3. An Expedition To The Pole (ii)

"I'll tell you a story," he said. "About a time when I had my eyes opened. Did I ever mention to you that I really was a detective once?"

 

I was lifting my pint again, but stopped half-way and glanced at him to see if this was a wind-up. This was a man who sometimes couldn't find his way home from the pub alone, even if the route was marked in luminous paint and he was tied to a rope that led to his front door. The incredulity I was trying to hide must have snuck through.

"A store detective, mate," he said. "You know... wandering around trying to look like I was shopping. Not so bad in books or radios. Bit of a drag in womenswear, if you'll forgive the pun."

I still wasn't seeing it. I tried to imagine this paunchy, dishevelled, endearingly scatter-shot mate of mine loping around a Lingerie department trying to look inconspicuous. Bizarrely, though, all I got was the image of him in white tights and a tutu, pirouetting lumpily across a stage - cap akimbo, rollie dangling - as the Sugar Plum Dumpling. I wondered what that said about me.

"How long ago was this?"

He rubbed his ear. "Let's just say it was an early experiment. Trying a few things out to see what I liked. Back in the days, too, when I still had a suit and tie and an aura of repectability."

I managed to stifle a smirk by making it look like I had something stuck in my teeth. I don't think he noticed.

"So, anyway," he said, "I'm this store detective, doing my job as best I can - half-hearted, if you like. Realising the mistake I'd made, of course. Thinking that half the people I'd seen nicking stuff looked like they probably deserved it. Only really going for the better-off-looking ones. The ones who tried to sneak greeting cards inside their newspapers, or bottles down inside their umbrellas."

He stopped and rubbed his mouth, and I saw a light go on in his eyes.

"And then one day... this woman comes in."

The light brightened.

"Stunner?"

He chuckled. "I'll say. Not just what you're thinking, though. She was something else altogether. Just the kit alone. Chinchilla jacket. Versace dress and shoes. Gold. Diamonds. Real tom, too - you could tell. Serious money. And of course, she stuck out like a chav in a church, 'cos it wasn't that kind of store. Not like a Harrods or a Harvey Nicks. So, for that reason - among others - I kept a close eye on her. Well, she wanders about for a bit, looking at stuff without really looking at it, if you know what I mean. Picking things up, putting them down, moving on. No real sense of purpose. Like she was killing time, waiting for a her bank to open or something. Eventually, she heads off into what I called the tat end of the store. End-of-line stuff, last year's fashions, shop-soiled stock, bargain bins - plus all the other market stall crap they only kept 'cos it drew in the punters. So... I'm standing behind this rack of ladies tights, keeping out of the way but making sure I could see her. And you know what she does?"

He glanced at me. Then he took another sup of throat lube.

"Go on."

He put his glass down again. "What she does is... she goes up to this display of cheap-shit accessories - you know, brass sovereign rings, chrome-plated bracelets, earrings that look like they're made out of bent nails and bubble gum. She goes up to it, looks around a couple of times... then she grabs handfuls of it and starts to shovel it in her pockets. Just like that. In the middle of the floor in broad fucking daylight. I was so gobsmacked I almost fell through the tights rack. I mean, this stuff was the crappiest bollocks you could imagine. Even I wouldn't have bought it, let alone nicked it. And there she was, standing up in the sort of outfit that was probably worth five times my yearly pay on its own."

He paused as we both took a refreshing neckful.

"What happened?"

"Well, naturally I stop her as she's leaving and ask her politely, as I've been trained, if she might mind stepping into this little office I've got at the back of the store. The main thing is not to make a public scene. Keep it discreet. And she doesn't look scared or ask questions or anything. It's like she knows what it's all about. So she dutifully follows me down into this office, and I shut the door. And then the weirdest thing happens. As soon as the door's shut, she goes down on her knees, grabs me around the legs, buries her face in my thighs, and starts bawling her heart out. Proper hysterics, you know. And she's pulling at my trousers so hard that they're starting to come down. I tell you, if anyone else had come in right then, it would not have looked good."

I laughed. He was deadly serious, though. He shook his head.

"I didn't have a fucking clue what to do, H. I mean, I'd seen tears before, but nothing on this scale." He took another swallow of beer. "Anyway, though... after a bit, she starts to calm down - just before my belt gives out, as luck would have it - and she lets go. I help her up into a chair and give her a box of tissues we always kept in there for that kind of thing. So she blows her nose and wipes her face - and even though she's smudged all her make-up and her eyes look like bullet wounds, she still looks stunning. In fact, if anything, she looks even more stunning. And, well... you know me and my soft heart. I can't help but feel something for her. Like we were saying, just now... I knew there was more to it than met the eye. Anyway... once she's more settled, I give her a glass of water, and while she's drinking it she tells me the whole story. About the wealth she comes from. The inheritance from her father, who was some big Dairylea in the entertainment industry. She had magazine cuttings in her handbag to prove it. She showed them to me. One of them had a photo of her as a child with her dad, standing with Michael Caine and Sean Connery at a party. It was all kosher. We're talking a serious player in his day. Made Simon Cowell look like some fucking spiv flogging dodgy iPods down the Saturday market. She could have bought the whole store if she'd wanted to, and the rest of the High Street... and still have had enough wad left over for a private jet or three."

He paused and took out his baccy tin and proceeded to roll one with a licorice paper.

"Anyway... as it turns out, that's the root of the problem. The money. Because it meant nothing to her, and she could buy anything she wanted and probably never spend out, it had had a funny effect on her. Reset her circuitry. She told me she was getting help for it, seeing a top shrink, taking all sorts of pills. She showed me her pill box. It was like a family-size packet of M&Ms. Uppers, downers, sidewaysers. And one of the effects of all this - the money, the illness, the drugs - was that she'd developed an uncontrollable urge to steal crap. She said she had a whole room full of it at home. Bubble gum, post cards, boxes of drawing pins, batteries, lighters, beer mats, dog biscuits, pens, Tic-Tacs, Kleenex, tea lights, Brillo pads. Stuff she didn't want. Stuff she was never going to use. Stuff she could easily afford to buy. But that wasn't the trip. She had to take it. She said it was the only thing that gave meaning to her life.

He licked the paper and finished the rollie.

"Now... what do you reckon on that?"

I shook my head.

"What did you do then?"

He stared down at the bar top.

"What did I do? I'll tell you. I let her go."

"You what?" I was starting to wonder if this really was a wind-up after all. But he was there ahead of me.

"Straight up, H. I let her go. I mean, this woman was nothing to me. I didn't know her from the back of my hand and didn't owe her anything. She might have walked right past me if I'd been sitting in the gutter and not given me a second look. What difference would it have made if I'd shopped her, anyway? She was sitting on a wall of money ten miles long. She could have hired the best lawyers and gotten off with a fine or a discharge on the grounds of diminished responsibility or something. But it was the whole thing of it, you know. The thing deep down in this sad woman's heart that drove her to do something like that... just to make herself feel better about her life. So I let her go. After I'd emptied her pockets, of course."

I took a reflective sup of my beer, thinking I'd probably have done the same.

"Sterling, mate," was all I could think of to say.

He sat forward on his stool, like someone had just pumped some air into him.

"You ain't heard the best bit, though. You know what happens? Get this. She's so grateful for my compassion, and my merciful attitude, that she writes in a letter of thanks to the management of the store, telling them in full what happened, and recommending me for an award."

Once again, he caught me with my glass halfway to my mouth. I put it down quickly before I dropped it.

"Did you get one?"

He picked up his own glass.

"Bloody right, mate. The D.C.M."

He took a long drink and belched with deep gratification.

"'Don't Come Monday!'"

We both creased at that. Denise looked along to see if we were alright. I put my thumb up. So did he.

"I didn't mind," he coughed. "I was pissed off with it, like I said. I was looking for a way out. She did me a favour, really."

Sterling!

He popped the rollie in his grin and got up from his stool.

"Time for some fresh air, I think. You coming?"

We made our way through to the smoking cabin at the back, passing the old geezers' table as we went. They were still deep in their game. A pack of cards, a cribbage board, a set of Scrabble letters, an egg timer and a dice. One of them cried 'Bingo!' as we passed. Anyone's guess. Lemon nodded at us, still mumbling to himself. Fred was framing up for another game of solo. Suzy and Trina were at the bar now, comparing tatts with Denise. Mole's eyes still glinted in the corner as he raised his pint of black-and-tan.

As we opened the door, T-Bone Walker was coming on: Mean Old World.

It certainly was.

But maybe not so bad with such people in it.

(continued) https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/3-expedition-pole-iii