The Abbottsford Police Chronicles – # 2 by Paul Curtis (read this if txt) 📕

Frank Owen stepped through the automatic doors and onto the pavement; he paused briefly and cast a glance back over his shoulder at the Churchill hospital and tried to think of a time when he had left that ghastly building with good news, but he couldn’t so he proceeded to the bus stop through the mist and murk.
It was a damp and dismal late October day, grey and uninspiring, the kind of day when it was impossible to discern where terra firma ended and the sky began.
When he reached the bus shelter he entered the inhospitable Perspex box and sat down on what supposedly passed for a bench.
He leant his walking stick against the bench beside him and then reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and his lighter.
He put one to his lips.
“You shouldn’t do that you know, they’ll kill you they will” A voice said from one corner of the shelter.
He turned his head to see that the voice belonged to a small skinny women in her fifties wearing a shabby coat over what he presumed was a cleaners uniform.
“They killed my husband” she continued as she sat down on the bench.
“And he was a lot younger than you”
He smiled and nodded then he lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Frank was seventy nine years old, eighty in November, and he gave up smoking on his fortieth birthday and apart from the very rare occasion when he was offered a cigar at a special occasion, a wedding, a regimental reunion or some other gathering, he had not smoked for half of his life, until a few weeks before when he was first diagnosed.
The oncologist used words like carcinomas and metastasised he didn’t really take it all in but it was in his pancreas, oesophagus, stomach and bowel which meant they would have to gut him like a fish even if surgery was an option which it never was.
There were treatments of coarse but they would merely delay the inevitable.
The prognosis was that without treatment he would probably see another birthday but not another Christmas.
So he thought what the hell he’d really missed smoking and it was hardly likely to kill him now.
He exhaled and a cloud of smoke which seemed to hang in the still moisture laden air.
“I will just have to take that risk my dear” he said to her and smiled.
Frank was a big man; over six feet tall and broad shouldered and despite his need to walk with a stick he still carried himself with a military bearing and apart from rheumatism in his knees, hence the need for the stick, and the fact that he was dying he had felt ok, a little discomfort at times but no more than that,
He had lost a little weight of late, not a bad thing in itself he had been a stone or two overweight for a good few years, and he had felt tired a good deal which he put down to his age, he would not have gone to the doctors at all but for chronic indigestion the reason for which had soon become quite apparent.
But in those few short weeks since the initial diagnosis the pain had started and it was getting worse, pain like he had never known before, even when he was shot in Korea it didn’t hurt so bad, and he was starting to look gaunt and skin hung loosely about his neck.
He thought back to that day’s consultation and the doctor’s words.
“You have a little time to get your affairs in order” he said to him.
“But you will deteriorate quite quickly”
Just as well I have no affairs to get in order, he had thought to himself.
He had no one to miss him or mourn him; his passing would be be as insignificant as a ripple on a pond.
Irene his wife of 39 years passed away ten years previous after a stroke and his only child Derek was knocked down and killed by a drunk driver while he was crossing the road outside his university digs aged 20.
He had no other family left his elder sister had died in childbirth and her daughter died shortly afterwards and his brother died in the port of Aden a victim of Yemeni terrorists in 1966.
He had no nephews or nieces, no distant cousins, the friends and comrades who were not already dead were gaga so there were no beneficiaries of his meagre estate.
There was enough in his savings to bury him and the rest of his worldly goods would be sold and the money could go to the hospice where he was set to shuffle off this mortal coil.
He was ready to die, he had had enough, his life had been almost intolerable since Irene died, lonely and meaningless, but the last year had all but broken him and he was ashamed of himself and that was something he thought would never happen, but he had allowed himself to become a victim, giving in to intimidation and what was most unforgivable of all he had become a coward.

A car horn sounded which brought him back from his self pitying reflections. He looked up to see a car parked in the bus bay with the passenger window down.
“Can I give you a lift Frank?” The driver called.
Frank got to his feet and walked stiffly to the car.
“Thanks” he said through the open window.
“As long as it not out of your way”?
“It’s not a problem Frank” Said the driver.
So Frank opened the door and got in, the door made that whirring sound as the window was raised as he belted himself in.
The driver was a muscular man in his mid thirties with Jet Black hair and wild eyes who appeared to be tall even sitting down.
His name was, Boris Katarski and he was a Detective Sergeant with the Abbotsford CID. Whom Frank had got to know during a murder enquiry almost a year previous.
This was not the first time they had bumped into each other, and it had happened more then once at the hospital, he supposed that police business was bound to involve visits to the hospital for any number of reasons.
“Thank you Sergeant this damp weather gets right in your bones” he said rubbing his knees.
“No problem, Frank, so what brings you to the Churchill on a damp and dismal Thursday?” Boris asked trying not to sound like a policeman.
“Just visiting a friend” Frank lied not wanting to be pitied. “And you?”
“Oh just interviewing a victim of crime” He answered not entirely convincingly.
“Anyway how come you’re at the mercy of public transport? Where’s your car today?”
“Oh it’s in my lock up I’m afraid I can’t afford to keep it on the road anymore”
Frank replied not quite honestly. “The pension doesn’t seem to stretch as far as it used to”
The rest of the journey consisted of small talk about politics and the previous nights match.
Then they turned into Orchard Lane and pulled up outside number 14 where Frank lived.
“Thanks for the lift Sgt it’s really appreciated” He said as he opened the car door.
“Don’t mention it and please call me Boris”
“Ok. Thanks Boris” He replied a little uncomfortably and then he got out the car after some undignified effort.
“I don’t move as well as I did” he said with a laugh.
Just before he closed the car door he said goodbye, then made his way up the short path to his front door.
It was a an unremarkable little house build in the same decade as Frank was born but looked as if it had stood the test of time better than he had himself and would be around a good many years after his passing.
The front garden much as the back needed some attention and he had had to admit to himself some while ago that he wasn’t up to the task anymore.
The hanging baskets that throughout the summer hung either side of the front door and half a dozen stone planters were about all he could keep on top off though not for much longer.
He fumbled for his door key and slipped it into the lock and having unlocked the door and he went inside turning briefly to wave to Sgt Katarski before closing the door behind him.

Boris sat in the car and watched Frank walk up the path and returned his wave and carried on watching him until the door closed.
He liked Frank, he was a nice old boy, but that wasn’t the reason he kept engineering these accidental meetings.
He knew Frank was keeping something from him and DS Katarski was like a dog with a bone he would not let it go.

Safely in his house he lit the gas and sat down in front of the fire he was glad he had got a lift the damp weather was getting to him, but as much as he appreciated the life and as much as he liked the Sergeant he always made him feel ashamed.
He had first met DS Katarski when he was investigating the brutal murder of Brenda Sage, an elderly neighbour, who lived in the house across the road from his own.
The reason for his great shame was that he lied.

On the evening of the murder Frank had been stood at the kitchen sink washing up after his supper idly looking out through the window, he had an unhindered view of the road and the houses opposite due to the lack of net curtains which he had dispensed with after his wife died, mainly because he thought them too fussy but also because he liked to see what was going on.
Just as he was washing up the last saucepan he saw Brenda’s front door open, which surprised him because she didn’t get many visitors especially of an evening so he was curious to see who it was.
The porch light was off and in the shadows he could only just make out a slight figure. But as they moved down the path to the gate they were illuminated by the street light.
Franks jaw dropped to see Danny Blake open the gate and pass into the street.
Blake was a small wirery man in his twenties, a vicious thug, who having never done an honest days work in his entire life made his living from crime.
Burglary, robbery, mugging, shop lifting you name it he’d done it, he was nothing if not versatile.
Then to Frank’s horror Blake looked directly at him and smiled a very unattractive smile, then his blood ran cold as Blake waved his hand across his throat in a cutting gesture.
Frank was frozen to the spot, powerless to move under his evil gaze.
Then he turned and walked casually down the street.
Frank was in turmoil he knew something bad had happened, Brenda could be laying in her house injured, but the implication from Blake was clear if he said anything he was dead.
He didn’t know what to do, he picked up the phone and put it straight down again, if he phoned the police he would have to say what he saw.
He grabbed his coat and rushed out the back door, went down the path and through the back gate where his car was parked.
He drove a couple of miles down the road until he reached a small