The Vacant Casualty (6 page)

Sam thought he also remembered finishing the contents of the last seven glasses on the nearby tables and then briefly losing consciousness, then coming round, and rushing the stage before being
kicked firmly out of the venue by the owner only moments ahead of the be-wigged, be-lip-sticked, be-boa-ed and be-high-heeled inspector. Indeed, even as Sam recalled them both stumbling out of the
door opposite where he stood now, he caught sight of the detective fast asleep, sitting up in next door’s carp pond.

‘Come on, old chap,’ he said, heaving Bradley up and helping him, dripping, along the road. ‘Let’s get some breakfast.’

‘No matter what you do to me, I will survive,’ murmured the detective in his ear.

‘No doubt about that, old bean – but then that depends if you can survive breakfast at Mrs Bagley’s cafe.’

He tumbled the sleeping figure into the seat opposite him at an outside table as a pretty waitress came out to greet them.

‘Do you have a “wake up” breakfast on your menu?’ he asked.

She smiled brightly. ‘Yes, we do.’

‘Could you get that for him – does it include a bucket of water in the face?’

‘I’d love to help you,’ apologized the girl, looking at the comatose policeman, ‘but I’d have to mop it up myself. And that’s not going to happen.’

‘I need to wake him up somehow. If I give you two quid, will you kick him in the nuts for me?’

The pretty girl pretended not to hear, smiled even more brightly, then blinked and tapped her notepad impatiently with her pen.

‘Okay,’ said Sam. ‘We both want coffee, orange juice, pints of tap water, and I’d like lots of bacon and eggs and beans and toast. And Tabasco sauce. Or hot pepper sauce,
if you have it.’

‘We do,’ she said, smiling.

‘Brilliant,’ said Sam. ‘By the way, how’s my flirting? It’s terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s rotten,’ she smiled and escaped inside.

‘Again,’ he muttered, grinding his teeth. ‘Why must I act like this always? I meet an angel in human clothing and I gibber like Hannibal Lec— Oh, hello.’

‘Hello,’ said Bradley from the opposite chair. ‘Am I . . . alive?’

‘Yes.’ Sam saw a small light of hope come into Bradley’s eyes just then, and he knew the thought process behind it well: ‘If I am not dead, then perhaps I will soon die,
and this won’t hurt so much?’ He leant over and grabbed the other’s arm to assure him he was firmly in the corporeal world.

‘Tough shit, boyo,’ he said. ‘We’re in this together. Didn’t you say – or sing – “I Will Survive”?’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said the other man, lowering his face to the table. ‘My head . . . my . . . my head . . .’ He then looked up to the sky briefly before closing his eyes
again. ‘And my bum!’

‘This is it, man,’ said Sam happily. ‘You’re a real cop. You’re hungover to hell. Look at you!’

‘Really?’ asked Bradley, looking up through bloodshot eyes. ‘This is what it takes?’ He seemed momentarily cheered by the prospect.

‘Well, not
entirely
. What it really takes is a number of deeply ingrained issues which you are emotionally unable ever to conquer, a far-right-wing world view and deep, deep
loneliness. The loneliness that only a certain hooker with a heart of gold can quench.’

Bradley gratefully took the coffee that was handed to him by the waitress, and stared through his hungover gloom at Sam.

‘This,’ said Sam, ‘this is pretty much the lot of the proper detective.’

‘Feels like shit,’ said Bradley, with uncharacteristic candour.

‘That’s because it
is
. But imagine the way the day goes from here. First, coffee . . .’ Sam pointed, and Bradley sipped.

‘Oh God, that tastes good.’

‘First food tastes better –
unbelievable
. The salt rush from the bacon, the crunch of the toast, the soft egg . . . Then you’re in fighting mode.’

‘Fighting mode?’

‘Come on, Reginald, you’re a
real dick
.’

What pride the detective had gathered itself into a somewhat awkward haughtiness. ‘Well
you’re
not so much yourself!’ he said.

‘No, man, I didn’t mean dick. I meant a
dick
. As in, detective.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Bradley gulped down a mouthful of hot coffee, hiding the intense pain it caused his lips, tongue, mouth and throat to do so.

‘So . . .’ said Bradley. ‘Oh Christ . . .’

Into Sam’s chest at that moment entered a feeling as close to being fatherly as there could possibly be between a twenty-something middle-class boy and a man at least ten years his senior.
He poured Bradley some more water from the jug that had been placed between them, put sugar in the other man’s coffee and stirred it in, then proffered the cup and asked for more orange
juice.

‘You’ll be okay,’ he told him soothingly. ‘It’s just a hangover. You’ll be fine by lunch.’

‘I’ll be
dead
,’ said Bradley.

‘Here are your breakfasts,’ announced the waitress cheerfully, setting down plates laid out like faces, with eggs for eyes and curled sausages making smiley mouths. With his fork Sam
turned each of the sausages the other way round, so they were less mocking. Little if anything was spoken for the next ten minutes, save for single-syllable grunt-like requests for sauce or
condiment, and gasps of appreciation and relief.

At the next table the artist they had seen at the meeting yesterday, Walerian Exosius, was looking even more mournfully hungover than they were. Sam watched wearily as he devoured his vegetarian
breakfast, then staggered to the curb, threw it up into the gutter and began to weep uncontrollably.

At this sight Sam moved his plate away, unable to face any more, and drank his cooling coffee as if it were life-giving serum.

‘So you say you’ve read lots of detective novels?’ asked Bradley, when he could speak again.

‘Yes . . .’

‘And seen lots of police dramas?’

‘Lots. Why?’

‘You’ll keep on giving me tips, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will, you lunatic, Detective Bradley, but I’m supposed to be asking
you
for tips, you know. That’s why I’ve come down here!’

‘Well, yes, I know,’ said Bradley, looking abashed. ‘But the reason
I’m
here is really to do with Mrs Detective. She loves the idea of being married to a
detective.’

‘And you want to learn from the guys off TV?’

‘The boys in the office don’t seem to respect someone coming from out in the sticks like me. I mean,
further
out in the sticks. They haven’t given me much other guidance
. . .’

‘Okay,’ said Sam, rubbing his hands. ‘Then I have lots of advice to give you.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, you’ve got to be a hard-boiled motherfucker,’ said Sam. ‘Yes, two more coffees, please,’ he found himself saying a moment later as he saw the waitress was
hovering.

‘Hard-boiled,’ said Bradley. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means you don’t take no for an answer from nobody.’

‘You mean I
do
take no for an answer from
somebody
?’

‘
No.
I mean not even from me. You’re a proper detective, you’re headstrong. You don’t give a fuck what no motherfucker thinks.’

‘Right,’ said Bradley, nodding with concentration as though someone had just explained a specifically difficult method of parking. Behind them both, Walerian Exosius had taken out
his camera and was photographing his ex-breakfast, while still weeping.

‘You don’t
care
,’ said Sam.

‘Right,’ nodded Bradley.

‘If I argued with you right now you’d have a fit and handcuff me to the table, even though we’re friends. That’s how tough you are,’ said Sam.

‘Right,’ said Bradley, closing a metal cuff over Sam’s wrist and linking it into the arm of his chair before he could protest. ‘I’m going to the loo.’

Sam swallowed several violent compound expletives as he watched his companion rise and go inside.

‘I can’t even reach my iPhone with my spare hand,’ he muttered. ‘This would make a great tweet.’ He leant forward to see if he could pluck it from his top pocket
with his teeth just as the waitress arrived again.

Raising his startled face to see hers as she took the plates, Sam realized that for once in his life he had the chance to give the impression of being a dangerous young man (locked as he was to
the furniture). Trying to make this impression while having a brain that felt like it was filled with cotton wool and shattered glass, he succeeded only in simpering pleasantly while she picked up
the plates, refusing to meet his eye or acknowledge his existence but, as she turned away, giving the artist a cheery little wave.

‘See you tomorrow, love!’ she said.

‘Cheerio,’ said Walerian, wandering off, mopping his tears with his neckerchief.

‘Where have you been?’ Sam whispered viciously as Bradley sat back down. ‘I’ve been humiliated in front of that deliriously beautiful waitress, you
pig
! Did you
see her hair? It
cascades
!’

The detective unlocked the handcuffs with slow clumsiness.

‘Okay,’ said Sam, rubbing his wrist, ‘I have to admit that was an excellent first step. You have to take that attitude into literally every walk of life. You don’t take
no for an answer from nobody. But let’s make me the exception . . .’

With one of his freed hands he took a pepper cruet and stuffed it up Bradley’s nose.

‘What-AHHH-ah-ah-AAAH-AHCHOO! I’m sorry about that, Sam – ahCHOO! I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to try it out on anyone else.’

‘If you want to get more advice along those lines, I’m the one you’re protecting, you understand? I’m Al Capone. Or . . . Well, the protected one, whoever that would be.
Come on, let’s walk. Wash that!’

His last words were addressed to the waitress, who had reappeared from within the cafe and to whom he handed the pepper cruet wrapped in a tissue.

‘We’ll be
back
!’ he added, pointing at her in what he realized was a not very charming and possibly somewhat threatening way. ‘Okay, style it out,’ he said
to himself, turning back round and brushing down his jacket and tie.

They were only halfway up the street towards the small car park where Bradley’s police carpool vehicle was parked, but the detective now put a hand on his arm.

‘I can’t drive it,’ he said.

‘Oh, come on, Cinderella,’ said Sam, before he felt the tremor in Bradley’s arm. Then he saw the man was standing stock still. He recognized what was going on, and he knew what
to do.

First, he sat the detective on a low, thick stone wall from which he would find it nearly impossible to fall. He spoke to him as loudly and clearly as to a child trapped in a lift.

‘THIS IS THE FIRST MAJOR SYMPTOM OF YOUR HANGOVER KICKING IN,’ he said. ‘THEY ARE REALLY RATHER UNPLE— Wait a minute, I can’t keep shouting like this, I’ll
give myself an aneurism.’ He sat down next to the detective instead and held his hand.

‘You see, you have much too much alcohol in your bloodstream. Now you’ve eaten, you’re starting to metabolize some of it, and it feels like a real bastard.’

The detective nodded stupidly, as though his body was a clumsy suit worn by some smaller intelligent creature within.

‘You’re lucky, I know what you need,’ said Sam, looking encouragingly into his eyes.

‘You’re the reason I
need
it,’ whispered Bradley vaguely.

‘Come on, Goldilocks,’ said Sam, ‘I’m just trying to make you a real detective. Just stay here and I’ll be back.’ With that he let go of Bradley’s arm
and vanished round the corner, for all the detective knew, to catch a bus to Heathrow, or fetch a camera. But sooner than he expected here was the young lad back again, with a white plastic bag
full of encouraging bulges.

‘Eating that breakfast helped you
begin
to get lots of stuff out of your system,’ said Sam. ‘There are a lot of things you don’t understand about the
hangover.’

‘I’ve been hungover,’ protested Bradley.

‘In 1996,’ said Sam. ‘Things have come on. Look here.’ He held up the bag. ‘At least this place has a working pharmacy and newsagent.’ He performed each of
these operations twice: taking out a bottle of spring water, opening it, taking a long sip and then tipping in a couple of Alka-Seltzers. Then cracking open a second can of fizzy orange-flavoured
drink and setting it on the wall alongside the first before opening another bottle of water and mixing in a diarrhoea cure, which (he had been told) contained many of the essential body salts that
are sacrificed by a night’s drinking.

Sat on the wall, the two men doggedly drank through all three containers until they were empty. They sighed, and gulped and gawped; they stretched, liquids fizzed in their stomachs and various
facts of the world seemed a bit more realistic and manageable. Bradley tried to work out whether he could dry his clothes and where, or when he might get other clothes while these ones dried.

‘Why did you let me sleep in that fishpond?’ he asked.

‘I don’t remember having much of a choice,’ said Sam. ‘The last I remember you were kissing me and telling me that I really have to follow my dream, that I really, really
have to follow it. Then I sang “Suzie Q” by Creedence Clear-water Revival and we got chucked out. That
was
a karaoke night, wasn’t it? Not just someone else’s table
we invaded?’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Bradley said. ‘What was that we were drinking, by the way?’

‘Sambuca, for the most part.’

‘Well, it’s revolting. I can practically taste it in my ears. Is there a dry-cleaning place in this town?’

‘Dry-cleaning places don’t actually
dry
your clothes for you,’ said Sam, sitting heavily back down on the stone wall. ‘Oh, crap, you know what? Your hangover is
about to lift and mine’s about to start. Come on then, Tinker Bell, where are we going next?’

S
AM AND
D
ETECTIVE
Inspector Bradley visited the two Miss Quimples next. It so happened that the Miss Quimples were twins, and as
we have seen they were both on the Parish Council, where they sat alongside each other, dressed identically. It didn’t come as a huge surprise, therefore, to discover that Miss Emily Quimple
and Miss Cecily Quimple lived beside each other in perfect picture-box cottages on the south-facing upper slopes of Church Lane, which was marginally the poshest of the town’s nine
streets.