He had never felt like a real detective; probably because he’d trained as an electrician.
After his father died under the wheels of a bus, caught taking photographs of an
unfaithful husband, in the nightclub Flagrante Delicto, he found himself running
the family firm. He had tried to sell it, of course, but nobody wanted it.
B Shaw, Private Investigators: it was corny but catchy; much like the old man himself.
He’d re-branded it “JP Confidential; no case too large or small” in the Pollock era,
and invested blood, sweat and tears, not to mention his last penny in a sensational
new website. He’d hoped it would bring in a tsunami of new business, but he was still
waiting on the beach. His father, who’d had a saying for every occasion, had always
told him “Life’s a beach, and then you die”. He had studiously avoided the seaside
ever since.
Everything about Goldman was a twenty-five carat fake: in his thirty-eight years
on the planet he had pretended to be so many things to so many people that he scarcely
knew who he was any longer. His flat had been repossessed so many times that he kept
a suitcase by the front door. Having recently been evicted, he now lived in his office,
contrary to the terms of the lease. Most of his meagre belongings had to be hidden
from the bailiffs when he wasn’t actually using them, and even the clothes he stood
up in bore the hallmark of the charity shop; a cut that didn’t flatter and a style
that was last fashionable in 1986.
Work had been thin on the ground of late, which suited his temperament, if not his
desire to eat regularly. On the morning of 4th July he awoke, slumped across his
desk, after another fitful night’s sleep in the swivel chair.
Bleary-eyed, he surveyed his kingdom at 792A Finchley Road with the haunted look
of one waking from a dream of paradise, to find he had taken the wrong turn at the
last roundabout and ended up in hell. Even in his dreams he should have known better
than to buy a satnav from Dodgy Dave down the King’s Head.
