2. Drinking and Driving

Christie’s Detective Agency Two Part 2 THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

Gorgeous Will - you might guess this wasn’t the name on his birth certificate, but it was the name he’d answered to ever since he’d reached what was (to him) the pinnacle of fame on a reality television show part of which involved him consuming barely cooked sheep’s testicles in a sandpit with half a dozen other no-hopers, and actually winning a cash prize when he won - was sobering up.

The reality show had been five years ago and since then he’d enjoyed television roles, including a corpse in Casualty, the top half of a drowned man in Silent Witness and a speaking part in Vera, though the speaking bit of that speaking part was cut by the director once it had been shot. His face was still there though, briefly, dancing with the rest of his body in a discotheque and almost clearly visible when the lights flashed on.

So, in his book, he was famous and only responded to Gorgeous Will unless he was due to receive money under his old name of Will Goatbeard. And in order to complement his talent and his fame he turned to drink. Alcoholic drink that is: he always maintained that he was allergic to water and anything containing it.

Along with an endless parade of hangovers he had somehow acquired an elderly Mini Minor which he pretended was a sports car and drove as if that’s what it was.

He’d been on the set of a situation comedy set in the world of the dead, had uttered his one word contribution to the script and was on his way home when his car took a leap of its own and buried its off-side headlight in a street lamp at exactly the same moment as he was taking a surreptitious sip from a flask containing cheap vodka, and precisely on the doorstep of Brumpton Borough Library.

He might have got away with it but a passing stranger just happened to be Police Constable Bob Grungeworthy who was nearing the end of his shift, with nothing to report unless you count a cat who had almost caused an old woman to fall onto her backside by trying to dance between her feet. In the end it turned out that no harm had been done either by or to the cat, and he had carried on his beat, chuckling to himself.

And now this.

An idiot with a booze flask in one hand and his steering wheel in the other watching steam shoot into the air from the front of his Mini Minor, clearly visible the opposite side of the market square.

He shook his head, nonplussed.

He watched as the driver of the mortally wounded car climbed out and urinated against the library steps before peering in through a window because he wanted any passing nosey parker to believe he was doing anything but urinating.

And he clearly thought he saw something.

Right at the far end of the library from where he stood by the door was an area where a feeble beam of moonlight found its way to what could only be someone asleep, with her head on a book and what looked very much like something unusual sticking out of her back.

“Well damn me,” he slurred just as P.C. Bob Grungeworthy arrived at his elbow with a notebook in his hand and a grim scowl on his elderly face.

“Name, sir?” he asked in his best interrogating voice.

“Don’t you know who I am?” responded Gorgeous Will, affecting a kind of alcoholic indignity.

Bob Grungeworthy, to give him due credit, took a step back and peered at the drunkard, then shook his head dubiously

“Nope,” he said, “name, sir?”

“Will,” replied the other after taking a few moments to assess the situation, which involved a crunched up and elderly Mini Minor still steaming. P.C Grungeworthy sadly shook his head as he took in the car’s driver still holding a flask that, in his experienced opinion, could only possibly contain alcohol, and the man who wanted him to be noted down as Will had been driving said Mini Minor in a state that was at best unwise and at worse drunk out of his mind.

“Full name, sir,” he asked, a little more brusquely.

One thing that really infuriated Gorgeous Will was when his name was not recognised because he was famous, wasn’t he? He’d actually eaten testicles, hadn’t he? Didn’t people know that?

“There’s a woman in there,” he told the policeman without actually responding with his name.

“Is there, sir? Very good. I’ll ask you one more time what your name is, and if you don’t tell me I’ll use my truncheon on you, then handcuff you and march you to the cells where you can spend the rest of the night contemplating the folly of offending Police Constable Grungeworthy!”

Something about that sentence tickled Gorgeous Will to the extent that he started giggling like only real drunks can and pointed at his interrogator and, when the giggling was over, hiccuped and slurred “tha’ ain’t your name, ish it, copper…”

The good constable was nearing the end of his career as a policeman and had heard too many mickey-takes involving his name to do anything but arrest the offensive drunkard and throw the book at him.

“Right, sonny, you’re coming with me!” he growled, grabbing him by one shoulder.

“Ged off me!” shouted Gorgeous Will, and that shout was a mistake because it attracted to the attention of Police Constable Peter Simmons, who, like Bob Grungeworthy, was reaching the end of his shift. And he represented reinforcements should they be needed.

Two police officers were too much for Gorgeous Will to handle, and with ill grace he submitted and even allowed himself to be handcuffed.

“But what about her?” he demanded indicating the window he’d been peering through, “she might be dead, she might.”

To give him credit, Bob Grungeworthy did take the trouble to peer through that window, but the moon, which had cast its helpful beam onto the figure sitting dead in a chair, had become obscured by a cloud, and absolutely nothing could be seen in the darkness of a closed library.

“There’s nowt there,” he growled, “the piss-head’s been seeing things like his sort often do. And look what a mess he’s made with his car. We’ll have to get it towed away afore Monday when things open up again. Come on, Peter, time for my nightcap and forty winks.”

“The little one will no doubt wake us up every hour on the hour,” moaned P.C Peter Simmons, “can’t wait for ‘er to be in ‘er teens and off our hands.”

“That’s when your problems will really begin,” grinned P.C Bob Grungeworthy.

“Who is this jerk, anyway?” asked P.C Peter Simmons.

“Reckons he’s Will. The desk sergeant will get him to talk and no messing. Come on, Peter, and you!” He jerked Will until the handcuff threatened to cut into his flesh.

“What about the woman?” shouted Will, his mind still focused on what he believed he’d seen.

“She’s in your head, chum, and nowhere else,” replied the younger officer, “come on: to the drying out cells!”

“But I seen ‘er…” stammered Will, “all dead, she were, all bloody dead…”

© Peter Rogerson 26.09.21

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