The Bone Idle Detective agency

It was three o clock, and the phone didn't ring.

Every day, at three, on the dot, it stayed silent. I sat back in my chair and steepled my fingers in front of me.

Somewhere, a crime was being committed, and fairly soon, it would be solved. And its solution relied on my staying still, in an attitude of deep thought.

In the square outside, it was late spring. It was late spring everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, of course, but I could only believe what I could see with my own eyes.

And what I could see was a couple lolling on the grass, a man reading a newspaper on a bench, a woman with a military bearing walking what appeared to be a dachsund. I heard the wonky chiming of an ice cream van, but it was outside of my field of vision.

I saw magnolia blossom drifting to the grass, I saw the handsome frontage of houses built with tainted money.  I saw a woman in an upper window leaning out to water a window-box. I saw a jogger going round and round and round.

All the people, so many people.

I tried hard not to think about the crime, it didn't help to think about what horror, what atrocity, was taking place right now. I have a 100% success rate of solving crimes I don't think about. 

Early in my career, I tried to involve myself in the detail. I'd take cases, answer the phone when it rang. I'd case locations, interview witnesses, look for clues, construct elegant theories. My success rate then was closer to 30%, and if I'm being completely honest a couple of those were blind luck. In one instance a man who'd embezzled thousands of pounds fell in love with me, in another I extracted a confession through what the perpetrator described as psychological torture, but was, in fact me being unable to think of anything to say. For four days. 

It is my belief that if you give people enough rope, they'll generally tie themselves up in it. In this, though in little else, I have so far been proved 100% correct.

Sometimes I just know a crime is being committed, and I also know, with utterly certainty, that if I barely think about it at all, it will be confessed to. Crime is a powerful motive force, and if it meets complete indifference, all that energy has to go somewhere, at least that's my working theory. It's worked pretty well so far, too.

The phone didn't ring, and at five to five, just as I was about to leave, the door didn't open, and nobody needing my help walked in. It did this every day. I nodded to myself, the case was proceeding satisfactorily, and I was increasingly confident of a result.

I took my coat from its hook on the back of the door and shrugged it on. It was a warm day, but I looked good in it. A long grey coat from Comme des Garcons. A hat, too. 

Half this game is image.

Stepping out into the square, I walked up to the ice cream van and smiled brightly at woman within. She smiled back. I'm personable enough, I think. I paid for a 99 flake, and walked off into the spring evening licking my ice cream, letting my mind unspool, and not thinking about crime. I passed a quiet evening watching wildlife documentaries of the sort with the title world's somethingest something.

In the morning, at ten past nine, the phone rang. DI Maskelyne.

“Was this your doing?” She asked. I allowed myself to feel blank, it wouldn't do to compromise the investigation at this late stage. She explained: a man had walked into the station that morning, a bewildered expression on his face, as though he didn't know what he were doing, as if compelled by some distant motive force. Acting almost as though he were under duress "like something was wrenching it out of him, which made me think of you" as DI Maskelyne phrased it, he confessed to murder and handed the duty sergeant a map with three locations. Each of which turned out to be a grave.

“Three?” I said “My my. Sounds like it could be one of mine, but I couldn't say for sure. I imagine I'm responsible for one of them, unless they were all at the same time”

“Well, on the off chance, thanks”

“You're most welcome, I imagine. Lunch on Thursday?”

“Not a chance” she rang off. I made a cup of tea, and wondered when the phone wouldn't ring again.