Lucy Caird fiction short story Company of Thieves

Title image by Pam McKnight, Broken and Rusted, Mixed Media on Paper, 6″ x 6″, 2025.

Company of Thieves

by Lucy Caird

It’s on a Monday, as I’m opening up, that I realize I haven’t heard from Carol in two days. We’re expecting a fruit delivery and she unfailingly shows up to help unload. It always puts a smile on her face because the Macaques get so excited and, though I don’t like to admit it, I suspect it has something to do with the letters piling up under the front desk, warnings of foreclosure, bills gone unpaid. When I call her, I get her bright and breezy answer machine. Hi, it’s Carol. If you’re calling for Bush Babies try the front desk and one of our amazing staff can help you. Or what’s left of the staff, I want to add. What’s left of the staff. 

“Any reservations?” I ask the summer boy, even though I know there won’t be. The summer boy is our yearly intern hired for work experience, who everyone just calls Summer. He would have left weeks ago if he had any sense. 

He flips his floppy hair out of his eyes and shakes his head, lingering, waiting for me to tell him what to do. 

“Go on, open up, Summer,” I tell him. “The road’ll be clear by now, surely. We’ll maybe get a few walk-ins yet.” 

They are strange, Barbary macaques in the morning fog. I can never reconcile them with this landscape. Their hunched forms with sharp, intelligent eyes, teeth nibbling along a strip of melon, and then there’s the sea, smashing in the background, unrelenting. It’s a weird sight. Kind of like dreaming, where familiar things are displaced, pieces of your home are outside, or someone you knew a million years ago shows up. A little ghost from the past, and all you want to do is wake up and have everything be in its right place again. 

We wait, drinking black tea, watching the dark clouds gather over head. 

When it actually happens I assume I’m seeing things. A mirage of sorts, conjured by my dreaming mind. I blink, but no, there it is, a lone car pulling into the parking lot. A beaten Land Rover, with rust along the side. 

“Blow me over sideways,” the summer boy says. 

“And me,” I reply. 

A shapeless figure emerges, swathed in a waterproof cagoule, followed by a skinny kid, maybe around twelve years old. The stone gravel crunches underfoot as they approach the front desk. 

“Two tickets, please.” The man places a ten-pound note on the counter. His clothes are a little shabby and he looks like he could use a shave, but he’s doing better than most if he’s able to afford an outing like this. 

“It’s ten each now,” I say. “Inflation. Sorry.” 

The kid is wearing a pin on his jacket that says Birthday Boy. He looks at his father, sensing some tension, but the man pulls another note from his wallet and slaps it down on top of the first. 

“Daylight robbery,” he mutters. 

“Leave your personal belongings in the locker,” I tell them, then add a please because, even though the end of civilization is clearly upon us, we can still be polite. “Empty out your pockets, any iPhones, jewelry, water bottles. Everything. Don’t come crying to me if you get something taken. Ok? And refrain from impersonating the Macaques or making any sudden movements. Things get lost in translation and they could easily perceive it as a threat.” 

They nod, the boy wide-eyed. 

I do what I can with them, the Macaques, I mean, but ultimately it’s what they know. The rampant stealing and frisking they exact upon each visitor. It’s cute and delightful having a monkey sift through your pockets, until you have something valuable that gets taken. Six months ago in the summer season, Romeo, a young, ambitious male, quickly rising up the ranks, removed a baby bottle from the hands of an infant and scampered up a nearby tree. We watched him guzzle the milk, the froth running down his chin and fur, then he beat the bottle against the tree, victorious, until it smashed into pieces. 

“I’m sorry,” the mother said, before she burst into a nervous giggle. 

“Breastmilk or formula?” I asked, wearily, because the last time it happened and it was formula, Romeo had stomach pains and diarrhea for days.  

“Breast,” she replied. 

“Well that’s something,” I said. 

Still, Romeo looked endlessly happy with himself and acted like a right asshole for the rest of the day, beating his chest to emphasize the triumph. 

It’s always in the back of my mind, as I open the gate. That scene. The human breastmilk running all over his face and the hungry, irate baby, with nothing to drink. It makes me think of the bewildered look on my wee brother’s face in the weeks after my mother met some rich guy and got the hell out of Dodge. 

This tour, however, starts well. I talk about how the Macaques came to be in Scotland, all the way from Gibraltar. Me and the summer boy take them over the swinging bridge where Flora, one of our older females, drops from a branch onto the kid’s shoulder and rides there, grooming his hair, for the rest of the tour. Orwell rides with me, as always. I was the one that rehabilitated Orwell, showed him that it was ok to trust me, but he has never advanced his feelings for humans beyond that. 

As the tour winds down, Romeo predictably loiters by the gate, showing teeth, hopping around, establishing status. It’s his routine power move. I glance at the birthday boy to see if he’s amused, but I find him impersonating Romeo, even though I warned him not to. The next two beats happen faster than my eyes can follow. Romeo, sensing his position threatened by this grinning boy, is a blur in the air. The boy screams. Romeo is off like a shot, up the nearest tree. When I look back at the boy, blood runs from a deep groove across his cheeks, down his neck. 

I look at the summer boy, who has paled at the sight of so much blood. 

“Get the first aid box,” I say. Then, to the man and his son, “Come with me.” 

The scratch looks worse than it actually is. Once the boy’s disinfected and bandaged up, he doesn’t look so bad, just a little stunned. I refund them half the cost of the ticket, before they drive away into the rain. 

It’s not until the man and the boy are gone that I realize, with a skip of excitement, what Romeo has in his hands. A small bottle of Laphroaig, the boy’s dignity being not the only thing he stole that day. He’s high in the tree, trying to unscrew the lid. 

“Romeo,” I call, delighted. “Where for art thou, Romeo?” 

I cut what’s left of the apple and bring a generous piece to offer him but Romeo refuses my advances. He doesn’t want the bitter green apple, and honestly, I don’t blame him. They taste like shit from the lack of sunshine. It’s the summer boy that brings out a plastic tub from his backpack and opens it. I haven’t seen the red watery flesh of what’s inside for about a year. Romeo is down the tree in a flash. Begging. Chattering. Hollering. He will do anything for watermelon. The summer boy has the advantage and they make the exchange. Romeo is off again, delighted with his prize. 

“Where’d you get that from?” I eye him, with bewilderment and begrudging admiration. 

“Not just a pretty face.” He winks, signaling he’s not giving his secrets away, but he does hand me the flask, which I slide into my pocket. 

Later, I steal away down by the stream in the afternoon. I’m struggling with the cap when the summer boy finds me and offers to open it for me. He sits down and we take turns, drinking in silence. 

Being a zookeeper, of sorts, was never part of the plan. Actually, I’m an intelligent enough woman. My ambitions were firmly rooted elsewhere, in the arts, maybe, or the theater, but after graduation, only Carol would take me. Carol with her swinging breasts, liberated from any kind of bra, and the way she throws her head back to laugh. That smile she’s got when she’s happy with your work. The one that makes you feel like a million pounds. Carol, who’s disappeared. 

I told her it was temporary, until I found something else. That was eight years ago, and serves me right, my father tells me. A degree in English. The surest way to wind up working with a bunch of primates. 

He’s wrong. The surest way to end up working with a bunch of primates is the failing of civilization. It’s twelve billion fat humans in cars. It’s that social media pandemic that made us incapable of socializing. It’s the other fourteen odd wars. I can’t keep count. It’s the hunger. It’s not having a mother. 

The alcohol brings warmth to my stomach, taking the edge off the growing sense of alarm I’ve been feeling all day. The nagging suspicion that Carol isn’t coming back. Somehow, some way, she has abandoned this monkey ship and I am the one that’s left, going down with these Macaques. 

We watch a bevy of deer grazing on the hillside, so silent in the rain and wind. I try Carol again and get her answering machine. 

Hi. If you’re calling for Bush Babies, please try the following number for the front desk, and one of our amazing staff will help you. 

“You think she got on a boat?” The summer boy asks. 

I nod, but the truth is, I have no idea. I’ve heard of people going other places but I didn’t fully realize we’d reached that point. I thought Scotland was still doing ok. I try to imagine what it would be like, opening the door to the Macaque enclosure, letting them out into the wild, watching them scurry away. I try to imagine getting on a boat, but it’s impossible to imagine. I’ve never been farther than Glasgow. 

“Why don’t you go, Summer?” I ask. “I mean, why don’t you go somewhere else?” 

“James,” he says, in that proper English accent of his. “That’s my real name, by the way. Don’t know if you knew. People just call me Summer because I come from Somerset.” 

“Oh.” I try to sound convincing. “I knew that.” 

He shrugs again. “I am home.” 

“No, I mean, why don’t you get out of here. Surely things are better down South.”

He looks a little thrown off, and I realize he’s turned bright red. Then it dawns on me. The summer boy has a crush on me. 

He can’t hold his drink, either, and he gets drunk really quickly. Ten minutes later he’s slurring his words, going on about his cousin, some kid whose parents paid for tickets to Russia. Fifteen hundred pounds a ticket. He shows me photos and tells me about the time he took him to Blackpool. This is a classic Macaque move. Male bonds with youngster in order to impress lady. Male gets laid. Now that he’s started, however, I’m not sure he’ll ever stop talking, so I kiss him, letting the whisky move from my tongue to his. I pull down his jeans and fuck him right there, in the mud by the stream. His body is sleek and hairless and tastes like the grass and mud below us. All I can think about, while I’m riding him, is that building in Italy that leans to one side and how, after an earthquake the other day, it finally collapsed after a thousand years. I’m surprised then, when a violent mounting sensation takes over me and he brings me to a shuddering orgasm. When I look down, his pupils have dilated and he throws back his head as he comes. Afterwards, he’s clingy. 

“You do realise you’re quite beautiful, don’t you?” He holds my face in his hand, examining it in wonder. “Don’t pull that face — I mean it. There’s something about you I can’t place. You’re… different.” 

“It’s a momentary blip in time,” I tell him. “You’re drunk.” 

“I want to marry you,” he replies.  

“You slow down now, James,” I say, and despite myself, I laugh. 

“I’m just speaking the truth.” 

“That makes no sense, whatsoever,” I say. 

“I’m in love with you. I was in love with you from the very moment I started work here. I can’t stop. I’ll die if you leave me.” 

He says all this, then he passes out by the stream. I finish the rest of the whiskey, contemplating the summer boy. He has nowhere else to go, I conclude. He doesn’t have a mother either, or even Carol anymore. Whoever this cousin is, and what remains of his family, are either long gone, or fled to Russia or Canada. He’s just as lost and terrified as me.  

I call Carol again and she doesn’t pick up. 

The days pass slowly after that. Our deliveries stop. I get into the habit of leaving Carol long voice messages, updating her on the antics of the Macaques. Maybe I can reach her conscience, I think. Get through to her, somehow. Stop her from whatever she’s doing. Honestly, I just want to hear the sound of her voice. Even if she isn’t coming back. Anything other than this kind of abandonment. Of all the human atrocities. Of all the ways meaning has broken down, of all the terrible things we have borne witness to, it’s this one I can’t stomach. 

My father is furious. He stokes the fire in his armchair and screams at me every night, telling me not to go back in the morning. 

“I need more time,” I tell him. “I just need to think.” 

“You think too much,” my dad tells me. “Ye dinna see yer brither wi his heid in the clouds. If it wisna for Jim, we’d hae starved by now.” 

“I can’t just leave them,” I answer him. “I just need a second to think.” 

“I’ve a thought for you.” He glares at me, red-faced. “We’re a half week away from being put out on our arses. Ah didna bring ye up tae hing aboot wi’ monkeys aw day. What did ah tell ye? What did ah tell ye about goin tae University? A bloody scam. That’s what.” 

I credit my father with one thing, however. He doesn’t insist I call the police. He knows they are just as useless as calling a troop of professional clowns at this point. And besides, they have bigger things to worry about. Constant flooding has brought this side of the country to its knees. 

I bring what I can in the mornings. 

Whatever I can steal from the cupboards before my father sees, hauling it the half mile down the road to the sanctuary because I can’t afford to put petrol in my car anymore. The Macaques are growing restless, though. Insulted by the dry bread, the stale oatcakes, and the measly berries I can find.  

Finally, I call the vet. I don’t know what else to do. I think maybe the vet has something he can bring. The vet tells me to call the police. 

The feeling in my stomach takes on its own kind of personality. A rampant beast of a thing that will only be quelled by obsessive calls to Carol’s answer machine. The sound of her voice providing twenty seconds of relief. And there’s a storm moving in from the East. I imagine the wind as containing minute particles of my own mother. Blowing her back to me, piece by piece, from Russia, where she went with some guy she met online. 

On Wednesday, we officially run out of food. James also does not show up. He comes from the village of Troon, three miles down the road, or so he says. Much about that remains a mystery to me, the exorbitant price of petrol for one. He definitely doesn’t pay for it on the wages he earns at Bush Babies and besides, neither of us has received anything that week. The two hundred pounds that is deposited into my bank account every week is simply not there. But I am now concerned that he hasn’t been able to get gas for his car. Or something worse.  

I sit watching the Macaques rouse from their nests, ready to face my persecutors. The wind and rain are bad enough, however, that they huddle to protect one another, bewildered by this dark, foreign country. Their bewilderment resonates with me. I was born here, into this body with its curves and desires, and its thinking mind, but I would jump right out of it if I could, leave it behind like a discarded snake skin. 

By the time James’ car pulls into the parking lot, I am beside myself. 

When he comes in, rain-soaked and shivering, he is carrying three whole watermelons. 

I scramble to my feet, marveling at the large, round fruits. The Macaques are on us instantly, begging, demanding, fighting so viciously that the watermelons fall to the ground, the flesh splitting down the middle. I kiss him with force, wanting to sew myself to him. Place my body inside his so that we’re never apart again. 

“How?” I ask him. 

He looks at me for a long time, then looks away. “Don’t be angry, ok? I should have said something earlier.” 

The only thing I can think to do is nod. Because what? What could he possibly be keeping from me other than something terrible? What kind of crime, or shady thing is he involved in exactly? He leads me through the enclosure, to a dripping-wet area covered in bushes near the back. Bending down, he clears a few twigs out of the way and beckons for me to follow him through to the other side. 

“There,” he says. “Halfway up.” 

I follow where he’s pointing, but see nothing. 

“The tree?” I say. 

“In the crotch, where the branches meet the trunk. I came across it, several weeks back.” 

Digging the toe of my boot into a groove in the tree, I hoist myself over the edge to where the branches form a natural basin. A rush of understanding hits me and my face breaks into a grin. Inside is a treasure trove of stolen items. Cash. Wads and wads of cash and coins. Most of it soaking wet and matted to the tree, but if removed carefully and dried, completely usable. Jewelry, some of it expensive-looking, old iPhones, a condom still in its packet, nicotine patches, numerous headbands and scarves, old candy, several hearing devices, buttons and a set of false teeth. The Macaque fortune. Over a decade of theft. 

When I jump down, James looks sheepish. 

“I should’ve spoken up sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t. I stupidly thought that if I told you…” He shrugs. “I don’t know; I didn’t want things to change.” 

“You could’ve just taken it all and walked away.” 

“Who do you think I am, exactly? That’s a rhetorical question. Don’t answer that. The point is, I told you. I’m in love with you.” 

“You’re out of your mind.”  

“There’s a few months’ there, give or take. Mortgage. Food. We could keep this place running. Maybe for longer if we play it right. Who cares about Carol? Or we could go. Get the hell out of here.” He clambers up into the tree, retrieves something from the nest, and hops back down, opening his palm to reveal a plain gold band, set with a beautiful sapphire. It was actually a woman on one of my tours that lost it. I remember the tears running down her face when she realized she wasn’t getting it back. “What do you say?” 

This is the strange circumstance I have wrought, I realize, in sleeping with the summer boy. I open my mouth to answer him, but the sound of voices from the parking lot forces me to freeze. 

“Customers?” I say. 

“In this weather? Surely not.” 

We run back, through the enclosure, to find two figures standing outside the entrance gate, looking in. Two uniformed policemen. 

“Officer Craig. We received a call from Aaron Malick,” the first one says. 

The vet. I curse myself inwardly for calling him. Despite the fact that civilization is breaking down around us, small towns will always be small towns. And yet, I am relieved. That drowning feeling, of being in over my head, lessens somewhat. 

“Says the owner’s disappeared.” 

“Carol Linegan,” I tell him. “I haven’t heard from her in over two weeks.” 

Romeo is hanging from a branch overhead. The females have grouped together near the gate, sensing more food might be coming. 

“Wow,” the other policeman says. “Would you look at that? That’s not something you see every day. Are they friendly?” 

“Pretty much. What’ll happen to them?” 

Officer Craig whistles. “Can’t say I get this type of call every day, but it’ll be passed to the environmental protection unit. What’s left of it, anyway.” 

The second officer says something to Officer Craig, who then turns back to me. “My colleague here… Colin’s wondering if he can come in. He’s an animal lover.”  

“If it’s not an inconvenience.” Officer Colin takes off his hat. “I’d love to see them.” 

“You want the tour?” I realize this will most likely be the last time I give it. “It’s not a problem.” 

“Would you?” 

“You’ll need to empty out your pockets. All your belongings. Especially those-” I point to the two guns lodged at their hips. “One of our Macaques has serious baggage from the war.” 

I can sense the hesitation in Officer Craig. He seems to wrestle with something, then he turns to Officer Colin. “You go on, ahead. I’ll wait out here. You never know.” 

“You sure?” 

“Aye. Enjoy yourself, you big bairn.”  

I can feel the weight of the gun as Officer Colin places it into the tray. Stripped of his police stuff, he looks like a school kid, excited about seeing monkeys. 

“I just love them,” he says. “My grandfather was from South Africa. He used to take me and my sister there when we were little.”

I open up the secure entrance area and allow him to pass through into the enclosure. 

“He wasn’t a big game hunter, was he?” I ask. 

“Oh, he hunted plenty an animal in his day. Different time though, know what I mean?” 

I roll my eyes at James, who shakes his head. 

It was a favorite saying of my mother’s. Different time. Although she used it when she was talking about the Europe of her childhood. Camper vacations with her own grandparents, moving from one country to the next, across borders, just like that. With me curled in the nook of her arm, she’d tell me stories about plazas, shops with ice creams as big as your head. The sun that shone all day. Flocks of blue-throated birds, migrated from colder places. 

I catch James’ eye as we’re crossing the bridge. Officer Colins is posing for a photo with Romeo on his shoulder. 

“Ok,” I whisper. 

“Ok?” He says, hopeful. “You’ll marry me?” 

“I mean, fine,” I say. “Maybe.” 

His face breaks into a grin. 

I lean in to kiss him, tasting fresh rainwater on his lips. When I turn around, there’s a commotion. Officer Colin is on the ground, clutching his face. Officer Craig is moving through the entrance vestibule, gun in hand. 

“No,” I say. 

It happens impossibly quickly, as everything with well-trained thieves does. Romeo jumps from Officer Colin, and is up the advancing policeman’s leg, screeching and howling at the sight of the approaching gun. 

“Get out!” I cry.  

I hear it, before I understand it. A single gunshot, loud and deafening. Crows startle from the branches of the trees outside. An awful thud as Officer Craig’s body hits the ground. For a while, nothing happens. Everything seems still. Peaceful, almost. 

My first thought is about Romeo’s status. This, I fathom, is the last piece of the puzzle that he needed. The gun. He will take his place now, at the top of the troop. Then I’m running. Running towards the Macaque treasure trove with only one thought in my mind. 

Get out.

This is how we leave them—the Macaques—with the policeman’s blood seeping into the mud of their enclosure, and the troop shifting and settling around their new leader. After the ambulance came and took away Officer Craig’s body along with Officer Colin, and we are left alone again, we take the money, the jewelry, and anything else of value, the summer boy and I. We leave the enclosure gate wide open, and we go. 

I look back once as we are pulling out of the car park, but the Macaques are already gone to join the wild. 

Lucy Caird is new to writing, but recently had a short story published in BFS Horizons and came second place in LA’s Writers of the Future. She is a graduate of Curtis Brown’s mentor program for fiction writers, and the WriteMentor program. From the north of Scotland originally, Lucy has lived in Los Angeles for thirteen years. From a creative perspective, she is particularly fascinated by the delicate balance between humanity and the natural world. Drawing on vivid settings and emotional landscapes, she explores themes of resilience and isolation through stories that blur the boundaries between civilization and wilderness.