The Fall

Estate Agents; how we all tend to hate them: they who with mellifluous tongues persuade you to buy the home of your dreams. The one with roses round the door and an ingle nook – only then you find the roof leaks and the neighbour’s dog is lethal. But not this man. He is a serious professional, one who practised his skills in the field of commercial property. For many of you a proportion of your pension fund or part of the handful of Unit Trusts you hold are invested in shopping centres and office towers and blocks of warehouses and out of town retail parks where he provides expert advice. He is the middle-man between the buyer and the seller, the one who manages your assets to maximise their value. A man of honour, steeped in professional ethics and always acting in the best interest of his client: a small cog in the glorious property wheel of fortune.

But, look at him now.

It could be said that he is, strictly speaking, a fugitive; a man on the run as the saying goes even though for the last day or two very little running has been involved and Hector has been more inactive than the most dormant of hibernating dormice; more immobile than at any time in his life – at least since learning to walk. As static as the statue of a long-dead and long-forgotten hero on display in the local park and ignored by all. He has never spent so many hours flat on his back because, even as an adolescent, he had not been stereotypical of those young people who stay abed until noon. Doing nothing. As though paralysed.

How has this situation arisen? Utterly incomprehensible? Was he actively being pursued by the police? Could it be that ports and railway stations are already under surveillance? Interpol has been alerted? Wanted posters are on display in shop windows and attached to trees in the park: notices advising concerned citizens that a reward is offered for his capture? Not thought to be dangerous. Perhaps a relation of the dead man will take up the challenge? But, he mused, from where did they obtain his likeness? Had Pam been required to bring out from their wardrobe that shoe box of assorted snaps? He even began to wonder how much the reward might be. What is he worth and is the bounty the same whether dead or alive?

He attempted to dismiss such ludicrous meanderings from his mind and bring a little common sense and composure into his thinking. As he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders, he had never been formally arrested nor acquainted with his rights because, in his view, he had done nothing wrong. As far as he knew no crime had been committed: but if that is so, why had he deserted the domestic hearth for this?

The number 39 glided to a stop. The driver was an expert, the exact spot every time whether on morning or afternoon shift. No one on board had paid him the slightest attention except for the old lady he sat next to. He could hardly take his eyes away from her hat which was pulled down to the eye line. It looked like a tea cosy fashioned from a scrap of crushed purple velvet where the nap had largely worn away after years of use. It had an aroma of its own similar to that which might be released from an unlovely mishmash of unwashed socks and Gorgonzola cheese. She complained about his packages. They were invading her space, she said, and why could he not control them parcels. She chuntered on. What was he doing on a bus with such big ‘uns and that people like him should not be allowed on public transport and why was he not using his car? Why indeed, he thought. His car. And its contents. He had left it behind, discarded without thought, much as one does with a circular letter from a firm selling double glazing.

He imagined the call to the police by his vexatious neighbour on the bus.

“That baddie you’re searching for. The one you’re looking high and low to find, so they tell me. I just seen him on the number 39 bus. Real nuisance he were. He got off at that Borders Estate. Acted so furtive like I got quite scared. Looked very guilty, if you know what I means and if you asks me, up to no good I’ll be bound. What’s he done? Is it murder? Who has he bumped off?”

A good question; what had he done? Has there been a murder? Could it be defined as such? Not only a good question but a searching one as well. One he was to spend days debating and agonising over

As he walked from the bus stop carrying those purchases she considered so heinous a picture of the dead man remained fixed in his mind. It was engraved there; in brilliant Technicolor with the preponderant hue being a burgundy red and etched as if cut by a diamond. Would it ever be wiped away? Is it capable of being erased? The faded black paint of those oh so cruel instruments of death is streaked with the red of his blood. His lavender coloured shirt is stained crimson and there is a speck or two garnishing his pearl cufflinks, spots that appear fluorescent against the shell-like background and resemble tiny petals of a dark red rose floating on the surface of a bowl of perfumed water as still as a sheet of glass. The mouth and the eyes are open wide as if in disbelief; as if it had not happened.

Presumably the cadaver has by now been removed; or does his fevered imagination see vultures hovering over as if at a Parsee funeral. Not at all likely; pull yourself together, he said, that is going too far, however confused his tortuous thoughts. It is the carrion crow; vultures are not common to the English Midlands.