Adam Maxwell: Murder on the Links

The Defective Detective

It’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 themselves inside out.

Of course for this round you, like me, would order yourself a coke, just in case and then you would watch as most of them drink the foul liquid down and down. But not Mitch, he’s still sipping at his lager-shandy and he comes over to talk to me puts his hand on my shoulder and

Waking up in the bunker of the first hole of a golf course with an ear full of sand pretty much drove home to me that golf was never really going to be my game. A crudely scrawled note was shoved in my pocket. I knew what it would say before I even read it.

Clint – we couldn’t be arsed to carry you any further so when you wake up we’ll be in the bar getting shitfaced. Hope you managed to avoid getting hit. Dean.

Narcolepsy has its drawbacks. Dropping off to sleep without a moment’s notice can be considered problematic but other times it can help you escape the clutches of a group of thunderous morons. I smiled as I stood up, the laxatives obviously hadn’t kicked in. But they would. I couldn’t decide whether to go and watch the consequences or just bugger off home. The freedom of the choice felt really good.

A breeze caught me and sent sand blowing from my hair and clothes, a yellow cloud billowed gracefully towards the fairway before the wind changed and hurled the tiny stony grains into my open eyes. My hands shot up instinctively to rub them but it just made it worse.

“Shit!” screamed a voice on the wind. “Duck!”

A tiny projectile thudded into my left shoulder, knocking me off balance and sending me backwards into the bunker once more. A miniature sand avalanche came down, covering the right hand side of my body and I lay still, eyes closed for a second trying to work out if the searing pain in my shoulder meant that it was broken and whether I was still sand-blind.

“I think I’ve killed him,” the voice was shaking as it came closer. It was probably best to play along.

“Bloody hell, Smith,” said another. “With a slice like yours I’m amazed you haven’t hospitalised more.”

I breathed deeply and instantly regretted it as sand whirled up my nostrils causing me to cough, gasping for breath and struggling to stand. My assailant screamed from a few metres away as I snapped to my feet and sent clouds of bunker sand into the air.

I worked the last of the sand from my eyes and stared coldly at him.

“Ah- are you alright?” he stammered. “I mean – are you hurt? Can I help you? Wha-what were you doing in there?”

“A bit. No. And sleeping,” I deadpanned. “Is this yours?” I motioned to the golf cart that was parked on the edge of the bunker.

He just stared, his mouth hanging open gormlessly.

“Don’t mind me, I’m not dead.”

The inept golfer tapped his friend on the shoulder and pointed as I commandeered the golf cart.

“Wait! Look out!” he shouted.

My exit was not destined to be as cool and Bond-like as I’d hoped. The cart lurched into reverse slamming into a bag full of clubs, cannoning them down into the rough where the majority of them came to rest on top of what they had been pointing at. It was, and this was obvious even to my untrained eye, a real dead body. I caught a glimpse of it and then

Waking up in public with subtlety is something that’s difficult to achieve. Even with the amount of practise I get, the place that exists where your body wakes up and your mind is still dreaming can produce some mortifying consequences. And, of course, the reverse is true when the cataplexy kicks in the mind is active, the ears are listening, the nose is working but the eyes and the rest of the body refuse resolutely to co-operate.