The Defective Detective : Murder on the Links by Adam Maxwell Read Free Book Online

The Defective Detective : Murder on the Links
      I t’s amazing how easy it is to get hold of a powerful laxative if you’re motivated enough.  And between you and me I was highly motivated. 
      I’m not entirely sure that was what Dean had in mind when he planned the stag do and in the end he was just collateral damage.  I mean it had all started quite amicably.  People started arriving at the appointed hour talking loudly on their expensive mobile iTwats rather than to each other.  It was before lunch but we were all men of the world so that didn’t matter, we could handle our drink on an empty stomach.  Oh yes.
      Then the rivalry began. Initially between the old friends and the new friends, not knowing each other, everyone wanted to appear more important, more successful than the rest.  No one backing down until Mitch Van Doren (or Mitch VD as he was known at school) rolls up his sleeves to reveal his Rolex, throws a roll of cash onto the table and the conversation is over.
      The ponce.
      Tells everyone he’s just been promoted.  I mean that in itself was laxative-worthy as far as I’m concerned but this wasn’t what triggered my jaunt to the pharmacy down the street.
      Okay, maybe it helped.
      It didn’t take long, maybe not even as long as it took to drink the first round before the whispering started.  In amongst the conversations about the cars and wives and girlfriends.  I’d like to say I didn’t join in the conversations by choice but I’d be lying.
      And you know when you can just tell people are whispering about you?    
      Well maybe you don’t but you will soon.  I tell you what they weren’t doing.  They weren’t whispering about how I had more GCSE’s than them and they weren’t whispering about how I had more A Levels than them or how when they were sitting the former I was already studying for the latter. What they were whispering about was summed up in what I could see out of the corner of my eye and that was them miming that action where they tip their head back, mouth wide open, eyes closed.
      Watching this game of charades taking place between old friends and new and knowing they were bonding over a shared mockery of me just boiled my piss.  I didn’t even want to be there.  I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t signed up to bloody Facebook.  Dean found me on there, told me he was coming home to have his stag do in Kilchester.  We hadn’t seen each other for ten years.  Longer.  And I mean he was alright but all these arseholes in suits that cost more than the rent for my flat taking the piss out of me…
      Because that’s when the jokes start.  So bloody funny.  They say they’re feeling sleepy, been up all night, can hardly keep their eyes open and I can feel it getting to me, feel the tiredness coming towards me but I fight it.  I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.  For the first time since school Mitch doesn’t join in, just looks uncomfortably, patronisingly at me, waiting for the inevitable as my head starts to drop forward but I catch myself then I tell them I’ve got to pop outside for a minute, get some fresh air.
      Well what would you do?
      I tell you what you’d do – you’d say, “Know what?  I reckon we need cocktails.”  And you would walk to the bar.  Then you would order the biggest pitcher of glow in the dark puke-juice you can find, wait the eternity it takes the barman to make it, all the while secretly rummaging in your pockets, tearing open the sachets in anticipation for that moment when he turns his back on you to punch it into the till.  When he does you would look over to make sure no-one’s looking then empty the whole lot into the jug and stir.
      And stir and stir and stir.  Then you would take it over to your new found friends and watch the fun really start.  We were supposed to be going to play golf in half an hour but with a bit of luck by then most of these pricks will be shitting