For Competition 3466 you were invited to submit a short story with a topical theme written in the style of hardboiled crime fiction.
A smallish entry bore all the hallmarks of the genre: dames, sharp repartee, staccato delivery, black humour and grandstanding similes laid on with a trowel. Topics included the Clacton by-election, Andy Burnham’s pledge on rough sleepers and Harry and Meghan’s return to these shores.
I enjoyed the Revd Dr Peter Mullen’s entry: ‘The air was thick, putrid, the kind you could strike a match on. William’s eyes had that glaze: a glaze that hid the hurt but not the history. Outside, the palace stones sweated in the fog. Inside, the silence could get a man killed.’ Janine Beacham and Adrian Moss also impressed, but the £25 vouchers belong to those below.
Someone was fixing to kill democracy: it wasn’t Farage. Sure, he had the regulation candidate’s smile and a fancy-pants French surname, but at least you could see the reds of his eyes. His opponents in this no-bit by-election he’d called for reasons beyond this gumshoe were the usual bunch of unusual fantasists, each off on tangents crazier than Thurber’s and packing more comedy props than Vaudeville. None looked like landing a blow bar this phoney aristocrat with a garbage receptacle on his head and a voice like a post-pubescent Fauntleroy strained through a Speak Your Weight machine. As Farage’s security, I kept a gimlet eye on that bin. It proved empty, though the television people watching more closely still clued me in on who the real villains were. I advised him not to show for Count or count and he won like the people’s champion my fee says he wasn’t.
Adrian Fry
They’d just blown in from Tinseltown. He was some big shot with a beard the colour of a rusty tin can. The broad on his arm had the kind of smile that spelled trouble in any language.
I told them right off the bat I don’t get involved in family disputes. That’s right, I knew all about the feuding brother, the disgraced uncle. But it wasn’t family therapy that brought them to my door. They needed protection. The cops didn’t want to know, so they came to a two-bit punk like me.
They had money. I had muscle. A fair trade.
I poured two fingers of rye and slid the glasses across the desk. I was in, I told them, but with one condition. They needed to get me a meet with the head of the firm. Nothing happens on this beat without the nod from Big Charlie.
Jon Robins
It was dead all right. It had died like Jeremy Clarkson giving a speech to the Free Palestine Trans-Activist Intersectionalist Society. Alive it wasn’t. Among the cans, food wrappings and dead leaves, a sign with brittled Scotch tape slumped on the ground like a 14th-Street wino. ‘Your nearest Post Office is at 1192 Main Street, Englewood.’ Cute. I needed Englewood like a hole in the head, which I could most easily get in that locality. I looked around. Guys round here are hairy as yetis and have lungs of leather. They do nothing but get haircuts and smoke vapes. Any of them could have iced the Post Office.
There was a broad wearing a slimmer broad’s yoga pants. ‘Who did this?’ I asked her.
‘Jeez buddy, you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground,’ she replied. I needed a drink. All the pubs had gone. Cute.
Frank Upton
I hit the streets of Camden on a sunless sunrise. After weeks of sweltering like a pig on a spit, I was shivering on a drizzly dawn as grey as a bean-shooter barrel. Andy, all glasses and eyebrows, needed a gumshoe like me to sneak around in loafers and grill a few bindlestiffs on where they would like to bunk for Christmas. I put the question to a reeking old souse cocooned in a doss bag outside a drug store. ‘Bunk for Christmas?’ he sneered. ‘Who’s asking?’ Without waiting for the lowdown, he spat out a list of ritzy high-hat joints as long as the proverbial piece of string.
Andy raised his eyebrows when I gave him the score. ‘Way over my budget,’ he shrugged. ‘See if Camden Council can stump up.’ I hit the streets again looking for any suckers who would cough up the cabbage.
Alan Millard
The office walls were sweating like burgers on an overloaded barbecue. Andy ‘The Burner’ kicked the fan. It gave a death rattle just as the door crashed open. Milly’s temper had reached boiling point.
Chief! You gotta do…
Go jump. Snarl like a chainsaw and they quit, fast. But not Milly. We can’t go on roasting the joint. He wheezed like a punctured balloon.
The Burner fingered his plans. A gun would be nice but hardware costs and the budget was dead in where there’d once been water. Besides, the office had witnesses. Breaking the news over Milly’s head was the easiest way. He had to grab the power while there was a chance before it frizzled to a crisp.
We need to cool this, sunshine, and the world ain’t gonna do it for us. Two guys, they’ll fix it. Rosebank, Jackdaw. Get them onside and the game’s ours. Capisce, amigo?
D.A. Prince
‘He’s coming this way,’ she said.
‘Sure thing.’
I ran my eye over her body, she had million-dollar legs and she didn’t mind showing them. But there was no time to speculate – what this broad said was true. He was on his way. El Niño. One mean guy, big trouble. He’d blow hot and cold, no racket he wasn’t involved in, and nothing he’d stop at. We were in for a stormy ride, this guy would flay you before you could bat an eye.
I lit a butt, nerve ends raw. He’d left his base in Panama, heading for California. Next stop the world, his game was global. Nowhere to hide. I flipped my spent butt onto the wet walkway and watched it fizzle and die. Might be my last.
Sylvia Fairley
No. 3469: Bad romance
You are invited to submit a seriously misguided love poem. Please email entries (maximum 16 lines) to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 23 September.
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