I’m the boss of the carrion crew. It’s not an official name and the crew don’t even know that’s how I mentally describe us. We work for a local auction doing house clearances. Most of the properties we clear are the rented accommodations of those who have died and lived on their own. The beneficiaries of their estates usually have a few days at most to clear the property before another week’s rent is due and unless they've already done it, or had it done, they’ll be charged for having the property cleared. In that event we’ll probably get the clearance job anyway, but they’ll be charged a few hundred quid for it. If it’s local authority housing they usually have a week, but they'll be charged even more for the clearance.
That’s where we come in. Our employer offers the service at a reasonable price to beneficiaries and executors as well as landlords if he gets whatever we remove to be auctioned. It's mostly cheap furniture, but the contract states we have to do a total clearance, including floor coverings, curtains and blinds and the tracking they run on too, and anything the auction house can’t sell he has to stand the cost of disposing of. We take most of the stuff back to work, though carpets and the like goes straight to the local ‘civic amenity site’ for which you can read tip or dump.
Anything the boss doesn’t think will sell is offered to a couple of retired guys, I think they’re brothers, who turn up with pickup trucks and a couple of fourteen foot trailers with cage sides. They ‘flatpack’ chipboard furniture and the like, often with a sledge hammer, to bulk it down and take that and any metal away. They weigh the metal in for scrap after processing it and use the furniture for fire fuel. They live out in the sticks and have solid fuel heating systems. What they don’t take and the boss says isn’t worth his while auctioning goes in a skip. He’s the auctioneer so it’s his call.
Unlike most of the crew, I am only too aware that when we have finished all evidence of a human being has been expunged from the face of the Earth. It’s a sobering and disturbing thought that one day my effects will be dealt with in a similar fashion. The crew have a rule, anything we find that we can dispose of easily we share the proceeds, you know a gold ring or jewellery, small easy to sell stuff to the folk who’ll buy with no questions asked.
The carrion crew aren’t the nicest of folk. They’re all vultures from the wrong side of the tracks and I’m not much better. I’m a bit brighter and can actually read, and I do, but that’s about the limit of our differences. The other day the crew came across a drinks cabinet while I was taking a load of rubbish to the tip. They drank the contents without leaving me my share which broke the rules. They smugly told me, “You weren’t here so we drank your share, so we could put the bottles in the trash.” I was as mad as hellfire but smiled because I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of winding me up, but I vowed I’d make sure they had their comeuppance.
My opportunity came much sooner than I’d thought possible. I saw the whisky bottle they’d opened and drunk. What a bunch of stupid bastards. I hope they enjoyed it. It was Islay, a vintage single malt, fifty-six years old and worth well over £10,000. The last one fetched £12,600 at a specialist auction house. I know a lot about malt, because I enjoy drinking it and reading about it is a hobby of mine. They broke the rules, so I felt entitled to too, and though I’m not as stupid as the rest of the crew I’m obviously more of a bastard because when I found the two unopened, unlabelled cases containing twelve bottles each of the same vintage whisky I surreptitiously hid them in my car boot and said nothing.
Sold one at a time over a couple of years or so the proceeds of their sale should, if carefully invested even with today’s pathetic interest rates, ultimately yield about £12,000 a year. That is enough for me not to have to do this lousy, soul destroying job any more and pay the mortgage on a house in a decent area. But before I quit for something better, if not as lucrative, I’ll tell the crew what it was they drank, but not of course about my bottles. I regret not having had a taste of that first bottle, but even if had I’d still have had those cases away and said nothing. Unlike the crew I’m a complete bastard, not an amateur.
