A turn of the key and the engine died with a shudder, leaving the wipers stranded near the vertical. The incessantly falling rain, drumming on the roof of his battered old Ford Mondeo, made Sam reluctant to leap out of the hard-won warmth of the car’s stale and grubby interior. This surprised him. Ordinarily, the prospect of a new crime to investigate, especially a potentially serious one, would have given him a surge of energy and enthusiasm, like someone replacing a waning battery with one that was new and fully charged. But today was strangely different. That initial tingle of excitement he had experienced upon receiving his Sergeant’s call had long since faded, and it had left him with a feeling of mild indifference. What he needed, he realised after several long moments spent contemplating the rivulets of water running down the side window, was something to give him a boost; a fillip.
Such a fillip was available to him, he knew, just an arm’s length away in the car’s glove compartment. It was all so easy to do, reach across, flick open the catch and there, the tin..
But something inside him counselled caution. It was too early to indulge. His stocks were dwindling steadily. New inventory was proving hard to acquire and the price of what was available had rocketed beyond the extortionate. All of this, Sam knew, was true; but then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he said: ‘What the hell!’.
A moment later, and Sam held in his hand a Spearmint Chew that he had taken from the small tin of mixed sweets that he always kept in the car. Quickly he unwrapped it, breathing deeply its sharp, minty scent, before popping it into his mouth.
Like some crack-cocaine addict of old when the empty needle was gently eased from the vein, Sam’s expression transformed into one of contentment, his eyes closing slowly as a tangy flavour began to flow over his tastebuds. In a world made dark by circumstance, a sugar hit such as this had become one of Sam’s few remaining pleasures and, as he swallowed down the sweetness that his mastications had released, he felt the listlessness that had dogged him ever since he had wakened begin, at last, to fade.
And so, revived if not revitalised, Sam set about preparing to brave the elements, picking up from the passenger seat the smartphone that had emitted a short and angry tucket just as he had turned onto Upper Church Lane. As he flipped open the tatty case, he could see the screen flashing insistently at him:
‘CAUTION. RED + ZONE PROXIMITY ALERT’
With a nonchalant tap of the touch-screen’s ‘Acknowledge’ button, the warning disappeared, to be replaced by a digital clock-face that informed it was 07:37 Standard on Tue, 29 Aug. He then thrust the phone into the inside pocket of his jacket, grabbed his overcoat from the passenger seat and, with a mumbled curse at the still-torrential rain, made his way out of the car.
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