by Robin Ince
He was up to his waist and looked up at the beautiful faces of the women. He shivered with the cold and took another step. He had reached the actual channel and sunk a full foot deeper. He was up to his shoulders. Marching forward towards his dream, towards completion. Towards life and light and love. But a thought, a single thought was fluttering somewhere, ‘Steve! Excuse me! Steve!’ Oh, go away you silly thought. I’m going to be happy now. Beneath the water he took another step towards his goal. But that pesky thought was really shouting quite loudly now, ‘Steve! Steve! steve! stephen!!!!’ His next step was into deep water and did not find the bottom and his head slipped below the surface and his mouth filled with the salt silty ice cold waters of the Thames.
And at that moment he was awake. And at that moment he realised where he was. And at that moment he realised he was going to die very soon. And at that moment as his head broke the surface briefly before sinking forever he heard the words to the haunting melody that had summoned him to this being sung by the two dark-eyed women.
Dear Stephen
Sweet Stephen
Stephen of our hearts
So sad to say
So sad to know
That you, my love
Cannot swim . . .
The Dream Of Nightmares
michael legge
‘Dibs McCawe was killed by her lover, not her husband, and he buried her in a shallow grave near their love nest because he thought she was having an affair and he was lazy.’
Gwen couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t ever sleep. Her bed was broken, with the frame of it vaguely held in place by five old VHS cassettes stacked underneath it; her bedroom was cold and her husband kept saying the stupidest things in his sleep. Every night.
She sat up in bed for hours, again, and just stared. Alf would have no idea in the morning because Gwen would never tell him. He just assumed that she was always tired because she worked so hard on her special projects. The whole house was always spotless because she kept it that way, she kept fit by keeping fit and she gave back to the community by volunteering to assist at a local petting zoo. Of course really she had a cleaner in to tidy, instead of breakfast and lunch she smoked and she visited the petting zoo simply because goats rarely judged if you spent all day smoking and weeping. That was Gwen’s real life; pretending that everything was OK while she tried to figure out why she hadn’t gone mad yet. Or if she had gone mad years ago. Either way, throwing days away and telling people she was busy seemed to be the easiest way to deal with life just for now. And at the end of the day she would cook a beautiful meal for her husband (get a takeaway) and then treat herself to a good night’s sleep (stay up all night listening to him talking shit).
It was an unbearable situation but it gave Gwen a wonderful chance to pretend to be patient. In real life, she had no patience whatsoever but being with Alf seemed so like something Stephen King would make up and publish under a pseudonym that she decided to just pretend to be a different person almost all the time. In this pretend life Gwen had friends that she liked, a husband who wasn’t a dickhead, a working bed and a heart of gold. Only two months ago, Alf had been in a coma after an industrial accident at his life drawing class. For those two months Gwen visited him every few days in hospital, held his hand and pretended to support him. She would bring him grapes; read the first few paragraphs of a book to him; eat his grapes. She was the perfect wife. It was during her third phone conversation with her solicitor about the sale of their house that Alf opened his eyes.
Gwen pretended that Alf’s open eyes were a blessing just as she was pretending that his closed eyes right now weren’t making her want to tear her own head off and club him to death with it. Other partners snored, hers talked arse.
‘The missing money is distributed to seven different accounts,’ he would say. Or, ‘She’s still alive. Check the ice cream van’ or, ‘It was suicide. He made it look like murder. He likes attention.’ Well, it was just another one of those awful nights. A night when he slept and talked nuts and she finally went downstairs to watch TV that even she couldn’t pretend was good.
Good or bad, the blue-green glow of the television is the true friend of the insomniac and just what Gwen needed right now. In the warmth of cold entertainment, Gwen could be herself. Mumbling, sniffing and smoking out the window. She was finally her. She didn’t feel the need to showbusinessly sing I Am What I Am but it felt good to just not be smiling or saying nice things or taking an interest in an anecdote that made her teeth die of boredom. Why did she worry so much about how people saw her? Why did she care if people thought she wasn’t perfect? Why was she so afraid to face life and just be herself? I’ve no idea. Probably the same reason you do it. Gwen got through six cigarettes, two episodes of a behated sitcom, half a chat show and then went back to a spot of slight pretending. She put the news on. She wasn’t pretending that she wanted to take an interest in current affairs, she was just pretending that she had an interest in current affairs. If only there was a way of knowing things without finding out about them, she thought. Then the newsreader said something familiar.
‘Missing student Becky Willoughby has been found alive after a twenty-three-day hunt by the Metropolitan Police. A man has been taken into custody. The missing student was found handcuffed and blindfolded in an ice cream van thought to be owned by a neighbour . . .’
Gwen lit another cigarette and thought, I could have told you that. She sucked in the beautiful chemicals and breathed out the romantic smoke. Then for the next forty seconds she tried to choke as quietly as possible while pointing at the television in disbelief.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That cannot have happened. The news cannot have just reported a thing Alf said because that’s not how the news works and the things Alf says are just the words of a nutcase dreaming and it must be a coincidence and that is frightening and there is no way that this has happened. Alf can’t be involved in a kidnapping.
Actually, that’s true. Alf really couldn’t be involved in a kidnapping. He hasn’t the time. And he’s an idiot. He didn’t used to be, he was OK once. Had ideas, wore decent shoes. But since the accident he’s just been all about work and talking in his sleep. He realised that life is too short and he has to live it and he talks in his sleep. He said all he wants to do is look after Gwen and make sure she’s happy. He said that while he was awake, by the way. He sleeps beside Gwen, goes to work and then comes home again to sleep beside her. And he definitely goes to work. She’s gone with him enough times. And he gets a paycheck. And he messages her all day from the office email to see if she’s alright or if she needs anything. I mean, he could use the office email when he’s out of the office and being a criminal but . . . Alf just wouldn’t know how to do that. He didn’t know how to retweet never mind hide an entire woman in an ice cream van while pretending to have a job. He just works, sleeps and then talks. And the madness he comes out with while asleep is just babbling. Dark, crime-obsessed babbling. Gwen switched on her laptop to look up some of the other insane jabber that her husband came out with. It’s not like anything else Alf spoke about in his sleep would turn out to solve an actual real crime. Gwen LOL’d (i.e. she made no noise at all). Funny if it did though.
No. It would be terrifying.
Gwen paced the living room floor pretending unconvincingly that she wasn’t going to throw up. The ‘killer used his brother’s shovel’ story from three months ago was there on the BBC news website. So was the ‘there was no twin. He did it all himself’ robbery and the ‘it was no accident, he knew the chainsaw was a go-er’ trial. Everything Alf had said was there. All those crimes he predicted in his sleep and here they were solved, often too late. Gwen circled the room again, went back to her laptop and unfashionably Yahooed the name ‘Dibs McCawe’. And that’s when the truth came out.
Gwen threw up on her own leg.
Dibs McCawe was missing. missing. Not dead.
For months – oh, stop pretending – for years Gwen had been wondering what she was supposed to do in life and now she realised her purpose. She could save a life. Alf had a gift. Maybe. An incredible gift that could change the world. Through Alf, there could be a world without crime. No murder, no violence, no fear. To change the entire world, all she needed to do was listen to Alf talk in his sleep and then tell him to inform the police. Or . . . she could just say that she’d worked it out herself.
Gwen didn’t need to spend her days crying in a petting zoo necessarily. She could be a master sleuth.
Gwen tied her long blonde hair (dyed) into a bunch and sat cross-legged in front of her laptop. The news of Dibs’s disappearance was everywhere on the internet. Every detail of a real life accessible to anyone who noticed if they clicked on it. Her parents’ names, her hometown, her school, her workplace, her best friend, her hobbies, her husband’s name, his work associate . . . Would it be too corny if the work associate was also Dibs McCawe’s lover? No. This pretend detective knew exactly what she was probably doing.
What she was probably doing was nuts. Even she knew that. But she hadn’t slept in days and going to the London offices of DeHolt, the highly questionable pharmaceutical company where Trent McCawe and his associate Peter Knox worked, to do some spying seemed utterly reasonable. Gwen could pretend to enjoy making Alf his breakfast another time, he’d have to make it himself. She wanted to get to the DeHolt building before anyone else. Three hours before anyone else.
Less than an hour into her new detective job and Gwen had come to the conclusion that it was mainly boring. She liked the hat she’d picked out for herself that morning but, other than that, being a detective was mainly just waiting. So far it had been two hours of standing in the rain, staring at an empty office building and looking great in a frankly fabulous hat. Even when people started arriving for work, she didn’t really know what to do. She was good at stopping them and saying, ‘Excuse me, I’m a detective’ but after that it all went downhill. What was a detective supposed to ask people? ‘Was Dibs McCawe nice?’ seemed irrelevant, not to mention stupid. And ‘Do you have Peter Knox’s home address?’ might give the game away and was creepy. Gwen didn’t want anyone thinking her pretend detective was really stupid or really weird so instead, after much thought, she decided to just stand in the rain and wait again. Maybe by the time they all come out she’ll have thought of something to ask them. Still, lovely hat.
The great thing about starting something that makes you feel stupid is that you don’t eventually feel stupid about it. Feeling stupid was there from the beginning. But even Gwen had to admit that standing outside a building from 6 a.m. to 2.45 p.m. just to get rained on seemed stupider than she anticipated. It was nice to smoke and cry somewhere new but, as far as finding Dibs McCawe alive and well went, it all looked pointless. Gwen thought about all the detective books she’d started to read over the years. How did Inspector Morse, John Rebus have the patience for this? Just when she finally decided to give up and go home for the fifth time, a black cab pulled up outside DeHolt. A man got out and said ‘I’ll be five minutes’ to the cab driver. It was Peter Knox. He was a tall, dark-haired handsome man in his late thirties. Not Johnny Depp handsome but definitely handsome. Like if they needed someone to play Roger Moore in a film about the making of The Wild Geese, they’d get Peter Knox. And there he was. Right in front of Gwen. He entered DeHolt and Gwen knew she had five minutes. Now what?
The only idea she had was to scream ‘He kidnapped Dibs McCawe!’ over and over again as he came out of the building. It was a brilliant idea with just one flaw: it was a rubbish idea. He’d jump in the cab, get to his house and Gwen’s excitement at being a detective would just speed up Dibs’s eventual murder. She was out of her depth, she was relying on evidence her husband mumbled in his sleep and she was panicking. She wasn’t a detective. She wasn’t saving someone’s life. She was nothing.
Knox left the building, got into the cab and it drove off. Gwen turned away and felt useless. She could go to the police, of course. She could tell them that her husband had a dream about how Dibs McCawe would eventually be found. They’d pretend to take her details and they’d swear blind they’d follow the lead up. The poor woman, thought Gwen. She hailed a cab. She just wanted to be home where it was warm and dry and false.
‘Where to, Miss?’ asked the cab driver. Looking through the windscreen, Gwen could see Peter Knox’s car in front of her, driving away with her new dream and all she wanted to say was ‘home’. Then her eyes widened and the most exciting thing that ever happened to Gwen in her entire life just burst out of her mouth, ‘Follow that cab.’
The cab driver put his foot down hard on the accelerator, sending the cab speeding forwards and Gwen flying backwards into her seat. ‘Please,’ she shouted with a thrill. Even when you’re an adventurous detective hunting down a man in a case that could mean life or death, there’s no need for bad manners.
The cabs zigzagged through the frustration of London traffic to the extravagant home of Peter Knox. As his cab pulled into the driveway, Gwen asked her cab driver to stop. She got out, paid the fare and went back to waiting. His cab left and she heard the front door of his house close. It was time to snoop, if that was the correct technical term.
You didn’t need to be a brand new detective to spot that Peter Knox’s house was huge. Gwen crept around the outside, peered through windows, hid behind pillars and sighed at lovely plants; God, his house was flipping gorgeous. If Dibs McCawe really was being held captive here then Gwen hated her for it. The lucky cow. She hunched by a window at the side of the house. There was no one there; just a running machine, a cross-trainer, a Swiss ball . . . Aw, he has a gym in his house. Gwen would love a gym. She’d never use it but no one would ever know that. The room had so many sets of weights. Enough for a Russian weightlifter or Dolph Lundgren in one of the Rockys. But not Peter Knox. He’s just not that big. Not even close.
Near the back of the huge house was another huge building. It looked like a garage but only if your car was a Concorde. The main front doors of the building were locked so Gwen crept along the side and peered through the windows.
Cars. There must have been fifteen of them. All looking beautifully brand new and shiny, even the old ones. Sleek red Ferraris sat next to luxurious Rolls-Royces that sat next to what Gwen could only assume were Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs. If she had cars like these, Gwen thought, no way would she ever take a cab. Although Gwen couldn’t drive so she’d actually have no choice . . . wait a minute; why would a man who can’t drive want to own a series of classic cars? And what cars they were. Gwen looked in through the windows at Jaguars, Maseratis, Dibs McCawe, Aston Martins and shit, shit, shit, shit, shit Dibs McCawe is in there. She’s in there and she’s tied to a chair and she’s gagged and she’s looking at Gwen and she’s trying to scream and Gwen is panicking and Gwen doesn’t want to be there anymore.
This was too easy. Two minutes of snooping and she’d found the missing woman. She called the police and told them she’d found Dibs. After hanging up, Gwen looked in at Dibs and tried to make a face that suggested the police were on their way so just relax. A sort of smile, eyebrows raised, head wobble thing. Then she just stood there in the rain and waited with Dibs. Standing in a beautiful but soaking wet garden while a criminal was probably in his Jacuzzi or his billiard room completely unaware that his evil plot had been foiled really easily.
Less than ten minutes went by and sirens blazed as police cars skidded to a halt outside Peter Knox’s house. Peter burst out of the frankly beautiful doors at the back of his house and ran to the rear of his garden.
‘Excuse me,’ Gwen called to the police. ‘He’s just here if you want him.’
Peter Knox was handcuffed and led to a police car while Dibs McCawe was released and helped to an ambulance. Gwen stood beaming with pride as she was thanked and congratulated by every police officer who passed her. Dete
ctive Inspector Billingham was in charge of the case and just wanted to know how she figured out where Dibs was.
‘Easy,’ she said. ‘You and I both know, Inspector, that Mr and Mrs McCawe weren’t getting on but that’s no reason to get rid of someone, is it? A career man like Mr McCawe doesn’t want to go to jail, does he? So I gambled: why are they not getting on, I thought? Maybe she’s having an affair. With his friend. It does happen. And look at him, he’s addicted to success. He wants to have everything, even if he doesn’t need it. House, cars, Swiss ball. And Mrs McCawe. I’m betting she wanted to call the affair off and he couldn’t handle it. Bit too much like real life for him.’
Billingham was impressed, thanked Gwen for her hard work and made it clear that if she ever tried anything like this again, he’d arrest her on a trumped-up charge of his choosing.
Sadly, Billingham hadn’t a hope of that ever happening. Gwen was a hero. She was interviewed by the BBC, the Guardian, Newsweek and Graham Norton. She was everywhere. And it felt like every week she was solving another case: the Sedgwick murders, the Marchmonte robbery, the idiot embezzling mayor of old London Town. She solved them all. Not just the big crimes, she knew when kids were going to nick from newsagents too. She was given the Citizen of the Year Award from the Prime Minister herself. And she was loved. The nation adored that lovely lady with the incredible powers of deduction and snappy headwear. Gwen was everyone’s hero.