Lightning

Press

Lightning Press

He threw a low-carb, high-fibre Atkins bagel into the centre of a small gang of ducks, rendering one or two unconscious. He often visited the park, finding it cheap, therapeutic and a good way of killing time between cases. By now he knew every blade of grass in the place.

Eventually he managed to find a bench that was both dry and free from obscene graffiti – no small task in London. He sat and gazed across the vast expanse of mud and dog turds that aspired to be a football pitch. The posts had been used for spare fuel last Bonfire Night and no one had played there since the Barnet Bulldogs were decimated by a drug-dealer’s Dobermanns.

Hours passed as he paced the footpath, trying to come up with a foolproof plan for selling the business to Ceefer Capital. If only one of the cases he had made up on the website had been true, he’d be home and dry. As it was, he would probably have to solve an investigation before they would take him seriously. No one went around giving out half a million quid for a nice website, surely? He would also need to get some accounts from somewhere; whatever they were. What had she asked him for? Cash-flow forecasts? His cash had been flowing out for years and he could hardly bring himself to read anything from the bank any longer. Clearly, he would have to be economical with the truth for a while longer.

Ritzy’s was the kind of nightclub that used to stand on the corner of every main street in every decent-sized town in the 1970s; grotty and crying out for demolition on the outside, tacky and full of kitsch on the inside. The local council had left it standing to avoid having to erect slums or whatever social housing project their planning department was championing that month. Even slums cost money.

Hanging around outside in the pouring dark, he felt purple: marooned in the urban jungle; too scruffy, disillusioned and old either to fit in or care less. He pulled up the collar of his coat, unfolded the Evening Standard, which he had retrieved from the bin in the park, and settled down to wait. He turned to the horoscopes page and looked up his stars; 31st March, Aries: “Beware blonde bombshells bearing gifts, they are not all they seem. Sunny spells later”. It must be that new astro-meteorologist.