Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 1

He would feel like killing himself again today.

Life had lost its meaning. In a fit of unaccustomed rage, Silas picked up his clock and threw it at the wall. He didn’t understand what was happening to him, and a temper like this didn’t fit his personality.

So what did?

He’d forgotten. The echoes of a violent dream swam around his head as he sat up in bed drenched in sweat.

Detective Chief Inspector Silas Nash was bored out of his mind. He didn’t see the point of getting out of bed—but he did because that’s what he’d done for almost half a century.

Five thirty. Get up, pee, and let the cat out.

Five forty. He would take his pyjamas off, fold and put them under his pillow. Shiver summer or winter, and shuffle into the ensuite shower.

And so his day progressed up to seven-thirty in the morning when he used to leave for work. Now he didn’t, but the routine was still the same. Sometimes he’d go wild and put the coffee pot on instead of the kettle.

He’d never been a drinker, but since his retirement, he’d taken to having a glass of red wine in the evenings and twice a week, he had two. Monday to Friday, a single glass sat alongside his dinner—something on toast or a TV dinner.

At the weekend, Nash would stare at his whiteboard and have his second glass of wine in his office with cheese and biscuits for supper. It was an established routine: four crackers and a wedge of cheese. Nash was a man of structure and habit.

At seven, after eating and washing his plate and cutlery, he’d watch two episodes of a police drama. There was plenty of them—and if all else failed, there were the really boring ones, Broadchurch, Midsomer and Poirot. He looked forward to his weekends, especially if he was seeing Sandy, but more often than not, he was on his own these days, and this was what separated Friday and Saturday from the rest of the week.

Nash was terrified of losing his mind. Even if dementia didn’t get him, as so often happened to people during retirement, he couldn’t lose what he called his blade—the part of his brain with the razor-sharp edge. In the afternoons, he would do The Times crossword and watch general knowledge quizzes to keep his mind as strong as his body. However, that didn’t sharpen the blade. Only detective work could do that.

He'd stop the show near the end when the story had developed, but no resolution had been reached. He’d take his supper into the office and get to work. This was where the programme came to life for Nash. At the centre of his whiteboard, he’d write the victim’s name. Using spider graph lines, he’d add details about the victim. Gender and age first. Then their personality and character. Were they kind or unkind? He’d add more branches with the suspect’s names and smaller twigs for each one’s details. And then he came to the motive. What was the motive behind every suspect? Who had the most to gain? The final branch of the tree contained the clues. What had been dropped into the show in conversation? What was hidden in drawers?

Nash would methodically work through the TV programme to solve the crime. Using his skill as a former detective, he’d work out the perpetrator, murder weapon and motive. Most of the time, there was no challenge. The TV show was light entertainment and had to be dumbed down to cater to the masses. But with his career gone, it was all he had left.

Woman. Fifty-two. Suspects: spouse, colleague, jealous sister, and neighbour. The motive in order of suspects: Spouse—money. Colleague—after her job. Sister—money and infatuation with the spouse. They could be in it together. Neighbour—ownership of the property-line boundary. He added a branch, took it through all of his notes to the corner of the board, and wrote Where does the son come into it? He added the missing clues that had been drip-fed into the show.

This one was too easy. Her son got married. The mother made a comment about the flowers by the marital bed being toxic at night and warned the son to take them out before they went to sleep. They were indeed dangerous because Nash picked up on the fact that, as far as the son knew, the victim had never seen the bedroom part of their bridal suite. Conclusion: the son murdered his mother in a jealous rage after she slept with his new husband on their wedding day. Too predictable.

Once he’d determined the outcome, he watched the final episode and was right. Always right.

This morning he’d thrown his clock at the wall, but that’s all that set it apart from any other morning. Ensuite bathrooms and coffee machines, what a world we live in. He remembered the days of the toilet at the bottom of the yard. It was a clichéd story that old people told their grandkids about the olden days, but he lived those times and remembered being four and standing with his pee-pee out in the middle of the night through the dead of winter. Monsters coming at you while you were peeing was unthinkable. He remembered candlewick blankets and a frosted Enigma Code on the inside of his window pane every morning.

It was a different world and the reason he’d hung up his hat. He liked the old ways of policing, and sometimes he still wore a trilby, but only for funerals these days after ten years of ribbing by the young PCs.

The day was so damned long, and he didn’t feel like an old man. He was sixty-five but went to the gym five times a week. It killed a few hours in the morning. Nash liked circuit training. He’d think back over his cases—the few unsolved ones—and pondered anything he might have missed. In Barrow-in-Furness, the crime rate was high, but the misdeeds were petty.

He retired, and by the time he’d accepted his golden watch—very nice, thank you very much—he was putting away the kids of the people he’d sent down thirty years earlier.

After weight training, he’d take a bracing cold shower and do a hundred lengths of the pool. His reward was a sauna. He’d have lunch at The Round House Hub and Café and discuss the decline of the town or at The Meeting Place bar, which was modern, but the food was good. Eight hours into his day, and he still had at least another eight to get through.

When he got home, he’d clean his house. It was pristine, spotless, and he didn’t do it to be obsessive but just because there was nothing else to do. On the days when the cupboards and fridge groaned under the weight of food, he couldn’t go shopping again, so he’d go for a brisk walk. He even did a couple of bouts of running. He was fitter than he’d been for years but put out to pasture to make way for the modern method of policing. You can’t put solid old-fashioned policy into a spreadsheet, for Christ’s sake.

They have a database for how to be a policeman now.

When the house was more sterile than an operating theatre, and he’d talked to the cat until even she’d had enough of him—there was nothing left but the television. God, please save him from daytime television.

Far too much of his day was taken up by thinking about Sandy. Despite his fitness, he still felt too old to call himself somebody’s boyfriend. Things had been difficult between them since his retirement, and there were only so many delicious moussaka and lentil dishes he could make. When Sandy came over, it was the only opportunity he had to cook. There was no point in cooking for one. Sandy detested anything healthy and lived on junk food. Left to choice, their main meal would be McDonald's, and then crisp butties for supper. Nash couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Today he was making stuffed aubergine with couscous and a creamed mushroom sauce. He hoped Sandy would come to eat it with him. He promised he would, but Sandy and kept promises were words not used in the same sentence. Their nights were getting less regular. It might be the right time to progress and live together—but the thought of the mess was unbearable.

It was late afternoon when his phone rang.

‘Nash. It’s Bronwyn Lewis.’ She didn’t give him a chance to respond with the usual pleasantries. ‘How do you feel about coming back to work? We’ve got a case.’