The Ram Murder Mystery - Chapter 1
"Incident on Meen Street"
Jim Barker

I always count it a good start to the week when I find that no-one has projectile vomited on the stairs leading up to my office. Since the said office is located in the middle of a street whose main attraction is roughly twenty bars of various reputations, my doorway makes a convenient stop for drinkers who have decided to relieve themselves, in one way or the other, of the nights intake. We would have moved offices but this section of town was all that we could afford and besides, I liked the name. How many private detectives could say that they literally walked a Meen Street every day?

This February Monday morning, though, the door way featured no obstacles to entry. Or maybe it had and the rain had washed all traces away. The first fat raindrops had started as I was leaving the house
that morning and on the fifteen minute drive into town, the downpour had increased steadily, drumming on the roof of my sixteen year old Volvo like a marching band on steroids. Naturally, the only parking space available was three street away, where I abandoned the car and sprinted through the constantly changing pattern of concentric circles that had become the pavement. By the time I reached the sanctuary of my doorway I was sodden right through to my underwear, I had ruined my expensive Nikes and the morning paper I had used as a makeshift umbrella was moulding itself into a papier mache helmet over my head.

I paused in the doorway, shook off what excess water would release itself from my leather bomber jacket and took a look out onto the street. The sky was a uniform slate grey, releasing a torrent of water
which was turning the street into a good imitation of Venice. Any cars passing had full headlights on and wipers uselessly sweeping water from their windscreens. Anyone caught out in the rain had collars clutched over their face with one hand and an umbrella in the other. As they scampered through the water, they looked as uniformly miserable as the morning.

Cars were parked along both sides of the street. I recognized the VW belonging to the graphic designer who shared a landing with my office, and the 4 wheeler of Mike, who owns Burkes Bar, one of the better
drinking dens, which was right next door to my office. They had probably both got up at three that morning just to make sure I couldn’t get a parking space. A large black saloon I didn’t recognize was parked a few cars down the street behind a pink Beetle. I figured that these either belonged to Tourists or were leftovers from last nights drinking sessions. The black car would be okay but I didn’t give the pink car much chance of survival in an neighborhood like this.

Across the street, the bakery and delicatessen was open, as I knew it had been for several hours. The lights were were full on and the smell of fresh coffee and warm muffins wafted across the street. I saw Carole, the owner, bustling behind the counter serving a horde of office workers who were stretching out a pre-work breakfast coffee until the rain went off. At this rate she would be busy until going home time. At which point they would transfer their business to the bars and I’d be tiptoeing into the office the next morning.

Carole must have felt me watching and turned, coming to the window under the hand-painted “Schwaders” sign on the window. She lifted a coffee mug and pointed to it, an enquiry on her face. Much as I was tempted to make the dash for a warming mug, having reached the safety of the office door I had no intention of leaving it - probably until summer. I made the universal shrug-and-point-at-watch gestures to indicate that I had no time and held up five fingers to let her know that I’d be over at five. She shrugged and smiled and sashayed away from the window, swinging her hips to let me see what I was missing. I shook my head ruefully, which released a fine spray of rainwater, and closed the entrance door. Since my jeans were soaked through and plastered to my legs, the only comfortable way of walking was to splay my legs at ninety degrees and hobble. It made me look uncannily like I had lost control of my bladder but it got me to the pigeon holes in the wall into which mail was delivered. I took out the mail and used my highly developed detective skills to determine which of the envelopes contained a cheque. Either their was nothing there or my detective skills were as waterlogged as the rest of me. I stuffed the collection of brown envelopes and mailshots unopened into my jacket and squelched towards the stairs.

Five minutes later, the exertion of climbing three flights of stairs while carrying an excess twenty pints of water had warmed me up sufficiently that I was beginning to steam. I spent another happy minute or two trying to extract my keys from the pockets of sodden jeans which had been pretty tight to begin with, unlocked the door with the marbled glass panel saying “ SALEM and SCHECTER - Private Investigators” and went in to start the day.

My partner, Andi, was off at the airport picking up a couple of prospective new clients. and was due to bring them back to the office for a meeting at ten, after buying them a big breakfast. Andi had done all of the initial contact work in the previous week while I had been out of town. The directors of a plastics manufacturing plant outside of town had a surveillance problem they wanted us to look at and had caught
the early morning flight up to meet us. Andi had prepared a dossier for me to look at and, while she was off playing chauffeur, the theory was that I would come in early and bring myself up to speed. A look at my watch warned me that I only had about forty five minutes before they arrived and it occurred to me that being greeted by a half-drowned detective probably wouldn’t make the best of first impressions.

Our main office is a big room with all the essentials you would expect: a couple of gray ash desks with assorted computer equipment, swivel chairs, filing cabinets, shelves with lots of impressive looking books
and magazines and a client greeting area with a comfy settee and coffee machine. Andi and I had more or less divided the room in half, staking out our own personal space. While my area could charitably be described as “lived in” Andi’s was neat, tidy and precise, arranged to an ordered pattern which made sense to her, if no one else. I once caught her on her hands and knees aligning her shoes in just the right direction to fill them full of energy. My suggestion that these were “fung shuei”ed shoes earned me a phone directory bounced off my forehead.

Off the main room were a tiny kitchen area and an even tinier toilet. I headed for the toilet, peeling off my sodden clothes as I went. I kept a gym bag in the office containing shorts and tee shirts for the occasional squash game to wind down after work. They were smelly but dry and I changed into them while I lay my street clothes on the radiators. With any luck they would be dry before Andi and our prospective new meal tickets arrived. I grabbed a towel, draped it over my head and vigorously toweled my hair as I padded back into the main office. That’s why it took me several seconds to realize that I was no longer alone.

A woman was standing at my desk in the main office, going through the mail which I had tossed on my desk. She was blonde and in her mid to late thirties. She wore dark glasses and a black, belted raincoat. Bizarrely she was completely dry. Even more bizarrely I could see that she was wearing a housecoat under her raincoat. On her feet she wore flat-heeled slippers.

“Ah.... can I help you?” I asked.

She started and looked in my direction. I couldn’t make out her eyes behind the glasses but the rest of her face had an almost manic intensity. I began edging towards the phone.

She tossed the mail back on the desk and moved towards me. I backed away again “Where is it?” she hissed. “I want it. It’s mine. Where IS it??!!

“I’m sorry. I...” I began and she pushed herself in front of me so that we were almost nose to nose.

“Where is it? Where is it? Whereisit? WHEREISIT!!!!!” she started screaming. She picked up a handfuls of files from my desk and scattered the papers all over the office floor.

I was still trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation when the outer office door opened and a skeleton entered, closely followed by a rotweiller on two legs. The skeleton cut off the madwoman's tirade by simply grabbing her from behind. One black-gloved hand clamped over her mouth and the other grasped her around the waist, pinning her arms to her sides. She was lifted bodily off the floor and dangled there, feet kicking futiley. The skeleton smiled at me and said “ Good modding. Sorry you’ve beed troubled. We’ll be od oud way.”

On closer inspection, the skeleton tuned out to be a tall, gangly man wearing a black suit and tie. The skeletal impression came about because his skin was deathly white, he had absolutely no hair on his head and his nose was missing. Between his eyes and mouth there was only a gaping hole through which air wheezed liquidly.

No-nose, or given his speech defect maybe it was “No-doze”, was carrying the struggling woman back towards the office door. “Now just a minute...” I protested, and the rotweiller stepped between us. He too turned out to be more or less human, though only four feet tall and looking like a wider, more malignant Bud Abbott. Bud never said a word, just smiled apologetically and pistoned his right arm straight forward. His fist connected with my groin , my groin passed the message to my brain, my brain exploded and I collapsed in a quivering whimpering mass on the floor and proceeded to black out.

When I opened my eyes some time later, I was curled up in a fetal position on the floor with my hands clenched between my legs. Needless to say I had the mother of all aches in my groin area and I decided to lie there very quietly while I thought about what I was going to do next. I was alone once more and moving seemed the least attractive option so I stayed where I was, breathing heavily in a futile attempt to ignore the pain. I was facing away from the door and when I heard it opening again, the effort of bringing my head around to see who it was brought on another attack of nausea. Happily for me, it was only the graphic designer from the office next door.

He looked at me warily and placed the parcel he was carrying on the floor, just in front of my face.

“Morning...” he said. “Sorry to interrupt you. Didn’t realize you were doing your morning exercises. Sit ups is it? You don’t want to overdo it. That’s it... keep breathing in and out... in and out...” He made encouraging circling motions with his hands and smiled. “ Look I gotta go to a meeting with a client but I wanted to drop this off. It came for you on Saturday morning and I took it in for you, Hope it’s something nice... Keep breathing....keep breathing... catch you later”

After he had left I stared at the package for a while. It was cube -shaped, roughly twelve inches on a side and wrapped in plain brown paper. It was covered in postage stamps from a places all over the globe. I recognized stamps from Australia, Alaska and Britain among many others. I was starting to feel less like death warmed over so I tried gingerly rolling over and sitting up. Another wave of nausea hit me and I threw up over the front of my tee shirt.

As I leaned back against my desk the door opened yet again and two men in overcoats entered followed by Andi. She took one look at me lying on the floor, clutching my groin and with vomit down my chest, turned to the men and said “Mr Rhodes... Mr. Cale... I don’t believe you’ve met my partner, Vic Salem.”

I attempted to smile and sit up at the same time which was unwise as I immediately passed out again.