The Book of Alexander E-Book

Mark Carew

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 314

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A post-modern puzzle about self and identity. Alexander embarks on a remarkable experiment, the likes of which no one has attempted before: to find who he is by writing a book as if he were a watching detective. With Penny, Alexander is a gadfly, mucking her about, unable to see past her beauty; but with Melanie, he has met his match. It is remarkable how quickly the mood shifts from talk of big questions (religion, God, beauty, how mirrors lie) to the perfectly ordinary nuances between a couple.

Leseprobe

THE BOOK OF ALEXANDER

by 

MARK CAREW

SYNOPSIS

A post-modern puzzle about self and identity.

Alexander embarks on a remarkable experiment, the likes of which no one has attempted before: to find who he is by writing a book as if he were a watching detective. With Penny, Alexander is a gadfly, mucking her about, unable to see past her beauty; but with Melanie, he has met his match. It is remarkable how quickly the mood shifts from talk of big questions (religion, God, beauty, how mirrors lie) to the perfectly ordinary nuances between a couple.

PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

‘Raymond Chandler meets Maurice Sendac. A private investigator develops his latest assignment into a more complex exploration of the exterior and interior worlds of his ‘watch’. It’s vastly more invasive, but no one gets hurt. Mark Carew’s book is mysterious yet understated, and the reader cannot but stick with him as the intrigue develops. Exquisite.’ —ALISON BAVERSTOCK, author of Is there a book in you?

REVIEWS OF THIS BOOK

‘We’re always wondering about the detective as much as his quarry and this makes for a rather mysterious read, another very enjoyable debut from Salt.’ —Shiny New Books

The Book of Alexander

MARK CAREW was born in Wales and brought up near Sudbury, Suffolk. He studied Biochemistry at King’s College, London, and received a PhD in Cell Physiology from Cambridge in 1995. After post docs in Cambridge and North Carolina, he worked as a medical writer before joining Kingston University where he is an Associate Professor. His stories have appeared in print and online in literary magazines. The Book of Alexander is his first novel.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Mark Carew, 2018

The right of Mark Carew to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2018

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-133-8 electronic

To all the dreamers – it’s hard work

Chapter 1­

This was one of the most remarkable cases I’ve worked on. It was the Monday of the third week of October, the days were cooling, and I was already missing the last of the Indian summer evenings in the garden with my wife. I was settled at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, musing about my next job, and speculating about its details, which I would learn very soon. The doorbell rang. The man on the doorstep was expected; we had an appointment. He shook my hand and engaged me with a flashing smile. He was one of those middle-aged men, fifty or so, with hair flecked grey in places, and crow’s feet under laughing brown eyes, but who still managed to look young, keeping himself slim and boyish. He smiled a lot, shook my hand with a firm grip, and was polite as he entered the house.

I hung up his jacket for him, and he sat down at the table opposite me. I offered him a drink and he decided on a cup of green tea, which my wife likes every now and then. As the kettle boiled, I listened to his request.

He wanted me to watch a young man to whom he referred as someone of whom the family had taken notice. I enquired further, and it turned out that his daughter was interested in this young man, whose name was Alexander, and my client wanted to know more about him. His daughter, Penny, was quite taken with her boyfriend, but the family name needed to be protected. I exchanged nods with my affable client. Of all the reasons people give me to have someone watched, this was one of the most benign: a protective father looking out for his daughter, and no doubt his own interests.

My client simply wanted Alexander watched, and for Alexander not to know he was being watched, and for me to write down my impressions of what he was like. In return, the client would pay me a handsome fee for my report, to be deposited at a bank. He wrote the address of the bank on a piece of paper I found for him, and I stuck it on the fridge with a magnet. The branch of the bank was in the middle of the city, next to the main post office.

I told him that I would hand-deliver the report to the bank myself. I anticipated I would need a period of about two weeks to complete it.

My client was impressed, and wrote down the name of the bank manager, a business acquaintance, who could be trusted to receive the report. He also wrote down the name of the street Alexander lived in. He didn’t know the exact address, as his daughter had been vague about it. He didn’t have a photograph of Alexander, either, but said that he was young, tall, and handsome, with dark brown hair. However, this information came from his estranged wife rather than his daughter.

I pressed for more information about Alexander, anxious to understand the sort of world I might be getting into. Even in this celebrated university city there were places and people that the police were wary of visiting. I didn’t particularly want to get mixed up with anything heavy.

My client sipped the hot green tea I had placed in front of him, and told me a little more about Alexander, in the process putting my fears to rest. Alexander was a student of fine art at the university. As was typical for people in that line of work (“If it can be called that!” laughed my client), according to the daughter he stayed in his house a lot, and was working on a grand project. The aim of this grand project had not been disclosed; my client was intrigued about it and wished to know more. He also wanted to gain a general idea about Alexander’s character. Marriage had not been spoken of, but it was as well to be prepared. As a father, he might need to head off a prospective engagement if Alexander was deemed to be unsuitable.

I thought about the sum of money on offer: it was very good, easy money for what the client wanted delivered. Jobs don’t grow on trees in my line of work, and the money (it’s always about the money) was a very big draw. I might even be able to surprise my wife by giving her a foreign holiday.

I agreed to take the case. I reckoned that my proposed period of two weeks’ surveillance was about right. If necessary, and depending on the outcome of the report, we could meet again, and I would take the case further if needed. Hiring a private detective to watch a man is not against the law, but in my experience it can become something of a fetish for the client, as well as unhealthy for the detective, who may develop a propensity for making things up to appease the client in order to continue taking his money.

My client agreed to my suggested modus operandi, so I slid a piece of paper detailing my terms and conditions across the table and left him to study it. In the small downstairs room I used as an office, I filled in my standard contract with details of my client’s name (Mr Anthony Travis), the rates for the work, the details of the deliverables, how payment was to be made by bank transfer and the deadline for completion. It all looked very simple and straightforward.

When I returned, Mr Travis had signed my terms and conditions with a signature that flourished above but not below the line. I’d studied a course in graphology and recognised this as the signature of a sincere man.

I presented my client with the contract, which he proceeded to read fully, as businessmen are hard-wired to do. When he was satisfied with it, I went back to my office, and made a copy of the signed contract for him. He was most pleased, as was I, and I told him that I would be happy to start work the following morning. We shook hands. Then he left, skipping down the steps chuckling to himself.

In my ledger I noted the date and time of our meeting and assigned a new number to the case. I wrote the target’s name, Alexander, on the front of a new manila folder in thick black pen and put the contract and Ts & Cs inside. My accountant expected close attention to such detail when we met for my annual financial health check.

By the time my wife returned, I had cleared the kitchen and made supper: a sausage and bean stew. We commented on the oddly warm autumn. She watched TV that evening, but I couldn’t concentrate: I felt distracted, already starting to think about the case, and what Alexander might be like, and where he lived. I went to bed early.

I didn’t sleep. I imagined Alexander as a young handsome man, a paintbrush in his hand, painting some very important work of art. My experience of art was chiefly informed by my experiences in the art room at school, where I remembered being criticised by a girl for only drawing straight lines. A real artist would be able to paint faces, and use colour in amazing ways, and would have an air of detached aloofness about his mighty brow.

But that was a silly caricature of an artist. What was an artist really like? Was he actually just like you and me, but with a single, special skill, like a pianist who could play the piano beautifully, but who still spoke with his mouth full at the table, and didn’t wipe the toilet seat when he peed?

Sometimes on buses there’s a screen which flickers every few seconds and shows the image from one of several cameras stationed around the vehicle. It’s funny to look at yourself in the image, standing next to the other passengers, and after a while you forget that it’s you standing there, and you blend in with the crowd: the third person objective viewpoint, just showing you what there is, with sound if you are clever. That man who looks like me, the one standing with his hand on the pole, pushing the button to bring the bus to a halt at the next stop, or, for that matter, the man lying now in bed, thinking too hard about this stuff, imagining that he is a fly on the wall looking down on himself. What’s that man really like – and does he even know the answer to that?

I couldn’t fault Mr Travis for wanting to know about Alexander, because looks can be deceiving, as surely any man over forty could tell you. What Mr Travis wanted was an in-depth character assessment of his daughter’s beau, which was exactly what I intended to provide.

Chapter 2

Alexander’s road was easy to find the next day, which was a Tuesday. Finding his exact house took a little longer. On one side of the road was a line of old, possibly Victorian, buildings. On the other side were newer houses, and slap in the middle of them, rather oddly, was a petrol garage: the street was busy with cars stopping to fill up, or to visit its little shop. I parked my car a few streets away, near the river and a rowing club, and walked up to Adelaide Road, where I stood outside a pub called the Hay Wain and surveyed the scene. Which one of these houses was Alexander’s? Did he rent, or did he own his house? Did he live in one of the new or the old houses?

My questions were soon answered. A young man on a bicycle rode up from the direction of the river, the same route I had taken, turned left on the road, hopped up on to the pavement outside the post office and headed down to the old houses opposite the garage. He stopped outside a house with a blue door; the brakes on his bicycle made a loud squawk. He was tallish, but under six foot, and had long, floppy hair. I walked up a side street so I could get a better look. He unlocked the blue gate by the side of the house, and my hopes were raised: it seemed that indeed this young man lived there. He took the bicycle clips off his trousers and pushed his bicycle through the gate. I saw a flash of green grass and a small garden. He propped his bicycle against the wall, leaving the side gate open, and went into the house through the back door.

I took a pair of opera glasses from my jacket pocket and focused them on the front door: number forty-four Adelaide Road. I powered up my mobile and typed the information into a people-finder account: the owner of the house was Mr Alexander Clearly.

Bingo, I thought, and then it got even better. I heard a window being pulled up and saw Alexander sticking his head out of the first floor window. He studied the people coming and going, just as I was now doing, and then sat down. He was still visible through the open window. Peering through the opera glasses, which I held in one hand so that I looked as if I was shielding my eyes from the weak sun, I could see that he was sitting at a desk and writing.

I stood and waited a while, thinking about the best observation post to watch him from. The front of Alexander’s house was overlooked by other houses, but the best spot to station myself would be at the garage itself. I would have to try one of my usual ruses to gain access, and then spin out my story for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Alexander had disappeared from view. When he came back, he had a white envelope in his hand from which he took out a sheet of white paper. He read this – I assumed it was a letter – and then let it fall from his grip. He waved his hands about and uttered a few shouts of annoyance. I pressed the opera glasses to my eyes and saw his lips moving, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he disappeared from the window again. This time he didn’t come back.

I took out my notebook and scribbled down my first observations of Alexander. He seemed lively, interesting, an open person. The side gate was still open; his bicycle was still leaning against the wall of the corridor between the houses. The first floor bedroom window was open to the warm air. With the right observation post this would be an easy job.

One hour later, I was watching Alexander from the garage across the road. I had been installed in the disused showroom, an empty room with grey plastic flooring and reflective windows that had once displayed the latest modern cars. The owner, a man called Mick, told me that he had lost the franchise and once the cars had been removed he had let the showroom stay empty. The windows had been treated so that people couldn’t see in, a security measure intended to act as a deterrent against break-ins. I sat down on a wooden stool with my notebook and opera glasses at the ready. From here I could watch both the house and the comings and goings in the street. Mick had bought my story that I was an undercover policeman readily enough. It was a cover I had used on many other occasions. For a split second he had looked at me with a quizzical expression, and asked if we had met before, but I assured him we had not. His assistant, a Chinese woman with a name I didn’t catch, obviously new to the area, brought me tea and biscuits. She bowed as she came through the connecting door from the garage shop.

So, here I was on the first day of a new job, settled down, catered for, and with the easiest brief I’d had in a long time. So far, Alexander had spent a lot of time upstairs in his house. He was in a room that had two windows, one large one guarded by wooden blinds, the other smaller and covered with dark blue plastic blinds. They had moved once, presumably when he’d brushed past them. I was to discover that the blue blinds were never opened. It didn’t take me long to guess that they covered the window of his bedroom. The lighter wooden blinds were open, however, and I could see the vague shape of Alexander as he worked at his desk.

No doubt he was gazing out across the street, pen in hand, watching cars drive into the garage, observing the drivers get out, fill up, and pay Mick or the Chinese woman in the shop.

Alexander would also be watching the people go in and out of the Hay Wain. People-watching was his big interest, like mine, I realised, except that I wasn’t a student artist. I watched him for an hour, finished my tea, and picked the biscuit crumbs off the plate. As I grew tired and yawned (one of the drawbacks of a sedentary job), he would be sure to do the same,. At least it would be lunch time soon: I quite fancied trying out the pub.

Any view of Alexander I might have had disappeared as Mick came into the showroom and crept up behind me. He asked about the case, who the suspect was, and if there were any developments. Mick was understandably agitated that one of his neighbours might be a source of trouble. I told him it wasn’t like that at all; the suspect, whom I declined to name, was not believed to have committed any obvious crimes, no burglary or violence. Instead my task was to gather information; it was about how intelligence and knowing your suspect got you the results in the end, rather than any derring-do. The suspect, as I continually referred to Alexander, was on the fringes of a network that had been linked to white-collar crime, accountancy fraud and the like. HM Government might be a target, hence the state’s interest. Mick was impressed, and obviously also relieved. He rubbed his messy beard and his messy hair and seemed to believe everything I said. He left me to it and I wrote a few pages in my notebook.

Just after I resumed watching the house the front door opened and Alexander stepped out. He’d obviously had enough of sitting down and wanted to stretch his legs. Now his face was lit by the midday sun it was clear that he was a good-looking young man, with a strong face and high cheekbones and a full head of black hair. I could see why my client’s daughter, and indeed other women, would be attracted to this man. It then occurred to me to check his marital status, which could be done easily enough when I was home and could log into the appropriate government website. I wrote ‘check marital status’ in my notebook. It would be unprofessional of me to overlook pertinent details: for example, whether Alexander was already married, or even divorced.

Alexander was standing on the pavement outside his house. I took a photo of him on my mobile. I was at least forty or fifty feet away and handicapped by having to shoot through that dull blue reflective glass, but the photo would represent a start. He was waiting to cross the street. There were a few people walking past the garage on my side of the street who had also decided to stop and cross. There was a lull in the traffic, a break in the regular whoosh of cars, and everyone swapped sides quickly. Alexander stepped smartly across the road. Once on the garage forecourt, he turned to watch those who had crossed from the garage as they disappeared into the Post Office, which was just before the pub and a few doors down from his house. He scribbled in his notebook, and then loitered in the middle of the forecourt, watching the motorists standing at the pumps patiently filling up their cars. A couple of drivers, hard-looking men, gave him a mean look, but he stood on the edge of the forecourt and stared back at them. When the men had finished, replacing nozzles in holders, screwing on petrol caps, Alexander followed them. They were both tall with shaven heads and clad in black jackets. They all went into the shop.

I sat listening in the showroom, my head turned towards the connecting door to the shop, hoping to catch sight of Alexander up close. My heart was thundering in my chest. I was still thinking about the look on Alexander’s face as he watched the motorists fill up their cars. He had been patiently observing them as if they were animal specimens. It was very odd: I wrote a couple of lines in my notebook, to record the oddness.

I got up and stood right outside the connecting door. I heard Mick serve a customer who was paying for petrol, two bottles of coke and a packet of crisps. There was no internal window to allow me to look into the shop. Another conversation started up, this time between Mick and another motorist, using virtually the same words: he’d bought the same amount of petrol and the same lunch. I continued to stand there quietly, waiting to hear Mick talk to Alexander, but I heard nothing. Eventually I returned to my seat.

Alexander was standing at the window, peering in, his face distorted by the reflective covering. I watched his eyes rove around, examining the room. For a moment he seemed to look straight through me. I held my breath, banking on the effectiveness of the reflective covering. Then he stepped away and turned his back to look out across the forecourt and the street beyond.

Alexander was talking as he stood there on the forecourt and watched the world go by. I could hear the words quite clearly. ‘Oh, my people – stop! Forget your cars – refuel yourselves!’

I wrote this in quotes in my notebook as he also wrote something, scribbling furiously, bending down to balance his notebook on his thigh. I did not elaborate or speculate on the meaning of his words, I just gave the facts, as I was paid to do. I waited for more, but that was it. Alexander re-crossed the road, his head turning quickly from side to side as the cars rushed by, took out his key and was through the front door of his house in a flash.

It took a while for my heartbeat to slow down. I found something very exciting about this case. It was educating me, giving me different perspectives.

Mick knocked on the door and came in with another mug of coffee and a thick chocolate biscuit. He stood next to me and asked how it was going. I said it was going fine and thanked him for the refreshments. I didn’t mention that Alexander had been standing on the forecourt outside the shop, where there was a stand for newspapers and charcoal bricks for barbecues, peering into the showroom through my window, or that he liked to watch Mick’s customers. I didn’t want to alarm Mick or make him suspect that Alexander might be planning a break-in, because then Mick might think about contacting the real police.

I commented to Mick that we, the unreal police, thought Alexander might be involved in something technical, computer hacking perhaps, something the young were known for. Mick’s eyes widened, so I carried on developing the idea that Alexander might be part of a hacking collective, having watched a television programme about one the night before. Mick liked the idea, so I told him that if Alexander ever did come over the road to his garage, to the shop, for example, he should keep an eye out for the magazines or newspapers Alexander was interested in. Mick was my eyes in the shop, I told him, and he loved that idea. Meanwhile, I would be watching for associates, the people who visited Alexander. Together, we would slowly but surely build up a picture of what he was up to. Mick went away intrigued and happy.

When I returned to the surveillance post I saw Alexander was once again staring out of his bedroom window: or, rather, he was staring at the inside of the window, looking at his own reflection. He had raised his hands and was running them down the glass, making the window blind, which had been rolled up to the top of the window, collapse and fall on to the desk. He stood up quickly; I could see him looking down at what must have been something interesting on his desk. Using the opera glasses, I could see that Alexander was smiling. The sun was on his face, and he was shaking with laughter.

I noted all this down in my notebook, in the entry for Tuesday. I suppose if any one of us were observed, secretly, throughout the day, and especially during the course of a whole week, we might also be the victims of slivers of time when we looked a little odd. So far, I had the impression that Alexander was inquisitive, fascinated by his surroundings and the people he encountered. He was also not shy of looking odd, or of appearing different. I was moving away from my original impressions of what he was like. He was young (how old exactly?), handsome (but did he know it?), and while he hadn’t painted anything or made any sculptures while I’d been watching, I could see that he was soaking up the details of the external world as if storing them to provide divine inspiration.

I stood up and stretched up my hands towards the ceiling. I shook the life back into my legs. It was late afternoon, and the temperature was dropping, heralding the arrival of autumn. I needed something to eat, something more substantial than tea and biscuits. I left the showroom by the back door, exited the garage from the rear, and walked out on to the side street where I had first observed Alexander riding his bicycle to his house. His bedroom window was still closed; there was no sign of him. I walked down the road, away from his house, and entered the Hay Wain. If Alexander had also decided to eat supper there, I would shrink into a dark corner, turn up my collar, and be at one with my pie and chips.

Nothing like that happened, although I did eat alone, with only a chicken and ham pie for company. I cleared my plate of the chips and peas and drained a diet coke. It was now six o’clock and time to knock off. The first day’s report had been written. Alexander was an interesting mark. I was quite enjoying myself, and I thought more about the foreign holiday and where my wife might like to go.

Some regulars came into the pub as I was leaving. I stood outside on the corner and looked across the road at the garage. Mick was there, gathering up the unsold newspapers and taking them inside. I wondered what time he would close. The showroom reflected the image of the cars at the pumps. The window covering was effective; no-one could see in from outside.

A young woman rode up to Alexander’s house on a bicycle. She was standing up on the pedals, a red light shining at the rear of the bike and a white light shining at the front. I stepped back into the shadows of the pub doorway and waited. She dismounted, walked up the front steps and knocked on the kitchen window, where a light was shining. Something caught her attention on the wall outside the house, and she picked up whatever it was, then disappeared through the open side gate, wheeling her bicycle beside her. I heard a door open. The young woman said hello, then came the smack of a kiss.

I stood for a few minutes waiting in the shadows of the Hay Wain. Was this woman my client’s daughter? Was this Penny Travis? I described her in my notebook as five foot six, short brown hair, what appeared to be a fine figure under her jacket, and with a high, well-spoken voice as she greeted Alexander. Their relationship was now my concern. Penny’s father was paying me to tell him what Alexander was like, and that included how he treated his daughter. Some fathers would do anything for their daughters, and that including hiring private investigators to spy on the young.

I walked up the road, away from the pub, past the post office, which was now closed, and approached the house. I stood back from the lit window in the downstairs kitchen of Alexander’s house. I could see the kitchen sink and taps through the bottom of the partially open kitchen window. I stood behind two bins, one for the usual household waste, the other for recycling, and waited, watched and listened.

I could see two people moving in the kitchen: Penny and Alexander were dancing. A flush came to my cheeks as I felt embarrassed to be standing outside Alexander’s house, peering in. I decided to walk on, further up the road, towards a corner with a street lamp that shone across the front of the house. I was aware that my having passed the house would have cast a shadow across the kitchen, and that anyone inside, whether sitting at the table eating, or standing at the stove cooking, or drinking beer and dancing, might notice a momentary dip in the light, look up, and perhaps even see me walking past.

But they didn’t see me. Penny and Alexander were dancing to a Latino band. She was talking excitedly about what she had found outside on the wall of the house: a pair of opera glasses with a mother of pearl body and gold focus wheel. “Are you listening, Alexander?” she asked him. “You seem so distracted. What are you looking for? There’s no one outside. Do you always have to be scribbling in your book?”

I heard Alexander apologise, and call her Pen, and there was the pop of a cork as they discussed who could have left the opera glasses there. I pricked up my ears when in hushed voices they agreed that it couldn’t have been their neighbours, because they were drug dealers or suspected of being so. A more innocuous theory was that Little Red Riding Hood had been on her way to visit her grandmother, but the wolf had now made his move and it was too late to save her.

I understood where the partying was leading to and slipped away. I went the long way back to the river, where my car was parked off the road, on the grass. There was a Police Aware sign on the windscreen, which made me laugh. In my experience, the sign meant nothing, only that my registration number would have been taken and passed on to the council. I wasn’t too concerned about it, so I removed the notice, thrust it into the glove box, and drove home.

Chapter 3

The next day was Wednesday. I knocked at the rear door of the garage and Mick let me in. He asked me if I had any news. I told him that it was still early days for investigation; Alexander might even be peripheral to the main action. Mick nodded and said he’d watched out for Alexander a bit himself last night. I was taken aback, but Mick said that he had still to clap eyes on the man. All he’d seen were vague shadows moving in the downstairs room of the house, the one next to the front door.

Mick then asked me what Alexander looked like. Did I have a picture? I didn’t want Mick to get involved at all. Having a member of the public on the scene engaging in amateur surveillance would only spook Alexander, and potentially bring the case crashing to a close.

So I described an acquaintance of mine, one whom Mick would never meet: he’s shorter than you, I said, thick neck, short hair, bit of a gut even at his age, and likes his fast food too much, bit of a slob, to tell you the truth. Completely harmless, but a wizard with computers, I added. With a man like that it was a case of softly, softly, catchee monkey.

Mick complimented me on my patience and professionalism. I said that it was just part of the job. No need to alert a suspect so close to his house; otherwise he would never feel comfortable and we would never get to see the real Alexander. Mick was pleased with this logic and promised to keep out of my hair. He had other things going on. With some coaxing and a lot of beard scratching and hair pulling, he told me that he was thinking of selling up. He had received an expression of interest in the site from a property developer who was keen to build more houses in the street. Mick had to be away a lot this week to negotiate a price and a date for completion, if indeed he did decide to sell. I could see that it would be a wrench for him to leave the garage. He seemed to appreciate my support. Five minutes later, Ying (I had finally discovered the Chinese woman’s name) brought in a steaming cup of coffee and a slice of Victoria sponge.

The day burst into life just as my previous days at the garage had, with cars and people appearing and the noise and fumes increasing until by lunchtime I was glad to go out and leave that hot little hiding place. There had been no movement at Alexander’s house, save for the postman parking his bicycle with the outsized panniers against the railings and shoving a couple of letters through Alexander’s letter box. The blinds at both upstairs windows were closed. The curtains were drawn across the kitchen window. After all, it was a student house.

I went to the Hay Wain for lunch and ate the same meal as before, marvelling at the loyal and comfortable nature of pie and chips. I was three days into the job and I knew a little bit more about Alexander and his girlfriend Penny, my client’s daughter. I wondered what they would be up to today and whether Alexander would leave the house so I could tail him, a part of the job I found thrilling.

A family came into the pub and sat down at the next table. Mum and Dad, son and daughter. The kids shared an enormous plate of fish and chips, Dad had the same pie as me, and Mum was brave and had a prawn cocktail. My wife missed me when I was working, as she worked mornings-only as an admin assistant at a local school. We had no children; they hadn’t materialised, and after a while we had become comfortable with the situation. Deep down I knew that we’d missed out on a special part of life, but I also recognised that we’d been spared the difficulties that came with it.

I returned to the showroom via the side road and the back door, and, blow me, if another cup of coffee, and this time a plate of chocolate biscuits didn’t appear in front of me, brought in by Ying, her hair in a new bob. Mick was away at his property development meeting. He was very sad, said Ying. I commiserated with her.

As soon as Ying had closed the door between the shop and the showroom, the side gate of number forty-four opened and Penny stepped out. She was dragging her bicycle along behind her. She had evidently spent the night at Alexander’s, but the look on her face was not one of pleasure. Her white blouse was ruffled, her brown hair out of place. She had stuffed her jacket into an orange carrier bag, it being fairly warm today, and the bag was hanging awkwardly off the handlebars of her bicycle. She had trouble reversing the bike out of the side passage and while she was attempting this the chain came off. She let the bicycle fall to the ground, shouting her displeasure at the stupid machine. Alexander, who was standing at the open front door, also came in for some vitriol.