Burning Bacon: Part One of The Dennis Bolam Chronicles

by Naff Writer

  Bolam and Grant pulled up outside Asid’s Eight-til-L8te. In such a hurry that he left the car door open, Bolam stormed into the shop. “Asid!” he shouted.

  “Detective Dennis, what a lovely surprise! Look! I have for you something, look, they just came in, a new batch of chicken tikka slices!” and he pointed at a new batch of chicken tikka slices that were on a tray and waiting to be deposited within the refridgeration unit. “I’ll take one now”!” said Bolam, taking one.

  Bolam reached into his pocket and pulled a £20 note from his red Velcro wallet. It made that sort of nice ripping sound. He looked conspiratorially either side of him and then handed it over. Half under his breath so that he wouldn’t be overheard despite nobody being there apart from himself, Asid and London, he said, “Do you know if Lewis Standish has been released early from Jail?”

  Asid pretended to hand Bolam back some change and said quietly, “He was released on Tuesday for good behaviour. Word on the street is he is looking for you and wants revenge for the 25 years he served after you framed him.”

  Bolam bit into his chicken tikka slice. “Thanks Asid, good doing business with you as ever!”

  The detectives were now back in the car and heading toward the station and then about 7 minutes later they were there. When they arrived, SOCO had put a tent up in the car park and there were several people milling about in what looked like space suits.

  Bolam drove his Rover Finesse straight into the SOCO tent and parked it. The two detectives got out and walked out of the tent as well. Tanya, the head SOCO girl was there. She was dressed like the other SOCO people, in a white suit with a funny helmet but her outfit was not an all in one like the others, the top half was just a white jacket and from the waist down she was in a white mini skirt and white knee length boots like they might have worn in the 1960s, showing off her long and slender legs, arousing Bolam and Grant immediately. “Pull prints off my car if you want darlin’ but your wastin’ your time!” said Bolam. “It’s Standish, he’s out!”

  Lightfoot who was sat at a table that he had set up outside next to the SOCO tent, with a Queen’s Jubilee tablecloth over it and tea urn, sipped tea from a mug with the Queen Mother on it. “Good work, Dennis but any clue where Louis Standish is now?”

  “No guv but I think I know someone who might!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dennis Bolam and Grant London sped away in the Rover Finesse, laughing because Grant was saying ‘down boy’ to the huge erection in his pants that he’d got because of Tanya the SOCO girl.

  “Aw, boss,” he whined, wheedlingly, “can we just stop off at Eileen Monument’s so I can get this taken care of?” He indicated his bulge.

  “You’re not to treat that woman like a whore,” Bolam said, gruffly. “I’ve got a lot of respect for our Eileen, she’s been through a lot.”

  “Oh okay then,” said Grant, furtively trying to masturbate while holding his jacket up at one side so that Bolam wouldn’t see but then he realised that he could see so he stopped doing it and decided to just wait until his valiant arousal had abated. “So where’s we goin’ now, Boss?”

  “We’re paying a visit to Asid’s 24 hour cut price convenience store!” confirmed Bolam, with a little almost imperceptible grin that reminded Grant how playful his boss could be sometimes, which was of course all part of his very complex character.

  When they got to Asid’s shop, Dennis Bolam just strode in and took a chicken tikka slice from the refrigeration unit, put it in his pocket and surveyed Asid challengingly.

  “I’ll take this on account, okay, Asid my friend?”

  “Yes yes of course very good you goodly kind man Detective Dennis,” said Asid, nodding humbly with his hands together in front, that made you think he respected Dennis but was also a bit nervous. But, Grant thought, people were often a little bit on edge while Dennis Bolam was around because you never knew what he would do next. He was loyal and lovable, but fiery too which was, of course, the main reason why he had such a reputation on the force.

  “We’ve put an APB out on Lewis Standish,” said Dennis. “And you know what? I reckon there’s something fishy going on!” He pulled out his Blackberry and handed it to Grant London with a look of disgust. “I don’t know how to work these stupid gizmos,” he said. “What’s wrong with cameras and telephones?”

  “Well this is actually a camera and a telephone,” muttered Grant, scrolling through the pictures on the phone. “Here it is!” He showed Asid a photo of the racist scrawl on the bonnet of the Rover Finesse. “Recognise the handwriting?”

  “Praise Allah!” said Asid, recognising the scribe’s handiwork immediately. “Praise the Goddess Vishnu and your Mary mother of God! But how did Trevor Monument do that if he was, how you say, banged up?”

  “That’s just it,” said Bolam. “I’ll tell you now, Asid, I’ve got the D.A.’s office on my back, and I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. I don’t reckon Trevor did this at all – and that means he didn’t rape Kylie Pitts, neither!”

  “But – but - ” started Asid, so confused by Bolam’s revelations that he reached for a chikken tikka slice himself almost without realising he was doing it. “How come you can see Trevor Monument, clear as day, on my CCTV, outside my shop painting vile words on my wooden shutters? And how come the bloke on the security cameras at the Flirty Carrot looks quite a lot like him too?”

  Grant and Bolam eyed each other knowingly and with humour, because of Asid getting the name of the nightclub wrong. It was these little moments of humour that kept them going during a hard day on the beat. “We reckon they was tampered with,” said Bolam in hushed tones.

  Asid chomped on his savoury pastry then swallowed it with a look of dismay. “Ugh Bolam how can you eat this muck, it is not proper chicken tikka, not like my wife Navindra makes.”

  “It’s proper enough for me,” Bolam said, archly, wiping his mouth as he finished his own slice.

  “We ain’t got time to sit around all day chewing the cud,” Grant London observed. “We’ve got villains to catch!

  “You got it, London,” said Bolam. He turned to Asid. “You gotta do something for me, bro. You see that Lewis Standish in the shop, you let me or my crew know, right?”

  Bolam gave Asid a quick hug and a sort of friendly thump on the back like the bikers of different but friendly gangs do on Sons of Anarchy. Asid was surprised by this as he’d never had any physical contact with Dennis before.

  “But – but – I don’t know what he looks like,” spluttered Asid.

  Bolam turned round at the door, and put his head to one side and back a bit and looked at him all piercingly, like Jax Teller does to people on Sons of Anarchy. “You will, Asid, you will,” he said.

  “Where we going now, Guv?” asked Grant as they sped off.

  “Back to the Flirty – um, Carrot!” said Bolam, and he turned round to share the joke with London, his playful side coming out once more. “I wanna check those security camera tapes again!”

  They both chuckled quite a lot at Asid’s mistake. “How can you confuse a carrot with a parrot?” chortled Bolam.

  “One’s a vegetable and one’s a bird! Well, I once had a bird who was more like a vegetable when she was in bed,” guffawed Grant London and they both laughed at this so much they had trouble speaking until their laughter had subsided.

  “What sort of vegetable?” Bolam enquired, and that made them laugh even more as they shouted out names of vegetables she could have been like. The one they liked best was ‘mange tout’ because ‘mange’ means eating in French and it made them think of oral sex, though they weren’t quite sure what ‘tout’ was. They also laughed because ‘mange’ sounded a bit like ‘minge’. So altogether it was a pretty good joke with lots of possibilities for stuff that could carry on making them laugh in the future, too.

  Bolam did a sharp reverse in the road, the tyres leaving marks on the asphalt and smoke coming up from the wheels. As usual, Bolam had scant regard for the
rules of the Highway Code.

  In the office at the nightclub, Bolam munched on his lunch and surveyed the cameras with a keen eye as the girl in charge of them, Mimi, flicked through them to find the night when Kylie Potter had been so cruelly vandalised.

  Grant eyed Mimi’s ample bosom. “You’re wasted in here lookin’ at cameras, luv,” he said, pinching a bit of tikka slice from a dumbfounded Dennis, and chewing it casually.

  Mimi looked up at him with a sort of ‘yes but what can I do?’ look in her eyes. “I double up as cage dancer and security man,” she said. “The nightclub has fallen on hard times since Kylie was assaulted here last month, people don’t want to come here in case the same thing happens to them.”

  “Ah,” said Grant, knowledgeably. “If you ever feel like a bit more doubling up, you can always bring a mate round to my place of an evening.”

  Mimi chose to ignore his remark though from her secret smile he could tell she might well be knocking at his door later. She turned her attention to the cameras, narrowing her eyes as a cloud of Bolam’s Rothmans smoke blew into them.

  At last, she found the tape with the rapist on it.

  “Hang on a minute!” said Bolam, jumping down from the desk and peering closer to the camera, more alert than Grant had ever seen him. “That ain’t Trevor Monument! That’s a big geezer wearing a ginger wig!”

  “Well, bugger me,” said Grant, wincing a bit because he knew that if he had been chosen from the ID parade and been put inside, that’s exactly what would have happened to him.

  “We gotta go find this scumbag!” said Dennis, and patted Mimi on the shoulder. “Thanks, luv, you’ve been a great help!”

  As they walked out, Mimi’s aura made Grant turn back. She was running a finger over an exposed nipple, tantalisingly. “I may come round to help you with your enquiries later, then,” she said. “But I don’t think any of my friends will have any information for you. I’ve got everything you need right here.” She lifted up her red flared mini skirt to reveal a floral panty girdle and stockings.

  “See you later then,” said Grant, though it was more of a strangled whimper. He grinned to himself. He’d never got laid so much in any job before, not even when he was working as an escort in Leamington Spa.

  But outside there was another surprise for our wily pair.

  Leaning up against a wall, folding his arms, was none other than Lewis Standish.

  “Morning, gents,” he said, a hint of a smile across his jaded but quite sexy face. He was a tall man with dark hair and the air of someone who’d been there, done that and applied soothing unguents to his sore bottom, though he hadn’t suffered at the hands of the Aryan Brotherhood after about his fifth year inside because he’d toughened up and got a crew of his very own. He’d made friends with some Puerto Ricans who were a bit like the Mayans biker gang in Sons of Anarchy. Also an ex junkie porn king bloke who was a bit like Nero who goes out with Gemma Teller (in Sons of Anarchy).

  “Lewis Standish,” said Dennis Bolam, matter of factly. “Written any good racial slurs lately?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Lewis Standish. “I just saw you driving here like you was on a mission, and I thought I’d come and say hello to my old mate Detective Inspector Bolam, that’s all.”

  Bolam held his hands up in a conciliatory way. “Look, Standish, it’s a shame about your lost years, but it weren’t just me what got you banged up. And you’ve not exactly been guiltless all yer life, have yer? Remember that benefit fraud you wheedled your way out of? The parking tickets you got nullified by giving hefty donations to the Police Benevolent Fund? The little ruckus outside a certain East End pub in the summer of 1999? That whorehouse you was running on the boardwalk that gave freebies out to the Feds? The non payment of the poll tax? Maybe you serving as Her Majesty’s Pleasure all them years was karma, right?” The words ‘His Majesty’s Pleasure’ made him think of Superintendent Lightfoot and his royal family tea set, and Bolam allowed himself a whimsical smile.

  “You wouldn’t think that if you had been through what I been through,” snarled Standish, tumultuously. “You stand there with your Rover Finesse, your fresh stock of savoury foodstuffs, your booze, fags and smart leather wallet full of the month’s earnings, and you ain’t got a clue. You’ve got it coming to you, Detective Inspector Bum Cheeks.”

  “You watch your lip, Standish,” said Bolam, pointing a warning finger at his adversary. Grant London could see that Bolam’s volcanic fury was about to erupt. He was burning up with lava-like wrath, you could almost smell him sizzling like burning bacon.

  “Yeah?” postured Standish, hands on hips provocatively. “Or what? You threaten me again and I’ll - ”

  “No,” spake Bolam, challengingly. He struck a pose to rival that of his enemy. “You threaten me again and I’ll tell everyone all about when I fucked your momma up the peachy white ass.”

  “Yeah?” fought back Standish. “You do that and I’ll tell the world about when I went round to fuck your momma and found her shoving a black dildo up your daddy’s ass while he cried out MY name, okay, sunshine?”

  Grant London clapped. “That was a good comeback, Guv. You gotta admit that.” He dragged an explosive Bolam away, wrestling him with an armlock, and got him into the Rover Finesse while Lewis Standish stood there smiling.

  In the car Bolam lit a Rothman and took a swig of JB whisky to calm himself. He turned to Grant, a look of sudden clarity all over his gnarled yet not unattractive face. Suddenly Grant realised that Bolam was ruthless and a bit of a loner yet also quite sexy, although obviously he didn’t find him sexually attractive because he was a bloke.

  “You know what I reckon, kidda?” Bolam said. “I reckon what he did was send actors in to look like Trevor Monument on the nightclub’s security tapes and Asid’s CCTV. The fucking clever baa-lamb had me fooled.” He clenched his fit in impotent rage. “He played me for dumb pussy! He knew I would get Trevor banged up, and to pay for it Kenneth Monument would send the Dockland boys round to whack me. Thus, other people would do his dirty work.” He shook his head, smiling, amazed by the way his own incisive mind had unravelled Standish’s plot. “Clever, Standish, very clever indeed! He gets away scot free.” Then he looked at Grant, with even more clarity. “But not quite clever enough, eh, lad?”

  Had Dennis uncovered the conspiracy behind the rape and racist slur mystery?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back at the station, Bolam ran his theories by Chief Superintendent Lightfoot who was eating a Farley’s rusk and dipping it into a commemorative champagne glass which had an image on it from the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and which was filled with Earl Grey tea decorated with a little cocktail umbrella and a green olive on a stick. Lightfoot twirled the stick within the champagne glass for a moment and finished his rusk. He then ate the olive and threw the stick at a dartboard which he had up to the side of his desk. There were several cocktail sticks lodged in it already, as well as three darts and the business end of a taser. The cables hung down to the floor where the actual weapon itself lay. The cocktail stick bounced off the board and with his hand still up from the throw, in a pointed gesture, Lightfoot turned back to Bolam.

  “Good work, Bolam, this is how you can afford such fancy wheels and those overpriced tikka slices. You could learn a lot from him, London.”

  “Yes sir.” Said Grant London, feeling priveledged to be in such fine company and feeling lucky to be a part of the Larchway’s Police Department.

  “What a mess.” conceded Lightfoot. “We live in very troubled times and it never ceases to sicken me the lengths that the criminally minded will go to these days to have their warped way and to pervert society in pursuit of their own selfish needs. Where is Standish now, do we know?”

  “Yes, guv, he’s hanging around outside Asid’s E8ight-Until-Leight waiting for me.”

  Lightfoot shook his head. “We must be cautious, there’s no telling what Standish has up his sleeve. Where d
id he find the actors to pretend to be Trevor Monument?”

  “The circus, guv.” Said Bolam lighting a Rothmans with a lighter he had that was shaped like an automatic pistol that his nephew had bought him which was why he always kept it and used it often. He puffed hard and blew smoke through his nose to give a bullish impression which worked, both Lightfoot and London knew the two blasts of smoke from the exhaust pipes in Bolam’s face were representative of how he was on fire inside, the engine of his detective skills and psychological make-up burning up due to the complex nature of his character - and his anger at Standish and his outrageous plans for revenge and because he now in turn was wanting his own revenge for the revenge that hadn’t yet been exacted on him for the framing he had done over two decades prior.

  “Remember,” continued Bolam, making as much smoke as he could with his cigarette, “that the circus was in the next town last month? Standish knew about it and that it was run by gypos with criminal records longer than a pair of stilts. He contacted one of his mates on the outside to go and liaise with the gypos at the circus telling them that that they would get cash-in-hand and some old copper pipes and a car door or two to sell for scrap for doing a bit of dirty work for him. So a couple of the clowns, one of whom had a ginger wig, agreed to dress up as Trevor. One of them raped Potts at the club to throw us off the scent. Asid was the real target that night. They knew I’d want in on the case and therefore, they’d be able to keep tabs on me, follow me arahnd, you know, bide their time until they pounced.”

  “Who’s they, Bolam? I thought it was just Standish who was out to get you?” said Lightfoot, squeezing the trigger of the TASER which made a loud electrical noise and sent sparks shooting out of the metal scoring frame of the dart board.

  “The gypo circus, Guv! Standish has got them in on the whole thing!”