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NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE
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6M P2 |
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Corpse Collector By Kate Honeyford |
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Synopsis This is humourous crime fiction in the tradition of the amateur PI but this sleuth is not usual the freewheeling, young lone wolf detective.
Sample: “Can you dial 999 from a mobile phone?” I asked myself. There was a pair of black lace-up shoes on the pavement and in the shoes were feet. They lay on the ground between two wheelie bins, those grim, grey, giant-sized metal bins on wheels that restaurants and shops use for their rubbish. A drunk or an overdose was my first thought and I went to cross the road and pass by on the other side; after all I was on my way to the library. First I had a good thought, there might be someone around who knew first aid and a then a bad thought, that I would rather not be seen sneaking away. Curiosity got the better of me in the end and I tiptoed toward the feet, I saw some unremarkable grey socks, then black trousers, further up there was the back of a navy fleece top and then some brownish hair with grey streaks in an unremarkable man’s style. I don’t know why it was so obvious that this was a dead person, the hands were out of sight under the wheelie bins and I couldn’t see the face, the limbs weren’t twisted into an unnatural position like in whodunits, there wasn’t any blood and no gaping wounds. But it was unmistakeably a corpse. I suppose that finding a corpse is an unusual route out of boredom. Boredom is a rather sophisticated word for what I was suffering, in the old days they would have called it housewife blues but no-one these days calls themselves a housewife. I had the husband and the two kids and I was chief cook and bottle washer but I also ran my own business. You don’t really want to know what I do, it is to do with computers and databases and things that make people’s eyes glaze over. So I did have my own company but I wasn’t doing much running, the commissions had trickled away after I had taken time off while my daughter recovered from glandular fever and I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to get out there an win some contracts. While I was hanging about looking for something to do, my husband Paul had developed late onset ambition and had started his own property conversion business. He devoted his waking hours to roaming Brighton in a Rover with a clipboard and hard hat on the back seat. If he wasn’t in the car, he was walking the streets between sites with a mobile clamped to his ear. I had taken to texting him and enjoying our bank statements. Valerie was making up for her illness the previous year by being really out there and Oscar had just discovered the meaning of his life was to sing in a band and spent most of his time with headphones clamped to his ears with mouthing silently. So the house was empty from eight till supper time; I read the newspaper from cover to cover every day, was intimate with the Radio 4 schedules and suffered from a lack of meaning in my life. I tried various projects to fill my time. First it was cooking but the only discernible result of an afternoon spent in the kitchen trying out cuisine cordon bleu was that people ate up faster at meal times. I decided I liked to produce something permanent and lasting for my efforts, so that pretty much ruled out anything in the domestic sphere. I had to cut down on e-mails and calls to friends at work because they began not to reply or to be suddenly unavailable to take my call. I got the hint, they had jobs to do after all and those jobs did not include impromptu counselling sessions for unemployed friends. Then I read in a magazine that the answer to life problems was an action plan so I sat down in front of the PC screen and typed one. In essence, the plan involved spending a day in the public library doing some research on potential new customers. I could have done it at home on the internet but I the library was free and I needed to get out of the house. I didn’t find out how to call the emergency services with a mobile because just as if it was telly, a police car came cruising by. So I waved frantically and they pulled up over the road. They turned out to be traffic police, I never could tell the difference and the young officer in the passenger seat looked worried when I told him there was a body by the skip and reluctantly unfolded himself from the car and loped halfway across the road. He paused there in the middle of the road and peered to where I was pointing. “Seems to be something there, madam. I suppose I’d better take a closer look.” He drew something out of a pocket and for a moment I imagined it would be a gun but it was his radio. “Stand back madam.” I ignored him and followed behind as he stepped rather slowly towards my corpse. He stopped abruptly and gulped with surprise. “I think you may be right. I need to radio this in to my colleagues. Perhaps you would like to step over to the car. You can wait there, if you wouldn’t mind.” I declined the offer of a seat inside, I said it was because I wanted fresh air but really it was because I couldn’t imagine what kind of small talk I could muster, when I had just found my first cadaver. There was a long, boring wait while I stood there like a lemon looking at this dead man across the road. At first, I felt silly, I stood there hoping that no one else would come along and see me, see the stiff and get the idea that we were somehow connected. I looked up and down the road. It was an anonymous back street with blocks of offices on one side and rusted metal security doors on the other, these were the back doors to the shops and café’s on the parade A few yards away a one of the metal doors swung open a black rubbish bag was dumped on the pavement and the door clanged shut. At one point I did think that I should check that this person was really dead by trying to find a pulse but it didn’t take long to rationalise myself out of that. The police arrived in a flourish of flashing lights with an ambulance close behind. The traffic police drove away with a wave and while the ambulance people did their stuff the policeman took me on one side and heard my story. It was all a bit of a let down. There was a woman PC, who stood to one side smiling in a supportive kind of way, while the man took down my name and address and checked my ID. The two of them did some exchanging of significant glances and then the woman police officer did the “are-you-alright-it-can-be-a-bit-of-a-shock-would-you-like-to-call-someone” bit. Meanwhile the policeman was over by the panda car, talking into his radio. There was some more exchanging of glances which I assumed meant that they hadn’t found a criminal record for me. The WPC told me I was free to go and offered to put me in touch with Victim Support. I bit back the impulse to say that I was not the victim and that the victim in this case was not in any state to benefit from the services of that organisation. Outside the library, I had to sit down on the wall outside. I wasn’t suffering from delayed shock; I was suffering from deflated ego, it had all been over so quickly. As it was Tuesday evening, it was one of our family dinner nights. I admit I was so looking forward to telling everyone that I barely waited until they were at the table before I came out with it. Oscar pulled the headphones out of his ears, “Ha, ha, ha! I can hear you Mum! It’s switched off!” “You what?” Valerie was grinning in disbelief “Found what?” Paul looked up from a pile of papers he had placed by his plate. For a whole ten minutes, I had everyone’s full attention...
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