Days of Long Shadows by Tim Franks

Author:Tim Franks [Franks, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

45

Jamie didn’t hear Shona’s alarm, but then the Yale lock dropped. He went to the window and watched her car’s rear lights shrink into the dark.

Around six he woke again and, this time, he got up and pulled on his kit. A twenty minute loop around the park in the cold and dark. He ran it twice. Lactic acid, the gift that keeps giving on Sheffield’s sloping streets. Still, he could feel the improvement. Back home, showered and fed, he assembled his equipment and checked his phone. The reply he wanted was there.

Up to my elbows in a deceased pensioner. Collect from Lauren. Bring back before weekend – Personal property, not department shit so be careful. Included tripod. Need a steady hand for long-shots. Enjoy C

Jamie edged back into the spot he’d found the previous day in the pallet-strewn gully. Cozza was right about needing a tripod with the zoom lens. A handheld trial shot of a streetlight looked like a fluorescent banana.

The coming and going of the industrial estate’s day began long before the January sunrise, but not in Shag City. Jamie was half way down his flask before a woman, hunched under layers of winter clothing, opened a metal side-door. After fifteen minutes, she came out, minus her layers, wearing an overall. Jamie squinted behind the tripod and the Nikon lens captured pin-sharp images of the woman’s face and mop. Over the next hour, the woman made repeated appearances, shaking dusters and emptying buckets down a drain. Then the door stayed shut. Around eleven o’clock she came out again, but now dressed in barmaid-chic. Leaning against the building, she lit a cigarette.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jamie lined up the camera. ‘Film-noir – Yorkshire style.’ Twelve million megapixels zoomed in on crow’s feet ridged with make-up and a lip-stick ringed cigarette filter.

The woman breathed out a final cloud of smoke, trod on the cigarette butt, and turned. She fiddled with a bunch of keys and the big roller shutter rattled up. Jamie was back at the camera. Inside, the light was fluorescent and tucked against a wall was an exercise bike and a bench with weights.

‘Fucking man spa,’ he grinned to himself. ‘Boys toys for Bakula, more like.’

Near the door there was an office and a reception area. He could see containers in neat rows and stairs leading to a mezzanine floor and the impression of more cuboids. Then the woman went inside and must have flicked a switch because fluorescent lights were replaced by strings of dim multi-coloured bulbs zig-zagging between the containers.

Around noon a smattering of blondes straggled in and sat in the reception area, seemingly chattering, while the earlier woman sat behind a counter, her face hidden by a computer screen. About the same time as the day before, the first customers arrived; a sparse succession of the elderly, unemployed and occasional shift-workers trailed across the lunchtime.

‘Jesus,’ Jamie whispered to himself. ‘Stick a couple of girls on the Meals on Wheels van and they could really rake in the grey pound.

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