Eyes wide open and staring at a ceiling crack that appears a little longer each day, Philip Anderson reaches out a hand to quell an alarm he has no need for, mere seconds before the tinny beep-beep-beep stabs savagely through the silence of his little room.
Old springs creak and wheeze as he eases pale, spindly limbs from twisted sheets and blankets and shuffles over to the sink to turns on taps which provoke noises from the boiler that would send shivers down the spine of any respected heating engineer. His beard prickles his hands; rough and dishevelled is his aesthetic now it would seem. The beard is wiry, ginger, ugly - he likes it because he knows he deserves it. Tired eyes, rheumy and sagging around the edges, stare back through a mottled mirror. Hair flops half-hearted over a brow bearing more furrows than a man barely into his forties deserves; a man in the prime of his life. Philip laughs at his reflection. He laughs at the prime that is his life, because he can't imagine how things could improve from hereon in. Sally would have said he had no imagination had she been around. But she wasn't, along with everyone else.
His old Nokia lay, virtually out of charge on the bench (where was that bloody charger?) but there was, miraculously a blinking light - a message. an acknowledgement, words from the void beyond the yellow front door of his shockingly grubby King's Cross flat.
Good news: hearing brought forward to Thursday. Get it out of the way before the weekend. Keep your spirits up mate. GL
Ah, Greg. His ex-boss had been nothing but fair since… that time, and was the only connection he still had with the Yard, beyond official emails and letters from the legal department. Get it out of the way before the weekend...He cocks a wry smile at that. Sure, wasn't his weekend just full of evenings out with friends at The Blue Goose and picnics in the park? It wouldn't do to let the inquiry into the suicide of a man he hated get in the way of all that quality time at the latest Hockney exhibition at the Tate Modern, or brunch at the Roof Garden at La Gavroche. He and Sally had liked the Comedy Club on Pink Lane on a Thursday night: a couple of rum and cokes each and a shared bowls of nachos. It wasn't trendy Thai street food in Houndsditch, but it had been good… really good.
Philip Anderson throws his phone across a cluttered kitchen bench and hunts for his keys. He wants to leave the faded primrose walls and greasy linoleum, he wants to jump into the bustle of London and be swallowed up, anonymous, private, hidden from prying eyes, and become part of something larger than himself. He wants to do something, something helpful, something useful and impressive. He wants a pat on the back, a recognition, a cool, sardonic assured voice that bleeds into his every waking hour and says:
"Good! Yes, good. Excellent observation Anderson."
But he never will now, will he?
~x~
Of course it's for men: I'm wearing it.
Here we are again.
Flashing lights, blues and twos, radios crackling, paper suit, air of own importance, smug smile in remembrance of last night.
Assurance dashed, sent away somewhere to curl up and die.
Thank you for your imput.
Face the other way.
Cold, set, porcelain pale; wide set, incredible eyes - alien. He was alien. A moue of distaste, disgust. No, worse - disinterest. Confidence and assurance stripped away, melting into the darkness of the night, alongside barely suppressed smirks of colleagues whose loyalty was just as intangible.
Here we are again.
Don't talk out loud.
Don't talk.
Don't.
A long coat, turning on its heel after delivering so many death blows. See it, solve it, sweep away and take my pride and dignity. Be right. About everything, even about me. See inside of me, defining and then dissecting my pointless existence without a smile or second glance. On to the next
Don't talk out loud.
You lower the IQ of the whole street.
And the next
You're putting me off.
And the next
Do
Your
Research.
Philip Anderson opens his eyes into another bleak and hollow morning, realising that the person who said some guff about time being a great healer was certainly no doctor. Eighteen months on and his life was little more than a spreading damp patch on a skirting board, Chelsea was still at the top of the Premiership, the congestion charge was still in existence and Sherlock Holmes was still dead. Everyday blurred into the next since his contract had no leeway for obsessive losers whose grasp on reality was too tenuous to be any good at forensic science. He'd stopped opening letters from his estranged wife's solicitor in July so couldn't say for certain whether he was divorced or not, but at the same time doubted whether the sporadic banging on the door of his seedy little hovel originated from queues of amorous ladies, clamouring for his attention.
Routine: Bedsprings, sink, water, bleary eyes, bristly beard, same clothes as yesterday, Blackpool breakfast, leave the flat, look for fulfilment, fail to find it, return, eat yesterday's remains, bed. Repeat to fade.
But, maybe not today.
Philip Anderson pauses as he looks into the mirror and catches sight of his own bright blue eyes, capturing something that he thought was lost: rebellion.
"No," he says to the mirror. "No. Not today. This has to stop. I am stopping it." He pauses, almost breathless with his decision, not yet knowing the method to intercept the madness.
"Brilliant," comes a voice he knows so well; deep, sneering, lingering around every darkened corner of his consciousness, all of the time.
"Yes?" Hope sparks. "Do you really think so?"
"Brilliant impression of an idiot," returns the voice, but Philip smiles anyway, taking it as encouragement, in fact.
"It's ok," returns he, reaching for a toothbrush, pushing lank hair out of brighter, bluer eyes. "I've stuff to do today: research. I've been told it's the way forward."
And that's how it all started.
