’ll be here soon.”

“But we’re not due an inspection for another three months!”

“It’s a spot inspection. You better hurry—they’ll be here within the hour.”

Molly cursed and gestured at Carrie to move faster.

When they reached home, she dumped the shopping in the hall and directed Carrie to the kitchen.

“Get the ration graphs and check the numbers add up. I’m going to make sure Mrs Giles knows what’s going on.” She dashed out of the door again and to the house directly across the street.

Carrie obeyed her mother’s instructions immediately, grabbing the ration graphs from a kitchen drawer and running to the energy metres. The numbers were within the permitted parameter and she checked them off the inspection list.

Now what?

Technically, she should check each room to make sure it was in order, although she knew her mother was always very careful to keep the house contents within the sustainability regulations. They’d never failed a Domestic Energy and Waste inspection yet. Carrie’s real concern was the shed and her illegal stash of buds. With the prearranged inspections, she was able to remove any illegal material from the house or hide it in places the DEW inspectors never tended to look; but, today, she didn’t have the time. Her mother would be back from Mrs Giles’s soon and the inspection team wouldn’t be far behind her.

Letting herself into the back garden, Carrie ran to the shed, yanked open the door and scrambled over the boxes and bags to her secret corner. Grabbing the buds from the bureau drawer, she clambered back into the garden and glanced around, trying to work out where she could hide them. It was no good stuffing them in her pockets; spot inspections were notorious for random pat-downs.

As she stood hesitating, her eye fell on the bare patch of earth where the plum tree had been. Pulling her green cloth bag from her jacket pocket, Carrie popped the buds inside, pulled the drawstrings tight and stepped towards the border. Dropping the bag into the hollow, she pushed the soft earth over the bag with the toe of her boot until the green material was completely buried under a layer of brown soil.

As she headed back to the house, she heard her mother calling for her.

“Carrie? Carrie…”

Carried kicked the dirt off her boots at the back door before she stepped into the kitchen.

“I’m here!” she responded. “I’ve checked the metres.”

She wandered into the hall where Molly was on the stairs with the ration graphs in her hand.

“Where were you?”

“In the garden.”

“Have you checked your room?”

“I’ll do it now.”

“Be quick!” Molly ordered, as she headed up the stairs in front of Carrie. “They’re already at the top of the street.”

Carrie checked her room, tossing clothes, shoes and other misplaced items into the wardrobe and getting onto her hands and knees to check for stray buds. She found her gloves under the chest of drawers but nothing else that shouldn’t have been there. Even though she went through the routine of checking every single corner, Carrie knew the room would pass on the sustainability regulations because nothing had changed since the last inspection. In fact, nothing had changed since Savannah’s death. Carrie never touched anything on her sister’s half of the room. When the inspection team arrived, she would stay downstairs so she wouldn’t have to watch the profanity of strangers combing through Savannah’s belongings.

Once she was satisfied the room was clear, Carrie rushed downstairs to check the kitchen cupboards. She was halfway through the inventory for the pantry when there was a stern rapping on the front door. Molly answered it and then came silently into the kitchen with four inspectors in green overalls behind her. Carrie stood in the pantry doorway as the team leader, a man with streaks of grey running through his dark brown hair, directed two of his officers upstairs, whilst he remained in the kitchen with his partner—a slightly younger, heavy-footed man, who immediately stalked over to Carrie as if to confront her.

“Carrie…” Molly said softly, jerking her head in the direction of the hallway.

Carrie slipped past the inspectors and followed Molly out of the kitchen.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Molly said. “You know what to do down here. Call me if you need me.”

Carrie nodded and shifted to the kitchen doorway, where she leant a shoulder against the frame as she watched the officers rummage through every kitchen drawer and cupboard, the oven, the fridge-freezer, the vegetable rack and laundry basket. They were alarmingly efficient: counting, weighing and knocking on the backs of the cupboards and bottoms of the drawers. They found, as usual, the loose back of the saucepan cupboard, but apart from a few spiders and their cobwebs, the cavity behind it was empty.

When they’d finished in the kitchen, they checked the utility metres and then moved on to the living room. That took less time, and as they finished inspecting the wood burner, the other two officers came downstairs with Molly close on their heels.

“Upstairs is clear,” one of the officers reported.

“Good. Head to the next property. We’ll just check out the back,” the lead inspector said briskly. “Garden this way?” he asked, already heading back into the kitchen.

Carrie and Molly followed him out into the garden. He did a quick sweep of the garden with a keen eye whilst his partner went to the shed. Carrie folded her arms across her chest and kicked the heel of her boot into the grass as she tried not to let her gaze wander to the naked earth in the vegetable patch. She watched the inspection officer go into the shed and glanced at her mother who gave her a tight-lipped, humourless smile.

Carrie’s gaze slipped away from her, skimmed over to the hollow where the plum tree had been and then darted over to the shed as a sudden, sickening thud of alarm punched her stomach. At the same time, the officer emerged from the shed holding the twisted corpse of the plastic bottle Carrie had dug up from the border.

“Where did this come from?” the lead inspector asked with a grim frown as his partner recorded the violation on his electronic pad.

Carrie avoided looking directly at her mother and kept her expression blank whilst her heart beat erratically in her chest. If she told them she’d dug it out of the ground, they’d want to check the vegetable patch.

“It’s got dirt in it,” the junior officer observed as he snapped a shot of it and then bagged it.

“I don’t know where that came from,” Molly said flatly.

“Well, it’s a code 72 violation,” the leader said. “What’s in these boxes?”

Molly stepped forward and peered into the shed. “My daughter’s belongings,” she replied without a trace of emotion. “My dead daughter’s,” she added as the inspector automatically glanced over at Carrie. “I haven’t got around to clearing her stuff out yet.”

The inspector shifted awkwardly and then closed the shed door. “First offence is a fine,” he said, printing off a form from his electronic pad. “You’ve got five days to clear the shed and then we’ll be back to check it.” He held the form out to Molly. “Payment details are on there.”

Molly took the form with a wry look. “I can’t afford this. How am I supposed to pay it?”

“You can work out a payment plan or extension with the Eco-offences Court. Five days and then we’ll be back.”

The inspector turned with his partner and walked back towards the house. Carrie watched her mother follow them but remained where she was as her panic subsided and a new feeling flooded her gut. This was her fault. She should have recycled the bottle immediately, and because she hadn’t they’d been slapped with a fine they couldn’t afford to pay—especially since she’d spent the last of her wages on the bud she’d bought from Nano.

Carrie glanced at the shed and then at the border where she’d unearthed the offending piece of plastic and where her green cloth bag was buried. Realising this was her chance to rescue her stash, she hastened to the border and pulled up the cloth bag, stuffing it into her pocket just before the kitchen door opened and her mother stepped out onto the patio.

Molly stood and stared for a second at Carrie, with her lips pressed together in a hard line before she spoke.

“Where did that bottle come from?”

“The veg patch.” Carrie replied quickly. “It was under the plum tree stump.”

“Then how and why did it end up in the shed?”

Carrie shrugged. “It started raining and I threw it in there with the rest of the stuff—I forgot it was there. I’m sorry.”

Molly gestured behind her. “Why didn’t you tell them that?”

“I didn’t think they’d believe me.”

Molly quirked a sceptical eyebrow and folded her arms. “What else is in the shed that shouldn’t be?”

“Nothing!” Carrie folded her arms too, indignant at the accusing tone.

“Really?” Molly strode across the lawn to the shed and threw open the door. “What else have you ‘forgotten’ in there?”

“Nothing!” Carrie repeated, feeling alarmed that her mother might actually go into the shed, even though she knew there really was nothing for her to find in there.

“So, when we clear this shed out, I’m not going to find… things… that shouldn’t be there?”

Carrie wondered why, if her mother really wanted an honest answer to that question, she didn’t just go into the shed and find out for herself, instead of standing on the threshold, tapping her hand on the doorframe.

“No,” she replied firmly.

Molly stepped forward and shut the shed door behind her. “We have five days before the DEW team come back. I’ll have to go down to the courts tomorrow to negotiate an extension on the fine and use the utility money to pay for most of it. If we’re lucky, work might give me some weekend shifts so I can make up the rest.” She hugged her arms around her chest, her shoulders hunched, as she walked back across the lawn.

Carrie watched her close the kitchen door but didn’t move. She knew she should go into the house and help unpack the shopping and finish the chores; but all she wanted to do was grab the one working bud she had and hit up for an hour or two. Standing in the garden, with a bag of mostly dud buds in her jacket pocket, the silence crowded in on her, leaving her guilt naked and clear. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t already given Nano the last of her cash. She would get her next wage packet on Monday, but most of it was already assigned for rent and other essentials. The little that would be left over wasn’t going to be of much help.

But she would fix this. This was her mess and she would get the money. And she already had an idea how.

Carrie unfolded her arms and shoved one hand into her jacket pocket, pushing her fist down on the green cloth bag and feeling the little discs pressing against her knuckles. Wait, she told herself. Not now. Wait.

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#Next weekend: Chapter 3—Savannah

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Author’s Notes:

Be careful what you keep in the shed. It could come back to haunt you.

Luckily, I don’t have a shed. I do have a garage though, which has been broken into a couple of times already this year. Unfortunately for the thieves, there’s nothing in there but boxes of manuscripts, some old camping equipment and asbestos in the roof (which—don’t panic—the landlord is arranging to have removed).

Conclusion: sheds and garages can be dangerous places—best to avoid.

If you enjoyed this chapter, please do like and share.

Chapter 3: Savannah, coming next weekend.

PJ