Shell Shocked (The Cosmic Carapace, #1) (2 page)

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S
pencer opened his eyes slowly in case they fell out sideways onto the pavement. He was flat on his back. As he lifted his head a sharp pain burst from the top of his spine up through the back of his skull, this was going to be some lump. He raised himself onto his elbows and looked around. It was still night. The street was deserted. He looked down to his chest and saw a small piece of paper. He sat up straight woozily and unfolded it. Just one word written in loopy, neat writing. 'SORRY.'

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S
pencer stared at the tortoise and took another long guzzle of whiskey. His next move was a bit of a mystery. He knew they ate lettuce and he was pretty sure they hibernated at some point, but that was about the extent of his knowledge. He needed to give it to a pet shop or the RSPCA or something really... But that was going to be tricky...

The tortoise turned a lazy eye to him and stood stock-still. Its expression was one of solemn expectancy. One that said, '
I am willing to wait an infinite amount of time just to see, on the off chance, that at some point, just maybe, someone might give me some lettuce.'
It was a philosophy and outlook that had always served it well in the past.

Spencer picked up a knife from the counter still encrusted with golden crumbs from this morning's toast, and tried gently scraping at the white substance on the tortoise's shell. It immediately retracted its head and feet at a surprising speed making Spencer jump. No, probably not the best way. Some sort of solvent perhaps?

Spencer sighed and finished his tea staring at the word painted in bright white letters across the side of the mottled shell... 'Prat'. The shell also had the number ‘1’ written across it but, Spencer thought glumly, this seemed to fade into insignificance next to the ‘Prat’.

Appearances would suggest that this animal defacement was the work of an irrational and unstable mind. Although appearances can often be deceptive, in this case, they were right on the money. Lisa Stroud was as irrational as a painting of dogs playing pool, and as unstable as the mind of the artist that drew them.

Spencer pulled at his right earlobe in thought. He knew he was going to have to do something about Lisa. It had been four weeks since they'd split up, and she really didn't seem to be any less angry, or any less odd in her retributions. Three days ago he had received ten handmade gingerbread men in the post, each with a painstakingly iced knife stabbing into an area that would be considered delicate even amongst the gingerbread populace. Two days before that, he had arrived home from work to find a bag full of soggy tissues, which contained 'tears, born of your brutality', according to the note.

Spencer finished his whiskey and stared at the empty tumbler in the rather dim hope it would refill itself. He readjusted the bag of frozen peas he had clasped to the back of his head. He hadn't been able to find any trace of the person who had attacked him. Initially, he thought the note had just been from a very considerate mugger, but his wallet had still been in his pocket when he'd woken up, his watch still on his wrist. He would have doubted the whole set of events, other than the fact he had a lump the size of an egg from an enthusiastic chicken on the back of his head. This would need further investigation, but it would wait until tomorrow, it was late. He had decided not to inform the police. For a start, the events of tonight would take quite a large amount of faith on the police's side, particularly bearing in mind the alcohol they would almost certainly smell on his breath. However, there was also the fact that Spencer wasn't currently flavour of the month at the local police station. In fact, if they were to assign him a flavour at the moment, it would probably be armpit.

It had not been a good day.

People have this romantic notion of private investigators. That they are all either Poirot, an eccentric gentleman figure with a superior intellect. Or Magnum PI, driving ridiculously expensive sports cars ridiculously quickly, and having a great moustache. Ok, Spencer would be the first to hold his hands up to the superior intellect charge. He hadn't however, ever managed to grow a convincing moustache. Convincing as in, it always looked fake. He'd tried trimming it in various ways and to various lengths, but it always looked like it had been bought at a local joke shop for 99p. Sporting an obviously fake moustache tended to make you stand out more than you wanted to as a private detective. Even if it was in fact, a real one.

In reality being a PI involves sitting around and waiting... and waiting... and waiting... and then just when you think something is about to happen... you have to wait fourteen more hours with nothing more than a suspiciously droopy sausage roll and a warm drink that was designed to be consumed cold. Sadly, Spencer had been one of those under the illusion that it would be a glamorous profession. Growing up in foster care, he had mostly been raised by the short stories and comic books shared amongst his fellow orphans. That, and TV.

They had crowded in the small TV room with the cracked plastic chairs, their exposed foam stained from years of use. They watched everything they were allowed. Mostly this had consisted of the lighter, less grizzly detective shows, and the science fiction hour. The science fiction hour consisted of a different story every week, sometimes a dashing hero, flying through space firing lasers and saving the girl, another, aliens invading earth, the only thing standing in their way, the dashing hero (who would of course, save the girl).

The stories had captured him, excited him. He had from then on always known that he was either going to be a dashing, space roving hero, or a detective. As he realised that these were both quite difficult things to become when you were an average orphan form Ealing, London. He had become a private investigator, and awaited the exciting clashes with baddies. They hadn't come.

For instance, today he had (as he had been for the last three days) been trying to catch a glimpse of Mrs Edie Robertson, who was currently attempting to sue the Ealing Borough Council for a fall she sustained on an uneven paving slab two months ago. Normally on a case like this, with only minor injuries being sustained (a bad back in this instance) and the potential bad publicity that would be certain to arise if the case ever went to court, the council would simply send a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds to the plaintiff and no more would be said of the matter.

However, Edie Robertson, who was now seventy four, had successfully won out of court payments from the council for the past six years running, and their patience was running thin. There had been the time she had badly bruised her arm after tripping over a manhole cover that was raised all of half an inch more than it should have been. There was the time she had been the sorry victim when the council’s white lines which designated the edge of a step in town, had worn away so much that she hadn't seen it and fell grazing her knee. The list goes on.

All in all the council were beginning to have doubts about the validity of sweet little Edie’s claims, and although Spencer didn't blame them, he’d still felt bad about sitting outside the old lady’s house waiting to get a snap of her walking normally, gardening or something, so he could claim his pay cheque. Still, you couldn't be picky in his line of work. He sighed deeply and took another gulp of whiskey.

Today he had been sat as normal outside Edie's house, parked just across the street under a roadside tree which seemed to house all the pigeons in London that currently had irritable bowel syndrome. There had been no sign of Edie at all, and as the morning had drifted on to fornicate with lunchtime and give birth to the afternoon, Spencer had become peckish. The small café which sat almost exactly opposite Edie's house was not much to look at from the outside, underwhelming was probably a decent adjective to use. When inside however, it managed to go far below even this level of expectation. It was utterly whelmless. It wouldn't have been able to whelm after five years training at the UK's leading whelm school. The drabness and sterility of it's décor seemed to have been styled on an exciting blend incorporating the fun of a service station on the M5, and the class of a toilet at Gatwick Airport. Sickly yellow was an overriding theme, as was grease. They had managed somehow to cover every single surface in the small room which housed the four cramped tables in a layer of what felt like chip fat. Spencer really hoped it was chip fat. The other options he tried not to think about.

The café was run by a Turkish gentleman whose demeanour suggested he was always deciding whether to treat you in the normal customer/café-worker relationship, or whether he should treat you in a more Hannibal Lecter/kill-you-and-grind-you-into-mince-that-will-go-lovely-in tomorrow's-lasagne kind of way. For some reason, Spencer always felt he was leaning towards the latter with him.

The gentleman's daughter worked in the café, and was almost certainly the reason that despite her father's view that rigorous food hygiene meant shaving the fur off the sausages before cooking them, it was always busy. She had long black hair, large, dark eyes and a body that went in and out to extraordinary degrees and in all the right places. As Spencer entered, she sashayed around the café while certain parts of her white, summer dress strained to keep her decent. The surreptitious gaze of the three men sat at the corner table who would almost certainly be ordering another coffee, had followed her while they talked in low voices. He had taken the seat by the window, allowing an unobstructed view of Edie's house across the road and studied the menu, deciding not to err on the side of caution and go with the sausage sandwich, reasoning that most of the things on the menu were likely to be potentially lethal, so he might as well enjoy what killed him. The waitress arrived in a cloud of exotic scent and crouched before him, placing her pad on the table.

“Hi, what can I get you?” She smiled causing dimples in her olive cheeks which, despite being seated, made Spencer's knees send messages to his brain that suggested if they were stood, buckling would be on the agenda.

“Er... can I just get a sausage sandwich and a tea to take away please?”

“Good choice.” She winked at him and spun upwards and around in one quick movement.

Spencer was still recovering from the wink when he caught the eye of the manager stood behind the counter staring at him murderously. He turned back to the window but could feel the eyes burning into the back of his head. A movement and another cloud of scent made him look back to find the waitress seating herself opposite him.

“So what are you doing sitting out in that car all week?” She cocked her perfectly formed head on one side as he tried to remember what language was and how he could use it to communicate. The only thing guaranteed to slow Spencer's mental capacities, was a pretty face.

“Er...”

“I've seen you out there every morning. Are you a policeman? On a stakeout?” With this last question her eyes grew wider as she leaned across the table conspiratorially.

“Er...”

Spencer's desperate scramble for coherence was thankfully interrupted by a booming shout from behind the counter.

“Afet! Order is ready!” He slapped the counter for added punctuation as Afet rolled her eyes at Spencer and wiggled away from him. Spencer made a very conscious effort to not watch her go under the eyes of her reddening father, and glanced back to the window. The door across the road was opening. Edie's door. Damn. He'd left his camera in the car. He stood and turned to the counter in a rush to pay and get out before he missed his chance and walked straight into the ample chest of Afet who promptly dropped his sandwich and takeaway cup of tea down Spencer's front.

Sausages rolled across the floor as Spencer squealed in pain in a voice far more high pitched than he would have liked. He started brushing the tea off his trousers, when suddenly Afet's hand, complete with towel, joined him in dabbing at the wet patch as she apologised frantically.

“I'm so sorry, are you ok? You're soaked! Can I get you another tea? I'm really sorry!”

“Afet!” the voice boomed around the solid surfaces of the room and Spencer saw him approaching. A vein on the top of his balding head pumped visibly.

“No, no, it's fine, I'll just take the sandwich, how much is that?” said Spencer desperately.

Afet's protestations were cut short as her father stepped in front of her and barked, “Two pounds fifty."

Spencer scooped the sandwich off the floor and fished the coins out of his pocket, shoving them into the man's open hand and already turning for the door.

“Thanks."

He had to get that picture.

He charged into the steamy café door, pushing it open sharply with his free hand. It swung open halfway when it suddenly thunked to a stop. There was a small whimper on the other side of the door as Spencer's stomach flipped in gloomy premonition. He peered round the edge of the door to see Edie Robertson lying spread-eagled on the pavement.

The rest of the afternoon had been a blur. The police had turned up at the emergency room at the same time as the lawyer. You could say this for little Edie. She didn't let the pain of a genuine broken arm get in the way of business. The police had taken a statement from him in a way that suggested they were seriously considering charging him with assault before Edie even got to them. After that, they were mostly fuming with him for bringing the woman in to their lives at all. He had overheard Edie explaining that she might sue the police force for not arriving quickly enough.