Festboden slumped in the unmarked Police Jaguar, brushed cigarette ash from his rumpled beige trousers and passed his hand over his rumpled beige face.听His beige coffee wasn't rumpled but that was about all you could say in its favour.听He sipped at it hesitantly and suspiciously, as if expecting something horrible to surface and sip back at him.听He lowered the widow and tipped the remains of the coffee out, cursing as the bottom of the cardboard cup caught on the sill and the loathsome liquid ran down the car鈥檚 far from pristine paintwork. He had spent much of the last week watching the front of Cooke's house and was now heartily sick of the sight of it and its dismal fellows.听Few people came and went in the quiet court in which it stood.听No distractions - good, nothing to break the tedium - bad.听 The houses presented no windows to the front, as if the architect (if indeed one had been involved) was planning to defend future occupants from riots or nuclear war.听 These occurrences would clearly have been of advantage to the householders, as at least they would have gone some way, at least, to clearing the rubbish and the unfeasibly large weeds from their tiny front gardens. Festboden had been involved in stakeouts in more salubrious surroundings but at least this one was easy - one way in and out and a clear view of the door.听He squirmed down in his seat and waited for Cooke to come out.听It would be a long wait, he knew.听Why, he mused (not for the first time), did law-abiding working people in general and coppers in particular have to get up at 6a.m., when burglars and robbers and suchlike听 pond life could lie in until mid-morning? Not fair.听Easily explicable, if Festboden had been clearer of thought but definitely not fair.听 Time passed.听 Nothing happened.听Then at ten Cooke's door opened and a swollen refuse sack shot out onto the pavement, where it promptly burst, scattering its contents to the four winds.听Festboden relaxed again and clicked on the radio, heard the words 'Woman's Hour' and clicked it off again before the inevitable discussion of the interior of the听 female body made him feel worse than he already did. The policeman glanced idly round the inside of the Jag .听He took in the car's luxurious trim and expensive equipment, mostly and sadly now not functioning - cruise control, aircon and so on - all the trappings of the Eighties' company director.听'Lovely wheels in its day' he thought and speculated what the car might look like if it had been his own property.听Dirtier probably, just as full of rubbish and in worse mechanical nick.听A single man, Festboden had never had a wife and kids for whom he needed to keep his car, or flat, or self clean and tidy.听He regretted this now, as he often did and silently and jealously mouthed obscenities at the invisible Cooke, who was, presumably, lying in the tattooed arms of his own loathsome paramour up there in the squalid bedroom of听 number 7, Cubley Court. His eye fell upon the digital clock on the dash.听Hopelessly inaccurate, the dusty flashing display showed the time to be 19:59.听This startled Festboden somewhat as this figure also happened to be the year of his birth.听His mind wandered as he pondered time, years and numbers in desultory way until the display changed to show that it now considered the time to be 20:00.听 "鈥橳wo thousand now, just like that", muttered Festboden. He suddenly realised that the clock's display, which he recognised ,in a moment of frightening lucidity, to be a sort of metaphor for his own life, had jumped from 1959 to 2000,听just like that and with no intervening figures or other indication of time passing. Forty-one years gone in a second and their passing not even referred to by the green digital display!听Festboden tried to recall incidents from the four decades in question and found, to his horror that he could not recall anything of a pleasant or even vaguely positive nature.听 "My God" he groaned, "my life has passed me by and I have absolutely nothing to show for all the effort I put in.听What a flipping monumental waste of time and energy that all was!" Festboden rubbed his eyes and kept them covered for a long time in a doomed attempt to blot out the depressing thoughts which were assailing his fragile ego.听When he took away his hands, the scene appeared exactly as it had been before,听except that he had the uneasy feeling that something was subtly different.听No, he couldn't spot it.听Must be tired, that's all - the mind playing tricks. However, something had changed. Unnoticed by Festboden, who'd had his hands over his eyes, Cooke and his wife had suddenly and rapidly left the听 house, carrying between them two shotguns and a holdall containing 拢100,000 in used fifties, had climbed into an ancient van and driven off into what the Jaguar's clock now showed to be the sunset. Festboden's boss, D.I. Molyneus, pointed at Festboden's face with a finger, which both of them clearly wished had been a revolver and screamed at his subordinate. "You blew the whole operation, you useless pile of steaming Dodo do!"听Three weeks of round-the-clock surveillance, thousands of man hours and you just put your flaming听 hands over your eyes and let听Cooke and his missus calmly walk past you, carrying the cash and the shooters!听My God!" groaned Molyneux, "They just passed you by and we have absolutely nothing to show for all the effort we听put in.听What a flipping monumental waste of time and energy that all was!" "Yes Guv, I know, I know", mumbled Festboden, "you don't have to tell me that.听Story of my life." |
