A PLACE BY THE SEA
The stone flew past her head immediately after the word. She’d spotted the kids sitting on the wall as she came round from the Co-op, but there was no other way back to the flat, sitting as it did at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was one of Billy Shaw’s boys, she was pretty certain, but she didn’t know the other boys, nor the girls standing by them laughing at how macho they could be. The rucksack should protect her back, she thought, so best just keep her head down and get in the door as quickly as she could.

There was another shit pasty on the doorstep, old newspaper wrapping fresher dog turds, but at least it was there and not on the handle. There was more writing, though, none of it in any way original, and as it had started to overlap it was steadily becoming less and less legible. The Council would be around again soon, then, to bill her for the cleaning and propose evicting her for the twentieth time. If she couldn’t maintain the property in a fit state, they said, then perhaps some honest hard-working family might do a better job.
Was it ‘hard-working’ now or ‘striving’? Did it really matter? She shut the door and immediately put the chain on, before knocking home the dead bots at top and bottom.

Gather the post and then up the stairs to her little space, which was dark, as always, curtains shut to prevent anyone seeing in, but also to cushion the impact of the odd stone or brick that might come in without the nicety of opening the window first. Jenny was waiting, as patient as ever, on her stool by the stereo.

Kettle on, and work through the letters. Gas bill, credit card default charge, bank statement cum warning about overdraft, Council letter about the state of the exterior of the flat, DWR, DWR, DWR… she had taken to calling those letters “Due to We Regret” because that was what they had always used in the past to tell her to piss off and look elsewhere for work, but they had stopped the ‘D’ part years ago, and now simply said that she had not been successful in her application. They’d also stopped regretting, but then she had plenty of that for herself without asking for extras.

Cup of tea, powdered milk tasting like chalk, and then the two stale sandwiches she had found just reaching the end of their shelf-life, reduced for a quick sale. Egg and cress, egg with salad cream. Jenny just looked at her, judging.

“And what do you suggest, yeah? I do what I can, that’s all there is. Look, early night. We’re down the job centre tomorrow”

Her stomach rumbled a few times that night, but she cuddled Jenny as close as she could and tried to tune her dreams to better times, better places. Dorset. That was where she wanted to be, some village or small town near the coast, the sound of the sea soothing on a lively day, far away from the decrepit ‘holiday’ coast of Thanet.

“Have you done any work paid or unpaid over the last fortnight Mister Stone?”

“Miss”

The job centre official looked theatrically down at the file before him, then looked up, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry Mister Stone, but I don’t see no fucking Gender Recognition papers on your file”

“Please don’t use that language”

“What language? Here, Shaz, you heard me use any fucking language?”

“No, Carl. Freak whining again?”

“Yeah”

He turned back to her.

“Shut it, you. Now, you’ve got an appointment, room 16, three hours’ time. Be there or get sanctioned. And shut the door on your way out, MISTER Stone”

She knew better than to argue, and spent three hours sitting in the wind looking over Margate’s beach as the rafts of sewage floated past from London. A small town by the seaside, yeah, right. She was living the dream, but she kept her hood up so that she could at least pretend nobody could see her.

Three streets away, a PCSO was showing some fresh meat around the sights and delights of his new beat.

“Yeah, Saracen’s Head here, that gets the bikers in on a Friday, but never no trouble, or no trouble we ever see, if you take my meaning, Sarge”

“And that is?”

“Well, they sorts it themselves. Leaves us with less worries, just pick up the pieces after, like”

“Right. And this is normal here?”

“Well, yeah. Community policing, innit? Now, down here’s a shitty bit. If you ever have to go in, they got four floors, but it only looks like three. Hillside, so the cellar opens out onto the street, you ever have to spin the place, got to have bodies out the back sharpish. Lots of them are flats now, so not as bad as it was. Buy to rent’s big round here, places being so cheap, so we get all the dole scum moved in by the Council”

“Dole scum?”

“Yeah, and Thanet flat key tarts. Best place for ‘em, away from decent folk”

“Frank, remember, yes? I have been working Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells—”

“Royal, yeah?”

“Yes, Royal, but Tonbridge was there before Tunbridge, and well, doesn’t matter. ‘Thanet flat key’? Explain”

“Simples. Little whores get their selves up the duff, gets them a flat. Thanet flat key’s a pram with a teenage slapper pushing it and new vermin inside it”

“Right. Got that—what the fucking hell is this all about?”

“What? Oh, the freak’s place! Got a tranny there, some bloke who wants his cock chopped off. Locals get a bit worried for their kids. Can’t blame them, really, is what I say”

“This is more… community stuff?”

“Well…”

“I can see at least two windows boarded up”

“Yeah, Stone rings up every so often for a whinge, but it’s bollocks, really. Probably puts them in himself. I mean, he’s a whatsit, exhibitionist, innit? Wants the attention”

The new sergeant muttered something, and kept his dirty look to himself until Frank looked away. What exactly had he let himself in for? He scanned the graffiti, and it was all there. Tranny. Nonce. Peedo---why could they never spell that one? There were some gouges in the wood, as if a knife or a chisel had been driven into it, and in the litter to one side of the front step was a bundle of newspaper, and the smell was enough to warn him off it.

Community spirit; he resolved to do some research on this one, as soon as he could get away from the unreconstructed arsehole he was following around his new manor.

The three hours were nearly up, but she had been at the door for at least twenty minutes. They were often late, but you could never risk it, for if you weren’t there on the dot it was sanctions all the way. Inside, room 16. Room? A cubicle with a glass partition. A young woman on the other side.

“You appear to have done no work for the last three years, Mister Stone”

“Miss, please. I have brought in all the letters I could find”

“I don’t need to see them, Mister Stone. Do you have any files for your actual job-seeking?”

“I have the replies from the people I wrote to”

“No, Mister Stone, do you have a file, USB stick, anything like that, to support your claim that you have actively been seeking work over the past three years?”

“I, er, don’t have a computer. No internet either”

“Everyone has the internet, Mister Stone”

“I don’t”

“Then on your smartphone, then”

“I haven’t got one of them”

“Then how do you expect to be able to actively seek work, which, I will remind you, is the main condition you must comply with in order to continue to receive the benefits that are paid to you from the taxes paid by hard-working families?”

“I can’t afford the cost of things like that”

“Mister Stone, all I will say now is that I find that you are being remarkably unwilling to make even the slightest effort to comply with the conditions of your benefit payments. I will discuss this matter with my line manager, but rest assured that I feel it is highly likely that we will be compelled to sanction you in order to encourage you to get off your backside and cease parasitizing honest strivers. Is that clear?”

“Yes, but--”

“This interview is terminated. Have a nice day, Mister Stone”

Sergeant Keaveney was back at the station an hour later, going through the Local Intelligence Officer’s notes on Peter William Stone, aka Mandy. The pattern was so bloody clear; why couldn’t they see it?

“Talk me through this one, Dick”

“Yeah… he was sent down by social from somewhere out West, by Groombridge I think. Got quite a file on him, picked him up a couple of times”

“Why ‘Mandy’, Dick?”

“Ah, one of them trannies, int he? Wears a dress, carries a handbag”

“So what did he get lifted for?”

Dick’s face screwed up in distaste.

“Nonce. Takes pictures of little kids, had a few slaps from their dads and then rings us, so what else can you do? I mean, grown man, wearing a dress, snapping kiddies. Tasha and Cindy brought him in, shouting how they’d stuck a knife in his door. Pervert. Not natural, is what I say”

The bad taste was back in Keaveney’s mouth, the smell of the dog shit almost as bad as the smell coming from the file on the desk. Not now, Chris, he told himself, get your feet under the table first.

The week after the interview, they sanctioned her. Her credit card was already maxed out, overdraft limit exceeded, and just as she was looking at the last tenner in her purse another window went in. She could hear the laughter as the little bastards ran off down the street, and sighed as she picked up her mobile.

“Which service?”

“Police, please”

They didn’t come. Two days later, her gas and electricity supplies were cut off as she ran out of credit on her key meter.

“What do you want?”

The woman in the food bank had that look on her face, the sneer, the contempt, all filtered through the bile rising in her throat.

“I’ve been sanctioned by the Benefits. If you’ve got something I can eat cold, I’ve got no heat or light”

“Well, you can fuck off. There are kids over there, don’t want your sort here, bloody paedo. I’ve heard about you. Fuck off before I call the Old Bill”

The bed was warmer than the armchair, especially as the wind howled through the broken window. She piled on all the blankets she had and added a coat on top, Jenny cuddled up to her, the yellow wool of her hair soft against her cheek.

“Sorry, love, but I’ve got nothing left. Just have to cuddle here till it’s day, yeah? Keep each other warm?”

Life had been so simple then. Hunger gnawed at her, so think back to better, warmer days. The podium holding the notes, fresh faces caught in her lecture as she showed how elegant the chemical exchanges in respiration were, how the structures of a bird’s skeleton worked to pull as much as possible from the atmosphere to let the skylark mount so high in its exultation. So she was still playing a male, and so badly, but she had always been able to lose herself in those faces, that energy and aspiration.

It was four in the morning by her watch, and so cold she could hardly feel her feet. Chemical exchanges… Perhaps there was a little gas left in the little camping stove she had used for the last of the tinned food? There was a plastic bag under the sink.

Think of nice things, think of Dorset, golden days, the waves whispering on the sand as a skylark rose, singing its heart and its joy to the world, and there was Jenny, her soul doll, Jenny who had looked after her for so many years, and she was standing before her, smiling, hand outstretched, and were those roses round the door?

“Sergeant Keaveney?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I hear you’ve been digging into our local nonce”

“With all due respect sir, I take exception to that word. There is no evidence of any such inclination or activity”

“He was taking pictures of children, Sergeant”

“SHE was taking pictures of criminal damage and the perpetrators, sir!”

“Well, have it how you will. Anyway, got another complaint from his neighbours”

“What now, sir? Haven’t they done enough?”

“Smell from his flat. I want you to take a constable, go round with environmental health”

Chris bit his tongue; save your ammunition for a fight you can win. Two days later, he was at the flat, pass key from the Council in hand, two constables and the EH woman in tow. No answer to the knock, nor to the bell. He slipped the key in the door and as soon as it was opened the stench came out to meet him, and the EH woman staggered back with a muttered “Oh fuck, not another one”

Chris led the way up the stairs, torch on because the light wouldn’t work, and, shit. He had to take a step back away from the smell, still strong even in the cold drafts howling in through two smashed windows. No power. A check later showed nothing in the fridge, nothing in the cupboards, nothing in the flat except for the dead woman under the pile of blankets, rag doll clutched to her, face livid inside the clear plastic of the bag.

He called it in.

Hours later, he sat in the police canteen with the Scenes of Crime Officer, washing the taste and the smell from him with tea and a shortbread biscuit. The SOCO was blunt.

“You got your arse covered on this one, Chris? Going to be some shit flying when this hits the press”

“As best I can, Phil. I was just starting to dig into this one, if you see what I mean, when, well, events, overtaking, shit, yeah?”

“You OK, mate?”

“Yeah, sort of. But there was fuck all in there, Phil. She’d even rinsed out the tins, probably to drink whatever was left in them. No food, no electric, nothing. She was even wiping her arse with old newspapers, and then, for fuck’s sake, when the news got out her neighbours were fucking well cheering! And there she is, under those blankets, nothing but a rag doll to be with her at the end”

Phil sat silent for a few minutes as they both washed the events away with their tea, then shook his head.

“Puzzles me, though, Chris. I mean, I’ve not seen much shittier scenes, you know? But with all that, did you see her face? She was smiling”