Inspector Hobbes and the Curse - a fast-paced comedy crime fantasy (unhuman) (5 page)

‘Andy,’
said Hobbes in a loud, nasal voice, ‘a word of advice. It’s never a good idea
to let the dog drop his balls into your mouth; you don’t know where they’ve
been.’

The
blood boiling in my cheeks, all I could do was nod and grin inanely.

The
pensioners departed even more rapidly, muttering, shaking their heads.

‘I’d
like to go home now,’ said Hobbes, ‘but I can’t drive like this. I wonder if
Billy’s free?’

Billy
Shawcroft was a binge-drinking dwarf, who, for reasons I’d never fathomed,
drove a reconditioned hearse and claimed Hobbes had once saved him from the
clutches of a witch. Whether or not his grasp of reality could be trusted, he
seemed to like Hobbes, often providing valuable information and other help.
There was no point in asking me to drive; the last time I’d tried I’d
demolished a Volvo while creating the ‘Leaning Tree of Fenderton’, as the
Bugle
dubbed it. Not that it leaned anymore; last January, having decided enough was
enough during a storm, it had lain down across the main Fenderton Road, holding
up the rush-hour traffic for several hours while the chainsaws reduced it to
bite-sized chunks. Hobbes had since offered me driving lessons, but I’d
declined. It seemed wisest.

Pulling
his mobile phone from his pocket, he handed it to me. ‘See if he can pick us
up. His number’s in the menu under “D”.’

‘OK.
“D” for dwarf.’

‘No,
“D” for driver,’ said Hobbes and attempted a smile. ‘You’re under “D” too.’

‘Eh?’

‘No,
not “A”; “D” for don’t let him drive.’ His attempted chuckle turned into a
soggy cough. Those pensioners didn’t know how lucky they were to be out of
earshot.

As
I phoned Billy, who was available, didn’t sound as if he’d been drinking and
reckoned he’d be with us in about half an hour, Hobbes slumped in the shade of
a tree, groaning that he wished to be left alone.

As
we waited, I chucked the ball round the field, keeping Dregs entertained, mostly
thinking about the wonderful woman, kicking myself for not asking her name,
though my father would, no doubt, have pointed out that she was way out of my
league. I had to admit he might have been correct, but I could dream and hope,
which are two things I was rather good at. After all, there was no accounting
for taste and, one never knew, she might have fallen under a curse, compelling
her to fancy an out-of-work, crap journalist. I might have been just her type.
These things can happen … really. In fact, at the very same moment, she might
have been feeling similar regret at not having asked for my name and telephone
number. My hand feeling the smoothness of my chin, I was grateful for Hobbes’s Christmas
gift of an electric razor, something I used nearly every day. I wished I’d
managed to buy him a little more than a bumper bag of walnuts, which had been
all I could afford. Still, he’d appeared rather pleased and had eaten them all,
though I would have preferred it if he’d removed the shells first.

The
image of the woman’s loveliness, having burned into my brain, I knew I’d never
forget her face, her eyes, her hair, her figure, her clothes, her everything. She’d
smiled at me and moved with such grace, her voice as warm and soft as a kitten’s
purr, and I realised with stomach-churning certainty I’d never see her again, unless,
of course, I could persuade Ellen Bloom to give me her name and number, an act
of bravery that would risk embarrassing myself further. Remembering the old saying
that faint heart never won fair lady, time and again, in between throwing the
ball for Dregs, I tried to revive my fainting heart and had probably nearly
succeeded when Billy’s hearse showed up.

He
waved, sitting atop the pile of cushions he needed to see over the steering
wheel, operating the pedals by means of long wooden extensions. It must have
been illegal but no police officer had ever brought him to book, which I
suspected was something to do with Hobbes’s influence. Even so, Billy was an
excellent and careful driver, who retained enough sense never to try when he
was on a bender. On those occasions, he might sometimes be seen flailing down The
Shambles on a pair of roller blades that scared him silly when sober. I had
long suspected that at least part of the reason for his headaches after a night
on the booze was because he’d fallen over so often, but at least he didn’t have
far to fall.

He
chugged towards us, stopped and jumped out. Dregs bounded up to him, an old
friend, greeting him exuberantly, jumping into the front seat, chewing his
ball.

‘Hiya,’
said Billy, in his high-pitched, piping voice. ‘How ya doing? You don’t look so
good.’

‘Thanks,’
said Hobbes with a grimace.

‘Have
you been messing with camels again?’

Hobbes
nodded.

‘I’ve
told you before they’re no good for you,’ said Billy, with a stern frown.

‘I
made a mistake.’

‘You’re
telling me? Oh well, I’d best get you home. You’ll have to pick up your car
tomorrow.’

Billy
helped Hobbes stand, trying to support him as he struggled to the hearse, the
pair making an entirely ludicrous tableau. I helped get Hobbes into the back,
where he lay flat, groaning, and joined Dregs and Billy in the front, there
being plenty of room for three to sit abreast. Following a brief scuffle, I had
to take the middle seat, so Dregs could stick his head out. An elderly
gentleman raised his sunhat respectfully as we pulled away at a speed in
keeping with the vehicle’s original use.

‘Has
he taken one of the green bottles?’ asked Billy.

‘Yes,’
I said. ‘What on earth is in that stuff?’

‘Mysterious
herbs from the East, so I was told. Mrs Goodfellow makes it and it’s powerful
stuff, though the side effects can be alarming.’

‘I’ve
seen them,’ I said, nodding.

‘Did
he howl?’

‘Yes.
It didn’t half give me a turn.’

‘Not
as much as it gave me,’ said Hobbes and coughed horribly.

‘At
least he’s compost mental again,’ said Billy.

‘That’s
compos mentis,’ said Hobbes.

‘Which
proves my point.’ Billy chuckled.

Hobbes didn’t speak for the rest of the
journey, except for a snuffly complaint about a headache. I wondered about the
green stuff he’d taken, alarmed that its side effects were presumably better
than not drinking it. On reaching Blackdog Street, he rolled from the hearse
with a brief word of thanks and went straight upstairs to bed. I checked on him
from time to time but he was fast asleep, still bubbling like a cauldron on the
boil.

I
was, therefore, by default, back in charge of catering and, despite the lure of
the pubs, I decided it wouldn’t be fair to desert Hobbes. Besides, I had no
money. Dregs’s dinner was not a problem; opening a tin of dog food, I spooned
it into his bowl and watched him wolf it down in half a dozen noisy bites,
before taking himself upstairs to lie at Hobbes’s door. Next came the important
thing: my supper. A rummage through Mrs Goodfellow’s cupboards revealed
surprising quantities of tins, mostly ancient ones. I was amazed she kept so
many for I’d hardly ever known her use one – except for tins of pears, which
Hobbes liked with his Sunday tea. None of them appealed.

Then
I had a brainwave. A jacket potato with cheese would taste great and be highly
nutritious. Selecting a brick-sized spud from Mrs Goodfellow’s store, scrubbing
it clean, I sliced it down the middle. Next, taking a nice chunk of the
wonderful, crumbly Sorenchester cheese from the pantry, grating it with a
potato peeler, I heaped a generous amount onto the potato halves and shoved
them under the grill. After lighting it, reckoning they’d take about half an
hour to cook, I sauntered into the sitting room and turned on the telly. As I
sat down, the regional news came on, making no mention of dead sheep or big
cats.

However,
one item caught my attention, a report on the First Annual Great Sorenchester
Music Festival. I watched with increasing interest, despite the inane and
annoying presence of Jeremy, a reporter who clearly imagined himself the
epitome of cool. He might have been twenty or more years earlier, though I
doubted it and his three-minute slot showed him to be a patronising, smug,
ignorant twit. He interviewed the festival’s organisers, a pair of local
farmers, clearly not gentleman farmers but genuine, horny-handed sons of the
soil, though I couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to get so encrusted in mud
when it hadn’t rained for weeks.

Why the report piqued my interest so much
mystified me for, although I had attended the occasional music gig over the
years, I’d not really enjoyed them and the last time I’d gone out to see a band
had been quite painful when a careless, or vindictive, person had dropped a
full drink from the balcony and, though I’d been fortunate a safety-conscious
management had replaced glasses with plastics, it had left a deep impression on
the bridge of my nose and a bloody mess down my shirt.

The
acrid stink of smoke in my nose, my eyes were already running with tears as I
leapt up, running to the kitchen, where heavy, yellowish, greasy smoke was billowing
from the grill. I was coughing like a sixty-a-day man, my potato and cheese
belching fumes like a pair of miniature volcanoes, erupting into orange flame as
I tugged the pan from under the heat. I tipped the whole lot into the sink, spinning
the taps to full throttle, watching as, with a sad hiss, the fires dying, the
potato halves collapsed in on themselves, leaving a blackened, soggy mess. Throwing
open the back door and window, I flapped a tea towel to disperse the smog,
dreading what Hobbes would say when he woke up, for it wasn’t the first time I’d
nearly set fire to his kitchen and, since the reason I was staying there was
because I’d accidentally burned my old flat down, I feared he might regard me
as a liability.

Though
I was fortunate there were two closed doors between him and the kitchen, I was
sure he’d notice the smell, unless I cleaned up as well as possible. Finding a
bucket and cleaning stuff, I scrubbed every surface I could reach until I was
dripping with sweat, and then spritzed air freshener all around; it turned out
to be fly spray but it did mask the pong quite effectively.

Afterwards, my culinary confidence dented
beyond repair, I resorted to cold baked beans à la tin, eating in the garden,
resolving to pay much more attention next time Mrs G was cooking. Then, before
turning in, and much to Dregs’s disgust, I splashed bleach around, hoping the
pungent fumes would mask any underlying odours and that Hobbes would think I’d
merely decided to clean up.

As I
lay in bed that night, thinking of the music festival, I hoped I’d find a way
to get there, despite what had happened at the last one I’d sort of been to as
a schoolboy. It had started when my mate Baz, spotting a poster for a free
festival, grew really excited at the bands listed and, though they’d meant
little to me, I’d allowed myself to be dragged along in the slipstream of his
enthusiasm. I’d agreed to go with him, providing I could get father’s
permission, something I’d thought unlikely with the festival taking place
during term time, albeit over a weekend. To my surprise, he’d said yes.

Just
after tea on the Friday evening, Baz’s mum had given us a lift to the farm
hosting the event, dropping us off with our rucksacks and a tent we’d borrowed
from Baz’s sister. We’d been surprised – and not a little proud – to be the
first arrivals. Tramping across a squelchy field that had quite obviously been
home for many cows, we found what we considered a suitable spot and set to
pitching the tent. The sky was already darkening when we started the argument
about which one of us should have brought a torch and, by the time we’d called
a truce, we could really have done with one, if only to read the instructions.
Instead, opening the tent bag, tipping everything out, we used the grope,
stumble and curse method, taking an hour at least to contrive something
tent-like.

 Then,
while I held it together, Baz, picking up the rubber mallet, attempted to knock
in the pegs. Taking a massive overhead swing, he struck the first peg a mighty blow,
bending it in half, as the mallet, rebounding, gave him a fat lip. Our strained
friendship could have done without my heartless laughter. Still, in the end, we
succeeded in pegging it down. We then spent another half-hour discussing
whether we needed the flysheet; Baz, insisting that we wouldn’t since it was
too cold for flies, won the argument on the grounds that it was his sister’s
tent. We were well past the tetchy stage when, at last, we chucked our gear
inside and set out for a recce.

Still
no one else had arrived and we slipped and squelched through mud that would
have been ideal for a First World War movie, searching with increasing
desperation by the flickering light of a match for a signpost, or anything to
direct us to the facilities. I’d begun to get a very bad feeling by the time we
were forced to pee in a hedge.

The
downpour started as we groped our way back to the tent, where we discovered
what a flysheet was for, how badly we’d put up the tent and how thin were our
sleeping bags. That night had been the longest, the most uncomfortable and the most
miserable of my life, up to that point.

Having
finally got to sleep in the dawn’s grey light, we were woken by a grinning
farmhand who, roaring up in a tractor, told us, through tears of laughter, that
we were a month too early. By the time Baz and I managed to get a lift home, a
tedious process in the days before mobile phones, we were no longer on speaking
terms.