Playing James

by Sarah Mason

  She bobs her head up and down without directly looking at me and sips her drink. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, it’s just that . . .” She shrugs a little.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Alastair is a bit distracted and although I understand he has to work, I’m upset he wasn’t around at the weekend after the hospital thing.”

  I reach over and pat her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he would have been there if he could have been.”

  “And someone has just got engaged at work today. She seemed so happy. It sort of brought it home how distant Alastair and I have been lately. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring this up.”

  “It’s OK.” I look concernedly at her, wondering what to say.

  “I’m worried he’s gone off me and just doesn’t know how to finish it, so he’s hiding behind work. It was so wonderful at the start. I don’t know how to get it back.”

  “I don’t think he’s hiding behind work. He probably genuinely is under pressure and it’s making him distant.” I’m not quite sure I believe this myself.

  “Well, if he does want to finish it, I wish he would get on and do it.”

  “Poor darling. But I don’t think you should just sit back and wait for it to happen. Why don’t you be the proactive one?” I pat her hand again as she looks miserably into her drink.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll think about it. Aren’t you and Ben going to that pizza place tonight?”

  “We are. Why don’t you come too?”

  “That’s kind of you but I’d be miserable company. Besides, you and Ben should spend time together. I’m going to have a hot bath and go to bed early.”

  “OK,” I say, a bit loath to leave her. For a minute I’m tempted to tell Ben to cancel the restaurant. I look over at him. Probably feeling my look, he glances up himself and taps his watch. I nod and get up.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” I ask Lizzie doubtfully.

  “I’ll be fine. Go on. You and Ben have a nice evening.”

  The three of us walk out into the relative quiet and cool of the evening and say our respective goodbyes. I give Lizzie a hug and tell her I’ll speak to her tomorrow. She walks across the square to her car and Ben and I turn and walk, hand in hand, down to our restaurant.

  seven

  I arise somewhat groggily from my pit on Friday morning. From the mound of wet towels on the bathroom floor I conclude that Ben has already left for his early morning meeting.

  I take care with my appearance as opposed to my usual method of grabbing the first thing to hand. This is a sort of psychological armor against the barbs of James Sabine.

  I wend my way down to the police station, only stopping en route for a fruit smoothie in lieu of breakfast. This is a pathetic attempt on my part to feel better. After two days at the mercy of Detective Sergeant Sabine’s tongue, I feel my self-esteem to be limping a bit. The emotional effect of having a fruit smoothie for breakfast makes me feel decidedly supermodel-esque.

  I park in my usual spot at the station, successfully exit from Tristan and breathe in the early morning air. The sun bounces off the top few windows of the building and the air has a sweet, fresh tang.

  “Morning!” I say brightly to Dave-the-grumpy-git-desk-sergeant. He at least makes eye contact and, with a curt nod, buzzes me through the security doors.

  I pop my head around the door to the PR office and exchange morning pleasantries with Robin. Once up in the detectives’ office, I make my way toward my desk. The room is half empty as some of the officers are on later shifts. Callum is already in state and greets me with a blaring, “Morning! How are you? You’re looking downcast. Not the puckish young thing we’ve come to know over the last few days. Not been dreaming of the harsh Detective Sergeant Sabine have you?”

  I grin at him, lean over his desk and whisper, “No, far, far worse than that. I dreamt I was being dragged by wild horses backward through bushes, while a Jamaican played Abba hits on his mouth organ and Detective Sergeant Sabine was giving me a verbal tongue-lashing.”

  He grins widely and murmurs, “Now there’s a vivid image. It must have been getting noisy. You weren’t in a bikini as well, by any chance? You know, in the dream?”

  I straighten up. “No, definitely not. Dressed as a nun, if I remember correctly.”

  “Oh well. Can’t have everything.”

  I smile to myself as I move on between the desks and arrive at my own. Callum reminds me of a rather boisterous Labrador and has the undoubted capacity to cheer me up. James Sabine is seated opposite. He is on the phone and gives me a nod as I sit down. The realization that I will have to deal with him today crashes my good humor as quickly as Callum has sparked it. I physically straighten up in my chair. I will have to be aloof and yet civil. Carry myself with aplomb.

  I turn my thoughts to today’s installment. I really hope there will be something juicy to write about, something to get my teeth into, as whatever happens today has to be written up for the first edition of The Real Dick Tracy’s Diary and I have to file copy tonight. A dramatic raid perhaps, or a high-speed car chase at the very least. I suppose I could always kick off with the first day’s local hospital drug thefts. I look across to the man himself, to the imaginary Jack—he has put the phone down and is shuffling some papers about and I wonder what he has planned for today. An arrest would start the first installment nicely.

  “Are you arresting anyone today, Detective Sergeant Sabine? Anyone at all?” I inquire politely.

  He fixes me with a stare. “Well, I don’t know. I’ll just have to check my diary. I could arrest you if you want.” He gets up. “Come on, there’s been a burglary in the Clifton area.”

  “Great!” I enthuse as I leap up.

  “Miss Colshannon. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but burglaries aren’t good things. Truly, they’re not.”

  I try to assume an appropriate air of sympathy and concern.

  “No, no, of course not,” I murmur, picking up my bag and following him out of the room, trying to suppress the urge to execute gazelle-like leaps of joy.

  Hurrah! A burglary. Never have I been so overjoyed at Bristol’s soaring crime rate. Not a high-speed car chase perhaps but good enough. My mind is racing as we set off toward the car park. Let’s hope it’ll turn into a series. If it does, I could give them a name! Something catchy. I really hope he’ll let me publish some interesting details. A thought occurs to me and I accelerate in an effort to catch him up.

  “Er, Detective Sergeant Sabine!” I call.

  “What?” he shouts back over his shoulder.

  “Do you, like, er, say anything when you arrest someone?”

  He stops suddenly. A little too suddenly. I cannon into the back of him like a cartoon character.

  “Oooff. Sorry. You stopped.”

  He turns round and fixes me with those eyes.

  “What do you mean, do I say anything? I read them their rights of course.”

  “No, I mean, do you say anything yourself to them? Anything at all?” I ask anxiously.

  “Like what? Advice?”

  “Well, yes, or anything else?”

  “What exactly are you getting at?”

  “I was just thinking that it would be really nice if you had a sort of, er, saying. Well, not you exactly, but the character in my diary . . .”

  “A what?” This is said in a low voice that has the merest smidgen of danger lurking in it. Even I can see he’s not too thrilled with the idea.

  “You know, a saying. A catchphrase. Like Dirty Harry.” He is looking hard at me but I valiantly soldier on, albeit in a distinctly smaller voice. “ ‘Go ahead, punk, make my day’?”

  “You are absolutely unbelievable.” He strides off again.

  “That’s the idea! Something like that. But I was thinking of something just a li-tt-le bit more threatening . . .” I shout after his disappearing back.

  I arrive at the car
park a few minutes after him, panting a little. I spot him in a far corner talking to a uniformed officer and frowning. He turns toward me as I approach.

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “No pool cars left, they were all scrambled this morning for an incident in town. Can we use yours?”

  “Emm . . .” I hesitate. It’s not that I mind going in my car, it’s just that Tristan isn’t renowned for his reliability and I haven’t checked him for any compromising evidence. No girl wants to get caught with twenty empty crisp packets in her car.

  “It’s in your interest that we get there too. We either take yours or wait for a pool car to come back and I don’t know when . . .”

  That does the trick. I need to get to this burglary. Tristan will be fine, it’s motorways that really upset him.

  “No problem!” I say lightly. I lead the way to Tristan.

  I try my best to climb elegantly into him. No easy feat. I get my bum in all right but quite a commotion with the rest of my limbs ensues. My right leg manages to get twisted around my left one, then sort of gets stuck underneath the bottom lip of the car and refuses to make the extra distance actually inside the vehicle.

  “Won’t be a minute!” I shout out, making a rather unattractive panting noise while frantically tugging on my errant leg.

  “What did you say?” He comes round to my side of the car.

  “I said that I won’t be a minute.”

  I fervently wish he would return to the passenger side of the car where he belongs. I really do not need an audience. “What are you doing?” he asks dubiously, watching me.

  “I am trying to get into the car,” I reply haughtily, still tugging frantically.

  “Really?” he says disbelievingly.

  I grit my teeth and manage to squeeze a few words out. “Detective Sergeant Sabine. If you—” Just as I say this, I make an almighty effort to free the troublesome limb and suddenly— THWACK!—my knee hits me squarely between the eyes.

  “Christ!” he exclaims, squatting beside me. “Are you OK?” His mouth twitches slightly.

  I rub the spot and wonder how I could possibly have managed to hit myself in the face with another part of my body. “Yes, fine,” I mutter mutinously.

  “You, er, hit yourself in the face. With your knee.” There is a definite emphasis on the word “knee” and it is accompanied by more face twitching.

  More muttering. “I know. It’s not terribly easy to get into this car, Detective. Why don’t you try?”

  He bounds around to the other side and simply hops in with the dexterity of an Olympic gymnast.

  “Beginners’ luck,” I snap. Steady, Holly, steady. Was that acting “with aplomb”? Cool, even?

  There is a pause while we both put our seat belts on. I would really like to give my head another rub but have no wish to bring attention to it.

  “I can see why you’re in Casualty so much,” he remarks lightly.

  I don’t deign to reply.

  “How is it now?” he asks, not trying very hard to disguise the fact that he is laughing.

  “Fine, thank you,” I manage to spit out. I truly hope it wasn’t a hard enough blow to leave a bruise, which would only serve to give me and James Sabine a lasting reminder of this incident. I grasp the wheel in a rather hard, uncompromising, Tristandon’t-give-me-any-shit kind of way, put him in first gear and we whoosh off. For the first time since we got into the car I take a look around to see what state it’s in.

  “Gosh!” I say, looking down at his feet which are actually invisible among the piles of rubbish. Diet Coke cans, empty crisp packets and sweet wrappers seem to spill out of every corner. “Sorry, I haven’t got round to cleaning it out.” I bend over to try and unearth his shoes by sweeping all the rubbish to one side.

  “S’OK. WATCH THAT . . . !” I look up hastily to find that the curb has rather unkindly leapt out at me. I swerve.

  “It’s fine. Honestly,” he says tensely, sitting very taut in his seat. “You just drive.”

  I concentrate studiously on driving for the next minute. And breathing deeply. I knew that those many hours watching the Green Goddess from the comfort of my sofa would come in useful. In . . . out, in . . . out, in . . . out. See? Easy. Didn’t need to take up Pilates to know how to do that. Eventually I regain enough control to ask, “Where are we going?” He duly gives me directions to an address near the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

  As I negotiate a difficult one-way system, James Sabine looks around the car.

  “Does this contraption break down very often?”

  I visibly bristle. We’re like two knights waging war and he’s just spotted an almighty hole in my armor. I rise to the bait admirably.

  “Tristan is not a contraption!”

  “Tristan?” he repeats gravely, with just a hint of derision and a raised eyebrow.

  Damn. I never tell strangers my car has a name. It’s so naff. “He was called that when I bought him,” I bluster.

  “You bought this?”

  “He happens to be an extremely valuable vintage car!” All right, only half of that is true. And it’s not the valuable bit.

  “They’re only valuable if they actually work, Miss Colshannon,” he says, picking up the RAC card from the dashboard where I leave it so it’s always handy. He waves it at me to illustrate his point. Damn his little detecting skills.

  I swiftly change the subject by snapping, “So, why are you being called out to this? Surely detectives don’t normally investigate plain old burglaries?”

  “The uniformed officer at the scene seems to think this one is a specialist. So he has called me in.” He gets out a notebook from his jacket pocket and studies it. After a few minutes of silence, I try to fish for some personal details and ask, “So, how does your future wife feel about your job?”

  “None of your business,” he says without looking up.

  “How about your family? Do they worry about you?”

  “None of your business. Turn here.” He points and we pull up to our address. I snap on the handbrake. “Will you always stay on active duty?”

  He looks over at me. “Well . . .” he says hesitantly. I fish into my bag for my notepad. “The Chief said something interesting to me the other day.” I poise my pen. Goody! A quote! “Do you want me to write it down for you?” he offers politely.

  He takes the pad from me, writes a sentence and then gets out of the car, dropping the pad on the seat as he goes. It says: “CURIOSITY KILLED THE CRIME CORRESPONDENT.”

  I sigh to myself. This is going to be harder than I thought.

  Minutes later we crunch up a path to the given address. It is an impressive Georgian house and I’m not surprised it’s been burgled. If I were a burglar then this would be my first port of call. The path is carefully graveled and the lawn is attentively manicured. Not a blade of grass out of place. There are steps up to the smart navy door and on each step a topiary tree stands to attention. James Sabine pulls the bell. We wait for a few moments and then the door is answered by a butler. Both Detective Sergeant Sabine and I almost jump back off the step in surprise. I didn’t know anyone had butlers anymore.

  “Yeeesss?”

  James Sabine flips up his ID. “I’m Detective Sergeant Sabine and this is Holly Colshannon. She is with me for observation only.” Point taken. Again.

  We follow the butler into the house and as James Sabine walks ahead of me I notice something rather colorful is stuck to his ass. I peer closer and my suspicions are confirmed. Yes, it is the wrapper of a strawberry-flavored chewy sweet and I think I can probably guess how it got there. I wince. Do I leave it for everyone to see? Or do I casually drop it into conversation? “By the way, Detective, a sweet wrapper seems to be attached to your behind . . .” Or do I even have a go at removing it myself? A fairly easy decision to make. Leave it there.

  We are shown into a large, chintzy drawing room, complete with requisite grand piano. The tall windows, so typical
of the Regency houses of Bristol, are draped with vast lengths of material. A uniformed officer is already sitting down, a notepad in one hand, cup and saucer in the other. He stands as we enter the room. Another man, sitting opposite him, also rises.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning Matt.” James Sabine turns to the stranger and out-stretches a hand.

  “Good morning, sir. I’m Detective Sergeant James Sabine and this is Holly Colshannon. She is here for observation only.” Blimey. How many times is he going to say it? Message received loud and clear.

  “Sebastian Forquar-White. How do you do?” says the stranger in the plummiest voice I have ever heard. I mean, where do these people get their accents from? Really? He is dressed in a tweed suit. His slightly protruding stomach stretches the buttons of his waistcoat and his jowls flap around his paisley bow tie. He has an enormous, flamboyant, handlebar mustache.

  James Sabine and he shake hands and then Sebastian turns to me and shakes mine as well. I murmur a gracious, “How do you do?” James glares at me.

  “Really, the whole thing is most distressing. Most distressing indeed. Some of the items had been in the family for centuries. Do sit down. Would you like some tea?” Jowls flapping in agitation, Sebastian Forquar-Whatsit looks from Detective Sergeant Sabine to me.

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’d love some!” I respond enthusiastically. James Sabine throws a death wish in my direction.

  Sebastian Whatshisgob exits from the sitting room, loudly yelling, “Anton! More tea!” Anton presumably and hopefully is the butler. James Sabine immediately goes into a rugby-like huddle with Matt and starts talking in low, urgent tones. I switch seats, get out my notebook and put a serious ear to the ground (not literally) in an effort to overhear their conversation. I catch various words, including “time,” “entry” and “interview,” but nothing even vaguely resembling a sentence. They finally break apart and I jump in posthaste.

  “What’s so interesting about this burglary then?” I ask.

  Detective Sergeant Sabine looks distractedly over at me. “It’s just so . . .” I wait with bated breath and pen poised because this is going to be the opening episode of my diary and I really, really hope it’s going to be good.