Little Sister by David Hewson Read Free Book Online

from the government for keeping the
narrow dykes of Waterland clear of weed and other obstructions.
    They were strong men with ruddy, bucolic faces that spoke of long nights in the few taverns from which they weren’t barred. Tonny, fifty-three, and Willy, two years his junior, now
laboured under hangovers that hadn’t improved even with their customary breakfast of eggs, cheese, ham and liver sausage.
    Still the council schedule was rigid and they needed the money. So at seven thirty that morning they started up their bright blue Fordson Dexta tractor, the one their late father bought new in
1975, hooked up a trailer and loaded their one working mini-digger on the back. Then, Willy at the wheel, Tonny behind in the seat of the mini-digger, they set out on a long, slow circuit of the
dykes and drains that lay behind the road from Marken back to the city.
    After an hour they were in the single-track lane that ran beside a narrow channel of green water. Tonny had the worst of the headaches. So Willy was baiting him.
    ‘You should try eating the weed, boy,’ he called out from the cab as his brother dropped the digger scoop into the dense green mass blocking the waterway. ‘I heard that was
good for a thick head.’
    The older man chuckled, let the scoop go deep, came up with a load of filthy slime that he dumped on the bank.
    ‘If that were the case, Brother, I’d have been feeding it to you ever since you learned to walk.’
    The bucket jammed on the bank, as it was wont to do at times. Maintenance was something the brothers performed themselves, not that they knew much about it. Willy got out and gave the thing a
kick. Then he looked up the lane.
    ‘Oh Lordy,’ he whispered and forgot all about the digger and his brother.
    Tonny cricked his neck and spotted what his brother saw. He climbed out of the cab and followed him. The pair had worked these lanes and channels for twenty years. In all that time they’d
seen six cars find their way into the dykes. The Kok brothers weren’t ones to wait around for the police to see what they contained.
    The rear end of a small saloon was just poking out of the green algae and duckweed on the surface of the drain. It was shiny yellow with a SEAT badge on the tailgate. The back window had smashed
in the impact. Water and surface vegetation had poured inside.
    ‘I have taken three bodies from them things over the years,’ Willy declared. ‘Not this time, Brother. You always make me look first. Ain’t fair.’
    ‘You’re younger than me. More nimble.’
    ‘Yeah. And I get to see what the eels and the rats have done. Don’t go down good for when you want to sleep that, does it?’
    ‘Not for me neither,’ Tonny replied. ‘I see it too, you know.’
    ‘In that case best we ring the police and leave them to deal with it.’ The water covered everything apart from the back window and hatch. They’d no idea what was inside.
‘Maybe it’s empty.’
    ‘Only one way to find out, ain’t there? I’ll get the digger back on the trailer. You drive us down here. I’ll do some exploring.’
    Willy stamped his big foot on the ground.
    ‘I’m telling you, Brother. We should be calling the police.’
    Tonny grinned and said, ‘But we ain’t got phones, have we? And I’ll be damned if we’re taking the tractor back home just so’s we can call ’em and have
’em drag us back out here again. We have a look. If there’s no one there we amble off home once we’ve done and report the car.’
    A cocky duck swam through the green weed towards them, chest puffed out, quacking all the way. The bird looked at the crashed car blocking its path.
    ‘Mr Mallard . . . he don’t like having that thing there in his home,’ Willy said. ‘Don’t blame the gent either.’
    Then the duck eyed something and swam through the shattered back window. They watched its head go down, the white and brown tail go up. They’d seen this in Waterland a thousand times or
more. But not