Manners Cost Everything (Manners Trilogy Book 1)

by Paul David Chambers

  He picked a bit of fluff off the cuff and shoulder of his new navy blue suit. Nothing fancy, 2 for 1 at Cecil Gee. One navy blue, and one black with a slight pinstripe; both allowing easy matching of ties and shirt. George liked to match things, he always had. Today, the first day was the blue suit, pale blue button down collar shirt, plain thin black tie. Carry the black of the tie through with black shoes, finished off with black sock with blue detail.

  ‘Lookin’ good, DC Lentus’ he said to his reflection, then frowned as he looked closer, his love of clean lines and perfection not quite fulfilled by his physique, features and his hair.

  Jesus, the hair.

  The hair never looks right, even when he goes to a proper salon. They’d get it to actually style just once, with layers of clays, gums, gels and squirts of sprays and serums. Then as soon as he got home, it looked shit.

  ‘Screw the hair, look at the cut of your jib, sir!’ He was in a good mood. This had been a long time coming and he couldn’t wait to report in for his first assignments, pick up the experience AND the qualification on the job.

  Detecting. Analysing. Probing. Musing. Solving. Arresting.

  Tidying

  ‘Right. Let’s do this’ he says loudly, in a gruff faux New York accent to an empty flat; grabs his briefcase and leaves. Not, however, before checking the door is locked four times.

  Chapter 8

  Slashing, biting, cleaving flesh. Blood, bone, teeth and hair. There’s some kind of chase, it feels like sport. Bloody fun. Hard ceramic surfaces smashing through skin. I’m someone else and I’m revelling in an orgy of killing.

  Gleeful in the viscera, I wreak my vengeance on my victims. Their disconnected faces, red with blood swim round me, whirling round in a vortex of gore.

  My normal persona kicks in and then so does my self-preservation mechanism, and I swim up through the layers of consciousness and awaken from my nightmare, thrills strangely mixed with terror. Confusion. As my dread abates, reality comes back to the forefront.

  The headache I wake to is ridiculous.

  Ok, what happened last night?

  I look around the bedroom through one open eye with vision that seems to pulse in time to my ragged heartbeat. My beautiful bedroom. Empty champagne bottles, various glasses with lipstick smears. Various shades, no less. Clothes everywhere. Faint smell of smoke.

  God it’s early. God. What a mess.

  I look at the dial of my Tag Heuer. 8:17am. January 1st. 2003. I turn my head and open the other eye. I can see the back of a blonde head. By peeking over the top of that I can see the top of a brunette head.

  Ah yes. Now THAT was a good party. Despite the pain in my head, I grin.

  A few bits are blurry, but that’s not unusual. Blurry happens oftentimes now even when I’ve been sober. I see flashbacks of flesh, limbs entwined. Hot kisses, champagne poured and licked. Then I remember…and grab my Nokia 6600.

  Sound off, I watch the grainy recording of the two girls sharing my cock, taking turns to suck on it wetly, hotly. As they do, their eyes look up into the camera, sly looks with hooded lids, part flushed and turned on, part drunk and high. I feel a stirring next to me and stop the film quickly, hiding the phone under my part of the super king size quilt. Just in case they have second thoughts this morning…I want that one for the wank bank. They are GORGEOUS!

  ‘Hey Robbie’. Sexy voice, gravelly. Part party voice, part still seductive. ‘Hey Robbie. Hey YOU’. The other one says

  ….what’re their names?...

  as she starts to stroke the hair of the one next to me. Smiles all round, eyes connecting, the same thoughts between all three of us. Unsaid, we all know what’s about to happen.

  They kiss, hungrily and eager. I smile, swivel myself round to face the slender back of the first girl. She must sense me and reaches down and wraps her fingers around my hard shaft and begins to gently pull on me, as she kisses the other girl and moves so that her lithe thigh is pushing up between the other’s equally toned legs.

  Why the HELL have I not got hidden cameras? Not the first time I’ve thought this, my life seems pretty charmed at times. Life is good. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. That’s how I live my life, and this is the payoff. I’ve always thought that.

  And even better news! It’s a bank holiday, I have the rest of the week off, and we have all day to fuck the new year in.

  I kneel up on the bed, look down at these two girls that are stroking each other, and they look up at me, then look at my aching hangover erection.

  ‘What do you say Robbie?’ The one on the left says, cupping my balls.

  ‘Yes, what’s the magic word?’ The other says, leaning forward and kissing my neck.

  ‘Please?’ I say, ‘And thank you. Very, very much’. I laugh, very happy. And so the feast of flesh begins.

  Now, any vestiges of the dream have fallen from my consciousness like the filigree remnants of imagined cobwebs, usurped by lasciviousness and the pursuit of sheer hedonism. Sexual breakfast is served. Get it while it’s hot.

  I whoop loudly and dive in, the memories of my gory dreams like another life now.

  Chapter 9

  The interior of a man’s car reflected his work and his office.

  That’s what Lentus truly believed and always felt a flush of pride when in his rigorously vacuumed, polished and washed Citroen ZX. It was a kind of olive green colour, 4 years old, and he had just finished paying off the loan for it. Hence the suits.

  He was off to a different department today, only a couple of hundred metres from his previous station but traffic made it a good twenty minutes more. However, his fastidiousness extended to punctuality and time management, so he had allowed plenty of time.

  Not that that fully stopped the dread that rose inside him at even the slightest chance of not being prompt. However, first day and his new boss had said to get in half an hour later than the normal start time. Not that there were rigid hours of work anymore, his day would be dictated by the cases.

  Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre. He changed lane and accelerated up to the legal 40mph limit just before his turn into the final stretch. He was proud of his driving, do unto others as you would have done unto yourself was his philosophy behind the wheel.

  Besides, it was way too hot for getting het up on the roads. He had all the windows open, and even for him it was roasting. It was the running joke in the family that he and his sister were polar opposites. In body temperature. In body. With everybody.

  ‘Time to change the world, DC Lentus’ he muttered under his breath as he drove under the barrier and pulled into the parking area of the yard. After trying to find an even number, he parked in Bay 17 with a little pang inside.

  Excitement and nerves were turning his belly over too, after years of working towards this new position he was finally here. The unknown was laid out before him as he almost tangibly felt like he was stepping on to the next rung of his career.

  This next step would be a challenge, he knew that. With the reactive nature of detective work, Lentus was going to have to step outside of his comfort zones. Times. Structure. Pro-activeness. Planning. It was all part of his life plan and self-development. It was all stuff that was bound to make him a more rounded and happy person.

  ‘Bound to…’ He mused aloud, winding up the windows of the car.

  As he visualised striding purposefully into the open plan offices, overcoming his inner angsts to confidently shake the hands of all of his new colleagues on his first day he grabbed his briefcase, tapped twice on the steering wheel and climbed out of the Citroen. He then retrieved his jacket from the hooked handle in the rear of the car, and already felt the sweat begin now that the breeze from the open windows was gone.

  ‘Calm, calm, Lenny’ he muttered checking his unruly reflection in his car’s windows, ‘you da man’. He re-straightened his already straight tie, buttoned his unnecessary suit jacket and marched towards the tired looking door marked AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY, and i
nto his first day as Detective Constable.

  Chapter 10

  After getting trapped holding the inner door to the division open for a stream of people, Lentus finally entered his new offices. Tired, stuffily hot, in need of a lick of paint and some modernisation as well as better cleaners. He assessed it as he looked quickly around the room and then strode as purposefully as possible towards his new colleagues.

  He took a deep breath as he started the walk across the room toward the first vaguely familiar person of the group huddled round a workstation, talking excitedly

  ‘Hello, I’m George Lent…’

  ‘WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN LENTUS?’ The room fell silent.

  It was DI Mel Baxted, his new boss. Face like thunder, she glowered at him afterwards in the silence having successfully stopped all other noise with her bellow. Feared and revered by the force, DI Baxted was legendary. Great at her job, and terrible with dealing with human beings, it was common knowledge that the mood of each day was dictated by how hard she slammed the door in the morning.

  Evidently today she wasn’t in the best of moods, and Lentus decided that he may have a part to play in that. Great.

  Until now, any communication between Baxted and Lentus had been either in the company of others, or via faxed memos. This was the first time Lentus had met her in her territory, and was instantly reduced to blushing and stammering, his escalating bravery cut short in front of his new colleagues before he’d even met them. Doubly great.

  Gathering some composure, ‘Ma’am, I thought you said to get in later..’

  ‘Shut up. Call me Guv, Jesus. I’m not the bloody Queen’.

  This caused quiet laughter from the gathered throng. Laughing at Lentus’ expense, he felt that. Knew that. They then carried on huddling.

  ‘You’ll have to get up to speed on what’s been going on while you’ve been fannying around getting here, and we’re having a status meeting in 15 minutes. I’m pairing you with Gav, talk to him’.

  She pointed at the man sat at the workstation that everyone was gathered round. He looked at Lentus despairingly, shook his head with a blatant look of derision on his face and started speaking to the two closest to him. They erupted in laughter and looked over directly at Lentus.

  For the first time as a Detective Inspector, George ‘Lenny’ Lentus stepped outside of himself and pretended to be someone else. Someone confident, gregarious, bombastic. He’d been doing this since he was a child and was waiting for the day that it actually happened on a subconscious level, that he actually became that version of himself.

  He was always quieter than the other kids around him, always ‘different’, and he was fine with that until he found he had to step up when it mattered with his little sister. Cruel little kids don’t care if you’re not predisposed to being outgoing, they just capitalise on it. So when push came to shove, and it had indeed sometimes come to shove; he would act so that he could ACT. And in doing so, the acting eased him into a role that although was not fully comfortable for him, it was at least maintainable.

  So he put his invisible mask on, strode across the office floor towards his new partner, and held out his hand in as confident a way as the character he was acting out would allow.

  ‘Allright, Gav, I’m George’ Fake masochism, slightly deeper voice than normal, legs apart as if his genitals were just too cumbersome to allow him to stand any other way. The things men do when meeting men they’re not acquainted with, Lentus mused.

  Detective Constable Gavin ‘Gav’ Shanks had been in the department for 18 months. However, his brusqueness and forthrightness had allowed him to establish himself in a way that suggested he had been there for much longer. He wore a burgundy three piece suit, a burgundy tie with gold coloured tie pin and black leather patent shoes. His socks were burgundy, a fact that Lentus noticed and approved of; a small plus in a symphony of fashion minuses. He was pallid in the way that people were when they either worked indoors, or stayed indoors when not working; and when doing either they didn’t eat healthily.

  This was 1996, not 1986. What did he LOOK like? He thought to himself, bolstering his false bravado with the knowledge of his newly acquired sartorial edge.

  DI Shanks stood up, puffed out his chest to counteract his average height, and looked at Lentus with his chin slightly upturned to effect nobility and a visually obvious upper hand. He ignored the outstretched hand and pointed at the chair next to his now vacant one.

  ‘Sit down, muppet. No need for kisses and hugs. You’re with the big boys now. I’ll fill you in on what’s kicked off. You’ve got two ears and one mouth, use them in that order. Alright?’

  His façade of bravado crushed, he wilted inside but kept the actor’s mask on. Painfully aware of the pecking order and that Gav was reiterating his Alpha Male status, Lentus sat down as told, where he was told to sit down.

  Little did he know that in a few hours, his life would never be the same again.

  Chapter 11

  Hand written diary entry

  April 14th 2001

  More dreams of blood and gore. I woke up gasping for air again as if surfacing from a deep dive. My sheets are soaked, I’m alone. I’d enjoy them if they were one of my films or books. But things are different in dreams, they’re so much more real.

  Worried today though…

  The doctor, my most excellent Doctor Barrett said to start up the journal again for the memory losses. It’s been a while, but here we go....

  I’ve had another grey out. Shit. It’s getting bad now. Last I remember is getting on the white wine after the area meeting. Up to about 7pm. That fucking idiot Anoushka was on my case again all day. I remember saying something heated to her, but after wine and on an empty belly.

  Good job I’m golden boy. She’s mouth, I’m action. Christ I fucking hate her. She really seems to love herself as well. Ugly bloody cow. If I had a fraction of her self-belief, I’d be invincible. I don’t do badly without it I suppose.

  Maybe I sent myself home. Self-preservation mechanism. Although maybe I told her the truth. It wouldn’t be a bad thing, you know what they say: drunkards never lie. I seem to have issues saying it to her face.

  I know she’s deflecting to reflect. I pissed all over everyone for quarter 1 after my millennium bug coup, still got shitloads in the bank now. She’s not doing well at all. Still, even knowing that she winds me up SO MUCH. Such a cunt.

  Anyway, I’ll find out Monday what happened, I’m sure. Whatever I did, I did. If it was really bad, I’m sure I’d know, or Alan would fill me in. He hates her as well anyway. Part of me hopes I’ve said some home truths, the other part knows how bloody awkward she’ll be if I have.

  Other than that, what a cool meeting. I know I’m in line for the AM role. Dan’s just a formality in the interviews and next thing you know, £10k more on my basic and commission from everyone.

  My head hurts too much for this right now though.

  It’s the weekend now, and there’s fun to be had. After bacon. Always bacon first.

  Chapter 12

  Hand written diary entry

  April 16th 2001

  Tough day today, I overdid it on the weekend. Nightmares as well all weekend when I did sleep and then trying to get over the tiredness with all the bag. God knows what my eyes must’ve been like this morning.

  Anyway, I spoke to Alan and Paul about Friday night.

  They said everything seemed fine until they saw my eyes go around 8ish. That’s the white wine then, no food and the lines. Eating is NOT cheating.

  But about Anoushka. I could tell Al wanted to slag her off but couldn’t. Still he was smiling when he said that it looked like I was having an in depth chat with her. He reckoned it looked like a home truths kind of chat. But other than that, he said that I went off one way at about 8:30, she talked to (AT) a few more people then she fucked off as well. Nobody’s heard from her today and I haven’t had any snide passive aggressive emails, so all’s well there.

 
Paul said that I was fuming though when we were in the bogs having a couple of lines. He was expecting me to finally tear strips off her when I went back out, but he came into the back later and HE also said I was calmly talking to her.

  One day I’ll ruin her. For now, I just hope I got my point across to her. No one needs to be that rude. All she does is push, push, push. She must be going to another firm soon, can’t be many chances left with us. Either way, eternally good Manners will prevail.

  Anyway, few beers and a decent sleep for me now. Hopefully the stressy dreams will stop.

  Chapter 13

  Lentus sat next to the eighties throwback Gavin in their swivel chairs. Surrounding them were another 7 or 8 other members of the team. All were listening intently to DI Mel Baxted’s briefing. He could feel Gavin throwing occasional glances his way, but nearly all of his attention was on what Mel Baxted was saying as part of him digested the few facts he had been told by Gavin preceding the status meeting.