pink socks

She had to blink her watery eyes in rapid succession to fight the vinegary sting of urine in the air.  She glanced at the cleaning log pinned to the door and opened her mouth to speak, instantly regretted it as she fought down a gag reflex.  Detective Bentley thought, “Call me the world’s greatest detective, but I suspect that the toilet cleaner did not in fact inspect this toilet 3 hours ago.”  The toilet was foul, always had been since anyone could remember.  Perhaps its value as a piece of local history was the reason why this shabby 70’s concrete-bunker-of-a-toilet remained despite the billion-pound development of the Docks surrounding it.  The detective ventured toward the details that eluded her pencil-light in the near-darkness.  It felt tacky underfoot so she swept the light down to the familiar black pool of blood that warranted her presence there.  Around the base of the toilet was curled a dark body slick with blood, making it impossible to identify.  As she stepped closer bile erupted from around her hanky splattering the inside of the cubicle and speckling a corpse the size of a small child.

The kid had run till it hurt, luckily The Navigator pub was only a few minutes from where the police had spotted him.  Its owners were a better, bigger breed than him, but for all their glamour and influence they were out for an easy buck.  They would hide him if he could offer that.  He did, he hid.  Crime-lords may own the streets, but they always need people like him, people who know the streets.  With the all clear, he ran home which was one of ten identical high-rise council flats.  He peckered at the lift button, catching his breathe.  The lift doors shuddered open revealing his reflection in the dented metal panel inside; his trademark green eyes were calm as always.  Deceptive, like his father’s eyes.  The inside of the lift looked like a beaten biscuit tin and stank of bleach.  A welcome rest nonetheless, the day had taken its toll.  It was the second near-miss with the Police in as many days and he had lost his closest companion. 

He found the puppy in a box by the creek, named it Bobby.  But from the day the puppy could walk it rarely left the treadmill in the lounge, hours spent trotting its tiny paws in front of the TV, so Dad called it Treadmill, just as Dad called Evan Taylor, ET, joking that the boy was an alien, no relation of his!  ET bitterly wished that were true.  Six months later the unknown mongrel puppy became a Great Dame and ET’s only family.  His Dad tired of his house-wife and his Mum tired of being a housewife.  ET and Treadmill were sent to his older half-brother, whom he had never known existed.  The man remained a total stranger due to long work hours and a longer drug habit.  ET was excluded from school and fell through the gaps between educational projects and social services.  Then his girlfriend got pregnant.  It was from that time that ET resolved himself to being a better father than his own had been.  Firstly, that meant money, so he worked for his brother and kept his baby and his babies momma well provided at her mother’s house.  He got to see baby Katie whenever the grandparents were out, occasionally she would stay nights at his place.  ET and Treadmill became permanent fixtures on the city sea-front, selling weed and pills, avoiding the attention of gangs or Police.  He sometimes saw his father sleeping rough by the beach huts, but he never dealt to him because his father was into harder drugs.  That meant he never noticed ET anyway - not that he took much notice of his son when they lived together.  The day before yesterday was an unusual drop, a cocaine drop, the kind that could draw attention.  ET took his usual precaution and put the package in a condom in sausage meat, Treadmill’s favourite.  As if on cue the Police showed up.  Treadmill gulped the package down without chewing and charged off in the opposite direction to ET.  They were supposed to meet up later, after ET had outrun the fat little piggies.  Treadmill was still missing and ET was distraught, but his bosses were now out of pocket so they ordered a repeat drop.  Without his trusted hound ET would need new precautions.

The lift stopped, as it always did, on the 13^th floor, four floors short, as if by design.  These floors were reserved for the council estate scum, druggies.  Each floor had four flats, each flat had no door and the connecting corridors were littered with old sofa cushions, garden furniture, spent bonfires, cats, dogs and on one floor a wailing toddler.  He reached his floor and dove through the rectangle hole that used to be his front door onto his bare mattress on the bare concrete floor of his bare room.  The only exception to the Spartan theme was a brand-new Barbie bed and matching dresser for his girl.  He lay in the dark no longer able to fight the realisation that Treadmill was probably gone for good and all he could do at the time was jump through hoops for his boss and organise another drug-drop.  It too had just gone South, but he found some comfort in knowing that the package would be reunited with him thanks to Royal Mail.  For while he was being chased he just so happened upon a post box on the corner of the road.  Momentarily out of his pursuers sight, he mailed his pre-stamped, pre-addressed cocaine package to himself.  Even if he had been caught, he had no drugs on him!  After all, he had to think of potential jail time since becoming a father.  But who was he kidding?  Drug-dealing meant he rarely saw his baby girl and had now lost his dog.  He swigged a shot of Vodka and Ketamin powder just as his daughter and her mother arrived unexpectedly.  Baby Katie was fast asleep which meant he was able to feign soberness to tuck her into bed and show her mother out the door.  The last thing he saw as he fell unconscious were his daughters pink socks poking out from the Barbie duvet.

In the silent darkness of the filthy public toilets the Detective forced herself to face the corpse again.  She traced its outline with her eyes, following the slick trail of oily blood coming from its head.  Her torchlight picked out the details brilliantly, exposing not a child, but the body of a large dog. Probably a Great Dame, she thought, one that seemed to have exploded.  She had seen this a few times in humans, the vomiting and diahorrea caused by a drug-package splitting in the stomach. 

ET awoke and made his way gingerly to the bathroom.  In the hall on the floor were the discarded remains of a package, with three neat little rows of stamps on it.  Good, he thought, my package arrived.  He assumed that his girlfriend had opened it, so he called for her.  There was no response.  Must have collected Katie already.  The kitchen blinds were down and in the dark the floor was iridescent like snow at night.  White powder was scattered all over the floor.  Before he could erupt in anger he noticed a tiny body curled up in Treadmill’s basket.  His dog had returned!  “Hey boy!”  He stepped closer and without warning he let out a long bitter scream.   As he knelt over the dog-basket and reached for the corpse within.  He gently rested his hand upon two little pink socks.