DaDa Detective Agency Collection

3. The Journalist and the Geography Teacher

THREE

THE JOURNALIST AND THE GEOGRAPHY TEACHER

Pimple gingerly picked his way up the stone steps to the imposing oak front portal, its visual importance as a means of entry reinforced as it was encapsulated in a hefty timber porch, the likeness of a cemetery lychgate. Upon reaching the porch, in pretty much the speed of a hoisted coffin containing a fat opera singer, Pimple addressed the panel of entry bells. In his short-sighted fashion, which Pimple said contributed to his buck teeth appearance, since ordinarily his teeth would be viewed as straight and true, he examined the buttons through black rimmed, bottle end glasses, at about a two inch distance. Standing out in a mixture of green and red ink was the name, Aedd Murphy, Flat 2. The Aedd written in red, the Murphy in green. Non-gingerly, Pimple picked his fingers over the panel, eventually summoned the courage and pressed the buzzer adjacent to the red and green name card.

‘Who’s on me feckin’ bozzer?’ Pimple’s sensitive aural organs immediately determined an Irish accent, Dublin’ish he guessed, but more likely a little to the north and left a bit. ‘Yer, be you talking to me sometime, boyo?’ Now this did throw Pimple, the accent had changed to the hymns and arias of the Welsh valleys.

Trying hard not to imitate the Irish or the Welsh accent, and focusing on his more natural mode of speech, 1940’s BBC Home service English, Pimple replied with as much assurance as he could muster, picturing in his mind and his trousers, how much he wanted to impress Cecelia Crumpet.

‘Er, my name is Everard Pimple from the Evening News? We spoke on the telephone and you agreed to meet with me?’ Pimple employed the current vogue of elevating and expressing a questioning inflection at the end of his sentences, he thought this made him appear Antipodean, like someone out of Neigbours, and thus he would be taken seriously.

‘Ah to be sure, boyo, why not you say in the first place yer feckin’ eejit,’ and Pimple was startled by a buzzing drone and a repetitive metallic clicking that was the automatic door lock releasing. Unfortunately, the indelible mental picture of said Crumpet was dulling any lightning reflex Pimple could summon to react to the door opening device. The not at the best of times, rapid thinking ability of the Pimple brainbox, had alas only pictorially focused on the Crumpet assets and in particular, the stocking tops, though the lacy brassier featured in there somewhere and so it was that he lost his chance of entry to number 28 on the first opportunity.

Pimple buzzed again. ‘Feck me gently, are you still there, isn’t it, an all, an all?’ Again there was the buzz, followed by the repetitive metallic clicking and Pimple dived for the door handle, this time he made it through.

Rather pleased with himself, he released the door to close behind him and leaning back to recover his heart rate, he surveyed the vast hall and polished timber stair, which he knew would give access to the upper flats of an old trout, and a sexually unacceptable Professor who had Greek leanings. Whilst Pimple considered the living arrangements of this disparate set of unlikely immediate neighbours and working out that the Pied-a-Terre and access to the synchronised swimming coach, must be via an external semi-basement door, the door to Flat 2, opened. Aedd Murphy presented himself and it is fair to say that the occupant of Flat 1, the garden flat, Ms Lovebody, could not have synchronised the gawk of Pimple’s mouth with the yawning gape of the Flat 2 portal better, as Pimple took in the look of this geography teacher.

Pimple had of course researched Mr Murphy, but all of that background work could not have prepared him for this physical encounter. Several phone calls to St Winifrede’s, Roman Catholic Secondary School, eventually concluded with a telephone conversation with the Deputy Headmaster, which had produced a rough consensus at; “Who?” It was a sad fact that Aedd Murphy was not a memorable sort of man and, despite his obvious height advantages, he had no presence and as a consequence, not very much was known of him, save that he was tall. This fact was undeniable, as Pimple took in the image of the man stood before him who had to be all of six foot six, maybe more; the man soared to the ceiling. Pimple himself was six four, and they shared similar beanpole characteristics, but Mr Murphy seemed taller, narrower.

The Deputy Headmaster, when pushed and assured by Pimple there was a geography teacher working at St Winifrede’s called Aedd Murphy, had gone on to say that Mr Murphy was from the west. But how far Pimple thought? Wales, or even further afield, Ireland. “He is, by all accounts, a well-educated man and possibly a hermit”, the Deputy Headmaster had said, adding that he taught geography and this was said as though this was all the explanation that was needed, he then hung up the telephone.

Pimple phoned back and the Deputy Headmaster expanded on his previously apparent insightful characterisation, only this time, especially for a dim-witted reporter. “You understand that very often Geography teachers can be assumed to be Hermits, it sort of comes with the territory, a bit like the jumpers and the cardigans with football buttons they wear. If you asked Aedd Murphy and could understand his Bristolian accent…” Bristolian? Pimple had thought, not wishing to interrupt the Deputy Headmaster who seemed to be on a roll. “… he would say he felt very much like a hermit, especially since his wife ran off. It was this traumatic event that had left him decidedly foxed, as, even with his encyclopaedic knowledge of geography, he could not place the Isle of Lesbos. This is where she is reputed to have gone, with Penelope Bloomer, the Hockey teacher from St Winifrede’s.”

The Deputy Headmaster hung up again, clearly irritated talking to the ignorant press. Pimple then googled the Isle of Lesbos, which he presumed had to be adjacent to Greece, but he could not find it and however much he tried, he got only pornographic sites that after three or four hours of a fully risen virginal sap, he decided it best to quit as he already wore glasses and had buck teeth.

Well, the teeth appeared buck, but as previously mentioned, they projected down from the upper jaw straight and true, the rest was an illusion borne of Pimple’s weedy and short sighted overall appearance.

‘Well, are yawl coming or going?’ Was that Bristolian Pimple thought, as he gazed upon six foot six inches of skin and bone, topped with an incandescent shock of red hair, the only thing Pimple could visualise, it even blotted out the image of Ms Crumpet’s stockings and lacy brassier. This geography teacher had, vivid ginger hair that stuck on his head like a rusty Brillo pad, such were the wire wool characteristics of this unfortunate mop.

‘Ginger it is, and like a Brillo pad, isn’t it, boyo?’ he said.

Now that was Welsh Pimple thought as he by way of hair distraction, focused on Aedd’s cardigan, which he was sure, although a bit blurry, was knitted with a picture of the Norwegian Fjords. It had the appearance of a fjord on the Discovery channel where the telly’s horizontal hold had gone a tad haywire, not unlike Aedd's ginger hair.

Aedd decided he’d had enough of being stared at and spun in his Hiawatha moccasins and walked back into his flat, presuming he had left enough smoke signals that Pimple would know to follow him.

Pimple did.