Confessions of a Private Dick

Terry pulls back her head and brushes her lips to and fro across mine. At hip level her crutch imitates the motion and I feel like a piece of carved wood that is being polished. My right hand hovers around the slit in the collecting box and I probe the soft, tight curls; feeling the whole feature quiver beneath my fingertips. As I had imagined they might, Terry’s hands drop to my waist and she fumbles untidily with the catch of my trousers. Just when I am thinking that she may need help, the zip jerks downwards and my slack cock is exposed like a fish in a net dangling against the side of a vessel. Terry sucks in her breath and dips a mitt down the front of my Y-fronts.

‘Oooom!’ she says. ‘That’s nice.’

I don’t think she is tempted to write to the Guinness Book of Records about it but the remark is just what percy needs to get all pinky and perky. Make no mistake about it, ladies. You can work wonders with a shy, sensitive lad if you give him a bit of admiration and encouragement. ‘What an attractive spot to have a prick’ or ‘Goodness! I doubt if my slight frame will be able to withstand the onslaught of such a monster’, go down a lot better than ‘Everything seems to be miniaturised these days, doesn’t it?’ or ‘OK, vole parts, let’s be having you!’

The minute that percy hears Teresa’s comforting words he responds as if plugged into a recharging machine. Any hint of the horizontal is brushed aside by a new sense of dynamic purpose and an angel choir bursts into song. Actually, it is somebody turning on a transistor radio across the other side of the light well but it does make me think about where we are. Miss Bradford has now started to fondle my spheroids and it is clear that a desire for intimacy is somewhat nearer than the back of her mind.

‘Nice black pussy,’ she husks bullying my lower lip with both of hers. My right hand has now discovered an opening with great opportunities for advancement and I look around for somewhere to start thrusting my way to the top. Though not expecting a four poster bed to be lowered through the ceiling on silken ropes it would be nice if there was somewhere a little more prepossessing than rutted, crumbling lino to plight our troth on. You could blight it rather than plight it in these surroundings. Still, it is no good worrying too much. We are lucky to have the desire, the opportunity and the capability. A stand-up quickie against the side of the filing cabinet seems to be the order of the day. Be just like the office party, won’t it? You always fancied that shy girl in accounts but you never knew she was like that – not until you poured half a bottle of gin into her lemonade.

In practice, the filing cabinet rattles too much so we stagger back against the door that connects with the next office. Teresa has thoughtfully yanked my trousers and pants down to knee level and percy is peering through the curtain of my shirt like an actor looking to see if the theatre is filling up. It would be but a second’s work to engage the lady’s parts with my towing equipment but I feel that those lovely knockers deserve closer inspection. As I have already indicated, Teresa is handing out a terrible beating to the front of her sweater and I almost hear the fibres groan with relief as I start to put the merchandise on display. What a hammockful! She may not wear any knicks but she needs a bra in case she turns round quickly and kills someone. Talk about Black Beauties. She makes Chesty Morgan seem like Olive Oyl’s kid sister on a diet. Some birds stuff a handkerchief between their knockers. This chick could manage a couple of sheets – and you wouldn’t have to take them off the bed first. Of course, I exaggerate a trifle – I exaggerate a jelly if you give me half a chance – but this bird is definitely an experience bristol-wise. For a moment I gawp. Then my itching fingers flip up the bra cups like they are garage doors. Bouncing out to meet me come a couple of nipples like the last third of a brown cucumber. She is obviously pleased with them because her hands leave my hampton and thrust up her bristols until the nipples are tickling my bracket.

‘You like black titties?’ she says. I don’t answer her because I have my mouth full. Miss Bradford would clearly prefer it if I had two cakeholes or one very wide one because she keeps counter punching with her knockers until I am in danger of going down for the count – as opposed to the cunt which is what I normally go down for. This is all very, very well but my appetite is now sufficiently worked up for the main course – shish kebab of Teresa Bradford: tender portions of grumble and grunt speared on my steaming hampton and cooked over a couple of white hot balls. I am about to pocket the lady’s socket on my sprocket when she gives a shudder like a cabinet minister looking at the latest trade figures and dives down the front of my body until her Manchesters are pummelling my knee caps. What those soft, tender lips and talented tongue are dishing out I hesitate to reveal but it is not a million miles from what must go on in the testing department of a trumpet factory. I am not surprised that the Queen is looking the other way as she salutes – she is on a calendar on the far wall of the office.

Teresa slips a hand between my legs and – ‘OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!!’ Any more of that and I will be using her epiglottis as the spring-up target for my fun gun. Taking a deep breath and hoping that Teresa will not do the same, I haul the sensational syrup (syrup of figs: nigs. Ed.) up my power-packed frame and cup my hands under her back bumpers. As our lips collide I hitch her into the air and guide her into the right position for a quick game of furry quoits. Her helpful fingers pull back percy from his streamlined – or more like it, steamlined – position against my body and I slowly ease her down until her feet are resting on top of mine and percy is flying blind. She grinds slowly whilst my nervous system responds like an under cranked pin table with two balls running and everything lighting up at the same time.

‘Love that white flesh!’ she groans, stretching her long fingers down the back of my thighs and chewing my neck. Call me impulsive if you like – though I usually answer to Tiger Lips – but all the signs indicate that this is going to be a quick romance. Miss Bradford presses her body against mine at many points and I lift her into the air so that her knees are on either side of my thighs and proceed to see how far percy can push pussy without losing contact. Teresa clearly likes this game and it is not long before her knees are banging against the connecting door like a couple of battering rams. My eyes glaze over and it seems as if the Queen is sliding off her horse – I know how she feels.

‘Go on! Go on!’ I never know why women say things like that because you have no intention of stopping, do you? I press back against the door for the last, telling thrusts and – ‘AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGG!!!’ No, you’re wrong. That’s not me going into orbit. Some blooming idiot has opened the door. Still carrying Teresa with me, I take a series of increasingly fast backwards steps and collapse on what turns out to be a button-back sofa. We must look as if we are doing a speeded up tango. My crotch needs one – or a couple – of splints and my high-pitched yelp of pain threatens to shatter the lamp bowl. When I have moved Teresa to a part of my body that is not a disaster area, I look over her shoulder and see a middle-aged bag of coke looking over his specs at us and rubbing his hands together nervously.

‘Righty ho,’ he says. ‘Glad you could make it.’

He goes behind a desk – I mean, of course, that he takes a seat behind a desk – and I try and work out what makes him so certain that we have made it. I am not so sure myself and I should be one of the first to know. At least he is being very reasonable about the whole thing. A lot of people would react very badly if you charged into their office in full knee tremble. Teresa pulls down the shutters over her knockers and I sweep the remains of percy into my Y-fronts. I will have to hold the autopsy later. The geezer in the blue pin stripe leans forward on his desk and places his fingertips together.

‘Of course, that’s all very gratifying,’ he muses, waving a hand in the direction of his left earhole. ‘But how are we to know it’s not just a flash in the pan? It’s when you’re waiting in the anteroom that you really get to grips with it, isn’t it? You realise what you’re letting yourself in for.’

This bloke is leaving me behind fast. If he is handing out a mild bollocking, I don’t get it. And why is he smiling at us like that? He reminds me of the bloke who came up to me when I was having a gypsy’s kiss in the gents at Piccadilly Underground – not a pursuit I recommend, incidentally.

‘We’d better be going,’ says Teresa.

‘But you’ve only just come,’ says Pin Stripe. There he goes! Jumping to conclusions again. ‘I know it’s awkward talking to a complete stranger about intimate matters but don’t worry, we’ve all been through it.’ He smiles at Teresa when he says this and I wonder if he means what I think he means. She was certainly very friendly when you come to think about it. The bloke unscrews a fountain pen and pulls a pad towards him. ‘How long have you two been together?’

‘Since about ten o’clock this morning,’ I say.

The smile drops faster than a pair of lead knickers. ‘Ten o’clock this morning and you’re here already?’

‘It wasn’t very far, was it?’ I say, turning to Teresa. ‘We wasted a bit of time trying to park but —’

‘You can’t expect things to work out right from the beginning,’ says the bloke. ‘There’s got to be a period of acclimatisation. You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘It’s what you have to do before you get out of a diver’s suit.’

Pin Stripe does not seem to hear my remark and helps himself to a couple of pills from the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘God knows, we live in troubled times and the whole fabric of society as we understand it is threatened – but really! You have to give it a little more time than this! What makes you think you have problems when you’ve only been married four hours – Good God!’ He strikes his forehead with his clenched fist. ‘You made the appointment yesterday – before you were even married!’

Before we can say anything, the door behind us has burst open and a bloke with a black eye and scratch marks down his cheek is revealed dragging a screaming woman by the hair. ‘Sorry we’re late, guv,’ he says. ‘We had words on the way here.’

While the couple trade punches in the doorway and Pin Stripe slides beneath his desk with a strangled croak, I am busy reading the sign stencilled on the office door. It says: ‘J. Bugstrode, Marriage Guidance Counsellor.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘Not much happening, is there?’ says Sid.

It is three days after my first visit to the building which now houses the N.I.B. (Noggett Investigation Bureau) and Sid and I are well and truly ensconced – as El Sid chooses to call it. This means that we have straightened out all the paper clips and folded them again, and watched Mr J. Bugstrode taken away by a couple of men in white coats. I have not said anything to Sid about Mr Bugstrode and Teresa Bradford. I don’t feel that it would help anybody, somehow.

Sid picks up the telephone and holds it to his ear. ‘It’s working,’ he says.

‘Don’t worry, Sid,’ I say. ‘The word’s got to get around, hasn’t it? We’re not in the book or anything like that. Those leaflets we dropped off in the Co-op are going to take a few days to get around. We’re competing against a special offer on dried figs.’

‘Funny about that bloke next door,’ muses Sid. ‘I wonder if there was more to it than the job. It might be blackmail, you know. He could have had a go at one of his patients.’

‘Unlikely, Sid,’ I say. ‘These geezers are very prone to mental disorders and nervous breakdowns.’

‘Exactly,’ says Sid. ‘He might have found that he was giving the helpful advice from inside some bloke’s old lady. The job getting on top of him in fact. Then, the door bursts open and—’

‘I don’t think it was like that,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Do you fancy a cup of cha?’

‘Not from that bleeding machine, I don’t,’ says Sid. ‘That’s not powder they have at the bottom of those cups – it’s rust.’ He glances at his watch and picks up his new raincoat – the one which has epaulettes, panels, brass rings, restraining straps at the sleeves and is three sizes too big for him. Alan Ladd wore something like it in ‘This Gun For Hire’. ‘I’ll leave you to look after the shop. Don’t do anything stupid. Take down any messages and try to get some of that pigeon shit off the windows.’

‘Where are you going?’ I ask.

‘I’m going round to the public library to look at the footprints.’

Before I can decide whether or not it would be wise to enquire further, Sid has gone. Opening time is not many seconds away and no doubt he has nipped off to get a bit Chopin before Lilley and Skinner. (Chopin and Liszt: pissed. Lilley and Skinner: dinner. Ed.) What can I do to while away the weary hours? I could write a few letters if I had anyone to write to, or try to unclog my biro. It has also been a long time since I pushed back the cuticles on my toenails. It hurts but at the same time you get a funny electric feeling which I quite fancy. You must know what I mean. I have not cleaned my belly button for a few months, either. My spirits rise as I see a whole programme of personal hygiene beginning to take shape. I will start on my toes and work upwards, skipping the most difficult bits until I get home.

I have just got my shoes and socks off and one of my feet on the desk when a shadow falls across the frosted glass. It does not do any damage but the shock makes me whip my tootsie off the desk and kick the telephone into the wastepaper basket. Before I can shout ‘goal!’, the door opens and a large, worried looking guy comes into the room. I would have preferred a beautiful blonde reeking of expensive perfume but you can’t have everything.

I advance round my desk to meet him and then shuffle back as I see him looking at my bare feet.

‘Hot, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘What can I do for you, Mr—?’ ‘Brown,’ says the bloke. ‘You handle divorce business, don’t you?’ His eyes follow me as I replace the receiver on the phone in the wastepaper basket.

‘We’re getting a new one,’ I explain. ‘Yes, Mr Brown. We handle divorce business. We handle anything. What’s your problem?’

The man looks round and lowers his voice confidentially. ‘It’s my wife,’ he says.

That’s a relief, I think to myself. Nothing too complicated to begin with. ‘Playing around, is she?’ I say.

Mr Brown looks impressed. ‘How did you know that? I only dropped her off at the golf club on my way here.’

I wave my hand airily. ‘Just call it instinct, Mr Brown. What do you want us to do for you?’

Mr Brown buries his face in his hands. ‘I can’t take any more. It’s too humiliating. The men – her lovers. She’s insatiable.’

‘In where?’ I say. ‘That’s the Indian Ocean, isn’t it? I had a mate who went there for his holidays.’

‘I believe you’re thinking of the Seychelles,’ says the bloke. ‘I was referring to my wife’s sexual appetites.’

‘Oh yes,’ I say, keeping the professional cool that is doing so well for me. ‘So your wife is in the Seychelles having it off – I mean, behaving indiscreetly, with whatever kind of person lives there, a fact that is inevitably causing you to feel dead choked?’

‘My wife has never been near the Seychelles,’ says the bloke beginning to turn red. ‘Not that it makes much difference where she’s been. She has relations everywhere.’

‘We’re a bit like that,’ I say chattily. ‘I’ve even got an aunty in New Zealand. Takapuna. It’s north of Auckland. She sends us a Christmas card every year. Same one usually. Maybe they don’t have a lot of Christmas cards down there or she bought a job lot.’

To my surprise, Mr Brown starts to quiver. ‘I am not in the slightest bit interested in your aunt in New Zealand!’ he hisses. ‘I have other things on my mind! My wife has become an unbearable burden and I wish to rid myself of her. I want a divorce!’

‘I see,’ I say. ‘You’re sure that’s really what you want? There’s a bloke next door – no, he’s not there any more.’

I feel sad when I think that Mr Bugstrode has taken a trip to the funny farm. We might have been able to do business together. He could have sent us the marriages he was unable to save.

‘I want you to procure the evidence with which I can divorce the slut! Take photographs of her in flagrante delicto!’

‘She gets abroad a lot, doesn’t she?’ I say. ‘Prefers foreigners and that kind of thing, I suppose. A lot of birds do. Personally, I think it’s all in the mind. I don’t believe they’re any—’

‘If I could get my hands on one of those swine,’ says Brown, thoughtfully gazing into space and picking up the wastepaper basket. ‘I’d crumple him up like a piece of paper. I’d rip him apart!’

I watch, fascinated, as Brown folds the waste-bin in half and then tears the metal as if it is a piece of tin foil. When that look comes into his eyes I would hate to be found practising press-ups on his old lady. ‘What does she look like?’ I say. ‘Where can I find her?’

Brown produces a much fingered photo and pushes it across the table to me. ‘By the cringe!’ I say ‘She’s a bit of—’ I pause when I see how Brown is staring at me. His eyes are harder than petrified cherry stones. ‘—very nice, very refined.’

When you look at Brown and you look at the photograph it is not easy to relate the two. The missus is definitely a looker and a bit flash with it. Brown seems like the sort of bloke who would turn down a job as a bank clerk because he thought the uniform was too daring.

‘She’s booked in to the Densford Hotel,’ says Brown. ‘I found this card in her handbag – quite by chance, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I say. The card is a postcard announcing that Room Number 367 has been booked for today’s date. I turn it over and see that it is addressed to a Mr Brown. ‘That’s not you?’ I say.

‘Of course it isn’t!’ snaps Brown. ‘Don’t you see? Her lover has given her that and used my name!’ He starts trembling again and suddenly picks up Sid’s paperknife and drives it through the desk. ‘I’d go there myself but I’m frightened that I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself. I only have to think of what they might be doing and—!’ He brings his fist down on top of the filing cabinet and all the drawers lock. I know because I try to open one of them.

‘Leave it to us,’ I say soothingly and start walking towards the door in the hopes that he will follow. At this rate there will be little of the office left when Sid gets back.

‘You’ll take a photograph, will you?’ says Brown.

‘That’s right,’ I say, grateful for the suggestion.

Brown shakes his head. ‘A dirty business. Still—’ he looks me up and down. ‘I suppose you’re the man for it. How soon will you have results? I want this matter dealt with speedily!’ He starts looking as if he is about to smash something else and I open the door like the cat has just started saying goodbye to a Richard III on a mat.

‘Tomorrow evening,’ I say. ‘How can I get in touch with you?’

‘I’ll come here,’ he says. ‘Six o’clock?’

‘Right,’ I breathe.

Mr Brown’s vengeful footsteps echo away down the corridor and I put my shoes and socks on. I will attack my cuticles another day. You need a bit of hot water to soften them up anyway. I could use something from the coffee machine but there is the danger that it might melt my toes off. Difficult to get your feet in the beakers, too.

I am really chuffed after my interview with Mr Brown. He seemed to accept me without question – mind you, I did handle myself well. I put him at his ease and got straight down to the nitty-gritty with the minimum of flannel. Sid will be pleased when I tell him. But why should I tell him? I have got this far by myself, why not finish the job? Close the file and tie a pink ribbon round it before throwing it on the D.A.’s desk. That’s what Clint Eastwood would do. Yes, I will show Sid what a smooth operator I can be when he is not around to foul me up.

In fact, Sid is so elephants (elephant’s trunk: drunk. Ed.) when he rolls back at a quarter past three that I doubt if he would understand if I did tell him. He starts reading a paperback entitled Blondes Like It Backwards and then falls asleep on it so that the centre spine forms a trough for his spittle. All very Homes and Gardens.

It occurs to me that I am going to need a flashlight camera for my assignment and that my Instamatic is not going to do, even if I run into the bedroom holding a freshly struck match above my head. Luckily I know a bag of coke who frightens American tourists into parting with a few bob by chasing them down Lower Regent Street with his camera and saying that the snaps will be waiting for them when they get back to the States – he even charges them postage. I don’t think he has ever taken an actual photograph in his life but the camera looks impressive.

I wait till Sid has slouched off saying that he has got an urgent appointment and start making arrangements. My mate says that I can have the camera if I pop round for it and let him have a couple of prints if they turn out to be a bit fruity. I suppose Mr Brown is right. It is a dirty business. I would not fancy it if some geezer rushed in and started snapping away while I was exercising the pocket python. I will have to move fast in case there is unpleasantness.

One thing that worries me is when the dastardly deed is going to take place. I should have asked Mr Brown if he had an inkling but it might have set him off on a rampage. The dirty duo could be on the job at this very moment. I hope they have a lot of stamina otherwise everything might be over before I have screwed in my flash bulb. To check out this unsavoury thought I ring up the hotel and ask to speak to Mr Brown – I can always pretend to be room service if he answers – but there is no one there. Diabolically clever, isn’t it? If I can keep up this form no criminal will be safe.

An hour later, I am sitting in the lounge of the Densford Hotel and wondering how I got lumbered with the disgusting thimbleful of brown liquid nestling between my thumbs. I asked for a beer and the bloke behind the bar gave me something out of a bottle with ‘Byrrh’ written on it. He seemed to think I was joking when I pointed out his mistake and I thought he was joking when he told me how much the muck cost: 45p! It is shocking, isn’t it? Still, I suppose if you are a private eye you have to get used to ritzing it up a bit. Which reminds me, I never talked to Brown about moola. Sid was very concerned that we did not take anything on without getting some cash in advance. Not that Brown can welsh on us because he will be coming round for his photographs. We can collect then.

I take another casual gander round the room and retire behind my copy of London Cries – at these bar prices it should be bleeding weeping. I have checked that the key to Room 367 is in reception, now all I have to do is wait for Mrs Brown and her lover to show up. From what I saw of the photograph I would not mind being around if she was looking for something to scratch her snatch with. I hope I will be able to recognize her. Birds can change very easily. Hang on a minute! That looks like her following the two knockers into the reception area. What a figure! She makes an hour glass seem like a test tube. And that arse! It looks as if it is hovering over a warm air duct. All this and V.P.L. (visible pant line). No wonder Mr Brown gets his knickers in a twist when he thinks of other geezers giving her pussy a protein injection. I could be up that like a rat up a drainpipe. But, restrain yourself, Lea! I must get my priorities straightened out – regular readers will not be surprised to hear that my number one priority started shaking out the kinks the moment I clapped eyes on Mrs Brown. I must keep a cool head, steady hands and a limp hampton and remember whose side I am on. To get mixed up with your clients must be fatal in this game.

The lovely Mrs Brown exchanges a smile for a room key and heads for the lift leaving a fine veil of steam rising from the desk clerk’s eyeballs. When she moves away from you it is like a couple of small medicine balls nuzzling each other. I am so mesmerized that I knock back my drink without thinking. Ugh! The stuff that Dad rubs on his chest must taste better than that.