Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Thirty-Two

I heaved open the door, set deliberately heavy in its frame to prevent the accidental discharge into the world of the permanently belligerent or the terminally befuddled, and stepped inside.

A wave of heat swept over me, causing me to pause mid-stride and providing unpleasant flashbacks to my very recent past. I steeled myself before pushing through the steam and into the geriatric second circle of Dante's Inferno.

Through the shimmering heat haze of the interior, I could just about make out a gargantuan misshapen form that looked perhaps as if it were the thing that had eaten the receptionist.

"Hello treasured friend, or relative, and welcome to Sunset Retirement Village!" wailed the woman behind the desk in a tone that would have the RSPCA kicking the door down to free whatever tortured farm animal was making that noise.

I sighed and trudged forwards, preparing to go through the rigmarole once more.

"Please sign-in," the woman did not attempt to rise, but instead waved a sausage-fingered paw in the vague direction of the visitor book perched on the raised desktop above her eyeline.

"It's a little difficult for me at the moment," I grumbled, reaching to point at the large, white, and very obvious sling holding my arm, taking the pressure off my injured shoulder.

"Sunset Retirement Village policy requires all Village guests or visitors to sign-in and out prior to admittance to the premises," the receptionist growled back.

I opened my mouth to complain but clamped it shut before even uttering the first syllable. None of my finely crafted courtroom-worthy arguments or rhetorical flourishes would make the least impression on the old people's home equivalent of a Gamorrean Guard.

Instead, I reached for the pen tethered to the book by a thin metal beaded chain with my wrong hand and signed Mike Hunt in an illegible scrawl. Nobody would ever read that and feel the burn of my minor act of rebellion, but I would know it was there, and that was good enough for me.

"Sam Gerart," I mumbled, begrudgingly.

I had been summoned to an audience with the retired detective under the spurious pretext of me not having visited him for some time. Given that I regularly neglected him in this sweltering Hell hole for upwards of six-month stints, and had called on him for help within the past couple of weeks, something else was up.

"Mr. Gerart is likely to be in the Day Room, please ..." The receptionist tried to direct me, but I had already walked away in the middle of her sentence.

Sam was indeed in the Day Room; a garish wasteland of chintz and doilies dotted here and there with the slumbering form of a deeply medicated inmate, many of whom looked as if they might have knitted and purled their final one on this mortal coil shortly after their last helping of mush and disdain from the staff.

He was perched in an armchair like a decrepit eagle in its dilapidated eyrie, reading what looked to be several sheets of close-typed documents on A4 paper. Judging by the abbreviated distance between the tip of his nose and the paper, the font of the typeface was uncomfortably small for his age-diminished eyesight.

"Satchmo, son! Great to see you. What happened to your arm?" He bellowed as I pulled up a chair beside him.

"Cut myself shaving," I retorted with perhaps more cheek than the situation demanded.

"Yes, it was about your age I too started to get hairy shoulders," Sam snapped back sarcastically.

I stared back, trying to keep my face deadpan. But when I saw the knowing look reflected back to me from Sam's rheumy eyes, I was reminded of an old copper's adage that applied to interrogations of suspects; try not to ask any questions to which you don't know the answers.