The Lateral Thinking Detective

CHAPTER FOUR: MONDAY

As I was walking to my first appointment, my mobile vibrated loudly in my pocket. I recognised the number straight away and answered it quickly.

“Hello, treacle pudding tart,” said the voice of my best friend.

“Hello, mate. How are you diddling?”

“f*****g champion, son, f*****g champion,” he said cheerfully, “how are things with you?”

“Same s**t, different day,” I admitted.

“Found yourself a new bird yet?”

“What at my age?” I laughed.

“You’re only as young as the women you feel,” he joked.

“How is the trouble and strife?”

“f*****g marvellous, son, f*****g marvellous.”

“Still getting it every day?”

“Not every day, son, but nearly every other day.”

“You’re slipping, mate,” I teased.

“If I don’t get a shag, I get a blow job.”

I laughed at his vulgarness. I knew he was making it up, he was only a few years younger than me. Overweight. [d]rank like a fish, ate like a horse, and fell asleep at every opportunity. His wife was younger than him, but if she did everything, he said she did, then he was a fitter man than me, which I doubted.

We had been friends for over thirty years, meeting at work, when he was my team leader, and then we built an unbreakable bond between us. When his first marriage broke up, I was there to support him and when I had my nervous breakdown, he was there for me.

He was about six-foot-four, with massive shoulders from his plastering job, and a great big British Bulldog on his right forearm, which his current wife hated and ended up not speaking to him for a week after he’d had it done.

When others lined up to judge and jeer, to point out every flaw that had been exposed by my new cruel circumstance, he stood by me, whether I was at my worst, didn’t know up from down, he was the one who stayed at my side. He praised my efforts and ignored my failures. I knew he would stand by me no matter what, and he did, as if he couldn’t be prouder that my heart still had the courage to recover. That’s why he’ll always be my best friend.

“Have you heard from the enemy lately?”

He was referring to my ex-wife which was what she had become since the divorce.

“Only the other week.”

“How was it?”

“About the same,” I replied.

“f**k me, hasn’t she learnt to leave you alone yet?”

“Not yet, she’s still trying to patch things up between me and the kids, and insisting that at my age it was about time I got myself a real job.”

“No go there, then?” he sighed.

“No,” I replied bluntly.

The guilt sat not on my chest but inside my brain. What I had done I could not undo. One second passed. Two seconds passed. Three seconds passed. Guilt was eating and pestering me. A fire burnt in my mind and throat. Remorse hit me like a sledgehammer.

“Has she found anyone new?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I said, not really wanting to know, but wanting to know, if that made any sense. “She hasn’t made any declaration on her social media page yet.”

“You don’t still follow her on that s**t, do you?”

“That’s the only way I can find out what they’re up too?”

“You need to come out with me, get absolutely blathered, pull a bird, and then shag her all night until she is begging for mercy.”

“That’ll be me begging for mercy,” I laughed, and I could hear him chuckling along with me.

“So, where are you now?” I asked.

“Near Cambridge,” he replied, “I was thinking of calling in on the way home, for a cup of tea and a couple of chocolate digestives.”

“Sorry mate, I am out on a job”

“Really?” He sounded more excited than I was.

“Yes, really.”

“It isn’t anything to do with that dead chess champion is it?”

“It is indeed,” I said.

“f**k me, they said someone had found him.”

“That was me,” I admitted.

“f**k me, really? What was that like?”

“Not very nice,” I understated.

“f**k me, are you okay?”

“Better than the corpse,” I said, trying to make light of it.

He laughed, but the laugh sounded shallow.

“Do you need any help?” he asked, sincerely.

“What do you mean?”

“You know muscle, protection, that sort of thing.”

I was touched. He was built like the proverbial brick s**t house, but I couldn’t pay him and when I told him so, his reaction was priceless.

“You’re having a f*****g laugh?”

“Roger Black, wanted to hire me.” I confessed. “I don’t know what for, but whatever it was, it cost him his life, and I want to find out why.”

“Have you had a bang on the f*****g head or something?”

“Look. I know it sounds strange, but I feel I[have] got to do it.”

“All that bloody church going has made you soft,” he told me, “I’ve never known you ever do anything for nothing. I mean it is very Christian of you but f**k me, it’s not going to put food on the table.”

“I just feel I have to do it,” I said.

“Okay, but if you ever need me for anything, you know where I am.”

“Cheers mate, I really appreciate that.”

The line went dead, and I continued on my way. My father always said that I walked like spring-heeled jack, but thankfully I’d grown out of that style, trudging along the pavement at a sedate pace, my mind focused on the gentle footsteps that seemed to echo throughout the desolate street.

I’ve seen fog before, the kind that makes the streets like old-fashioned photographs everything a shade of grey. This wasn’t like that. This was fog that robbed you of your best sense and replaces it with a paralysing fear. In this fog I am almost waiting to stumble across Jack the Ripper, mutilating one of his victims. I only know my eyes are still there because I can feel myself blink, still instinctively moisturising the organs I have no current use for. I can’t hear anything either. I guess that should bring my heart rate down below the level of “rabbit in a snare” but it doesn’t. By my genes I am a predator, I have the front facing eyes and brain enough to hunt, but I feel like prey in this utter black. My footsteps make[ delete s] an echoing noise, but I put my uncertainty to the back of my mind. Not continuing with my own investigation meant letting Roger Black down and that is something I was not willing to do. Abandoning isn’t my thing.

The gloom of the wintry day crept into me like the damp into bare timber. It seeped into my pores, travelling to my heart which beat more morosely. Even the bird song came to me as if from a deep well rather than high in the trees.

The village church loomed out of the fog. It was a great irony to me that the mighty churches were built from the cruel labours of the poor and gloried the costumed men who knew nothing of what love really calls us to do - to really protect and serve with love, with empathy, with a will to see others as they are. The obsession that man must work for the meanest survival levels, rather than being elevated into a position where they can work for love with solid mental health, is the death of us all. And should we learn that and honour the real human hardships that built the church instead of the egos and greed that cloaked themselves in holy words, maybe the spires would become purer, radiate a more egalitarian ambiance.

Within the swirling fog, the graveyard shifted uneasily. Plants rustle, birds fly into the fading light, startled by the unseen. Eddies of wind gust dirt and leaf into mini tornados that die before suspicion is roused. Only when the soil cracks along graves long overgrown with weeds do the children telling ghost stories around a candle experience the gut churning transition from excitement to fear. With a creak that could wake the dead a crypt opens and from the darkness comes only the stench of the dead at first, then a single pair of glowing eyes that change from amber to scarlet with the frequency of a beating heart.

My best friend had teased me about my church going. I started to go with my ex-wife as part of my recovery therapy. Initially my faith had floated away from me a very long time ago, like a leaf being pulled away on the tide, and into the sea to become lost and alone, likely drowned. It began when I dated a girl from the Catholic Church youth club and we went to the pub after the seven o’clock and saw a few of the congregation donating to a masked member of the IRA and felt it was hypocritical, so I dumped the girl and stopped going to church.

Then when my ex-wife suggested that we went to the cathedral about fifteen miles away, I was initially reluctant, but I still went. And I was so glad I did. I walked into the huge building and for the first time in my life felt the presence of God. It was like having a great weight lifted off my shoulders, and for the first time in a long time, felt at peace with myself.

Unfortunately, it didn’t have the same effect on my ex-wife and she soon stopped going. But I continued and built up some nice relationships with the people who attended. They were mostly older than me, with quite a bit of life experience, that they tried to pass onto me, when my tales of woe became known to them. They didn’t pass judgement, they just welcomed me with open arms, and I will always be eternally grateful, for having my eyes opened to a new and more controlled and relaxed life.

It didn’t matter if I had faith in a God, what mattered was that I held strong a faith in love. God had faith in me. I truly believed that, and it didn’t matter if I worshipped or not. God wasn’t a megalomaniac with self-esteem issues. He loves me always, like I do, no maybes. You don’t have to earn love, you never did, it’s my birth right. I started five years ago trying my best to be good, to live a life of love, and be kind and loyal. I didn’t fret over what I should or shouldn’t believe, I just kept trying to be the most decent chap I could be. Forgive myself when I made mistakes. I mustn’t let my past mess up my present and future. I wanted to strive and be ethical and environmentally friendly, but not to be afraid to think freely and love strongly, with passion. Did I need any more advice than that?