Bill and the UFO17

Inspector Murphy and Sergeant Cooper stood together balanced on the balls of their feet. They each checked the green Council house door, by bending over and peering, like birds taking turns on a feeder. They’d checked the number-15- and they’d checked the street name-Dickens Avenue. They’d even checked each other out.

Inspector Murphy was sure Sergeant Cooper would fail the mandatory biannual physical test of running a six-minute mile. He didn’t look as if he could run a 12-minute mile. The way he huffed and puffed his cheeks out and asthmatically searched for a breath to climb up three little steps made Inspector Murphy wondered if he’d be able to walk a mile. There was also something monkey brained about him that just didn’t inspire confidence. The garden path was a simple L shape, with a privet hedge running along the first part until it hit the perpendicular. Any of Skinner’s rats placed in a puzzle-box would have taken the right turn, but Cooper waited for Inspector Murphy to take the lead, which did show a certain level of animal cunning.

‘Mr Bowers?’ Sergeant Cooper wanted to be sure they were at the right door.

Bowers was middle aged; the clue was in the brown Val Doonican cardigan, a paunch that one button grey polyester trouser found difficult to contain and the raised high forehead that suggested baldness, or drunken barbers having a laugh. He was standing with an Evening Times in one hand, the front door wide open like an invitation, looking not in the least surprised that two police officers were standing on his doorstep. ‘You’ll have come about my Bill.’ His Adam’s apple bobbled up and down as he spoke.

Inspector Murphy had looked at his notebook again and wasn’t taking any chances. ‘Bill Bowers and his missing dog: Todger?’

‘You better come in.’ Mr Bowers stood aside to let them pass him in the hallway. ‘Just in at your right.’

Inspector Murphy as senior officer was first into the Bowers's house. Sergeant Cooper barrelled in behind him blocking up the narrow hallway so that Mr Bowers had to squeeze against the white Anaglypta to get into the living room.

A woman, they supposed must be Mrs Bowers, was staring at the blank screen of the TV. Her face was thin: cheeks, nose and chin sharp edged, whittled away by nervous energy that her toe-tapping on the patterned peacock coloured whorls of the carpet could not dissipate. She was sitting on the edge of the easy chair in front of the orange lighting of the electric fire. Sergeant Cook cleared his throat. She didn’t seem to realise that she was smoking. Her right hand waved her lit cigarette in from of Inspector Murphy’s face like a sparkler.

‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Have you found him? Tell me the worst. Just tell me the worst. You’ve found him lying in a ditch somewhere. Haven’t you?’ She smoked as she talked blowing out each word with a theatrical gesture.

‘No Madam. There is no need to get hysterical.’ Inspector Murphy fingers drummed against the hat in his hand.

'I'll get hysterical if I want. It's my house.' Mrs Bower's eyed him up and down and begged him to contradict her.

‘Tea?’ Mr Bowers with a practiced sweep of his arm, blocked his wife off and gestured that Inspector Murphy and Sergeant Cooper should sit down on the three-man tan-coloured couch. Todger’s throw lay on the arm on the couch, his hairs knitted into it and his doggy smell lingered.

‘No,’ said Inspector Murphy settling himself on the settee for the long haul.

‘Yes please,’ said Sergeant Cooper, his eyes flickering to the left to where his superior was squeezed in beside him.

‘We need to search the house first.’ Inspector Murphy’s scrunched up nylon jacket fizzed suddenly like static on a radio as he got off the couch.

Mrs Bowers jumped up as if jolted by an electrical charge. Her husband’s arm automatically went out shielding Inspector Murphy from her. ‘You think I’m hiding him. My own son. Is that what you think?’

‘No Madam. It’s procedure.’ Inspector Murphy looked to Sergeant Cooper to back him up, but he was having trouble pushing up off the couch.

‘Oh, it’s procedure to kill your own son. Is that what you’re saying?’ Saliva sprayed from the side of her mouth.

Mr Bowers's lips clenched like closed fists, a warning in his eyes not to take her too seriously.

‘No Madam. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that before we can proceed with out enquiry we need to make sure that we have not missed anything.’

Sergeant Cooper found his legs. His considerable bulk standing beside Inspector Murphy’s gave the latter’s words added gravitas.

‘Just let them do their job.’ Mr Bowers seemed to slouch down inside himself.

Inspector Murphy let Sergeant Cooper check out the bedrooms, whilst he had a quick look in the kitchen. It was just Murphy’s luck that Mrs Bowers followed him. He’s seen some sights in his time. Kitchens where the cockroaches wore overalls and only came out when a light was on so that they didn’t step into anything too disgusting. Kitchens where the dishes had lain that long in the sink that furred up forms had begun to emerge from their watery grave and created their own sink microclimate. But by any standards Mrs Bowers’s kitchen was clean. The taps had a buffeted diamond Brillo shine. And the dishes were orderly stacked in the cupboards. He noted a tin dog bowl underneath one of the opened wings of the kitchen table and thought about flicking through his notes to find out the dog’s name, which he’d forgotten.

‘You’ve got a dog?’

Mrs Bowers frowned and she chewed her bottom lip. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t want him back. Just my son.’ Her shoulder shook and she began to wail, ‘I just want my son.’

Inspector Murphy was conscious that she’d moved unreasonable close to him and that he should really fling an arm round her shoulder to comfort her, or at least pat her on the head. He cursed his luck for bringing a fat useless officer with him and not a WPC that was good at that kind of thing. He looked up at the pots on the high cupboards as if they contained clues, which was a well known detective bit of misdirection, like dealing from the bottom of the pack. When an adequate non-sobbing space between him and Mrs Bowers opened up he sambaed sideways through it and bolted into the living room. His heart was beating at double its normal rate as he flung himself onto the couch, set his face to neutral and peered at his notes on the case.

‘I’ve opened the window, but there’s still a bit of a smell.’ Mr Bowers showed Sergeant Cooper into Bill’s room

‘There’s a bit of a smell?’ Sergeant Cooper sniffed at his uniformed oxters, ‘oh, you mean in the room.’ He could smell something and envisaged finding the Bowers's boy dead body. There weren’t, as far as he could see, many places to plank him. He eased himself down sitting on Bill’s unmade bed and then got down on one knee to look under it. ‘What’s that?’ He reached under the bed and pulled out something, putting it up to his nose. ‘Argh,’ he dropped the thing that he’d picked up. ‘That’s disgusting. It smells like shit.’

Mr Bowers got down on one knee and looked under the bed. ‘Oh, so that’s where the smell was coming from. Do you need a sample?’

Sergeant Cooper’s brows overlapped on his forehead like two black beetles humping one another. ‘No. I need a toilet to be sick in and somewhere to wash my hands.’

‘Sorry about that.’ Mr Bowers cleaned the offending ordure with a little blue plastic brush and shovel set that had been sitting under the bed. ‘That’s just Todger marking his territory and saving himself something to eat for later.’

‘Jesus, other dogs just pee.’

‘He’s very smart-when it comes to food. Apart from that, he’s very lazy.’ Mr Bower picked up a framed photograph of Bill with Todger who looked as if he was sticking his tongue out at the camera.

Sergeant Cooper took the photo carefully in his big hands. ‘Mother of Christ, he’s ugly.’

‘He takes after me or his mother, Gina.’

‘No. I mean the dog.’

‘Sorry,’ sighed Mr Bowers, ‘I was a million miles away. I don’t know who Todger takes after.’ He shook his head, ‘probably Bill’.

Sergeant Cooper had another two hours before his shift finished so he took his time going through Bill’s room. His eyes quickly scanned the posters on the wall. ‘Star Trek.’ He nodded in approbation, walking over to take a closer look. ‘Beam me up Scotty.’ He turned and smiled at his witticism to Mr Bowers who was standing beside Bill’s unmade bed. ‘Why is Lieutenant Uhura circled in ballpoint pen?’ Sergeant Cooper sounded aggrieved enough to arrest somebody for the crime of defacing an official Star Trek poster.

‘It’s nothing.’ Mr Bowers chuckled to himself.

‘We’re conducting an investigation into your missing son and his dog. I think you should let me decide whether it’s nothing.’

‘No. It’s really nothing.’

Sergeant Cooper reached for his truncheon. He might have to beat it out of him, but couldn’t think past the grim grey grind of paperwork. The legalese on the pink form that he filled in later, after such encounters were based on multiple choices: a) that he fell over or b) s/he did not fall over. There was a check list of potential injuries from falling over/ not falling over that were usually attached later: fractured heads, concussion, broken eye sockets, jaws or teeth…

‘I really shouldn’t be telling you this,’ chortled Mr Bowers.

If there was anything guaranteed to piss a police officer, like Sergeant Cooper off, it was people threatening them him with innuendo. He reached for his handcuffs.

‘It’s just that Bill’s short-sighted.’ Mr Bowers laughed as if that was funny. ‘And he won’t wear his specs.’ He laughed again; there was a hysterical tone to it. ‘So that when he’s, em, playing with himself in bed, em, exercising his right hand, he wants to make sure…’

‘… that he’s looking at Lieutenant Uhura and not Dr Spock and leaving himself with little Klingons on his mucky paws.’ Sergeant Cooper finished the sentence for him, because he knew exactly what he was talking about. ‘That seems quite prudent.’ He peered at the picture of Uhura again. ‘ He seems like a right smart kid your son.’

Sergeant Cooper wandered into the hall and back into the living room, and took a seat beside Inspector Murphy.

‘No sign of the boy,’ he elbowed his superior officer playfully in the ribs, ‘but he seems like a nice kid. Mr Bowers was telling me he’s short sighted so we can maybe sneak up on him when we find him.’

Mrs Bower stopped puffing on her cigarette for a moment to look over at Sergeant Cooper. ‘He’s not that short-sighted, he’d miss you.’ Her neck whipped round to look at her husband for support.

Inspector Murphy got up from the couch to leave. ‘If we hear anything about your son, or the dog, we’ll let you know.’

Sergeant Cooper pushed up and out from his seat on the couch like a pregnant woman giving birth, and stood up beside his senior officer.

‘Oh, no,’ Mrs Bowers looked towards her husband standing at the living room door. ‘Didn’t you tell them?’

‘What?’ Mr Bowers shoved his hands in his cardigan pocket and tried to frame an innocent look on his face.

‘About the dog.’ Mrs Bowers's voice rose an octave.

‘She doesn’t want the dog back.’ Mr Bowers's eyes pleaded with the officers to understand.

‘You don’t want the dog back?’ Inspector Murphy looked from husband to wife.

‘No,’ snapped Mrs Bowers, answering for both of them.

‘I’m afraid we’d need to bring him back here, with the boy. It’s a legal obligation.’ Inspector Murphy fingered his cap, hoping to bring the matter to an end.

‘What if there was something wrong with the dog?’ Mrs Bowers looked for her husband for inspiration, ‘like in that film.’

‘Lassie?’ said Sergeant Cooper.

Mrs Bowers shook her head in such a way that showed she’d Lassie him if he came up with other stupid ideas.

‘One Man and his dog,’ offered her husband.

‘Rin-Tin-Tin,’ said Inspector Murphy.

‘Champion the Wonder Horse,’ said Sergeant Cooper when they’d run out of doggy films.

‘No. No. NO.’ Mrs Bowers was getting increasingly agitated.

‘What exactly is wrong with your dog Todger?’ Inspector Murphy tried to narrow it down.

‘Rabies.’ Mrs Bowers was almost frothing at the mouth herself with the monumental effort of diagnosing Todger’s apparent illness.

‘I don’t think you get rabies in Scotland.’ Inspector Murphy nodded his head, and raised his eyebrows as a signal to Cooper that they should move towards the door.

‘Gregory Peck,’ shouted a demented Mrs Bowers.

‘Towering Inferno,’ Sergeant Cooper stabbed at it.

‘That’s it. That’s it.’ Mrs Bowers almost did a dance of triumph and Sergeant Cooper looked pleased that he’d not got his man, or his dog, but he’d got the right film. ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird. Gregory Peck shoots the dog because it’s frothing at the mouth-demented-that’s Todger. You’ve got my permission to shoot him. In fact if you get me a gun I’ll shoot him myself.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Inspector Murphy, replied drolly, and put on his hat as he left the living room.