Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Nicola Barker

Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Internal Mail

Skipton,

09/03/07

14.00 hrs

(Package and covering letter sent by internal mail)

For attn PC Roger Topping, Ilkley

CONFIDENTIAL

Great news, Rog, great news

At last all those long, incalculably boring, soul-destroying hours of trudging and waiting and moping and cussing have finally paid off, and the career-making case youve been yearning for (stuck out there on your lonesome, all stiff and cross and swollen with that haunting, blue tinge around your gills like a huge, neglected gouty toe; a beached whale; a dour, oversized funeral director with no funeral to direct; a bad joke; a lazy error; a missed train; a dropped stitch; an unsightly stain on the perfect, white napkin of West Yorkshires tea-cake and charity-shop capital) is about to land not the cake, you dope with a lovely, resounding plop! right in the middle of your capacious lap.

Oh, and its a good one, Rog, its a choice one! Its something thats going to frustrate and perplex that razor-sharp intellect of yours for many, many years to come. Its going to haunt your dreams, Rog, and dominate your every waking moment. Its going to confound and enrage you, Rog. Its going to challenge you in ways you never imagined, ways you never even thought possible.

Put plainly, Rog: its going to take over your miserable, pointless little existence and turn it upside down in exactly the same way it took over (and turned over) mine (which is slightly less miserable and pointless than yours, admittedly. No, considerably less, Rog considerably less if you dont mind my saying so).

Its a Red Letter Day, Rog, so thump the tub! Whoop it up! Blow off the lid! Because your time has finally come! And its an important time, Rog, a vital time, a time to cast aside compromise and waffle and pragmatism, and re-embrace all those old-fashioned principles of your gilded youth ideas like like truth and honour, like pride and justice. (Dont think mortgage, Rog. Never think mortgage. Great men never think mortgage. And while were on the subject, dont think bun. And try not to think steak pie or battered sausage. I know how partial you are to those.)

In short, this is no time for beating around the bush, Rog. Its a time for plain speaking, a time for speaking your mind, a time for speaking as you find; a time for barking out orders, for slamming doors, for shoving your way, brutishly, into tiny, tightly packed rooms, squeezing your big, meaty hand into a powerful fist and banging it down, forcefully again and again and again and again on to desks and tables and other hard surfaces.

Its not a time for idle prattle and mooching about and eye-rolling and clock-watching (although, God only knows, there has been time for that in the past, Rog and, God willing, still plenty more of it yet to come).

Its time to step up to the plate, Rog (and I dont mean your dinner plate, lad), a time to gird your loins if loins you still have (Sandy, my gorgeous wife your ex once told me how you liked to shed them, every autumn, the way a stag sheds its antlers. But darling Sandy as we have both discovered, to our mutual cost can sometimes be a little bit creative with the truth, eh, Rog?).

Its A Time to Dance, Rog as I believe the bestselling author, Melvyn Bragg, once so poetically exhorted us. Although if you do decide to break into a spontaneous quickstep or a foxtrot, or a samba please be sure to wear your head-brace, your shoe-supports and your corset (or else dollars to doughnuts, Rog those moronic jobsworths from Health and Safety will be sniffing around us, yet again, like a feral pack of constipated hyenas).

Lets throw caution to the wind, Rog! This is no time to shilly-shally, no time to test the water and teeter, nervously, on the brink. (Ah yes, I still fondly remember those compulsory school swimming lessons at Thornhill Baths: me, clowning around on the high diving board to wildly cacophonous cheers from the boys, hysterical screams of terror from the girls and then suddenly, with no warning, clicking into The Zone, striding calmly to its furthest tip, bouncing once, bouncing twice, and then performing to assembled gasps a near-as-dammit-perfect back-flip, barely disturbing the surface of the pool with so much as a ripple as I entered it. Incredible!

And you, Rog? You? Far down below, Rog, crammed into an under-size pair of brown nylon/viscose-mix regulation trunks, your soft belly bulging over the waistband like a generous slick of extra-thick UHT cream, the voluminous skin of your upper torso pulsing translucently ghastly and white as a portion of uncooked tripe your chest heaving, uncontrollably, as you shivered and whimpered and clutched on to your towel, blinking, uneasily, into the blurry half-light.

You had good reason to feel apprehensive, Rog, having just a few moments earlier taken the very sensible precaution of removing your glasses: you were vulnerable, Rog. You were hamstrung. You were tragically incapacitated.