A story to die for
by Rob Hopcott Those who like car boot sales, whodunnits with a thriller murder
mystery with a good plot will be well pleased by this short story.
A whodunnit set somewhere in the deep countryside, it is
a thriller murder mystery story that shows how both good and evil can come from
standing up to the rich and powerful.
*** He would always set up his wooden box in the busiest part of the
monthly car boot sale.
"Give me some space will you."
Impervious to the pushing and jostling, he'd climb aboard and
balance precariously. The crowd would part around him - almost recoil.
But then as he talked in his special way, people would become
curious. Like snakes fascinated by the charmer, they would move closer. Each
time he would have a new theme. Then whatever he said and whatever he sold to
the crowds around him would act as a pall over the ensuing weeks or bring a
cheery grin to passers by - until the next time.
Waving above his head a slim bundle of pages, he would peer down at
a middle aged Mrs., comfortably replete in slacks and rolling contentedness,
with his single eye.
"Madam," his voice was deep and resonant. "Madam,
what do you know about adultery?"
The implication was that she knew more than she would be willing to
admit.
"Madam, would you walk away and miss finding out what
happened?"
This was his favorite phrase. It raised a question in the minds of
those around him. It tweaked their curiosity.
"This week," he would say, "I have an account that
is depraved and disgusting. Those of a weak disposition MUST NOT .." His
voice rose into a tremulous falsetto, "MUST NOT purchase this slim tome -
for I will not allow it."
"Only those who, out of a sense of outrage, are brave enough to
experience first hand the fruits of true sexual peccadillo should dare to delve
within."
"Go on, you don't know what you are talking about, One
Eye!" scorned a pretty young twenty-something. Her slim hips had been
poured into cut off shorts and her push chair was loaded with bargains and
snoozing offspring.
"And you're in the story too, so you can't talk,"
said One Eye. The girl giggled.
"If I'm in the story it'll be a pretty boring story
judging by my sex life," she said.
The crowd around tittered.
"You can talk and laugh as much as you like," said One Eye,
"but I have conducted extensive research for this little piece of
investigative journalism and I know that the people exposed in these pages are
at this very moment quaking with fear."
He surveyed the growing group around him, his one eye shining
brightly.
"Quaking in their shoes and underwear, and more about that I
will not say for fear of offending you gentle country folk gathered here to
celebrate this piece of literary genius."
And so the haranguing would go on backwards and forwards between
the local writer and the crowd. Then one by one they would pay their pound
sterling and carry away the slim volumes to read either in their cars or later
when they got home - just in case a neighbor would see their blushes.
Then the rumors would start.
"I reckon its that John that did it, you know him that lives
down by the marshes."
"Never, he wouldn't have the courage - it's Fred over
on the other side of the hill. He always had an eye for the ladies. I knew one
who stayed overnight and she was never the same again and wouldn't talk
about it."
"What a thing for a woman to do - can you credit it -
disgusting I call it and, all the time, her husband next door.
"The conversations went on and on. Always puzzling, always
wanting to know. Sometimes the response was angry.
"That vile man. All that power and he uses it like that. He is
supposed to be working for the community but he's got fat on it and is kept
in office by elderly voters living in the past. If I could get my hands on him
in his posh London Board room, I'd give him a talking to."
"Go on, he doesn't care. It'd be water off a ducks
back. He's laughing all the way to the Bank with his cronies - and they own
the Bank. He'd laugh in your face."
"Then I'd dot him one right in the middle of his stupid
face, the slimy rat."
"Anyway, it's supposed to be a story. You don't know
if it's really about him."
"I know enough! One of my business mates tried to get some
help from him - as is his right - and said more or less the same thing. He was
more interested in whether a non-executive Board room job was likely to become
available than the merits of the case."
Backwards and forwards the conversations went. It was supposed to
be fiction but every body believed it was fact and in a small community
everybody believed that they could spot the characters. And then the next time
would come and grudgingly they would crowd around him and buy his latest
offering.
If the books had been sold in the local book shop nobody would have
bought them. Next to the bright covers of historical romances and hi-tech
thrillers, the photocopied pages, hand folded and wrapped in a blank cover
would not have appealed.
It was the immediacy of his presence and the knowledge that others
would inevitably buy or, on a bad day, be given the secrets to which he was
privy that brought the desire to know.
Whether all that he wrote was as a result of extensive research or
whether he was just a good and shrewd judge of character, nobody knew. Perhaps
he just had a very fertile imagination and the courage to stand up literarily
and be counted.
But his descriptions never disappointed. His imagery was sharp, his
character descriptions poignant. You could taste the food on which his
characters dined and the cider that they drank. His bushes were a deeper green
and his roses blossomed more brightly.
At the end of an account, he always left you feeling better.
You had lived through an event that was important for somebody. You were
uplifted by the experience. Drawn in by curiosity, the form of his art was to
supply nothing less than satisfaction.
"You should get yourself published properly, Jack," one
onlooker shouted.
"And one day I'll write a story to tell you exactly why
I'd never do that," yelled back Jack. His thick set lips curled with
distaste in the mass of his ragged beard at the thought of fame, fortune and
corporate money.
One day he was recounting the outline of a story to the gathered
crowd when a stranger pushed through and tugged on his arm.
Hesitating for a few minutes and then obviously in distress, Jack
gathered up his box and followed him away from the crowds and out to his old
Ford motor that was always parked outside the car boot area.
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