Not all my cases involve conspiracies, murders and corruption. Not everybody I meet is a gangster, politician, hooker, copper or wayward relative. You won't want to hear about the others at 100,000 words' length, but there are still tales to tell, human frailty to explore...a small bite at a time...
Faith In Our Fathers (Part 1)
“How come you’re such an arsehole? Is it natural? Or did ye
send away for it, get it off the internet or some fuckin’ ‘hing?”
“Listen, bud, I don’t expect you to be buyin’ me steak
dinners, but if ye want to check out the bad guy here, jist cop a swatch at the
mirror. That’ll be him, right there.”
“Whit? How d’ye make that out? Every man would be jist the same as
me.”
“Slice it how you like – say you’re an unfaithful husband
cuz you’ve been nippin’ wee Helena from the work since this year past, mibbe
longer…if that hat doesny fit, well, you’re still the dickhead for bein’ so stupid
as to do it in everybody’s favourite hot-sheet cheapo and use your own name an’
all. It was that easy I’m nearly embarrassed to be chargin’ your wife for the
job…and that’s how you’re a loser as well, cuz it’ll be you payin’ for that in
the end, one way and another. Have a good one, Ally.”
“Hey, one ‘hing but – how did Coleen know in the first
place? She’s no’ the brightest, I don’t understand
how she caught on.”
“Aye, about that?…ye might want to have a word wi’ wee
Helena – tell her that puttin’ pictures a’ you and her on Facebook would only
be okay if she’s not eatin’ your face off in the photo. Your wife figured out what that
meant pretty easy.”
Ally McNaughton, soon to be ex-husband of Coleen and
estranged father of several bovine children, fired a few more fucks at my back
as I left him pondering the wisdom
hidden (maybe) in his continual choice of sub-Nobel laureate women to dunt.
Me, I reckoned they were all pretty evenly matched; I wouldn’t want to set odds
on any of them making professor by Christmas.
*** *** ***
It had been a classic what-the? Infidelity in the first
degree, stunned wrongdoer, car-park confrontation, mea culpa but so what?, slow
realisation, then the first strands of
wondering what wee Helena would be like as a life partner and not just a
very special Facebook friend. Straight from the private detective’s big book of
standard take-downs, with a thin veneer of the 21st century applied too
lightly to hide its never-changing nature.
My problem was, now that Ally McNaughton was only a future
invoice, my professional day had nothing to prolong it. Until the phone dinged,
the display telling me my caller was Detective Inspector Paddy Haldane.
“Stevie? Paddy at Stewart Street. Somethin’ moody’s turned
up, a bit informal - ye got a minute?”
A minute? Today, Paddy, I’ve got so many minutes I could fill
a clock.
(to be continued)
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