Tell Tale by Mark Sennen Read Free Book Online Page A

in shimmering nylon, the inner part not thin, but fleshy, soft, succulent.
    Succulent, Chubber?
    Yes. The word reminds him of ripe fruit, a plum or a nectarine perhaps. Sink your teeth into a plum and the goodness flows out. Forget touching, maybe he should bend his head and bite her down there. Where she’s juicy.
    No Chubber! This place is much too public for that! Too many people.
    Chubber stares around. Tables lie scattered outside the cafe. People are walking back and forth across the plaza. Yes, much too public; far too many people. Instead of bending and biting he lets his eyes follow the waitress as she moves away, glides and slides between the tables and heads back inside the cafe. The uniform suits her, he thinks. The way the material flares out from the waist, accentuating her shapeliness. Making the most of her curves, her hourglass figure.
    Hourglass. Like an egg-timer, Chubber. Sand. Trickling downward. Marking time while the eggs boil dry.
    Chubber shakes his head. He doesn’t like time. The way the seconds slip past. Clocks tick. Hours go by and Chubber finds things haven’t changed much. He needs to do something about that. He needs to act.
    ‘Oh well,’ Chubber says aloud. ‘Faint heart never won fair maiden.’
    ‘Pardon?’ An elderly woman sitting at the next table looks across. ‘Did you say something?’
    ‘Huh?’ Chubber says and then crunches his nose in a sneer. ‘My business. Not your business. You mind yours and I’ll mind mine, OK?’
    He scrapes his chair around so he won’t have to look at the crone. Concentrates instead on the waitress. He can see her in the cafe, talking to a customer. Then she slips behind the counter. Uses a pair of tongs to retrieve a cream éclair from the cake cabinet. The tongs squeeze the cake, the cake lets out a long sigh and the cream oozes out.
    ‘Ah!’ Chubber says. ‘Lovely. What a lovely, lovely girly girl.’
    A snuffle comes from behind him. Chubber hopes the old dear is choking on her dentures. He pauses. He really shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t even be here. If Antler Man knew, he’d be angry. Very angry. Still, he can’t know, can he? Chubber reaches into his pocket and pulls out his pencil. Licks the tip. Takes a napkin and flattens it. Bends to the table and writes a note to the waitress. She’ll read the note and maybe next time he comes into the coffee shop she’ll ask him out.
    He slips a ten-pound note on top of the napkin and moves back his chair. The girl looks over from another table, mouths a ‘thank you’ and starts to move towards him.
    ‘Oh Chubber-Chub-Chubs,’ Chubber says as he hurries away. ‘Chubber’s been a bad boy. Naughty Chubber. Bad Chubber.’
    He doesn’t look back as he pushes across the plaza. He kicks the side of a pushchair as a young mum comes by. Barges past an elderly man who is as slow as a snail on coarse-grit sandpaper.
    Sand again, Chubber? It’s slip, slip, slipping away. Marking time. Hours rushing past.
    ‘Busy, busy, busy,’ Chubber says as he skitters away and turns off the plaza, heading down Royal Parade. ‘Got things to do today. At home. Best get back. Kettle on the boil. Things on the go. Deary, deary, deary me my Chubber-Chub-Chubs.’
    Major Crimes operated out of Crownhill Police Station, located on the north side of the city, away from the centre. The building was a modernist brute of a structure in brown concrete, the colour choice not lost on the officers within or on a number of the more quick-witted of their clients. Savage arrived back from the moor mid-afternoon and went straight to the crime suite, where a DC informed her that DSupt Hardin wanted to see her.
    ‘Pronto, ma’am,’ the DC added. ‘As in, now.’
    Savage about-turned, headed to Hardin’s office and rapped on the door. Hardin’s ‘enter’ came with a splutter and when Savage pushed the door open she found him attempting to pat himself on the back with one hand while wiping up a pool of coffee