Tears Idle Tears

Good News Everyone! I have found the title of this stew of my creative juices; it will be called “A Couple of Tenors Short”. In celebration, I bring you Part Twelve of what might yet prove to be a novel.

As always, I remind you that in order to get the best from any serial, you should start at the beginning which I decided on a whim to name as Part One.

Should you be rejoining the story, or do not have the inclination to read the previous parts, allow me to recap.

Inspector Glynn Jones has made a big decision. Even if he is mad, that is no excuse for poor police work. Invigorated by this, he has decided to solve the various puzzles with which he is confronted. This is despite suddenly finding himself married to Pippa Hucknell and having to drive a rather chirpy, lime green Datsun Cherry with a tendency to behave like a puppy. Since the case has started, he has suffered numerous random wardrobe malfunctions, grown a moustache that has turned out ginger, bet against his own station in the upcoming police light entertainment championships, had run in with gangs of Buddhist monks, had one of his team hospitalised by feral Girl Guides and found he is quite fond of a pink Mark III Ford Zephyr.

Horace Adkins, the beloved and renowned Barbers Shop Quartet Impresario is presumed dead after his Georgian Mansion was blown up in the course of his suicide. In the mortuary, there is the body of a swimmer who drowned in the Thames after taking a large high tea. The safety of the streets of London is threatened by the illegal importing of cheap Macramé yarn.

Every clue appears to be linked to Horace Adkins.

After finding a copy of ‘The Cat Crowed at a Little After Two-thirty’ by Archie McRamie in which the main character appears to be Horace Adkins, he decides to pay the author a visit. Not only does he discover that McRamie has been abducted, but that all records relating to the case have vanished. Not only that, but he and his sidekick Smithy have no recollection of their previous visit.

Jones is convinced that the ‘John Doe’ in the Thames was murdered by Darrius ‘The Baker’ Kipling, an employee of the Horace Adkins. Darrius ‘The Baker’ Kipling and Dunker Phil, another of Adkins employees, were observed with Vera Anne Adkins and Violet Ann Adkins, two of Horace’s daughters, visiting the offices of London’s premier trial lawyers, Witherspoon, Lewes, Grambling, and Witherspoon.

Jones has had a meeting with his Superintendant and a man from the State Security Services who are very interested in finding out why this visit took place, but have told the Inspector that he will be disowned if his investigation results in adverse public opinion.

Now read on...

The briefing flowed from Inspector Jones from instinct. Facts were highlighted, evidence divulged, theories postulated. The assembled squad listened intently, some took notes, and others stared at the whiteboard as Jones spoke.

When the briefing ended Jones paused and looked around the room, trying to catch the eyes of everyone there. Satisfied, he called for questions and was disappointed that everyone stayed silent.

“OK then!” Jones slapped the flat of his hand down on the table causing some to jump. “Assignments!”

Jones went around the room. The uniformed constables were sent out to knock on doors around the scene of Archie McRamie’s abduction and see if they could get witnesses. DC Brown was set the task of finding Archie’ McRamie’s car which seemed to have been lost. DC Johnson looked none too happy to be told to get an artist’s impression of the body from the Thames and get it into the papers to see if anyone recognised him, but warmed to it immensely when offered the alternative of rounding up the new pack of feral Girl Guides.

“And finally, Smithy, you are with me.” Jones rubbed his hands together and grinned broadly. “I want updates from all of you at tomorrow mornings briefing.”

Jones paused and watched people slowly rise from their chairs and head to the door before adding, “Remember everybody, let’s be careful out there.”

Smithy trailed along behind the Inspector as he left the station by a side door and took a route to the Zephyr that avoided passing his Datsun.

“Where to, Guv?” Smithy waited until they were both seated comfortably in the Zephyr before asking.

“Oh, yes! Do Tell!” the Sat-Nav piped up before Jones had time to answer. “I do so love visiting new places.”

Jones tried to switch off the Sat-Nav, but it stubbornly refused to power down.

“So? Where to, my cute adventurer with the ginger moustache?” The Sat-Nav asked impatiently.

The Inspector swore, checked his top lip and swore again.

“First, to the mortuary.” Jones announced.

Smithy threw the Zephyr into gear and edged out into the traffic. Throughout the journey, the Sat-Nav kept telling him to watch the road and slow down. Jones kept hitting the ‘off’ button on the unit to no effect. At one point, the Sat-Nav caused Smithy to break hard and nearly be rear-ended by a bendy bus by suddenly exclaiming “Oooo, Look! Shoes to die for!”

The Inspector sat with his arms crossed and stared straight ahead.

The queue for seats for the day’s post-mortems was always worse on Wednesdays. Since Prime Minister Simon Cowell had introduced the incentives for pensioners and the right to choose your own pathologist, it had caused a surge in demand for tickets. Most mortuaries had been forced to install extra seating. As the two policemen ignored the queues and walked straight towards the entrance, there were howls of protest, cat calls and abuse. The leather clad security guards moved in and cracked their whips to try and quell the crowd.

A full colostomy bag was thrown, narrowly missing Smithy and exploding against a waxwork of Alfred Lord Tennyson dressed in the garb of a Greek Sailor. Jones and Smithy made a run for the entrance. Once inside they watched as security slowly restored order before heading toward Doctor Wilkins’s dressing room.

“Wow, Doctor Wilkins!” Smithy gave a quiet whistle. “He’s one of my wife’s favourites, Guv. She just loves him in ‘Autopsies of the stiff and famous’ – never misses an episode.”

Jones ignored him, knocked on the door and without waiting for a reply walked in. A star-struck Smithy followed him in.

The make-up girl scowled as Wilkins jumped from his chair and greeted Jones warmly. They exchanged small talk for a while before Jones took out his wallet and withdrew two of the four tickets for the Light Entertainment Championships. He handed the tickets to the doctor who grinned broadly.

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the final results yet, Inspector.” He said apologetically as he quickly thrust the tickets in his pocket. “However, the preliminary results do suggest that those Fruit Fancies were indeed baked by your friend, Darrius ‘The Baker’ Kipling. I’ll be able to give you the definitive answer tomorrow.”

“Thanks, doc.” Jones smiled and shook his hand warmly. “As soon as you have them, let me know.”

“Of course” Doctor Wilkins grinned back. “I’ll see you at the Championships!”

The Doctor shook Jones’s hand again then turned and shook the hand of Smithy who just whimpered.

“Come on, Smithy!” Jones grabbed Smithy’s arm and manhandled him out of the room. “No time to dawdle! It’s time I got a haircut!”

A Bewildering Air of Unmatched Non-conformance

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It seems that I have picked up some kind of strange ailment. It is one of those horrible illnesses where you feel bad, ache, get tired quickly and feel a little ‘odd’. (see Note 1)

This has been made worse by somehow tweaking a rib muscle in my sleep. For those of you who have never managed to tug an intercostal, I can testify that it is a particularly painful affliction whenever you twist your torso. (see Note 2)

This second problem is probably best fixed by getting plenty of rest and maybe a trip to the ‘Rat & Ferret’. Sid always has a couple of bottles of Ethaniel Nightswerve’s Thoracic Embrocation under the counter for such emergencies. Had I not felt quite so ‘odd’, I might have even paid the premium to have Mattress Madge and her amazing manipulating digits apply it, but, at the moment, I’m not quite sure that I would get the most from the occasion.

I know my cognitive yeomen will suggest I should go visit my doctor’s surgery.

This is probably good advice, but sadly my past experiences tend to suggest otherwise.

My last visit was on a balmy sunny day. The surgery was hermetically sealed from the outside world with the heating turned up to full (see Note 3). As I walked in, a neighbour with her sick child waved at me and I felt obliged to sit between her and on old man with a complexion of a medieval manuscript.

While I was treated to the latest gossip, her son coughed, sneezed and wheezed. Then in apparent contradiction to his mother’s assertion that he was an angel, wiped his nose on my arm. The old man was replaced by a woman who seemed to have an angle grinder in her chest cavity.

When my neighbour was called, I was left to contemplate a geriatric copy of Reader’s Digest while a man with a face not unlike an over-ripe Victoria plum, coughed into my left ear threatening hearing loss.

Eventually my name was called over the crackly PA and I got to see the doctor. Ignoring my detailed description of my symptoms, he shone lights into every orifice, poked planks of wood around my mouth and stuck his stethoscope places I’d forgotten I had.

Ignoring my obvious discomfort and weakened state, he snapped on a latex glove with far too much glee for my liking and then decided an impromptu prostrate exam would be fun. It wasn’t.

After having me climb on the scales and him give that long intake of breath normally the preserve of car mechanics, I expected him to reach for the prescription pad. He didn’t.

Instead, he told me I had a virus (see Note 4). What I needed to do was to lose weight, drink less, take more exercise and rest and drink plenty of liquids – which seemed the most contrary and contradicting diagnosis.

So, I sit here feeling ‘odd’, but not odd enough to visit the quack. I think I can guess what he would say should I pay him a visit. I have an idiosyncratic virus. I should rest, sit quietly at my keyboard and regale the world with my feeling of ‘odd’ while drinking copious amounts of liquids in the form of beer.

You know what? I think I’m beginning to feel better already.

Note 1: I realise that there is a fair proportion of the population scratching their heads at this. It is generally accepted that ‘they’ have already observed my behaviour, produced their clipboard and written ‘odd’ against my name in green biro. However, I still stand by my claim of feeling ‘odd’. To try and make this odd state off affairs easier to explain, I decided to consult an on-line thesaurus to see if I could find the correct state. There are a huge range of words there. I particularly liked wacky, weird and screwy. I did consider kinky for a while, but as I said, I’m getting tired quickly so it was discounted. In the end, I decided that the best I could come up was odd, but decided to add a pair of quotation marks so you realised that I am in an odder state of odd. 

Note 2: Which is another reason why the word kinky was discounted.

Note 3: I’m undecided whether this is a marketing ploy by the medical profession to ensure that all the happy germs floating around the waiting room have a chance to find a new host to guarantee future income or if it is to make sure that people don’t start to feel better and wander off before their turn to see the doctor.

Note 4: It is absolutely impossible that a single virus could have caused me to be that ill. At the very least it was a whole army of the little bleeders all behaving like they were on a stag weekend in Blackpool.