My office can be a lonely place when there are no clients, no work, and the bottle of Scotland’s finest export is empty. I was not exactly broke, I still had a little leftover from my last case, but I was being careful. In my business money comes in waves, sometimes a month’s work can earn enough to live on for a year – but mostly it doesn’t.
If I was careful with my spending, what I had would probably last me until the next case. Probably, but not definitely. It could be a month or more before my next client walked through the door. And that was the reason the whisky bottle was still empty and had not been refilled.
To hell with it, I told myself. It could also only be a few hours before my next client walked through the door, then I would regret forcing myself to go without the necessities of life – like whiskey. Angrily I stood up and headed to the nearest off licence. Eleven in the morning was too late in the day to be totally sober when there was no work on.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not an alcoholic. I drink because I want to, not because I need to. My urgent desire to get a bottle in now was mostly due to boredom. With no work on I have to wait in the office hoping for something to appear. I would not have been rushing to the offie if I had a client. When I am working I can sometimes go hours without a drink.
Soho, London, is busy at any time of day or night. Normally I am used to it, but when you have been dry since before breakfast, a crowd is simply an annoying barrier between you and the nearest off license. So when a crowd of people covered the pavement and most of the road I did not politely ask "please will you get out of my way" - there was no 'please', but there were a few extra unnecessarily crude adjectives.
And when a large bloke blocked my path and asked me just as politely, and using even more crude adjectives, exactly who I thought I was pushing, there was nearly a violent scene.
The guy was a man mountain. True, most of it was fat, but there was enough muscle hidden beneath the blubber to convince me that he could lift me up and throw me high enough that I could pay my personal regards to the guys aboard the nearest NASA shuttle. But that was not what stopped me. If necessary I fight dirty, and sometimes when not necessary. I go for the testicles and kneecaps, and in an emergency, I can break an opponent's nose with one blow or burst their eardrums. This 6'6" hunk of fat and muscle may have had the strength and brute force of a charging rhino, but he would have the speed of an one-legged Koala, and the agility of partially set concrete.
What stopped me from taking the pointless route of mindless violence was that the crowd moved to get a better view of the street brawl they thought was about to start, and I finally saw what had caused the crowd to gather in the first place.
Lying on the pavement with his back partially resting against the window of a sex shop was an elderly man. He had a shocked look on his face as though he could not believe the things displayed in the store's window. But I would guess that his look of surprise was not due to the selection of adult toys and erotic lingerie, but to the knife sticking in his throat. He was either dead or unconscious, dead I guessed because if he had lost consciousness while alive the look of surprise would almost certainly have slipped from his face - that expression spoke of dying while still aware of his own passing, and while still shocked at the manner of his imminent demise. But even if I was wrong and he was still alive, he would be dead before paramedics could do anything, the wound was sickeningly terminal.
Speaking of the paramedics, where were they? Judging from the size of the crowd this had not just happened, the ambulance should be here by now. The reason for it's absence suddenly found it's way into the thing that I laughingly call my brain. No one had called for one yet. Good old British public, they love a spectacle, a murder will drag people in from streets away. But get involved? Phone for help? Oh no, let someone else do that. And today it looked like that someone else was going to be me!
As I got out my mobile I half-heartedly asked if anyone had already phoned for an ambulance, and got the expected silence as a reply. Then I asked if anyone had phoned the police, this time the silence was broken by the sound of nervous shuffling feet as people tried to back away from me at the mention of police. I sighed, good old responsible, caring, British public.
Once I had dialed the three nines and made the necessary call I thought I could ask a couple of preliminary questions. This was more for something to do than to be helpful. The cops would ask them again when they arrived, they would not want the results of my work, but I could at least get the great unwashed thinking along the right lines. Besides, I had been the one to report the incident, I was going to have to stick around until the cops arrived, and asking questions was something to occupy my mind while I waited.
"Anyone sees the incident?" I asked. More nervous scuffling of feet. A couple of people began to back away. Both obviously had seen something and did not want to get involved. Nonchalantly I held up my mobile phone as though to check the time on it. Modern technology has made my job a lot easier in the past few years, and one of those improvements was putting cameras in mobile phones. I was getting quite good at taking photographs while apparently checking the time on my mobile. If no witnesses actually came forward the police might be grateful for photographs of the two reluctant ones.
I tried a few other generalities such as "Did anybody know the victim?", but all I got was more silence and more shuffling of feet. Eventually the real police arrived, but I had long finished asking anything by then and was busy giving off my own silence. The ambulance arrived almost at the exact same time as the police, and the paramedics confirmed what I had already guessed, the old man was dead. The police were beat cops, the detectives were probably still finishing their coffee, and beat cops have little authority other than to ask if there were any witnesses and cordon off the area. They did this with surprising efficiency, then got round to moving on anyone that had not come forward as a witness, which was everyone. Finally, as I was about to let myself be moved on along with everyone else, one of the cops remembered to ask who had called the incident in.
I had not seen anything, was useless as a witness, and would only be waisting my own time if I came forward. But there was no point in not doing so, I had called the emergency services on my own mobile, the one in my own name, not one of the phones I had under fictitious identities, and they would have traced my call. So, resigned to a fate of several hours waiting in a police station, I admitted that I was the person who had phoned the authorities.
When they find out I am a private detective, the police fall into one of two categories. The first group are those who consider us useful in that we keep some of the more useless cases away from them (a private dick can spend as much time as the customer can afford looking into a hopeless missing person's case, the police can only afford so much time before marking the case "open but unsolved"). The second group is those who consider us a pain in the backside, meddling amateurs with a badge they should not own, ripping off clients, and getting in the way of the real police. The cop who took my card was neither of these. He was young, probably fresh out of Hendon. He still looked up to the detectives, no doubt hoped to be one himself one day. When he saw "detective" on my card, he immediately thought of me as his superior and came over all polite.
I have several different types of business cards, some just have my office address and phone number, some also have my mobile number. A few also have my home number and address - it was the latter type that I had given to the cop. I told him I would be at the office all day, home all evening, and could also be caught on the mobile number anytime. He accepted this and said that someone would call me. I nodded to him and added "Try and make it before six o'clock. That way I'll probably be sober enough to help.
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