I pull up to the estate in the early hours, the pre-dawn
gloom shrouding my surroundings. It’s a cold winter; cold like Lilian’s heart,
but it seemed to be stretching on just as long as my thoughts about her did. I
shake myself to attention – I could get lost in those kinds of thoughts, just
as far as I could lose myself in her eyes, and there was no ordnance survey map
detailed enough to chart a safe path out of those orchid-blue pools. A second
shake is necessary.
“Dammit Larry get a grip on yourself!” I say. I should take my own advice, but always take care sign it out on the log sheet.
The engine of my car is still running, keeping the heater on my face for a last few seconds before I plunge into the chill of the outside world. I wrap my trench-coat closer around myself as I sit there, keeping myself enclosed as an impenetrable fortress of solitude. If only I’d managed to defend myself so well against Lilian’s charms; her sweet words to a burned-out, broken bum like me. She was made for the grander things in life, the finest champagnes. I’m barely the finest chamois. She was a fine sham, alright.
“Dammit Larry get a grip on yourself!” I say. I should take my own advice, but always take care sign it out on the log sheet.
The engine of my car is still running, keeping the heater on my face for a last few seconds before I plunge into the chill of the outside world. I wrap my trench-coat closer around myself as I sit there, keeping myself enclosed as an impenetrable fortress of solitude. If only I’d managed to defend myself so well against Lilian’s charms; her sweet words to a burned-out, broken bum like me. She was made for the grander things in life, the finest champagnes. I’m barely the finest chamois. She was a fine sham, alright.
I check
my watch; time to go. My mark is supposed to be a couple of streets over but I
don’t want to drive straight up and blow my cover; that’s rookie stuff. Rookie
stuff costs you leads, costs you cases, and sometimes costs your life. Very
occasionally it costs about three fifty for a bus ride back downtown. But I’ve
moved on from those days; I’m Larry Murphy, and due to a spelling mistake by my
sign-maker, I am the world’s finest privet detective.
I
run the details of the case over in my head: it’s a stakeout, plain and simple.
The target is usually in green, above average height, and has a haunting ground
on the corner of First and Last. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that
Lilian’s memory haunted me. What would she say if she could see me now? ‘Let me
in out of this cold, ya big lug’ probably. And then there’d be me, sitting in
the same clapped out automobile I’ve had for years, warming up the same oafish
hands that could never give her what they wanted to. Next to her, at least my
heart would be warm, not like it is now…
“Get it together, Larry.” I tell myself. “You’re on the job. Focus and get your mark.” I finally switch off the engine and get out of the car. As I slam the door shut I see my gloves sitting on the passenger seat, so I open it up again. What a waste – what inefficiency.
“You’ve gotta be slicker than this.” I say as I close the door a second time. This time I lock it to keep it shut and secure – like my mind needs to be, against the memories of golden hair swinging like a dancer’s veil, through the smoky air of a dark bar all those years ago.
The gloves creak as I flex my fingers, like doorway in a horror movie, but with hinges made of bone. Maybe horror movies have that kind of thing these days, I realise. I don’t know any more – I’ve not watched a murder flick since that night in Reno when Lilian bought us popcorn and we sat in the back row laughing. Just the thought of it makes me angrier than the theatre worker who threw us out for pouring cola into the seats when we got bored.
I start walking along Last towards my vantage point, the one I picked out yesterday with the benefit of daylight and having to come by this way anyway to pick up some toothpaste. I’d forgotten it when I was last at the supermarket and I couldn’t risk tooth decay. ‘Dental hygiene is important,’ I think to myself. ‘When did I last go to the dentist?’ I can’t remember. Lilian would have remembered – she had a way of keeping the whole world in order. There was no rushing; no panicking; a wink and a smile and everything fell into place in front of her. She also kept an impeccable Filofax. The way her silky-skinned fingers flipped through the spiral-bound pages – she could just as easily browse through my heart…
“No, Larry. No distractions, no Lilian, no dentistry. You’re on a case now.” I order myself, trying to push the dark, fluorinated thoughts away. I pull my collar up around my ears and my hat down farther onto my head, to stop the wind biting and clawing at me. There’s no vet around to de-claw this vicious beast, so I have to weather to storm and push on with the job. The wet pavement reflects the streetlights back up at me, and the shadow I cast drifts silently alongside me; it blocks out the light and leaves a dull imitation in its place, just like I did with Lilian. No-one could ever hope to outshine her, but I somehow managed to dim her down – like sunglasses on a chandelier. I was about as much use as that to her as well…
I arrive at the first corner of Last, Last and Second, and stop by the kerb. There’s no traffic around, but I press the crossing button and wait patiently anyway. In this line of work, you get used to exercising patience, or you fail. Sometimes you do both – they’re what we call bad days. I tell myself that today won’t be a bad one, that I’ll get this job done and then put my life back on track, but I’ve never been a great liar. A worse lyre, to be sure.
The seconds pass by and I thrust my hands into my pockets, waiting for the green man to grant me safe passage. He and I have an understanding – I wait for his say so before stepping into the road, and he has his people hold the traffic for me. He’s one of my most reliable and far-reaching contacts, but it’s always a messy business when he’s involved. A loose cannon, that green man – I’ve seen him stopping the traffic for no-one at all, and I’m sharp enough to read between the lines. He’s making an example of the influence he wields, showing the poor shmucks in their cars who holds the real power in this town. I tell myself for the hundredth time ‘Stay on his good side, Larry. Wait for his say so. He’ll sort you out’ but it’s hard to forget his treachery on the way here. Twice he stopped me. Twice. Dirty double-crossers don’t last long in this town, but I guess he has the clout to pull it off.
Thankfully, green man shows up and lets me cross. I nod to him and make my way across swiftly. He doesn’t ask about Lilian – I guess it’s just that plain from my face that she’s not in the equation any longer. I wonder for a moment if he’ll use it against me one day, but there’s nothing I can do about it now; I still need him, so I go on my way. Lilian always told me I needed to cool down and play things a little easier; exercise more control and keep my temper. This one was for her.
The next street flanks me with bungalows, like silent crowds on either side of a detective procession. They’re all quiet; they’re all dark; they’re all calm. This was my time to stalk and get my mark without interference. ‘Bungalows don’t usually interfere, though’ I remind myself. That was one of Lilian’s first and greatest lessons to me – her wisdom was always a gift far beyond comprehension for a bum like me. It was like giving a dress suit to a hermit crab – a grand act of charity, but woefully under-utilised.
Formal attire for nomadic crustaceans aside, the bungalows remind me that it’s important to remember who’s never done you wrong, just as much as who your enemies are. ‘The people inside, though; they can be the major players in a very different story.’ I warn myself.
I check my collar again, to make sure that I’m hidden from bungalow peepers as well as the cold night air. I’m half way down the street now and approaching my vantage point, ready for my task to begin in earnest. I have it all planned out – arrive at the corner, obscure myself behind the post box, and gain as much intelligence as I can about the mark before moving on. The best laid plans can fail though, just like the plans Lilian and I had for our future together. Now it’s a future apart, and I never made a contingency for that. There’s no pension for love, despite my significant investments of affection. I’d thought she was a sure winner, but our futures market crashed and now I’m out of options.
I keep walking; keep moving; keep going with the case. Suddenly, ahead of me, I see a tall shape through the dim night on the street corner – Lilian! I start to run, barely believing my eyes. I can see her black boots; I can make out her white fur hat and her pillar-box red jacket, her strong post box like physique… and that’s when I realise it’s not Lilian at all. It’s just a white cat sitting on a post box – again!
“You’ve gotta stop doing this to yourself, Larry. Get your head in gear or get out of the game.” I say, cursing Royal Mail for making a fool of me. The cat leaps off and runs – even he thinks I should be alone.
Pushing my torment aside, I position myself behind the post box and begin the stake out. I look across the street and straight away I see my mark – running the length of the corner plot it stands there, square-cut and defiant. I take out the Polaroid I was given with the job and make a comparison – that’s definitely my mark, but something feels off. I can’t put my finger on it right away – it’s just a gut instinct that everything isn’t as it seems. He’s got company too; to the left of him are two others of smaller build. Some kind of crew? Perhaps. Henchmen? Probably not, they’d be flanking him defensively. No, they weren’t on their guard, so I don’t think I’ve been spotted. Like a nocturnal toilet patron, however, I’d need to conduct my business in silence.
For a few minutes, no-one moves. Me, leaning with my hand partially in the letter-slot. The mark standing on the corner, stock-still. His accomplices loitering like dull statues in the dark of the early morning. Everything is calm, and I wait patiently. Then, after a flash of amber, my signal comes – the green man has done his part and secured me access across the road, but I’m lit up like a Christmas tree on the fourth of July. Quickly, I scurry across the road, trying to remain as quiet as I can. It’s tense, but I get to the other side and nothing has changed – I made it through.
I sneak closer to the mark and that’s when I notice it, I realise what it is that felt so wrong about this case. Damn it, this was sloppy, I should have twigged sooner! This wasn’t some two-bit job from a tawdry housewife – it was a set-up. The mark isn’t privet at all; I’ve been duped, and now I’m standing in arm’s reach of a bona fide creeping juniper. Oh, Lilian, what have I done? What have I let myself get into without you? I’ve tried to be strong without you, tried to get by and push you out of my mind. Maybe this is just my place in the world, to be a clapped-out, burned-up fool. To be manipulated by the great wheels of progress. I’m sorry, doll. I’m sorry.
I turn around quietly, trying to make an expeditious retreat to my car, when I see the final betrayal – it’s red man!
“Who told him I’d be here? Who knew enough to trap me once the ruse was revealed” I ask myself. There’s only one answer – green man, the dirty rat! He sold me out. Unless this was bigger than him and me, bigger than all of us, bigger even than a moose on a hillock. Someone high up was pulling the strings here, and they got to him; got to green man.
I don’t know enough right now, but I vow to myself that I’ll find out what’s going on here. For Lilian. For some reason.
Trapped like a fish in a trap designed to catch fish, I have no way to go but towards the mark or along the street in the opposite direction. If I went that way, though, I might be spotted – the streetlights were bright. Even if I made it, my car wasn’t over there, and I could find myself suckered into a many-yard walk around a longer route. It wasn’t worth it – the only person I’d walk around the world for was Lilian, and I’d walk a hell of a lot farther than that, to boot. Besides, I’m this far in now, and the only way I’ll be able to find out who’s calling the shots on this dirty job is to head in further. I have to finish the stakeout to get the first piece of the puzzle.
I take a deep breath, crouch low, and sneak towards the juniper. It’s taller than me by a clear foot, thick-set, and clearly in good shape. I suspect topiary abuse, and steel myself for unpredictable shapes and pleasing forms. Still moving forwards, I’m practically underneath its foliage and I can see the thorns – thin dark silhouettes in the blackness. They’re like wooden hat pins, yearning and leaning in to make a perforated fedora of me. My own trilby could be in danger, but there’s no turning back now.
I spot something next to the trunk. It’s a rectangular spire of wood sticking out of the ground – the stake! I reach one hand out, towards the stake, and feel its cold splintery surface as I prepare to finish the job. My grip tightens, and I take a deep breath. I inhale a mouthful of bark fragments and lichen as I go, so I cough, splutter, spit, and then take a shallower but longer breath instead. Lilian always used to leave me short of breath too… but rarely gave me a mouthful of plant detritus. Times really have changed.
I run my hand up and down the length of the stake, feeling for connections, just like with any other case. Sometimes you luck out and find what you want, others you end up with nothing but splinters. This time, it seems, I’m OK. There’s a single loop of twine, old as I am and stretched just as thin, securing the trunk to the wooden post. I take my pocket knife out of my pocket and lean the second arm in, adjusting my balance to avoid a faceful of thorny regret. If I went over I’d be cut up for sure, but not even slightly as cut up as I am over Lilian.
I feel for the twine again and cut through it easily with the knife, letting the bindings flop uselessly around the trunk – an ageing scarf for a juniper with no fear of the cold. With both hands I grip the stake, lean back, and begin to push off the ground with my feet. This is it, I’m fully committed to the stakeout, just like I was fully committed to Lilian. I can only hope that the stake is more committed to me than she was. Its commitment to the ground is poor, that much is obvious as it comes sliding out through the dampened earth. I stagger backwards, catching my hat on the thorns and landing on my bottom. My buttocks do an admirable job of dampening the impact, but I feel it all the same. If only I’d had emotional buttocks to stave off the hammer-blow that Lilian dealt me.
I snatch my hat back up from the ground where the juniper deposited it, and I push it firmly back onto my head. With a wary glance towards its silent associates, I slip back away with a feeling of success – the stakeout is completed, and I’ve taken the first step in a new investigation. This could be the start of a new chapter in my life; as if a new beginning in my work could hold a candle to the world-shattering change of Lilian. I can almost hear her laughter at the idea; a heavenly chord ringing across sun-kissed meadows of gold, all in mockery of the sad plebeian trying to scratch away his existence in the abysmal plane of her absence.
There’s no time to waste, and I know it all too well. Under normal circumstances I’d head back to the car, take my evidence back to the office, and lay out everything I know - trying to put the pieces together. This time I need to stay on the ball and keep my momentum going, lest a slow puncture bring me steadily down to the ground. Lilian always had a puncture repair kit, but now there’s no-one to mend the hole in my oaf’s heart.
“Snap out of it, Larry, and get moving.” I tell myself.
I got the job from a woman named Williams yesterday morning. Eliza was her first name, if I recall. Even if I don’t, she’s still named Eliza. No-one’s name is dependent on my memory, but Lilian’s is irrevocably etched into it – like a prayer carved into a rain-slickened rock. Eliza came to my office as if it was a normal job - all concerned expressions, pleas for help, and spurious details. I thought she was distressed, as everyone who comes to me tends to be, but maybe she was just a damn fine actress.
Eliza lives nearby, on the corner of Last and Shopping. I have to go back to her to collect my fee anyway, so I decide to pay her a visit now. The walk isn’t long – Shopping is the next street over – so I move slowly and give myself time to prepare. I can’t go in too hard with this one; if she was behind the double-cross then I’d need to gather evidence, otherwise I’d have nothing to go on and she could claim innocence. Besides, Lilian always told me to be gentler with people, to treat them with more compassion and not view them as sources of cold hard cash; as cold and hard as I’ve become without her. Still, it was true that she may have been acting out of desperation, at this stage I can’t tell. Like a determined proctologist, I’d get to the bottom one way or another.
I arrive at the address she gave me – 163 Shopping Boulevard. It’s an end terrace with a short flight of steps leading to a blue door. Round handle, Yale lock above it, and no peephole. She’d have to open the door to me, even if she wasn’t expecting me to make it out of the juniper trap. Any crack in the door would be far more than Lilian ever opened up to me, but even so, all the juniper in the world wouldn’t have kept me away.
I put the stake down and knock on the door with my left hand, keeping the right ready to defend myself if necessary. I‘m tense, on guard, ready to react to whatever Eliza Williams wants to throw my way. There’s no answer for five seconds, then ten, then fifteen – that’s the order in which those numbers arrive. I knock again, then notice the doorbell. I give it a short ring, though I would have given Lilian a ring of whatever length she chose, encrusted with diamonds enough to put the sparkling ocean surface to shame. A few more seconds pass and there’s still nothing.
‘Eliza is playing hard-to-get; I need to play hard-to-ignore.’ I think to myself, and unleash a torrential rainstorm of knocking on the door, leaning my head into the doorbell to hold it in for a perpetual hell-scream of ringing. My right hand is still free to defend me, but the jaunty angle of my head skews my perceptions, heightening my need react with severity and swiftness if something does go wrong. My calamitous cacophony carries on for around twenty seconds before Eliza shows her face at the door. She lashes a hand out towards my face and I catch her wrist in my free hand – my head remains firmly on the doorbell.
Eliza shouts something at me, but I can’t make it out because of the ringing. She tries to snatch her wrist out of my grip but I hold strong; I can’t afford to trust her yet, especially after such a violent reaction. The force of her yanking does, however, pull me forwards so that I’m no longer ringing the bell, and silence descends on our pre-dawn confrontation in the cold night air. I notice that Eliza is wearing only her nightclothes – somehow sleeping soundly despite sending me into that nest of thorns. She was either some piece of work, or an unwitting victim like myself – duped and played by some sinister shadow organisation. I should be used to it – Lilian played me like a fiddle, then left me to swell and rot in the meltwater of a long and unforgiving winter.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts at me, presumably angry that I tried so hard to get her attention. Clearly she underestimated my determination, as either a privet detective or a victim for her juniper trappings.
“Getting your attention.” I tell her. “This is for you.” I hand her the stake from underneath the juniper, evidence of a job well done and a trap poorly sprung.
“What? Why did you bring it to me now? What’s wrong with you? It’s the middle of the night!” Eliza is clearly agitated by something. Not quite jumpy, but far from the picture of calm she was when giving me the job. A sign of guilt, like the writhing of a con under interrogation? Maybe.
“I told you yesterday, I’d see you in the morning when the job was done. You’re surprised to see me, it seems.” I cunningly observe, goading her into admitting that I shouldn’t have made it out.
“Of course I am you numbskull! It’s 4am! Who comes around to drop off a bloody garden stake at 4am?”
She has me there – even in this part of town it’s unorthodox to exchange gardening supplies before dawn. But this is a game of hedgerow hegemony – my domain.
“I do. You hired Larry Murphy – best of the best. I play by my rules and I get results. Just ask your friend the juniper. You left out that neat little detail when you hired a privet detective. What’s your game here, who are you working for?” I ask her, laying the accusation of skulduggery down, amidst a self-aggrandising cloud of hyperbole and failure not to play this one hardball.
“What difference does the type of hedge make? And I’m not working for anyone! I asked you to sort the stake out, not leap into the hedge and wake up the whole street, you maniac. If I hired the best then I won’t be making that mistake again.” She says, and attempts to close the door in my face. A mistake indeed – no-one pulls the juniper over my eyes. This attempt to shut me out was another double-cross, and a sloppy mistake. She hasn’t offered me my fee yet, as if she never had any intention of paying me at all. Her defences are starting to crumble and I’m putting pressure on in all the right places.
“I think you’re forgetting my payment, miss.” I point out, holding the door open. Eliza looks at me like I’m a bad smell on a satin sheet.
“You can have your money later on, when any reasonable human would expect to be discussing a job with a gardener. I’ll drop it off at your office or something. Goodbye.” She evades, her tone belying that she wished me anything but ‘good’ in our departure. I ready myself to escalate the engagement, but then I remember Lilian’s words, drifting through my mind like a flock of doves across a summer sunset. ‘Be patient, Larry. Trust people once in a while and your world might not have to be so dark anymore.’ Oh Lilian, you know me better than I know myself, you were better than I am myself, and you were probably better than I know. But I can’t trust Eliza, not with everything that’s happened tonight. Even you can understand that, surely?
“Miss Williams” I say “I’ve held up my end of our agreement. I’m afraid I have to insist that you prove your word’s worth more than old twine on a wooden stake.” I worry that my wordplay is being too heavily influenced by tonight’s events, but don’t bring her attention to it. I need to keep as much power in my hands as possible.
“Oh, fine! Stay here.” She orders, frustrated at the defeat of her delayed payment play. She disappears into the house, then re-emerges a few moments later with her handbag. I notice that it’s the same blue bag she was wearing yesterday. Running the details through my mind, I realise that this is of no relevance to anything. Another clue? No. That’d be reading too far into it. Lilian always told me not to drill so far into things – my cases, her words, the cellar floor with the water pipes below it; I got myself too far into her hypnotic influence, and just like my cellar, the icy waters rose up to engulf me.
Eliza counts out my fee - £20 – and thrusts it roughly towards me without a word.
“Thank you.” I say, taking it from her like a goat taking food pellets from a child at a petting zoo. Which is to say, with my mouth. Both hands have to remain free for self-defence of this wily backstabber.
Eliza snatches her hand back then slams the door in my face, and I hear her stamping back up the stairs – probably heading back to bed. Yet again, I find myself standing outside alone in the cold darkness. The sunbeam of Lilian is nowhere to be seen, and all that’s left is for me to go back to my car and get some rest before heading to the office. Still, it’s another successful case. The insidious Eliza Williams failed to despatch me with her juniper gambit, and I even got a fee for the pleasure of escaping the trap.
“You’d be proud of me Lilian, I did it. I solved the juniper case. How, you ask? Well, I’m Larry Murphy - the best damn privet detective in the world”
“Get it together, Larry.” I tell myself. “You’re on the job. Focus and get your mark.” I finally switch off the engine and get out of the car. As I slam the door shut I see my gloves sitting on the passenger seat, so I open it up again. What a waste – what inefficiency.
“You’ve gotta be slicker than this.” I say as I close the door a second time. This time I lock it to keep it shut and secure – like my mind needs to be, against the memories of golden hair swinging like a dancer’s veil, through the smoky air of a dark bar all those years ago.
The gloves creak as I flex my fingers, like doorway in a horror movie, but with hinges made of bone. Maybe horror movies have that kind of thing these days, I realise. I don’t know any more – I’ve not watched a murder flick since that night in Reno when Lilian bought us popcorn and we sat in the back row laughing. Just the thought of it makes me angrier than the theatre worker who threw us out for pouring cola into the seats when we got bored.
I start walking along Last towards my vantage point, the one I picked out yesterday with the benefit of daylight and having to come by this way anyway to pick up some toothpaste. I’d forgotten it when I was last at the supermarket and I couldn’t risk tooth decay. ‘Dental hygiene is important,’ I think to myself. ‘When did I last go to the dentist?’ I can’t remember. Lilian would have remembered – she had a way of keeping the whole world in order. There was no rushing; no panicking; a wink and a smile and everything fell into place in front of her. She also kept an impeccable Filofax. The way her silky-skinned fingers flipped through the spiral-bound pages – she could just as easily browse through my heart…
“No, Larry. No distractions, no Lilian, no dentistry. You’re on a case now.” I order myself, trying to push the dark, fluorinated thoughts away. I pull my collar up around my ears and my hat down farther onto my head, to stop the wind biting and clawing at me. There’s no vet around to de-claw this vicious beast, so I have to weather to storm and push on with the job. The wet pavement reflects the streetlights back up at me, and the shadow I cast drifts silently alongside me; it blocks out the light and leaves a dull imitation in its place, just like I did with Lilian. No-one could ever hope to outshine her, but I somehow managed to dim her down – like sunglasses on a chandelier. I was about as much use as that to her as well…
I arrive at the first corner of Last, Last and Second, and stop by the kerb. There’s no traffic around, but I press the crossing button and wait patiently anyway. In this line of work, you get used to exercising patience, or you fail. Sometimes you do both – they’re what we call bad days. I tell myself that today won’t be a bad one, that I’ll get this job done and then put my life back on track, but I’ve never been a great liar. A worse lyre, to be sure.
The seconds pass by and I thrust my hands into my pockets, waiting for the green man to grant me safe passage. He and I have an understanding – I wait for his say so before stepping into the road, and he has his people hold the traffic for me. He’s one of my most reliable and far-reaching contacts, but it’s always a messy business when he’s involved. A loose cannon, that green man – I’ve seen him stopping the traffic for no-one at all, and I’m sharp enough to read between the lines. He’s making an example of the influence he wields, showing the poor shmucks in their cars who holds the real power in this town. I tell myself for the hundredth time ‘Stay on his good side, Larry. Wait for his say so. He’ll sort you out’ but it’s hard to forget his treachery on the way here. Twice he stopped me. Twice. Dirty double-crossers don’t last long in this town, but I guess he has the clout to pull it off.
Thankfully, green man shows up and lets me cross. I nod to him and make my way across swiftly. He doesn’t ask about Lilian – I guess it’s just that plain from my face that she’s not in the equation any longer. I wonder for a moment if he’ll use it against me one day, but there’s nothing I can do about it now; I still need him, so I go on my way. Lilian always told me I needed to cool down and play things a little easier; exercise more control and keep my temper. This one was for her.
The next street flanks me with bungalows, like silent crowds on either side of a detective procession. They’re all quiet; they’re all dark; they’re all calm. This was my time to stalk and get my mark without interference. ‘Bungalows don’t usually interfere, though’ I remind myself. That was one of Lilian’s first and greatest lessons to me – her wisdom was always a gift far beyond comprehension for a bum like me. It was like giving a dress suit to a hermit crab – a grand act of charity, but woefully under-utilised.
Formal attire for nomadic crustaceans aside, the bungalows remind me that it’s important to remember who’s never done you wrong, just as much as who your enemies are. ‘The people inside, though; they can be the major players in a very different story.’ I warn myself.
I check my collar again, to make sure that I’m hidden from bungalow peepers as well as the cold night air. I’m half way down the street now and approaching my vantage point, ready for my task to begin in earnest. I have it all planned out – arrive at the corner, obscure myself behind the post box, and gain as much intelligence as I can about the mark before moving on. The best laid plans can fail though, just like the plans Lilian and I had for our future together. Now it’s a future apart, and I never made a contingency for that. There’s no pension for love, despite my significant investments of affection. I’d thought she was a sure winner, but our futures market crashed and now I’m out of options.
I keep walking; keep moving; keep going with the case. Suddenly, ahead of me, I see a tall shape through the dim night on the street corner – Lilian! I start to run, barely believing my eyes. I can see her black boots; I can make out her white fur hat and her pillar-box red jacket, her strong post box like physique… and that’s when I realise it’s not Lilian at all. It’s just a white cat sitting on a post box – again!
“You’ve gotta stop doing this to yourself, Larry. Get your head in gear or get out of the game.” I say, cursing Royal Mail for making a fool of me. The cat leaps off and runs – even he thinks I should be alone.
Pushing my torment aside, I position myself behind the post box and begin the stake out. I look across the street and straight away I see my mark – running the length of the corner plot it stands there, square-cut and defiant. I take out the Polaroid I was given with the job and make a comparison – that’s definitely my mark, but something feels off. I can’t put my finger on it right away – it’s just a gut instinct that everything isn’t as it seems. He’s got company too; to the left of him are two others of smaller build. Some kind of crew? Perhaps. Henchmen? Probably not, they’d be flanking him defensively. No, they weren’t on their guard, so I don’t think I’ve been spotted. Like a nocturnal toilet patron, however, I’d need to conduct my business in silence.
For a few minutes, no-one moves. Me, leaning with my hand partially in the letter-slot. The mark standing on the corner, stock-still. His accomplices loitering like dull statues in the dark of the early morning. Everything is calm, and I wait patiently. Then, after a flash of amber, my signal comes – the green man has done his part and secured me access across the road, but I’m lit up like a Christmas tree on the fourth of July. Quickly, I scurry across the road, trying to remain as quiet as I can. It’s tense, but I get to the other side and nothing has changed – I made it through.
I sneak closer to the mark and that’s when I notice it, I realise what it is that felt so wrong about this case. Damn it, this was sloppy, I should have twigged sooner! This wasn’t some two-bit job from a tawdry housewife – it was a set-up. The mark isn’t privet at all; I’ve been duped, and now I’m standing in arm’s reach of a bona fide creeping juniper. Oh, Lilian, what have I done? What have I let myself get into without you? I’ve tried to be strong without you, tried to get by and push you out of my mind. Maybe this is just my place in the world, to be a clapped-out, burned-up fool. To be manipulated by the great wheels of progress. I’m sorry, doll. I’m sorry.
I turn around quietly, trying to make an expeditious retreat to my car, when I see the final betrayal – it’s red man!
“Who told him I’d be here? Who knew enough to trap me once the ruse was revealed” I ask myself. There’s only one answer – green man, the dirty rat! He sold me out. Unless this was bigger than him and me, bigger than all of us, bigger even than a moose on a hillock. Someone high up was pulling the strings here, and they got to him; got to green man.
I don’t know enough right now, but I vow to myself that I’ll find out what’s going on here. For Lilian. For some reason.
Trapped like a fish in a trap designed to catch fish, I have no way to go but towards the mark or along the street in the opposite direction. If I went that way, though, I might be spotted – the streetlights were bright. Even if I made it, my car wasn’t over there, and I could find myself suckered into a many-yard walk around a longer route. It wasn’t worth it – the only person I’d walk around the world for was Lilian, and I’d walk a hell of a lot farther than that, to boot. Besides, I’m this far in now, and the only way I’ll be able to find out who’s calling the shots on this dirty job is to head in further. I have to finish the stakeout to get the first piece of the puzzle.
I take a deep breath, crouch low, and sneak towards the juniper. It’s taller than me by a clear foot, thick-set, and clearly in good shape. I suspect topiary abuse, and steel myself for unpredictable shapes and pleasing forms. Still moving forwards, I’m practically underneath its foliage and I can see the thorns – thin dark silhouettes in the blackness. They’re like wooden hat pins, yearning and leaning in to make a perforated fedora of me. My own trilby could be in danger, but there’s no turning back now.
I spot something next to the trunk. It’s a rectangular spire of wood sticking out of the ground – the stake! I reach one hand out, towards the stake, and feel its cold splintery surface as I prepare to finish the job. My grip tightens, and I take a deep breath. I inhale a mouthful of bark fragments and lichen as I go, so I cough, splutter, spit, and then take a shallower but longer breath instead. Lilian always used to leave me short of breath too… but rarely gave me a mouthful of plant detritus. Times really have changed.
I run my hand up and down the length of the stake, feeling for connections, just like with any other case. Sometimes you luck out and find what you want, others you end up with nothing but splinters. This time, it seems, I’m OK. There’s a single loop of twine, old as I am and stretched just as thin, securing the trunk to the wooden post. I take my pocket knife out of my pocket and lean the second arm in, adjusting my balance to avoid a faceful of thorny regret. If I went over I’d be cut up for sure, but not even slightly as cut up as I am over Lilian.
I feel for the twine again and cut through it easily with the knife, letting the bindings flop uselessly around the trunk – an ageing scarf for a juniper with no fear of the cold. With both hands I grip the stake, lean back, and begin to push off the ground with my feet. This is it, I’m fully committed to the stakeout, just like I was fully committed to Lilian. I can only hope that the stake is more committed to me than she was. Its commitment to the ground is poor, that much is obvious as it comes sliding out through the dampened earth. I stagger backwards, catching my hat on the thorns and landing on my bottom. My buttocks do an admirable job of dampening the impact, but I feel it all the same. If only I’d had emotional buttocks to stave off the hammer-blow that Lilian dealt me.
I snatch my hat back up from the ground where the juniper deposited it, and I push it firmly back onto my head. With a wary glance towards its silent associates, I slip back away with a feeling of success – the stakeout is completed, and I’ve taken the first step in a new investigation. This could be the start of a new chapter in my life; as if a new beginning in my work could hold a candle to the world-shattering change of Lilian. I can almost hear her laughter at the idea; a heavenly chord ringing across sun-kissed meadows of gold, all in mockery of the sad plebeian trying to scratch away his existence in the abysmal plane of her absence.
There’s no time to waste, and I know it all too well. Under normal circumstances I’d head back to the car, take my evidence back to the office, and lay out everything I know - trying to put the pieces together. This time I need to stay on the ball and keep my momentum going, lest a slow puncture bring me steadily down to the ground. Lilian always had a puncture repair kit, but now there’s no-one to mend the hole in my oaf’s heart.
“Snap out of it, Larry, and get moving.” I tell myself.
I got the job from a woman named Williams yesterday morning. Eliza was her first name, if I recall. Even if I don’t, she’s still named Eliza. No-one’s name is dependent on my memory, but Lilian’s is irrevocably etched into it – like a prayer carved into a rain-slickened rock. Eliza came to my office as if it was a normal job - all concerned expressions, pleas for help, and spurious details. I thought she was distressed, as everyone who comes to me tends to be, but maybe she was just a damn fine actress.
Eliza lives nearby, on the corner of Last and Shopping. I have to go back to her to collect my fee anyway, so I decide to pay her a visit now. The walk isn’t long – Shopping is the next street over – so I move slowly and give myself time to prepare. I can’t go in too hard with this one; if she was behind the double-cross then I’d need to gather evidence, otherwise I’d have nothing to go on and she could claim innocence. Besides, Lilian always told me to be gentler with people, to treat them with more compassion and not view them as sources of cold hard cash; as cold and hard as I’ve become without her. Still, it was true that she may have been acting out of desperation, at this stage I can’t tell. Like a determined proctologist, I’d get to the bottom one way or another.
I arrive at the address she gave me – 163 Shopping Boulevard. It’s an end terrace with a short flight of steps leading to a blue door. Round handle, Yale lock above it, and no peephole. She’d have to open the door to me, even if she wasn’t expecting me to make it out of the juniper trap. Any crack in the door would be far more than Lilian ever opened up to me, but even so, all the juniper in the world wouldn’t have kept me away.
I put the stake down and knock on the door with my left hand, keeping the right ready to defend myself if necessary. I‘m tense, on guard, ready to react to whatever Eliza Williams wants to throw my way. There’s no answer for five seconds, then ten, then fifteen – that’s the order in which those numbers arrive. I knock again, then notice the doorbell. I give it a short ring, though I would have given Lilian a ring of whatever length she chose, encrusted with diamonds enough to put the sparkling ocean surface to shame. A few more seconds pass and there’s still nothing.
‘Eliza is playing hard-to-get; I need to play hard-to-ignore.’ I think to myself, and unleash a torrential rainstorm of knocking on the door, leaning my head into the doorbell to hold it in for a perpetual hell-scream of ringing. My right hand is still free to defend me, but the jaunty angle of my head skews my perceptions, heightening my need react with severity and swiftness if something does go wrong. My calamitous cacophony carries on for around twenty seconds before Eliza shows her face at the door. She lashes a hand out towards my face and I catch her wrist in my free hand – my head remains firmly on the doorbell.
Eliza shouts something at me, but I can’t make it out because of the ringing. She tries to snatch her wrist out of my grip but I hold strong; I can’t afford to trust her yet, especially after such a violent reaction. The force of her yanking does, however, pull me forwards so that I’m no longer ringing the bell, and silence descends on our pre-dawn confrontation in the cold night air. I notice that Eliza is wearing only her nightclothes – somehow sleeping soundly despite sending me into that nest of thorns. She was either some piece of work, or an unwitting victim like myself – duped and played by some sinister shadow organisation. I should be used to it – Lilian played me like a fiddle, then left me to swell and rot in the meltwater of a long and unforgiving winter.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts at me, presumably angry that I tried so hard to get her attention. Clearly she underestimated my determination, as either a privet detective or a victim for her juniper trappings.
“Getting your attention.” I tell her. “This is for you.” I hand her the stake from underneath the juniper, evidence of a job well done and a trap poorly sprung.
“What? Why did you bring it to me now? What’s wrong with you? It’s the middle of the night!” Eliza is clearly agitated by something. Not quite jumpy, but far from the picture of calm she was when giving me the job. A sign of guilt, like the writhing of a con under interrogation? Maybe.
“I told you yesterday, I’d see you in the morning when the job was done. You’re surprised to see me, it seems.” I cunningly observe, goading her into admitting that I shouldn’t have made it out.
“Of course I am you numbskull! It’s 4am! Who comes around to drop off a bloody garden stake at 4am?”
She has me there – even in this part of town it’s unorthodox to exchange gardening supplies before dawn. But this is a game of hedgerow hegemony – my domain.
“I do. You hired Larry Murphy – best of the best. I play by my rules and I get results. Just ask your friend the juniper. You left out that neat little detail when you hired a privet detective. What’s your game here, who are you working for?” I ask her, laying the accusation of skulduggery down, amidst a self-aggrandising cloud of hyperbole and failure not to play this one hardball.
“What difference does the type of hedge make? And I’m not working for anyone! I asked you to sort the stake out, not leap into the hedge and wake up the whole street, you maniac. If I hired the best then I won’t be making that mistake again.” She says, and attempts to close the door in my face. A mistake indeed – no-one pulls the juniper over my eyes. This attempt to shut me out was another double-cross, and a sloppy mistake. She hasn’t offered me my fee yet, as if she never had any intention of paying me at all. Her defences are starting to crumble and I’m putting pressure on in all the right places.
“I think you’re forgetting my payment, miss.” I point out, holding the door open. Eliza looks at me like I’m a bad smell on a satin sheet.
“You can have your money later on, when any reasonable human would expect to be discussing a job with a gardener. I’ll drop it off at your office or something. Goodbye.” She evades, her tone belying that she wished me anything but ‘good’ in our departure. I ready myself to escalate the engagement, but then I remember Lilian’s words, drifting through my mind like a flock of doves across a summer sunset. ‘Be patient, Larry. Trust people once in a while and your world might not have to be so dark anymore.’ Oh Lilian, you know me better than I know myself, you were better than I am myself, and you were probably better than I know. But I can’t trust Eliza, not with everything that’s happened tonight. Even you can understand that, surely?
“Miss Williams” I say “I’ve held up my end of our agreement. I’m afraid I have to insist that you prove your word’s worth more than old twine on a wooden stake.” I worry that my wordplay is being too heavily influenced by tonight’s events, but don’t bring her attention to it. I need to keep as much power in my hands as possible.
“Oh, fine! Stay here.” She orders, frustrated at the defeat of her delayed payment play. She disappears into the house, then re-emerges a few moments later with her handbag. I notice that it’s the same blue bag she was wearing yesterday. Running the details through my mind, I realise that this is of no relevance to anything. Another clue? No. That’d be reading too far into it. Lilian always told me not to drill so far into things – my cases, her words, the cellar floor with the water pipes below it; I got myself too far into her hypnotic influence, and just like my cellar, the icy waters rose up to engulf me.
Eliza counts out my fee - £20 – and thrusts it roughly towards me without a word.
“Thank you.” I say, taking it from her like a goat taking food pellets from a child at a petting zoo. Which is to say, with my mouth. Both hands have to remain free for self-defence of this wily backstabber.
Eliza snatches her hand back then slams the door in my face, and I hear her stamping back up the stairs – probably heading back to bed. Yet again, I find myself standing outside alone in the cold darkness. The sunbeam of Lilian is nowhere to be seen, and all that’s left is for me to go back to my car and get some rest before heading to the office. Still, it’s another successful case. The insidious Eliza Williams failed to despatch me with her juniper gambit, and I even got a fee for the pleasure of escaping the trap.
“You’d be proud of me Lilian, I did it. I solved the juniper case. How, you ask? Well, I’m Larry Murphy - the best damn privet detective in the world”
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