Danny Yates Must Die

Her footsteps receded, leaving Danny to test the hammock. He didn’t bother. He’d seen enough sit-coms to predict the outcome. Setting the hammock creaking back and forth he considered the floor, deciding it’d be better to sleep on than the street. And he had this whole room to himself. And, unlike Lucy, a nun wouldn’t help herself to his property, claiming Finders Keepers as English Law’s one inviolable principle – when the item had been ‘found’ in a locked drawer, using a crowbar.

The sister’s footsteps returned.

Her head popped round the door, her fingers wrapping around its frame. ‘Do you play a musical instrument, Mr Yates?’

‘No. Why?’

She just smiled then left.

Danny was lying on the floor when Sister Theresa returned. Smiling mischievously, she was hiding something behind her back. ‘Hello again, Mr Yates. Lying on the floor are we?’

He said nothing.

She lay beside him. The hidden thing droned like a trod on octopus. Produced from behind her back, one end strapped to one hand, the once hidden thing distended and sprawled like an sick caterpillar across her chest. The thing dribbled to the floor and expired.

It was a squeezebox.

He squinted at it, suspicious.

The sister made herself more comfortable. ‘I thought we could have a sing along. Do you know any sea shanties, Mr Yates?’

‘None.’ He hoped to discourage her.

‘Fortunately, I know one. It’s called The Rhyme of Long Gone Hats and is so authentic it practically reeks of salt. A sailor taught it me in a Liverpool bar.’

He glanced at her.

Gazing at the ceiling, she answered his implied question. ‘Sister Remunerable took me there. “Tessie,” she said, a Rothmans flapping in her mouth, “in order to understand sailors, we must first mix with them. We must ape their ways, however coarse.” Sister Remunerable spends near all her time getting to know sailors. That’s where she is today, seeking them out in the pubs of Newcastle on Tyne, before moving on to its many all-night clubs.’

Danny chose to say nothing.

‘Mr Dimitri Stassanopolou, my sailor was called. Sister Remunerable introduced us. He had some very strange ideas about what nuns get up to.’

Her free hand entered the other strap and, fingering a bewildering array of buttons, she held the small accordion ready. ‘Right. Here goes.’ And she squeezed.

THE RHYME OF LONG GONE HATS:

Oh my hat lies in the Eastern Caucasus.

It was thrown there by naughty porpoises.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.

Sea horsie.