Cause And Effect: Vice Plagues The City

PART ONE

CAUSE

ONE

BATTLE OF ACACIA AVENUE

POLICE - where were they?

Bernie Thompson: Portsmouth Evening News, crime reporter.

Four youths were injured in a gang incident last night in the usually peaceful suburb of East Cosham. George Rattle, Chairman of the Local Community Policing Committee, said, The fight was vicious and people were scared. Why did it take 15 minutes for the police to respond?

A Police spokesman said, The response time is under investigation. An anonymous but reliable police source said, We're sorry residents felt threatened, but what do they expect with Government cutbacks forced on an already stretched Police service? If it is any comfort to the residents, who returned a Tory MP, we are all in this together.

The Chief Constable commented, The Police do not comment on Government policy. When pushed if his force was under strength, he said, The force struggled with all it was charged to do even before the cutbacks.

The Head of the Community Policing Committee for Portsmouth, Captain John V. Littleman RN, said, The Police may be understaffed, but in-line with Government policy to involve more volunteers, good people are helping in admin posts, freeing up officers for frontline work. He has called a special meeting of the committee, made up of senior police officers, Councillors, and volunteers like himself. Government policy is working, he said, and being implemented with full vigour in |Portsmouth.

‘Jane, my office,’ and turning on her heel, Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce squeaked across the polished floor of the community policing room, jerked the door open, and disappeared along the short corridor and into her office at the front of the police station.

Jane continued his reverie, induced, he says, by his cycle ride into work on a glorious late spring morning. At 59, Detective Inspector Jack Austin felt his morning assertion (he meant exertion) due to his competitive nature, racing often unaware opponents, generated a creative frivolity, his juice moment, referring to his brain activity, not the sweat; others referred to that.

Spinning Jack’s chair, Detective Sergeant Josephine Wild, nicknamed Jo-Jums, cautioned,

‘Pumps looks serious.’ The Superintendent’s nicknames were Mandy Pumps or Mandy Lifeboats, courtesy of Jack Austin, who nicknamed everyone, saying, That’s yer moniker, son, so lump it. Everyone was son to him. You had to lump that as well. Jo-Jums, also known as Mumsey, which described her comely appearance as well as her instincts, asserted her matriarchal caring role of her frequently distracted, often errant, boss, shook her head and tutted, which usually did the trick.

The Superintendent reappeared, ‘Jane, when I say step into my office, I mean now, not when you felt like it,’ stayed, hazel eyes flaring green within her angry face; Jack liked that face.

Languidly, and in his most refined voice, ‘Miss Bonnet, I seek first to deteriorate your intonation, thus relieving me of the burden of assuming your iron on a morning when my mood is elevated and my eyes are brightened by exercise, and, what’s the magic word?’

As funny as his Pride and Prejudice misquotes were, Jack Austin being Mr Malacopperism, Jo-Jums noted the impeccably coiffed, sharply dressed, high-achieving, fifty-something, strong Superintendent, appeared edgy this morning and not so sartorially smooth. Jack remained unruffled. He relished his nickname, Jane, frequently regaling one and all with bastardised Jane Austen quotes such as, Your family, they are well? the expected response, Yes, quite well. However, this morning, Jack was insensible to the precarious signals.

The Riot Act was interrupted by the whistled theme from Z-cars, a vintage BBC police drama only Jack remembered, heralding Hissing Sid, the station desk sergeant. ‘Jane, I need you downstairs to sort out bleedin’ Dixon of Dock Green.’ Sid acquired his moniker because he hissed the C in CID, although he was a lanky, skeletal, middle-aged snake of a man, so covering all bases, Austin would say.

‘Siderney...’ Austin’s posh voice, '...the magic word?’

‘Christ's sake, Jane, Pleeeeeeeasssse,’ Sid hissed, a drawn-out whiney, sycophantic enunciation, reflected also in Sid’s body language that naturally simpered.

‘Righteeho, but I may have a previous engagement with Superintendent Pumps.’ Austin replied, fluttering his one eye, pleased with his response, didn’t look around, he knew others liked it too. He had a sense for these things to the extent he told people he was blessed.

Resigned, Sid slithered out as Mandy bashed Jack on his head with a rolled-up newspaper, and mimicking Sid, ‘Pleeeeeeeasssse, Jane, pretty please with brass knobs,’ and whacked him again.

Feigning a serious head injury, ‘Be right with you, sweet’art.’

Jack’s juvenile behaviour irritated, but Mandy liked him, irritated her more. A tall man, six-four and straight backed, his dad had been a Marine, a tad overweight, he erroneously thought, and definitely ugly, though he argued his face had character, Austin was a charismatic cockney barrow boy, and he called her beautiful, a real woman, which she liked. Mandy was tall herself, five-ten, and in reasonable shape for fifty-three, but beautiful? She considered her nose too big, but Jack would say it was one of the things he liked most. Mandy had known Jack nine years since coming to Portsmouth, she, a single parent of two children, Jack an evident strong bond of love with his wife and their two kids. He’d been devastated when Kate died three years ago; even now she knew he grieved.

She paced back to her office.

TWO

Jack sauntered the corridor, knocked politely, opened the door, and Martin zeroed in on Mandy’s crotch. ‘Can we not meet without your dog?’ Mandy exclaimed, brushing Martin away with an affectionate scratch of his head.

Austin Martin, a proud and scruffy, ginger-haired Border Terrier, his nose not appreciated, trotted on, any idea Mandy’s crotch worth sniffing, a coincidental thought, and settled himself beside his master. Jack sat upon the spare, straight-backed, orange PVC chair that resided on the far wall. Jack felt the comfy seating in front of her big desk put him at a psychological disadvantage; low, reclining backs made him appear awkward and feel small.

Jack wasn't an office man, preferring the social amenities of a communal space, but Mandy's office had one coveted feature, a large south-west facing window, affording a view of a mature, leafy tree. He settled, in order to take pleasure in the solar benefits of this window and the hypnotic dappling leaf shadows on the moss green carpet, like a forest floor he supposed; Jack was a town man, but he’d seen Robin Hood. The combination of agitated, sparkling dust motes, a whirligig leaf pattern on the forest floor, had a soporific effect on Jack, or would have, were it not for Mandy asserting herself. He adjusted his seat so his scarred and empty right eye socket faced her, leaned back, enjoying the warmth of the sun on the varicose veins of his outstretched legs, raised his arms behind his head and closed his eye, just for a bit; it didn’t look like he would be called upon to say much.

In the spirit of the never-ending exchanges between the two of them, Mandy positioned herself in front of the window, forcing him to look at her into the sun with his good eye, and she criss-crossed the strong sunlight, beating her leg with the rolled-up newspaper. ‘Ah, attack out of the sun,’ a casually murmured thought as Jack slipped into a daydream, warmed by the radiant heat and the sight of this magnificent woman, in her prime, every inch and curve his Isle of Portsea, Sophia Loren.

Hissing Sid popped his head around the door, saw Superintendent Amanda Bruce musing, bashing her leg with a newspaper, hips swaying in the sunshine, and DI Austin slumped in the most incongruous part of the office, his extra-long bare legs stretched outright, and Martin looking as if he was seated at Wimbledon.

‘Bugger off, Sid,’ Mandy and Jack said, Martin barked out of synch, and Sid slithered off. Mandy launched into Jack, pacing, every now and then pointing the newspaper, eliciting defensive grumbling from Martin, whose perceived role in life was to defend his master when he was not paying attention – a full-time job. In reality, however, Martin was a recommendation by the police psychiatrist to calm Jack, a noted Berserker, a trait people believed the cause of his severe facial disfigurement, his right eye glassed berserking in a pub fight.

Jack lived with a gruesome, puckered layer of sunken skin in his redundant eye socket, a vertical, silvery, raised scar from his forehead to the top of his cheek. No eye patch, he wore the disfigurement with perverted pride, adding character to a face he considered handsome. If asked, he would say he was a Buddhist, but was C of E, Church of Egypt, and allowed this minor imperfection to his counter-dance. The normal response to this was Twat, and what’s a counter-dance? One tended to ignore his face-saving diatribe of Strictly Come Dancing on shop counters.

Ordinarily Jack was a calm individual, rarely flustered, always witty (he thought), happy, whistling and singing, jovial to the point of causing everyone else to go berserk. Extraordinarily, he survived all attempts at censure, allowing his natural instinct for humour to smooth over his pathological hatred of the pompous, self-important, doctrinaire, up their own arses, bureaucrat wankers, quoting Mary Poppins, whom he also said was Truly Scrumptious. Jack was a team player as long as he was captain, but how did he survive the bureaucracy? A higher power he would say. You’ll get your comeuppance one day, people said, and maybe he would eventually have to take early retirement, another of his great jokes at 59, aware he was reckless, which he put down to the loss of his wife. People said he’d gotten worse since Kate Austin died. He cared not, thought if he was a ship, rudderless and at sea, he would get back to harbour. You’re a natural survivor, Jane and replying by rote, Not sure I want to survive, the melancholic Jack, ever present, an emotional man not frightened to show his feelings, some say rare in a copper, especially the crying.

‘Earth to Austin, are you listening, what're you thinking?’ Mandy asserted into Jack’s ether.

Groggily, he replied, ‘Amanda, sweet’art, I was thinking of your lustrous hair, how it sways with your body. In the sun it glows album. You’re fifty-odd, an age where a woman may worry about lines, and you do have a few...’ acknowledging his powers of observation, ‘...but they radiate your womanly beauty.’ Mandy stopped pacing. Martin flipped his grizzled muzzle. ‘You have magnificent hips and an arse like a scrumptious apple, a womanly figure silhouetted by the sunshine behind you, and I imagine your olive skin, in cream silk underwear, full Alan Wickers, stockings and suspenders, where the button gives the tell-tale hint beneath your skirt,’ he was quite breathy.

Smoothing her skirt and feeling dim-witted for walking in front of the window, she shuffled aside.

Responding to the familiar watch-out growl from Martin, Jack stirred to see a stunned Superintendent, mouth agape as if someone had unsuspectingly kicked her backside, ‘Did I just say...out loud?’

Martin barked Der.

Mandy countered, ‘You did, and I see an old man with floppy, unkempt hair and a gammy eye. A man who has never matured, a senior police officer no less, sprawled in an ill-fitting England rugby shirt that displays his beer belly off to revolting effect.’ She paced energetically. ‘A shirt incongruously worn with spindly, sticky out arms that makes him look like a drawing by a five-year-old, magnetically pinned on the fridge by a Mother who would pin anything their child did on the fridge and say, how lovely.’ She changed her tone, settling into her rebuke, ‘Then we come to the lower part of you, Jane. The piece-de-resistance making you truly God’s gift to women, the Morecambe and Wise khaki shorts, so voluminously baggy around the leg holes I inadvertently glimpsed your revolting bits and pieces. Why shorts when you have legs choked with varicose veins, and why Jesus sandals with your revolting big toe sticking out wrapped with toilet paper and sellotape? What happened to your toe?’

Martin was impressed; he’d not heard such a fantastically devastating attack on his master since his mistress had died, God bless her soul; Martin was Catholic.

Jack reacted, ‘I’m not God’s gift to women. I prefer to think I was sent by the devil to tempt womankind, and I dress to tone down my overwhelming magnet, and I like to air my various...’ Martin sniffed Jack’s toe, and reassured of the loyalty of his hound, Jack continued, ‘...a fat eejit in an eclectic buggy ran over my toe. I did a pretty good job bandaging this morning, mind you, with all the government cutbacks the NHS will soon be a DIY, Dad’s Army.’

Mandy detonated, ‘Ah ha, J’accuse mon petit turd,’ the newspaper making contact as Jack felt his chest for an imminent heart attack, ‘cutbacks, the very topic....’ the phone rang, she picked up. ‘Amanda Bruce...Fuck me, Sid, what part of he will be down when I’ve finished with him do you not understand?’ She listened. ‘I don’t care if I didn’t say that...’ Jack and Martin shared a conspiratorial glance, ‘...piss off, Sid,’ and she put the phone down probably harder than was absolutely necessary to break the connection.

Jack thought he ought to say something; he instinctively knew what to say to a woman. ‘Well, that’s fecked the mood. I may be wrong, but I think I detected a concoction?’

Martin knew his master’s conversations with the human opposite sex rarely had a satisfactory outcome, so he let out a strangled whine to indicate he was generally on his master’s side, but in this instance... Mandy rolled her eyes, exasperated, but smiled. Martin was no expert in human behaviour, preferring to sniff another dog’s bottom, but his master was right in one thing, You just never know.

‘Sort out Dixon, and, Jane, we need to have a serious conversation,’ and she emphasised her point by brandishing the newspaper. ‘Sid also said your dad phoned, what’s that about?’

He flinched, put that down to Florets, ‘Did he say dad or father?’

‘Dad, now get out, and I think you mean Tourette’s,’ she replied, the rolled newspaper no longer threatening. Raising himself and making for the door, Martin took advantage of the mood of bonhomie to pad over to Mandy’s crotch. ‘Bugger off and take this flea-bitten hound with you,’ Mandy’s dramatic effect mitigated as she crouched and gave Martin a flea-bitten hug.

Jack sensed a sexual paroxysm; was that the tell-tale sign of a suspender button? Martin was licking Mandy’s nose; she cooed. ‘He’s been licking my toe.’

Mandy leapt, heaving, and chortling, Jack and Martin departed, heading to a rendezvous with Hissing Sid and Ha Ha Dickey old chap, a meeting that would turn out to be more significant than he could imagine.

THREE

Approaching the bottom of the two flights of stairs to the station reception, 'Jack Austin, Olympic champignon,' he'd seen his son do this, easy-peasy, jumped the last three steps whilst swinging off both handrails.

Spread-eagled on his back, Jack had a faraway view of the stairs ascending as if to heaven. Heads hovered, not Gods, but the pale, emaciated, red-lipped, crescent-mooned face of Hissing Sid, and the rounded, florid, face of Dickey; Martin managed a lick when he could get his snout in. The twanging Pompey (Portsmouth) tones of hissing Sid burst his fantasy, ‘Y’alreett, Jane, nasty bang, needs a few stitches you dooos,’ and imitating the sentiment was the lyrical Welsh inflection of Dickey, but it was Martin’s slobbering that brought Jack to his senses, that, and a celestial view up Amanda’s skirt as she leaned over the upstairs landing, an Olympian Goddess.

‘Oooh err, I prefer cream silk...’ Jack said, unable to stop himself, ‘...sorry, florets...’

‘Jane Austin, you’re a twat,’ Mandy said and tossed her head for a parting shot, ‘you’re disturbed, and so am I to put up with you and your Tourette’s,’ and she disappeared, shooing the team back into the CP room.

Jack’s developing Superintendent fantasy was spoiled by Dickey’s hymns and arias, ‘Yer Jane, it’s Mickey Splif's boy, Keanu, you knows ‘im, a good lad, and Gail will go barmy, and his dad, well, he’s a bit fed up. Osama says he’ll 'ave the fucking bastard, but I didn’t fink Muslims swore, anyway, if you’re in the family way you often fancy something weird, my Dyliss fancied coal and not cause she’s as Welsh as me neither, something in it, Amfracite? So, Bombay mix and pineapple chunks, stands to reason?’

Sid inveigled in a Dickensian, very ‘umble way, ‘Bombay Mix or the contents of the till...’ Jack thought, it’s like Stratford-upon-bleedin'-Avon here, ‘...a crime, is a crime,’ and rising, he struck a pose the Bard and Mincing-International would be pleased to see.

'There’s never a Z-car around when you want one,' Jack thought and said, to whomever might be interested, as he was mainly talking to himself, ‘should it not be Mumbai Mix now?’

Martin was relieved his master was back to normal. Lifting his star-swimming head, Jack looked through the glazed screen into the spacious reception lobby, where, in assorted states of merriment, was Mickey Splif with his son Keanu, WPC Alice Springs Herring, gorgeous in her uniform, standing next to a spotty drip of a youth in a suit from Sainsbury’s, who could only be the duty solicitor, and everyone stood clear of Little shoe big shoe, the Big Issue salesman. What was immediately obvious, though, was everyone could see up his shorts, which didn’t worry Jack unduly, except Alice was laughing uncontrollably; a minor dent to his ego.

‘Dickey, old Chap, a hand-up, and, Sid, a plaster for my forehead, please,’ Jack said, fingering a gash on top of a bump, oozing blood, which would likely be gushing if Martin had not been licking it.

‘‘Ave to be toilet paper and sellotape, we got no plasters,’ Sid replied, disappearing.

Toilet paper and sellotape on my toe and now my head, Jack thought, and promising himself a couple of Paracetamol like it was a pint after work, he went into the reception vestibule to be assailed by a plethora of pleas.

FOUR

‘Cod and Chips twice please, Sid.’ Jack thought Sid, behind his counter, looked like he was serving in a fish and chip shop.

‘Heard you the first time,’ Sid’s conforming response.

Pondering the universe like a space chicken, and based upon the grating quotient of his blossoming headache, Jack faced the most significant noise source. ‘Oi, I want my pand,’ a circumspect, Little shoe Big shoe said. Not a nickname, but a quote from the street corner salesman for the Big Issue, a paper sold by people who need a hand up from life’s misfortunes. For the newspaper vendor’s style, Jack would forgo his pound and buy a magazine off Little Shoe, who would hold up a baby’s shoe saying, little-shoe, then the magazine, Big-Issue. Jack ordinarily would avoid these salespeople and then feel guilty; The price you pay for being a socialist, he would say, wouldn’t see a Tory-boy worrying. Jack never saw any reason why he shouldn’t generalise. ‘My pand?’ a quieter, questioning look on the down and out man.

Jack gave him an old-fashioned look, and at nearly 60, most of his looks were old fashioned. He tried as often as possible to create new ones, but when pressed for time, he rolled out the old ones. A bit like his jokes, Mandy would say, but just now, Jack’s headache was biting at his good humour, and pointing to Little Shoe, ‘Right, you, what’s a pand?’

‘It’s wot you owe me, Guvna,’ Little Shoe’s snapped reply.

‘First of all, my dear old chap, I’m not your Governor, and the inclination I am indebted to you to the tune of one of our Majesty’s sovereigns leaves me somewhat perplexed.’

Martin looked at Dickey, who looked at Sid, who looked at Alice, nobody looked at the gentleman of the street or the suit from Sainsbury’s, but between them all, you could see them thinking, Oh no, it’s Mr Darcy, and tittered.

In an Eliza Doolittle moment, Little Shoe said, ‘You 'ad one of me Big Issues this morning and scarpered wivout payin’, and I wants me spondulics.’

Jack recalled, he’d taken a Big Issue that morning having stopped on his bike at traffic lights, meaning to pay of course, when the cyclist he’d been racing passed him looking back and smiling as the lights changed. Naturally, Jack engaged in hot pursuit, regardless the runaway was thirty years younger, had a Claude Butler supersonic ten thousand-gear, mega bike, and wore tart cycling clothes. ‘Sod, I forgot,’ Jack said, rattling loose change in his pocket as a pretence or prelude to paying, but largely buying time. ‘Pay the man, Sid,’ Jack said, disappearing to find an interview room, calling Dickey, Keanu, and Mickey Splif to follow.

Martin was comfortably seated in the smallest interview room in the police station, oppressive, no window, no ventilation, painted institutional green base and cream upper walls, reminding Jack of school corridors of the 1950s, he reminisced, enjoyed reminiscing. He shoved Martin off his chair, and ignoring the canine sulk, they settled around the old wooden table covered in an imperfect fablon covering, a sort of sticky back plastic from the seventies, meant to protect the table and brighten the place up, but only gave suspects something to do, picking at it. The chairs were also old, wooden, and specially designed with varying leg lengths so they wobbled.

There was a timid tapping at the door, ‘Yoh,’ Jack’s American cop, nobody was impressed, reinforcing his view American police only look good on telly.

The door opened and the suit from Sainsbury’s, a beanpole youth with greasy, jet black, lank hair that draped over his forehead causing a major eruption of spots, popped his pimply head around the door and nervously spluttered, ‘As duty solicitor, I should be present.’

Mickey Splif said it for everyone, ‘Fuck-off before I get Rin-Tin-Tin to give your bollocks a seeing to.’

Martin assumed an air of indignation. Jack made a mental note to tell Martin, Rin-Tin-Tin was a famous dog in the fifties; how come he got a sensitive dog, and a guilt-ridden Catholic to boot, Jack thought as the pimply solicitor withdrew, relieved. Putting his head in his hands, causing blood to ooze into the toilet paper, Jack mumbled, ‘Constabule Dixon, what’s got your goat this morning?’

Mickey Splif looked hesitant, ‘Mr. Dixon, you got a goat?’

Keanu and Dickey tittered.

Mickey was a likeable, weaselly rascal, slight and short, the complete opposite of his wife, Gail. He was known as Mickey Splif as his phizog appeared always vacant, but he just had a lugubrious style about him that was the vogue in the seventies, presumably what the long-suffering Mrs Splif saw in him. Well, she must have seen something because they had ten kids, and if the nicking of the Mumbai Mix to go with pineapple chunks for Keanu’s Mum was any measure, likely another was on the way.

The Splifs, like many on the council estate where they lived, were interrelated with the criminal underbelly of Portsmouth, but this family had not a criminal bone in their collective body, which was why Jack had excluded Hissing Sid and his charge book. Keanu, looking like a dozy, lanky, skinny alien, but with no aerial on his head, was a good lad.

‘Shall we get on?’ Jack said, distracted, looking at the blood on the palm of his hand and feeling faint.

Dickey, in his Welsh modulating tones that Jack found hypnotic, related the story of how Mr Ali, affectionately known as Osama by locals and even Mrs Ali, caught Keanu nicking a bag of Bombay Mix. Jack once had to explain to the Chief Constable, "Osama, it’s not about political correctness but being able to laugh at yourself; quintessential Englishness, see? A bit like I’m known as Jane and you, Chief, as Sitting Bull." Jack often thought he should have been a Dimplemat.

Melodic Dickey asserted himself into Jack’s outspoken thoughts, explaining Keanu was not denying the offence but begged extenuating circumstances. Mickey put his hand up like he was in class, an effect Jack noticed he had on people, which he ignored, of course, also like he did with most people.

Jack turned to Keanu, ‘D’you do this, son?’

‘Yes, Mr Austin, me mum wanted Bombay Mix with her pineapple chunks, there was nobody there to pay, so I legged it,’ Keanu answered, looking every bit the child just turning fifteen.

‘That’s fievery, you dipstick!’ Jack startled himself, wondering where his aggression came from. Tears appeared in Keanu’s eyes, in Dickey’s as well, romantic and soft-hearted, the Welsh, Jack thought, staving a tear himself. Thinking a hard-man image suited him, he slapped his hand onto the fablon, everyone jumped, and Martin did two circuits of the table at breakneck speed, barking, which brought in Sid.

‘What’s up?’ Martin slowed, looked up.

‘Sid, Keanu and me are going to see Osama,’ Jack answered.

‘We not charging him then?’

‘Feck-off, Sid.’

Sid slithered from the room, a defeated look on his skeletal face, and as his bony bum disappeared around the door, he murmured, ‘My name’s not Sid.’

Jack phoned Jo-Jums, ‘I’m off to Osama’s, what’s going down, apart from Pumps on the towpath. What’s that about?’

‘Mandy, not a clue, theft of bikes, riveting, why I followed you to Community Policing. Alice Springs had some ideas, shall I talk to her?’ Jo knew he would say yes and had already got the ball rolling, knowing Jack encouraged initiative if he couldn’t give a toss.

‘Yeah,’ Jack said, realising he was encouraging initiative, not that he gave a toss.

‘D’you need some help at Osama’s?’ Jo added, knowing also Jack would want to do this himself.

‘Nah, but tag Spanner, got potential that girl. In fact, get her on our team; despite the baggage of her family, she’s made it clear she’s her own gal, diplomanic as well.’ Jack sometimes called Alice Springs Herring Spanner, said her lips made his nuts tighten.

Jo-Jums disapproved, knew resistance was futile, but was intrigued. ‘I agree about Alice, but what makes you say this, and do you mean diplomatic, and tag?’

‘That’s what I said, diddli?’ Jack replied, explaining further, ‘She just got a butcher’s hook up me shorts and didn’t laugh, and I know she’ll not say anything, good girl that.’ He hung up, and turning to the Splifs, ‘Keanu, go with Dickey in his car, I’ll cycle and meet you at Osama’s.’ Jack was issuing orders on the move, sort of multitasking.

Jo enjoyed a laugh; Alice was sitting beside her having shared the shorts moment.

‘What about me?’ Mickey Splif asked, his Eeh-haw face on, to a disappearing Jack, schlepping with Martin through reception, Dickey complaining about the room in his car, a distant and ignored voice.

‘Oi, my pand?’

‘Sort this bloke, Sid.’

Sid’s rejoinder faded into the car park ether as Jack unlocked his bike whilst reading an attached note from Bad. Commander Manners was known as either Good or Bad. The note, threatening dire consequences if he locked his bike up beside his car again, was from Bad. Jack scribbled a repost, stuck it on the Commander’s windscreen, and cycled off. Martin, in the front gunner’s seat, an orange box that Jack had secured to the pannier frame with a combination of rusty brackets and duct tape, sat proud on Jack’s son’s old Noddy and Big Ears baby quilt, which, to Jack’s continued amusement, had PC Plod facing out. The wind in his face, whistling, Martin’s face nudging the breeze, Jo-Jums and Alice Springs leaning out of the first floor window jeering, "Dinah, Dinah, show us your leg," Jack thought, it doesn’t get much better than this, gestured two fingers behind his back, unaware his euphoria was about to be shattered. His life changed forever.

FIVE

No immediate competition on the horizon, Jack pedalled at a relaxed rate, the morning still bright. He loved his adopted City of Portsmouth. Even cycling up into the north, arguably less attractive than Southsea, where he lived close to the seafront, he saw much to contribute to his sense of wellbeing. Portsmouth was flat, making cycling easy, which allowed Jack time to indulge his favourite pastime of daydreaming, marginally more favoured than rememincing, mainly because he couldn’t spell reminisce or say it. He had many arguments of justification for his love of daydreaming; thought processing, a form of meditation, but whatever reason he was using at the time, he did it because he loved it and looked for any opportunity to indulge. Mandy said it was the natural state of a man, a vacant mind, but what did she know; probably why Buddhist monks were men, Jack would say to himself, would be one himself only orange didn’t suit him, or was that Gerry Kitchener?

Jack cycled lazily, sometimes wonky, which he called multi-directional; hand gestures, tooted horns, occasional shouts, all ignored, this was a good morning, and he would not allow the intolerant to spoil it for him. He turned off the main drag into a parade of seedy shops where the Asian Emporium took up three units. Osama’s shop was alongside an off licence, an irony Jack thought, the other side a betting shop, even more ironic. A tatty hairdresser advertising in its window a special for manicures completed the line-up. Jack pushed his bike to the nearest lamppost, and Martin sprung from his orange box and marked the post as his territory. Jack locked the bike and a sulky Martin to the lamppost; well, it was his territory.

Osama’s expansive frontage display offered all kinds of fruit and vegetables that Jack hadn’t a clue to the identity. To Jack, the Asian Emporium looked chaotic, sacks of rice here, and in another part of the shop, more sacks of rice, interspersed with sacks of rice and fragrant and the not so fragrant commodities that served the Asian community, strong in this part of town and well-integrated. No ghettos here. Jack liked the Pompey people; they got on with life, rubbed along.

Martin gave Jack an old-fashioned stare, shrank as he sensed Jack’s thoughts, and goldfish-like, forgot his concerns, attracted to a poodle tied up outside the off-licence. ‘Leave it out.’ Jack couldn’t stand poodles and made a mental note to get Martin’s eyes tested. Dickey arrived, parking the ridiculously small patrol car. Keanu exited nimbly, Mickey Splif languorous, Dickey puffed and blew invisible steam from his inflated red cheeks and pursed lips, ‘Get a bike or a trumpet, Dickey,’ Jack called out.

‘If they gave me a proper car...people will think you’re barmy talking to Martin like that, Boyo.’

Jack screwed his good eye up as he looked into the sun, ‘Dickey-old-chap, my dog is my soul mate, my muse, did you know Shakespeare had a Border Terrier, did you know Martin sniffed Mandy’s crotch this morning?’ Jack’s face beamed pride; a two-point rejoinder.

In his grumbling Welsh baritone, Dickey looked at Martin, ‘You lucky, lucky bastard.’

No mention of the Bard, I work with Philistines, Jack thought as he heard the incongruous Pompey accented voice of Osama, or as Sitting Bull would say, Mr Ali. ‘'Allo, Mr Austin, lovely day, in it.’ Jack looked down on the diminutive Osama’s joyful smile and sparkly teeth, his thin face animated, wide brown eyes contained by squinting into the bright sun that illuminated the pencil thin moustache balanced on the edge of his lip, held in place by a hooked nose. A slender man in baggy white linen garb, upside down pie-dish cloth hat, and black waistcoat, a natural born Portsmouth lad whose manner conveyed energy and goodwill, though Osama’s demeanour changed in an instant when he saw Keanu with Dickey. ‘Bloody Nora, why’s that boy not in prison, in it?’

Jack loved to hear the second and third generations of Asian people speaking, not only in the local accent but with the Asian idiosyncrasies, it was all he could do to focus on the point. No change there, then, he could hear Mandy saying in his head; he’d drifted off again.

‘A word in your shell-like?’ Osama appeared nervous, a normal reaction when the police call unexpectedly, Jack thought, but his eye was twitching; Jo’s caustic comments intruded, Well, he’s obviously guilty, nick him now. Jack would explain his non-existent eye twitches when something is not right, and the fact Jo-Jums is never around when he had got it right just meant she should get out more.

‘Mr Austin, you alright?’ a polite Osama asked, nervous, shuffling his soft-shoed feet. Maybe it’s the police car parked outside, Jack thought, Osama kept looking at it. ‘Can we talk out here, lovely day, in it?’

Irritated, Jack returned his gaze and thoughts to Osama. ‘Yes, yes, let’s go in and have a cup of tea over the rice sacks, so oriental; slow boat to India or something like that?’ Osama, thinking it should be a boat to Pakistan, went off in one direction, Jack another. ‘I meant these rice sacks,’ Jack said, rolling his eye to the ceiling that had posters of Asian scenes, women in saris. Jack’s mind flitted, should be Burkhas, he thought, falling over another stack of rice sacks.

‘Sorry, Mr Austin.’

‘Osama, what’s up?’ Jack gave him the quizzical eye, he only had the one and making it quizzical involved a momentary blurring