Who Fwamed Pesky Wabbit?

Business had been slow since I’d cracked the case of the Cult of the Succulent Lamb. I thought the phone would be red hot with lucrative offers of work in exotic locations. I thought maybe I’d pick up a chick or two. I even thought getting a haircut that cost more than my phone and handing out flyers would raise my profile, making me the investigative journalist of choice for the jetset.

I thought wrong

I thought maybe it was because I was with the 3 network, and their coverage was still lacking in the Highlands, so this week I changed to O2. Talk about bad timing.

Jinxed doesn’t come close.

Two weeks ago I consolidated all my bank accounts into a new account in RBS. Haven’t been able to get a fiver out since.

Finally my phone rang.

The guy on the other end sounded intelligent, using lots of words with more than two syllables all in one sentence. I had to tell him to slow down. Take a breather. Speak in plain English.

Turns out he was a lawyer. A defence lawyer.

I told him that as far I knew I wasn’t in need of defence lawyer.

He said he knew that, although he’d also heard through the grapevine, so to speak, that I might be needing one in the not too distant future.

I felt uneasy at this. What did he know? No-one was supposed to know anything. Well, no-one apart from an old friend from way back who’d recently chapped my door with fresh promises of finding the elixir of life and pots of gold under brown-stained skies.

Alarm bells started ringing. The newsagent next door was being robbed again. I put the lawyer on hold and ran outside to grab a carton of Regal King Size and Hamlet cigars before the rozzers came. To be truthful, there was no need to run.

The newsagent was getting robbed so often this summer the rozzers had stopped answering the alarm call. One of them had even asked me to keep an eye on the place, and if there was anything suspicious going on I was to try and get him a carton of Mayfair for his wife.

Back inside I locked the front door before any of the stray kids roaming the neighbourhood took advantage of a warm bed under my stairs for the night. I don’t mind helping out those less fortunate but the thieving little bastards had helped themselves to a few buds from my plants, even though they weren’t quite ready yet, neither the kids or the plants.

Once settled back inside I picked the phone up and tried to sound professional and derisory at the same time, in case it was a prank call who really could turn out to be an earner. “So, Mr big time lawyer, what can I do for you?”

“I’m representing a friend of yours. He says you might be able to help.”

Bigger and louder alarm bells started ringing. I looked out the window but there was no doubt the alarms were going mental inside my head. The reason was obvious.

Whenever someone mentions helping a friend it usually means no fee involved. I had to think fast. “I’m not in the business of helping so-called friends. I think you must have the wrong number.”

“Wait,” he said, pausing for such an age afterwards I thought he was trying to tell me something telepathically. “It’s Pesky….Old Pesky.”

His words knocked my breath away. How did he know Pesky? What had Pesky told him about us? My first thoughts were gambling debts. I knew he thought he was a cool hand around the poker table. No doubt he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

But wait, no, if it was gambling debts why was a defence lawyer calling me? Why wasn’t his torso just turning up in a wheelie bin? I was never good with numbers but even I knew something didn’t add up.

“I don’t know anyone by that name.” I tried to sound menacing but ran out of breath halfway through the next sentence and barely managed to reach the end without fainting, even though it was a very short sentence. “What’s your game,… mi…ster?”

I breathed again. It was nice to feel the oxygen rush to my brain, albeit at a fairly leisurely pace considering the circumstances. I wondered if I was experiencing a natural high but stopped wondering to concentrate on the silence.

This time the lawyer’s long silence on the phone told me he was thinking, and I believed it. Silences don’t usually lie; especially long ones.

Although, in saying that, there was the time my dog lay on the rug silently watching The Dog Whisper DVD on repeat. Well, I thought he was watching The Dog Whisperer. Turned out he was dead, which, as you can imagine upset me no end. The lazy bastard couldn’t even drag himself outside to the grave we’d dug together earlier that week. Took me ages to clean the carpet.

“Pesky says you’re the only one who can help. He says you’ll understand. Says you’ve been there.”

My mind raced to long ago. I remember watching Pesky take his first boings in the world. He was always a feisty character but with a heart of gold, and stuck his nose in places others shied away from, as well as sticking stuff up his nose that others shied away from. Unfortunately, that led to his cocaine, Vicks nasal spray and index finger addictions.

“Okay,” I said, reluctantly. “What if I do know this…this Pesky you’re on about? He’s got to conquer those demons on his own. He’s never going to stop until he wants to, until he really wants to. I can’t help him with that shit.”
The lawyer’s silence wasn’t as long as the last time, so it was hard for me to understand what it was saying. Luckily, I didn’t have long to wait.

“It’s not drugs this time. It’s writing.”

Those words set off a chain reaction that started in my toes, ran straight up to my head and punched my nose from the inside before escaping out my arse as a gas, although there was a chance a little liquid also found its way on to my relatively clean boxers, but not enough to force a hasty pre-washday change.

I knew he’d started dabbling in words. I’d warned him not to be taken in by their sexy curves, lovely alliterations and promises of otherworldly visions from the muse. But I knew he wasn’t listening. He looked at me like I was a stupid old-timer; a relic from a bygone age who didn’t understand how the world worked these days. He had that look in his eyes. The look of ‘I’m going to show you. You think you could’ve been a contender. You’re jealous because you’re old and weak.’

It was all my fault. I’d told him drunken tales of the old days. Tales of poems of love, stories of truth, and novellas of less words than one of my poems. Tales of fighting the good fight against the ruling class and dragging the people…our people…kicking and screaming into the twenty first century as we charged the establishment armed with nothing more than Parker pens claimed free from the Michael Parkinson life assurance advert and Ikea pencils.

Back then, he listened. He listened good, but not well enough.

“Where is he?” I finally asked, heart pounding, unsure as to whether I really wanted to know, but certain that I couldn’t deal with not knowing.

“He’s in the ABCTales Jail, Mr Pimpernel. He says you did a bit of time in a similar jail back in the day. Says he’s been set up. Says it was a honey trap. Claims it was an inside job.”

“A honey trap, eh? Not heard that phrase for some time. Come and see me when you’re done visiting Pesky. And tell him he’s a stupid cunt. Tell him I told him this would happen. Tell him…ach, don’t bother, I’ll tell him myself once we bust his fluffy arse out of there.”

As soon as I hung up the phone I kicked the new dog. In all the excitement I’d forgot to tell the lawyer I wouldn’t be giving my services for free.
Sure, Pesky was an old friend. Well, more of an acquaintance than a friend. And old acquaintances don’t pay the leccy bill or home deliveries from Dominos. You can’t buy a curry with a memory of good times.

I redialled the last number and called the lawyer back. It went straight to answering machine so I was going to hang up, but then I heard the options:

‘Hi, welcome to the auto-office of Jonathan Boyd from Boyd, Boyd, and Khan. Unfortunately Mr Boyd is not available right now, but if you want to leave a message it will only cost you £20, which, if you check the going rate is actually a fucking bargain. However, if you want to leave a number for Mr Boyd to call back that will be only £40, or if you want to leave a message that also asks Mr Boyd to call you back that will be only £60. If you don’t want any of these fabulous and competitively-priced offers please press hash key and the call will be terminated with immediate effect right after we electronically capture your details so we can invoice you for the call so far. I think you’ll find our £100 disconnection fee one of the best value deals in this field, or any other field for that matter.’

I hung up.

My phone rang right away. The same voice said: “Hello again, Mr Pimpernel. I forgot to mention early disconnection is an extra £50. Have a nice day.”

It was one thing offering to help an old acquaintance if the money was right.

It was another thing being conned into helping for free.

However, being charged for offering to help an old acquaintance because I forgot to push my own fees upfront is in a completely different league of scamming altogether.

If I had a hat on I’d have doffed it to them as a mark of begrudging respect.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew Pesky had to be involved in the planning. But then the more I thought about it, the more I remembered he could never be trusted by anyone other than himself. And then when I thought about it even more, so much more that my head started to explode, I realised it was past midnight and well past my bedtime.

If Pesky was really in ABCTales Jail he’d have to wait until morning at least. And if he was part of that lawyer’s phone scam then I’d hunt him down like the pesky cwabbit wabbit that he is and get my phone expenses off him.
(to be continued…at a much later date)