Excerpt: The Story of Peter Parmesan.

NaNoWriMo 2009.
The Story of Peter Parmesan.
If there had ever been a lesser rank than ‘Constable’ in the Basingstoke police force, Octopus Plod would have been the perfect candidate for the post. ‘Would you care to run that past me again,’ he said for the third time. Peter found himself wondering which part of the story the officer was having problems with; though actually it would have been a far simpler task to ask whether there was anything at all he actually HAD understood.

On his part P.C. Plod was wondering why he was wasting his time talking to an obvious lunatic when he could have been at the cinema with Marilyn, a rather accommodating young lady he’d met some ten days earlier. Strangely enough, at that exact moment, the same accommodating young lady was thinking that she’d rather swim the entire length of the River Amazon naked, risking the caimans, piranhas and all manner of nasty denizens of the deep rather than visit the cinema again with P.C. Octopus Plodd, a man she’d described to her friends as having more hands than a championship whist drive.
Holding up one of those very hands P.C. Plodd managed to halt Peter’s next explanation before it was able to get into its stride, allowing him to turn and stick his head through the open hatchway behind him.
‘Er... excuse me Sarge,’ he said, ‘do you think you could spare us a moment?’
Sergeant Nutt was naturally a rather large man, a situation he blamed on the combination of a healthy appetite and the fact that he’d been bullied a lot at school. Whilst he preferred to use descriptions such as solid, reliable and imperturbable when discussing his physical attributes, many of his customers, (along with a surprising number of his work colleagues), preferred to use the more traditional description of ‘Fat Bastard.’
Now Sergeant Nutt firmly believed that at some stage during his twenty seven year service with the constabularic forces of law enforcement in the Thames Valley, he’d seen it all, heard it all and done most of it. As a result he listened politely to Peter’s next explanation, nodding sagely from time to time in an attempt to convey the impression that he understood at least some of what he was being told. As impressions go it was a dismal failure, and when the story was over, he took a deep breath, turned and stuck his head through the open hatchway behind him.
‘Er... excuse me Inspector,’ he said, ‘could you spare us a moment?’
The way things turned out they were still in the early stages of a long and drawn out afternoon, and by the time they’d called in the Assistant Chief Constable, whose name (to the amusement of the entire Thames Valley Police Force just happened to be Pratt), Peter was beginning to wonder which part of his story was giving them so many problems.
He couldn’t see that spending Tuesday evening in The Drum and Monkey would stretch their imagination too far, and nor should the bit about finding himself on his doorstep in the early hours of Friday morning, still clad in his leathers clutching his crash hat in his hand. After all at this point in his life, the loss of the odd day or two was hardly an unusual occurrence; he often had problems recalling his whereabouts after a night in ‘The Drum’, and something niggling in the back of his mind was definitely suggesting that Tuesday could have been such a night.
No, the point at which his problems seemed to arise came at the point when he responded to the question ‘When and where did you last see this so called motorbike?’ by pointing down between his legs and answering ‘There...’ and ‘Tuesday night...’
After the first hour or so Peter was getting the impression that they thought he was taking the piss when all he was doing was telling the truth. Okay there can be occasions in everyone’s life when truth can seem a totally alien concept, one that can sometimes seem to get in the way of the simplest police investigation. Unfortunately for all concerned, this was proving to be one of those occasions.
Peter could distinctly remember all four of the bike’s cylinders humming contentedly between his thighs as he hurtled up the A339 on Tuesday night. Equally clearly he could remember standing on his doorstep with his crash hat clutched in his hand in the early hours of that very morning. What he couldn’t remember, either distinctly or otherwise, was anything that had happened in between. No... actually that wasn’t quite true...
He couldn’t remember anything apart from the fact that a pair of distinctly feminine arms had been wrapped around his midriff on that journey to nowhere. Yes... the knowledge was there all right, but it seemed to be tucked away in some remote corner of his brain where he couldn’t quite get his hands on it. This he noticed, was usually the point at which the person he was talking to at the time stuck their heads through the open hatchway behind him and said. ‘Er... excuse me...’
By the time he heard the Assistant Chief Constable whisper something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Home Secretary’, Peter decided he’d had enough. He walked quickly out of the door, and a few minutes later caught the bus that conveniently dropped him off outside ‘The Drum and Monkey.’
It didn’t register with his at the time that the service which plies the two miles or so between the far end of Basingstoke High Street, and the front door of ‘The Drum’ (admittedly on a rather random basis), bears the number twenty seven. What did register though was the fact that was in urgent need of alcoholic stimulation, a need that ‘The Drum’ was only too happy to fulfil without asking so many questions.
Darren arrived at exactly the same moment. With some people that fact would probably have aroused their suspicions, but not Peter. Well... not yet anyway... not for another ten minutes or so.
****
By whatever standard he cared to apply, the past few days had been strange ones for Peter, three days and an equal number of nights of deep uncertainty, and yet the moment he reopened his eyes he could tell that things were about to get a great deal worse. In fact the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach was suggesting that the process was already well under way.
He stared at the figure seated on the far side of the table and asked the question again. ‘What did you say?’
The lizard looked at him and smiled. ‘I was merely wondering,’ it said, ‘whether adopting a flat back four might tighten things up in defence.’
‘Hmmm...’ murmured Peter, as much to himself as to the reptile, ‘I thought that’s what you said.’ It wasn’t that the question itself disturbed him unduly, after all the Arsenal defence had been leaking too many goals this past few weeks. No, the question itself was a valid one, it was just that he hadn’t expected it to be asked in the games room of ‘The Drum and Monkey’ by a Monitor Lizard the size of your average salt water crocodile.
For a moment or two the lizard continued to sit there, returning Peter’s stare in that slightly superior manner that lizards always seem to adopt when dealing with non reptilian life forms. When it, (or he), reached out and picked up his glass of stout in its left hand, Peter realised for the first time that it was more of a claw than what he’d come to expect of a human hand. As far as he could recall, Darren Monitor’s hands had always seemed normal, at least up to this moment they had, particularly regarding their reluctance to dip into his pockets when it was time to pay for the next round.
Peter was beginning to wonder whether his problem was with his hearing rather than his eyesight, and in an attempt to test this hypothesis he closed his eyes and counted slowly to the number twenty seven before opening them again. At this early stage of the evening the number still hadn’t struck him as having any more significance than say... two hundred and seventeen, or six and three quarters, and by the time it had several more valuable hours had been lost to the human race.
The moment he reached his chosen figure, Peter squeezed open his right eye just the tiniest fraction and looked across the table. The lizard was still there waiting to hear his thoughts on the Arsenal defence, so clearly the problem wasn’t with his eyesight either. To be honest he’d never really thought that it was, but it had been worth a try, though only marginally better than doing nothing at all.
Peter groaned and his eyes snapped shut. The pain in his head was getting worse by the second and he added a rather cavalier shrug to the original groan. For some reason the two seemed to go together well, and twice more he repeated the combination.
‘Buggar...’ he said, and did the same with that, ‘Buggar... Buggar...’
Even to his own ears he sounded depressed. As far as he was concerned football was fast becoming an anachronism; a seemingly essential element of everyday conversation that was as far removed from the reality of his day to day life as a Caribbean holiday only twice as expensive. Right now, if he were offered a choice between the two, the Caribbean holiday would win hands down. Not only because names such as Barbados, the Bahamas and (particularly) The Virgin Islands, sounded somehow warm and romantic, but also because they were situated an awfully long way from ‘The Drum and Monkey’ on Basingstoke High Street.
While he waited for the lizard to explain his thinking in more detail, he placed his head in his hands and lowered it onto the table. It hadn’t escaped his notice that his curses, mild though they were by current standards, seemed keen to hunt in packs tonight instead of pursuing their solo careers. Actually he found the thought somewhat worrying, and one by one he ran the possible causes through his mind. It wasn’t too difficult a task, after all there were only the two of them, causes that is, not minds. The first was trying to suggest that he was now completely insane and seemed an unlikely premise until you considered the alternative – that it was the other seventeen customers currently drinking in the games room of The Drum and Monkey whose sanity could be called into question.