Free Deadfolk by Charlie Williams

em and that.
    I knelt down beside Baz. ‘Soz about that, mate,’ I says. ‘I er…I reckon I dunno what came over us, like. You’ll understand, won’t you? Aye, course you will. Well, er…I’ll be off then. Bye.’ I pushed his eyelids down, but they crept up again. I tried again a couple of times, then gave up. He’d always been an awkward cunt and he were no different dead.
    I stood up. A bus chuntered past alongside the graveyard. A dog barked. A plane flew overhead, likely heading somewhere better than Mangel. I had to do summat, I supposed.
    I hauled the carcass behind some nearby bushes. There were a big pile of dug earth amongst em which didn’t seem to be doing much in particular. So I dumped Baz next to it and kicked some soil over him. Not much, mind. I had to be able to find him again. When his face and hands was covered, and he looked like a few old rags in the dirt when you stood a few yard back and squinted, I legged it.
    I headed back same way I’d come, seeing even less of it this time. All I could think of were Legs, raising his fatherly eyebrow in that way of his and telling us I’d done all right. It were barmy to ponder along such lines, I know. But it were better than the other—to think about how I’d just killed a Munton.
    When I got back to the Capri the engine started first time. If I were a man who lived by omens I’d take that as a good un. I crossed me fingers and let the clutch off. If there were one time I needed her to purr nice and quiet like a good pussy, it were now.
    And she did.
    I nigh on floated through the streets, heading back to the graveyard. I didn’t dare think about what the hell I were to do once I got there. It were broad bastard daylight, fuck sake. And driving your motor across a graveyard ain’t exactly the most discreetest of things a feller can do. How were I planning on getting Baz inside the car? I weren’t even sure he’d fit, your Ford Capri being a bachelor’s coupé and not well suited to what I had in mind for it. I pulled up a block away from the graveyard and gave the situation my full and undivided.
    If I left it until dark, some bastard might find him. Or some dog, more like. No, I had to get him out fast. At least if I took Baz that’d be the evidence hid. And it were better to be seen hauling summat into a car now than to have folks find a dead feller later on. Wouldn’t take many brains to link the corpse to meself. Not even Mangel brains.
    From my vantage point at Capri-level I could see a fair bit of the graveyard two blocks down the road, including the foot of the old oak tree, which is where Baz and I had come to blows. My eyes stayed on that spot as I sat behind the wheel and tried to think. But a sudden movement set my heart thrashing like a landed trout. Someone were coming up the path towards the bushes and the dirt heap.
    Some bastard with a shovel and barrow.
    I gunned the engine and charged into the car park. I weren’t sure what I were up to. All I knew is what I had to do—stop the gravedigger finding Baz. The car crunched to a halt. I got out. The digger were still where I’d first spotted him. But now he were staring at us, gob agape. I reckoned the dodgy exhaust had finally earned its keep. I ran up to him, wondering what the flaming Betty I were meant to say. But then, like it always do if you leaves yourself open to it, Providence steamed in clutching a little plan in his sweaty paw.
    ‘Hoy, mate,’ I hollers, all urgent and scaredy-eyed, which were how I were feeling anyhow so I didn’t need to put it on. ‘Yer, uh…yer bird’s had accident, like.’
    ‘Me burd? Who?’
    ‘Aye. You know. She’s…’
    ‘Me gurlfriend?’
    ‘Aye. Thass her.’
    He were a young feller, as gravediggers went. But bald as a duck egg. ‘But I ain’t got no gurlfriend.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Me woife, you means?’
    ‘Oh aye. She’s had accident.’
    ‘Ain’t got a woife neither.’
    I scratched my head, which