Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“The latter,” said Julie, although the salary she was paid was a pittance by comparison with the male staff in the office.

“Should jolly well think so, girl. Need to be careful which way the wind’s blowing when it comes to possible promotions, eh? In the light of which, one hopes the answer to the twootings question wasn’t also a ‘no.’”

Which of course it was. No way had Julie intended to waste her precious time scrolling through thousands of clearly bananas tweets. But she wasn’t going to fess up to it. Not to Bossy Boy, anyway. On the other hand, nor was she going to lie. “Never tell lies, our Julie,” her dad, Steve, had always told her. “They’ll always catch up with you in the end, luv. Particularly if you can’t remember who you told which lie to.” And Steve would have known after all those years of working the Mersey docks and being told he’d never lose his job… until the night before he did and Julie’s mother left home. Yet still he’d somehow managed to send her to university down in The Smoke. They said in Liverpool the only good things to go south were rain clouds, but Steve had nonetheless believed such a move would give his only child the chances in life he’d never had. And Julie loved him for it.

So she never lied. On the other hand, largely through exposure to the very academics in whom Steve had so much faith, she had quickly learnt how to obfuscate. Getting a straight answer from an academic was like extracting truth from a politician. Never reply to the question you’re asked was the maxim. Always hum and haw for a bit, then come up with an abstruse answer to the question you wanted to be asked instead.

The preferred question Julie framed for this occasion was: “How hopeful are you of future progress in the hunt for Jeremy Crawford, Miss Mackintosh?”

Dodging precise details of Bossy Boy’s tweetings/twootings enquiry, therefore, Julie nodded and said the material was certainly interesting and she was working day and night on a complex algorithmic formula she was confident would, within next to no time, deliver the very goods Sir Magnus had requested: viz Jeremy Crawford’s whereabouts. She would report back in a few days.

“Gosh… well… um,” said Sir Magnus, perplexed just in the manner Julie wanted him. “All-go-rhythmic, eh? And a for mula to boot. Sort of dancing while you work, is it?”

Swallowing a giggle, Julie claimed she needed to get on with the job ASAP and excused herself.

“I shall be out of the office for a few days,” she called over her shoulder. “Anything urgent, you’ve got my mobile number. Have a nice day.”

What Julie hadn’t told Sir Magnus—which wasn’t a lie, just a matter of withholding the truth—was that, during the “research” in which she hadn’t contacted million-pound-seekers worldwide, she had been in touch with both “Jim” in Knotty Ash and “Betty” in Fanbury in regard to their claimed sightings of Jeremy Crawford.

“Jim” had been friendly enough and even given Julie his Skype number “so’s we can have a proper chat,” but, when she made the connection, she’d concluded he was either an out-of-work Sir Ken Dodd impersonator or, more likely, off his trolley. Same straggly hair as Sir Ken, same protruding teeth although they looked false, same tickling stick being wafted about, but not funny. Far from it. Gloomy and self-pitying, more like. Before Julie could get a word in edgewise, he was telling her about how life had kicked him in the teeth even though he was an obvious genius. How he could have been in The Beatles if he’d wanted, but he hadn’t reckoned them good enough to play his songs. How he could have been one of the Liverpool Poets along with Roger McGough, Adrian Henri, and Brian Patten, only his poems were better than theirs. Deeper and more complex. How his plays compared with Shakespeare’s. How at least two of his kitchen sink novels were far better than “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,” only…

That’s when Julie had interrupted and asked about the sighting of Jeremy Crawford, to which “Jim” had replied: “Who?” before embarking on a rant against Margaret Thatcher and all subsequent Tory governments, especially the latest one led by a woman called Maggie May, before launching into his version of the song about the whore who wouldn’t walk down Lime Street any more.

Leaving “Jim” to his world, Julie had thanked him for his time and disconnected.

The correspondence with “Betty,” by comparison, had been more interesting. No Skype this time, just a phone number and a cryptic one-liner, saying: “You can find me in Fanbury.” Impressed indeed had “Betty” Dawkins been at having been contacted by the very Jackie Lamur who’d posted the original bonkers banker tweet. Best to stay in her good books, he reckoned. Might even help with his investigation.

That was why Julie Mackintosh was to be “out of the office for a few days.”

Barry deferred any further enquiries into the purpose of PC Dawkins’s visit by plying him with several glasses of nettle brandy and then launching into a lengthy off-the-wall disquisition on the manner in which simple and innocent stories could be hyped out of all recognition by the regular and social media.

“Take this bonkers banker tale, for example,” he said. “Local chappie, as I understand it. It would take an idiot to believe there is any truth in the wild accusations about him , wouldn’t it? Especially not the million pound reward for his capture. Pure fabrication and pernicious tittle tattle in my view. ”

“Um,” said Dennis.

“I assume an officer of the law would share such a view,” said Barry.

“Erm,” said Dennis.

“Don’t tell me you don’t .”

Dennis hummed and hawed some more, swallowed hard and semi-nodded. “I just thought…”

“Well, I suggest you think again, PC Dawkins. I wouldn’t like to think your unexpected visit to my humble home was in any way related to that nonsense.”

“But it was you who brought this pig to your house at the dead of night?” said Dennis, unwilling to concede the game just yet. “The one over there,” he added, nodding at Pete, who said, “Oink.”

Barry rubbed at his stubbly chin. “Yes, that was I,” he said after a pause.

“The pig who’d lived with the Crawford geezer in his barn,” said Dennis, encouraged by the admission.

“So the story goes. Probably apocryphal but…”

“Although it is true that you are the Crawfords’ gardener and might know him if you saw him.”

“I can’t deny it, Constable.”

“And why would you have been stealing the pig at the dead of night?” said Dennis/“Betty” hoisting both eyebrows. “Especially as from what I heard, anywhere the pig went Crawford would follow. Don’t s’pose you had anybody hidden in the wheelbarrow you was pushing that night, did you?”

Forced onto the back foot by a copper who wasn’t as daft as he looked, Barry was left with no option but to tell the truth.

“Ha- hah ,” said Dennis/“Betty.” Triumphantly.

But Barry wasn’t giving up on the falsehood of media narratives.

“Crawford’s story is not what you think it is, PC Dawkins,” he stressed. “It is of the simple and innocent kind I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion, now blown out of all proportion. All I was doing was helping a fellow human being in some distress,” he added before explaining why it was that Jeremy had left his millionaire lifestyle and wife for a leap into the unknown.

“Nothing to do with politics or international plots. He was just sick and tired of the life he was leading, that was all.”