Bumping Uglies

Chapter Nine

Dawn broke bold and beautiful over Pebble Deeping with streaks of pink and purple lacing the sky like a flamingo's dream. The gentle glow of the autumn sun filtered through the skylights in my hayloft home, waking me with a comforting embrace to the tune of warbling songbirds out in the trees and hedgerows.

It was several days after my abortive visit to The Tunnel of Love and I had returned to Pebble Deeping to immerse myself with work around the farm. I was in the process of insulating the ground floor of the hayloft and making it more hospitable in general. Bitter experience of the previous winter had taught me that the modifications to the hayloft itself left something to be desired in terms of thermal efficiency. My leg wound tended to throb in the cold; a frigid reminder of a time best forgotten.

My plan was to batten the interior of the barn, fill with insulation material then board across the battens and paint the exterior. It was a good plan, Thatch-approved, but it failed to consider just how inept I was with a saw and hammer. It was taking me forever, not helped by the repeated times that I was belting my own fingers and thumbs with the fucking hammer.

The only real tangible results so far were that I was breaking new ground at the cutting edge of creative profanity, and I had thumbs that were bruised the colour of a baboon's arse.

I was stalling on working on the case. I had a couple of leads that I should have been chasing down, but something was holding me firmly back. I had a pretty good idea what it was and you could probably guess.

I was busying myself collecting another pile of boards and insulation whilst an iron skillet heated over a low fire at the grate when my phone rang.

I dumped the boards on the floor and looked around for the source of the merrily tinkling ringing. Being a very late convert to the brave new world of mobile telephony, I'm not glued to the damn thing like every other human being. Consequently I very often don't know where it is, and am only reminded when I need to use it, or on the very rare occasions when someone actually wants to talk to me.

After ten seconds of narrowing down the possibilities, I eventually fished the device from out of the cushion crack of my battered sofa and glanced at the screen.

It was Sophie.

I stared at the phone in my hand, weighing up what to do. I mean, obviously the thing to do was to answer the phone and to talk to my client, but I really didn't want to.

After a few seconds, the phone chirped its last and fell silent. I did not feel relieved. I felt unprofessional.

This was not a new experience for me. The defining characteristic of my Private Detection career was my unswerving and all-consuming commitment to unprofessionalism.

In hindsight, that was one of the primary drivers behind the termination of that line of employment. Well, that and having really shitty partners. I suppose that falling in love with a woman involved in a case and my getting shot as a result didn't help matters either.

In any case, it wasn't dodging the call that made me feel bad. It was that, actually, all other things being equal, I missed the case work. This case in particular was one in which I wanted a positive outcome for the client, both to restore some semblance of my self-worth and to reinstate a shred of hers.

I picked up the phone and called her back.

"Hello," Sophie answered; no hint of annoyance in her voice.

"Hi there," I responded.

"It's been a few days..." Sophie began. It had been the best part of a week.

"...and I owe you an update," I interrupted.

She made a sort of hmmn noise that could have been interpreted as a yes or no with equal accuracy.