by Hannah Howe
I glanced up and down the row of crumbling Victorian tenements; buildings that had seen better days, yet still retained a certain charm. Children, off school although it was term-time, played in the street, kicking a football between parked cars. A curtain twitched – that would be Mrs Hodges, who lived on her nerves and local gossip – while a boy ran past, poking his tongue out at Rosie.
“I’ll get you, Joel!” Rosie screamed at the boy who turned briefly to offer a “na-na-na-na-na-na.”
While guiding Rosie along the street, I asked, “Where were you walking when Bugle ran away?”
She pointed towards an area of green space, an area of common land where four streets converged. “Over there, in the park.”
I smiled and took hold of Rosie’s hand. “Okay, let’s go to the park.”
The park, like the district, had seen better days. Rusty swings swayed in the breeze, a roundabout stood motionless with paint peeling, looking forlorn, while the slide shimmered after a light shower of rain.
“Which direction did Bugle run in?” I asked while looking around, though catching no sight of the hound.
“Over there.” Rosie extended her right arm and pointed towards an area of wasteland. “Bugle!” “Bugle!” she screeched as we walked towards a demolition site, a district scheduled for renovation. “Beagles have got two hundred million scent receptors on their noses, did you know that?” Rosie announced with justifiable pride.
“No, I didn’t,” I replied.
I was about to ask where she had gleaned that information when she extended her right arm again and yelled, “There he is!”
A white and brown head popped up, then peered over a slab of demolished concrete. The nose on his square muzzle twitched and I gazed into a pair of soulful brown eyes.
“Bugle!” Rosie screamed while running towards the dog. Job done, task complete...but no, we’re talking about a beagle. Bugle took one look at Rosie, barked, then turned tail. He scampered into a partially demolished building, with yours truly in pursuit.
“Come here you naughty boy, you’ve got Rosie into big trouble,” I muttered while climbing over an old garden wall. Fortunately, I was wearing slacks and so could scramble over the blocks and bricks without losing my dignity. “Come here, Bugle,” I repeated, my voice soft and light, friendly and enticing. The dog’s lead was still attached to its collar and was just out of reach. While picking my way through a tumble of masonry, I smiled and murmured, “Good boy...good boy...” Then, “Bad boy!” as I lunged for the lead, missed and the dog ran deeper into the building. “Bugle!” I ground out through clenched teeth. I followed the dog into the building, wary of conditions underfoot and the amount of loose masonry, directly overhead. “Come here,” I enticed, “I’ve got a treat...”
The dog barked and simultaneously I was showered with dust as the breeze disturbed the debris above my head. I turned my head, spied the tip of a white tail then, stealthily made my way towards Bugle.
In all probability, our game of dog and human would have continued into the next millennium, save for the fact that Bugle had retreated into the bathroom of the house and I had him cornered. With a smile and a sigh of relief, I took hold of Bugle’s lead and guided him towards Rosie.
“Bugle!” Rosie gushed as we emerged from the demolition site. “Oh, I love him!” she announced while squatting beside the dog, her arms offering an affectionate embrace.
I was dusting myself down, smiling at Rosie and her jaunty dog when something appeared in the corner of my eye. I turned and stared towards a line of old garages. The garages were all empty and in various states of disrepair. From one of the garages, a man stepped forward. He had a handsome face, the face of a male model, yet that face was lined with suspicion and apprehension, and covered in blotches, hinting at malnourishment. Standing around six foot tall, he was very thin, to the point of emaciation. His clothes were dirty and unkempt. He had long, wavy hair, jet-black in colour, hair that touched the epaulettes on his navy blue jacket. However, for all his strange looks, his eyes captured your attention. They were dark, intense, staring, vacant, like two black holes seeking to suck you into an endless void.
Rosie glanced at the man and took fright. With a nervous shuffle, she snuggled at my side, where I placed an arm around her shoulders. Bugle barked at the man, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he continued to fix us with his intense, unyielding stare.
“Come on, Rosie,” I took hold of the girl’s hand while adjusting my grip on Bugle’s lead, “time to take Bugle home before your dad hires a private detective to look for you.”
Chapter Three
With Rosie and Bugle safe in their home, I returned to my office to find Marlowe sitting on my client’s chair licking his privates. “Off there!” I admonished, tilting the chair, and the cat jumped on to my desk. He meowed then purred as he rubbed against the back of my hand, to show that there were no hard feelings.
I brushed the cat hairs off my client’s chair before flicking through the local newspaper. Another prostitute had disappeared, only to be found brutally murdered. That made two gruesome murders in two months. I clipped the article from the newspaper and placed it in my archive, a habit I’d cultivated since the dawn of my agency.
I was wondering what the local women, many of whom were prostitutes, were thinking of the murders when a man knocked on my office door.
“Delivery for a Miss Smith,” he announced cheerily.
“That’s me,” I replied, standing as the man entered my office.
He placed the package on my desk, then produced a hand-held gizmo. “Sign there, love,” he instructed, offering me a plastic stylus. I signed my name on his gizmo – where have all the pens and paper gone? – then turned to face my new computer.
“Have fun,” the delivery man grinned as he closed my office door.
“We will,” I replied, reflecting that yours truly and modern technology were not the best of bedfellows.
“Look, Marlowe, our new computer,” I said while picking up the scissors to attack the packaging.
I swear that it’s easier to climb Mount Everest than to open a twenty-first century package – do they really have to make them so secure? – but eventually, I did break the seal and reveal the contents of the parcel.
All silver and shiny, I removed the computer from its bondage and placed it on my desk. I was singing, ‘Softly Whispering I Love You’, bending the lyrics to suit my gender, murdering the song by remaining true to my one, natural note – B very flat, when Marlowe knocked a ribbon of plastic packaging on to the floor.
“Don’t do that, Marlowe,” I admonished. “Our office is our shop window to our clients; we must present a sense of order and decorum, not chaos.”
I tickled Marlowe under his chin, then stooped to retrieve the plastic ribbon. At that moment, someone entered my office. I was about to straighten and ask, “Do you want to hire me?” when the gun went off and I fell to the floor, dead to the world.
Chapter Four
“Emergency!”
“Christ! Who shot her?”
“Don’t know.”
“What a mess.”
“Better call Dr Warburton.”
* * *
Bright lights.
A sharp, antiseptic smell.
Pain.
Nausea.
Feel so weak.
* * *
The cat, who’ll feed the cat?
“Marlowe.”
“She’s babbling.”
“She’s lost a lot of blood.”
Blackness.
“Have we lost her?”
I don’t want to die!
* * *
A jumble of images, my mother, my father, but his face is so vague. “Daddy!”
Nothing.
* * *
A man scowling, with a needle. “I’m going to put you to sleep. You won’t feel a thing. Just count backwards from ten...”
“Ten, nine, eight...”
* * *
Nightmares, very vivid, all too real. Dan, my ex, hitting me. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Please...”
In hospital, Dan has fractured my skull.
“You’re a very lucky woman, Miss Smith. A fall like that could have killed you, but fortunately there should be no lasting damage.”
* * *
So confused.
So weak.
I need a pee.
* * *
Distant voices.
Laughter.
A nurse, smiling, reassuring.
* * *
Alan, tears in his eyes. “Don’t cry, Alan, don’t cry...”
I need another pee.
* * *
Aching all over.
Can’t move my shoulder or arm.
Very tired.
More nightmares; too black to dwell on; make them go away...
* * *
Alan’s here, his fingers entwined in mine. Alan’s here, everything’s going to be all right, everything’s going to be all right...
* * *
Sweating.
Drowning.
I catch my breath, like breathing for the first time.
Eyes blink awake.
Gasping. Try to rise, but head hurts too much. Fall back on to the pillow.
I ache all over, but I’m alive!
* * *
“So, you’re back with us.”
A woman in a white coat with short, dark hair, dark, sensual eyes and an attractive, sympathetic face, a face slightly blemished by a birthmark on her left eyebrow. She was petite, around five foot six, just a bit taller than me. She wore gold stud earrings, no rings, and a gold necklace with a small crucifix upon it.
I glanced around. A monitor. Tubes in my arm. Strange clothes. Strange bed. Strange room.
“Hospital?”
The woman in the white coat smiled. “That’s right.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were hoping that you could tell us.”
I was in my office. Marlowe. A new computer. Pain. Darkness. “Can’t remember.”
“Can you recall anything?”
I cast my mind back, then shook my head, it hurt. “Nothing. My head hurts.”
“That’s the concussion. You bumped your head after you were shot.”
“Shot?”
“Don’t you remember?”
My mind was a jumble. Images appeared, out of time and out of place. So many dreams, so many nightmares, all entangled. What was real, what was fantasy? What happened to me?
I glanced at the woman in the white coat. “Who are you?”
“Dr Felicity Barr. We met briefly, at the fireworks display, on Bonfire Night.”
The fireworks display at the castle. The woman with short, dark hair, kissing Alan on the cheek. Back then, a feeling of jealousy and quiet rage, then embarrassment for indulging in such thoughts, for being so childish and immature. “Alan...”
“I’m a friend of Alan’s,” Dr Barr smiled, her face the essence of reassurance. “He’s been here since the shooting. I’ll get word to him.”
“I was shot.” In a daze, I was dumbfounded by my own remark.
“In the shoulder. Dr Warburton operated. It was a straightforward operation. You will be fine, though you have lost a lot of blood. And, due to past trauma, we were concerned about your head injury.” Dr Barr placed her hand on the bed, beside my shoulder. She frowned, then gazed into my eyes. “Rest and recuperation. After a period of rest, you will be as good as new.”
I nodded then cursed myself for inviting more pain. “Marlowe...”
“Who’s Marlowe?” Dr Barr asked.
“My cat.”
“I’ll mention him to Alan.”
I closed my eyes. My mind was wandering, the images swirling as reality and fantasy combined. “Feel very tired. Feel very weak.”
“Rest now,” Dr Barr insisted. “The police will want a word.”
“Not yet,” I mumbled with my eyes closed, my eyelids heavy. I was falling into a black hole. I didn’t want to go there, but I was powerless to resist.
“I will keep the police off your back. Rest now. There is a police guard on your door. You are safe. No one can hurt you.”
Dr Barr’s words floated above my head as I drifted off into a deep, troubled sleep.
Chapter Five
The pain was still there, in my right shoulder, down my arm, in my head, but I was more lucid. I glanced around the hospital room, at the monitors to my right and above my head, and at the bright light that filtered through the large window to my left. The room was a mixture of beige and ochre, with grey fittings and white sheets on my bed.
Propped up in bed, I was resting on three pillows when a welcome visitor entered the room. A friend for the past five years, Detective Inspector ‘Sweets’ MacArthur had become a father figure to me, which I greatly appreciated, especially as I had no knowledge of my real dad.
Sweets pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat beside my bed. He asked, “How are you doing, Freckles?”
Like me, Sweets had an abundance of freckles, a rash of dots covering his fair skin. He had salt and pepper hair, close-cropped and thinning on top. His eyes were blue and playful and when he smiled, he revealed a large gap between his two front teeth. Habitually, Sweets wore a trilby, but in deference to his surroundings, he was bareheaded today.
“Someone shot me,” I said in awe, as though unable to comprehend the fact.
“Any idea who?”
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. “Can’t remember a thing. My mind’s a blank.”
Sweets nodded. He popped a bonbon into his mouth, gave it a thoughtful suck, then said, “Doc says you should be fine, just need to take it easy for awhile.”
“Uh-huh.” Clearly, I required a fair amount of recovery time and, in truth, I still felt weak and wobbly. However, my mind did wander to my dependant. “What about Marlowe?” I asked.
Sweets flexed his right hand and I sensed that his arthritis was troubling him. “I’ve been detailed to feed your cat; don’t worry about him.”
As if Sweets didn’t have his own problems and enough to do in his personal and professional life. I sighed in gratitude, “You’re very good to me, Sweets.”
“Yeah, well,” he shrugged modestly.
Then he sat forward on his chair and fixed me with an intense stare. He had something on his mind, a daddy lecture, as I called them.
“Go on, Sweets, say it, I know you want to.”
He looked away, his face bashful, before running his index finger under the collar of his shirt. He straightened his tie, gave an involuntary twitch of his neck muscles then offered me his parental glare.
“You’re sick, Sam, so I’m not going to lecture you now, but I will say this...why do you get yourself mixed up in all this? I warned you, didn’t I?” He shook his head and sighed, dragging up the emotion from the soles of his shoes. “You have any idea what you’re putting us through?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled in a small voice.
Sweets scratched the crown of his balding head. He looked around the hospital room, upset with me, upset with himself. He cared about me, which I found touching, but he failed to appreciate how much my job meant to me, how my work as an enquiry agent had dragged me out of the mire and kept me sane.
“I shouldn’t have said all that,” Sweets conceded, “you’re not well; but you did have us worried there for awhile.”
“Sorry,” I repeated.
Sweets puffed out his cheeks. Then he delved into his trouser pocket for another bonbon. It’s a good job that Sweets was not a smoker, because with me around he’d be on sixty a day.
Sweets sucked his bonbon vigorously, then said, “You’re a piece of work, you are, Sam.”
I smiled, demurely, then asked, “Any leads?”
Sweets shrugged. “I’m here under false pretences. I’m not officially on your case.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“Go
d upstairs reckons that we’re too close, my judgement might be impaired. D.I. Tyler is on your case.”
I grimaced. “She hates me.”
“Yeah, well...just because God says ‘don’t’ it doesn’t mean I won’t be doing some digging of my own.”
“Don’t get yourself in trouble, Sweets,” I cautioned.
“I know what I’m doing,” he replied with his customary confident air.
I closed my eyes for a moment and found myself dozing. My heavy eyelids were a reaction to all the medication I was taking; I don’t know why, but my system was not equipped for drugs of any sort.
“Hey, Freckles,” Sweets said as I opened my eyes, “do you want one?” He offered me his packet of bonbons but, quietly, I declined.
“I don’t need a sweet,” I said, “but I could do with one of your jokes.”
Sweets grinned and a mischievous twinkle appeared in his eyes. “This should suit you, Sam...A beautiful young woman is about to undergo an operation. She’s placed on a trolley and wheeled into the corridor. The nurse leaves her outside the operating theatre and goes to tell the surgeon that she’s ready. Then a young man in a white coat comes over, lifts up the young woman’s sheet and examines her naked body. He walks away and talks with another man in a white coat. The second man comes over and performs the same examination. Then a third man comes over and lifts up the sheet. By this stage, the young woman loses her temper. She exclaims, ‘Are these examinations strictly necessary?’ ‘I’ve no idea,’ replies the man, ‘we’re just here to paint the ceiling.’”
I laughed, my shoulders shaking, and hurting as I did so. “It hurts when I laugh,” I admitted to Sweets. “Tell you the truth, it hurts when I just lie here.”
“A few more days, Sam, then you can go home.” Sweets placed his hand over my good hand, my left. He gave my fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Be good, listen to the doctors and I’ll see you soon.”
