Bumping Uglies

Chapter Thirty Four

I had a lot of time over the following forty-eight hours to ponder the myriad ways in which I was going to be dry humped by the forces of Law and Order.

I was held in effective solitary confinement in a cell of such spartan grey sparsity that I could imagine a non-trivial number of its former occupants must have gone mad through sheer tedium.

The walls were plastered, so I couldn't even count the bricks to pass the hours. Instead I wandered the pathways of my mind; playing and replaying the events and decisions that had led me to that point.

I had no contact with any police officers, no offers of phone calls to arrange a lawyer and no opportunities to leave the cell to stretch my legs or to get some fresh air.

My personal effects, which amounted to my wallet and watch, had been removed on arrival. The only way to mark the passage of time was the grating sound of a metal tray of what I assumed passed for food being shoved through a flap at the bottom of the door three times per day.

On the third day, I was finally removed from my cell for an interview with one of my captors; a flabby and balding officer who introduced himself as Inspector Anderson.

Anderson was a florid man of below average height and personal hygiene standards; a quivering blancmange of a man whose primary ingredients I soon discovered to be piss, gelatine and barely-suppressed rage.

I sat in silence at the table in the interview room while Anderson reviewed a tight stack of printed reports and a sheaf of 8x10 photos.

On the table between us was the ubiquitous tape recorder, not one of the nice modern digital ones, and two buff folders. The smaller of the folders bore my name and date of birth on the cover.

Dwarfing the my folder by well over an order of magnitude, the second folder was a tome with Ty's name on the cover.

"Mr. Turner, you were a Private Detective. You have some faint notion of the law gained from watching Morse and taking pictures of missing cats... You know that you are fucked, right?" Anderson finally broke the silence, his accent a nasal South London lilt.

"Yup," I replied honestly. No sense beating around too many bushes.

"Do you have any idea where you are?" Anderson asked, setting the notes and photos face down on the table and placing his interlaced fingers behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. The manoeuvre displayed dark and fetid patches beneath each armpit, and I wrinkled my nose in response.

"Paddington Green nick, London," I answered. Anderson raised an eyebrow in surprise. Perhaps he thought that was his ace in the hole; that the agony of not knowing might weaken my resolve or loosen my tongue. In truth, I had only caught glimpses of a yellowed and fading sign-up sheet for a regular poker night that was pinned on a notice board on my way to the interview room. "Which is interesting, because I thought this place had been closed," I continued.

"Indeed, it has," Anderson said. "At least for its original purpose of holding high security prisoners and terrorism suspects. But we've still got the keys," he laughed in cockney.

His mirth was interrupted by an insistent banging on the door. Anderson sighed and hauled his bulk upright to open it.

I could barely believe my eyes when Walker Pelc shambled through the door. He surveyed both Anderson and me with the gleaming eyes of a fox being invited to babysit a hen house while the chickens are out getting pissed at a PTA meeting.

"Apparently, this is your brief," Anderson rolled his eyes and lowered himself carefully back to a sedentary position. "Best of luck with that..."