TWO SUGARS OR THREE?

Does everything have to make sense? Maybe not....

The fat detective police Inspector and his skinny female sergeant almost got it all wrong.

It didn’t have anything to do with work. Their job usually involved solving the most dreadful of crimes with the most blood-curdling evidence of dead bodies and torn flesh occupying their working days. But there was always a time when work was over and their private lives loomed pleasantly on the near horizon.

The police Inspector, Andrew Cumbland, was single and didn’t want to be. True, he had been married, to Elaine, but she had got fed up with his demands, usually as bloated as his needlessly bloated flesh, and in the end had walked out on him.

“You’ll never see me again!” she had shouted, and she was gone.

He thought of killing her there and then (several methods sprang to mind) but he knew just how good and methodical the detective force was, and how they always got their man (or woman) and decided against it. Anyway, he growled to himself at the time, how can I actually be expected to investigate a murder that I’ve personally committed?

And he concluded that he couldn’t.

On the other hand, D.S (for both Detective Sergeant and Denise Sarah) Bowler was single through choice. She had experience of too many men who should be totally devoted to their smooth peaches and cream skinned, bright eyed spouses but who strayed from the path of righteousness by drooling over other women in the belief that their testosterone was undiluted by the years. She herself had been drooled over and although she quite enjoyed the attention she didn’t want an intimate partner to drool over anyone that wasn’t her. So she was single through choice.

Now let’s turn to the present day. Friday the First of December 2017. Work was over, the weekend was looming, and they were operating a car-share system for travelling to and from work. And this time it was Denise’s turn to use her car, and Andrew’s task to be the passenger.

Denise had passed all the police driving tests with flying colours and knew quite a lot of tricks when it comes to driving safely and at speed through built-up areas and along sedate country lanes, whereas her superior officer was incapable of negotiating anything more complex that a deserted dual carriageway without putting a dent somewhere on his car. So whoever’s turn it was to be the driver there was always a kind of morose silence in the car, with her feeling that criticising her superior officer might be likely to result in a disharmonious working relationship next day and he aware of his frailties and doing his best to avoid anything dangerous that might lead to criticism by a woman, which put him on edge and made things worse.

“Watch that cyclist,” he growled, forgetting that he was more likely to cause danger to cyclists than she. And he also forgot that there wasn’t a cyclist within miles of her. The nearest one, in actual fact, was leaving the front drive to Hope’s Farm half a dozen miles away and way beyond his own little house. But neither of them was aware of that despite its eventual near-relevance to subsequent events.

“There’s no cyclist,” she murmured, frowning and feeling that if he made any further advisory comments whilst she was driving he could damned well get out and walk. Though she didn’t say that. It would have been silly, with her hoping for promotion any day.

They arrived at the Inspector’s little house and he did the decent thing.

“Fancy a coffee before you go home?” he asked.

Home, for her, was mere hundreds of yards away because he lived at one end of an isolated terrace of ex-farm workers cottages and she lived at the other.

She didn’t really fancy a coffee but replied “Yes, that would be nice,” anyway.

As you can see, she was quite good at lying to her superior officer.

They went into his house to find it looked as if it had been ransacked. There were sheets of paper, ring-binders with the pages missing, paperback books by the score and a dish of fragrant pot pourri all over the floor. The coffee table had been up-ended and his (substantial) drinks cabinet had the lock smashed and its contents just about everywhere, fortunately still intact.

“What’s been going on here?” she asked, her eyes everywhere and on his face at the same time.

“Don’t ask me,” he replied, looking as puzzled as he’d looked earlier that day when a new and fresh-faced constable had pointed out that Squire Gimlet hadn’t been murdered but that his death was clearly a consequence of natural causes after he’d been expounding about how devilishly clever the killer had been. But the constable had turned out to be quite right, down to the small detail of the suicide note being definitely in Gimlet’s own hand.

“But I did ask you,” she said, still jointly surveying the scene and looking at her boss.

“It looks like … maybe I think I’ve been robbed,” he said.

“But you haven’t,” she pointed out, “or that fake Rolex would have been taken.”

“It’s a good fake though,” he conceded, pointlessly. “I bought it in Spain.”

“A thief would have been in two minds and taken it, boss,” she said, meaning he should be less diagnostic about what might have happened and look at the facts.

“The facts,” she said, pre-empting him, “are as follows. Your house was double-locked, the security alarm hasn’t gone off, there are no broken windows and nothing’s been stolen.”

“How do you know the alarm hasn’t gone off?” he barked in his workaday authoritarian voice.

“We’d have heard it,” was her simple reply.

And it was at this precise moment that a cyclist appeared, his helmet perched tidily on his head and an apologetic expression on his face.

“Have you been robbed?” he asked.

“Go away!” snapped the Detective Inspector.

“Fair enough, dad,” grinned the cyclist, and he pedalled off.

“He called you dad!” exclaimed the D.S.

“So he did.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I am.”

“What?”

“His dad.”

“I never knew...”

“I’ll just tidy up,” moaned the D.I. “I was in such a hurry this morning and things sort of got out of hand.”

“You mentioned coffee,” she said.

“Let me tidy up a bit first. I feel … you might think that I live in a pigsty.”

“I’ll make the coffee, you straighten up,” she said, clearing her way to the kitchen. “What you want is a woman in your life,” she added as she put the kettle on, “someone to make sure you put things away. After all, everything should have a place and everything should be in its place...”

“It was this morning … are you proposing to me?” he stammered.

“Of course I am! Sir.” she grinned as the kettle boiled.

“It would make the car-sharing easier,” he murmured to himself, forever the practical man.

“And you’d stay straight. Sir.”

“But what about the you know what, intimate side of things?” he asked.

“She means sex!” called the cyclist who hadn’t really gone more than a dozen yards from the door and come back, “Dad,” he added.

“Go away!” snapped the D.I.

“Two sugars still?” she asked.

“I’m down to one.” he replied, shutting the door in the cyclist’s face. “I’m on a diet,” he added, “and it makes me irritable,” he further added, “which is why I make a mess like this,” he concluded.

She carried the coffee in.

“I’ve given you three,” she said. “Do you want to try the intimate thing now or later?”

“Coffee first, Sergeant!” he barked, “coffee most definitely first.”

© Peter Rogerson 01.12.17