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I reckon he’d be able to talk underwater buried in a cement coffin, gagged and following a laryngectomy. I’d barely got a word in the whole time we’d worked together. He had the gift of the gab, was a real charmer and his speech would have been a work of art. Well, it should have been because he’d laboured over it every day for the last six months instead of doing any real work.
    I wish I’d been at the pub to hear it, but I’d been at old Miss Greville’s house, half-heartedly searching her dark overgrown garden by torchlight for the third peeping tom she’d reported that fortnight. She’d clutched my hand gratefully, if a little shakily, when I’d assured her that there was nobody there. I hadn’t wanted to remind her that if there was even the remotest chance of a man peeking on ladies in our small town, he’d be heading straight for the nudist community which was only a couple of kilometres away.
    Failing that, he had the option of waiting around until eight on a Sunday night when, as regular as clockwork, the town’s good-time girl, Foxy Dubois, gave an impromptu free striptease performance in her lounge room after spending the afternoon drinking at Abe’s pub. There was always a crowd at her window on Sunday nights. But what a peeping tom patently wouldn’t be doing in Little Town however, was wasting his time spying on Miss Greville, a ninety-three year old spinster who had confessed to me with breathless confidentiality that she always bathed with her underwear on, “just in case”.
    Of course I had wanted to attend Des’ retirement bash. He’d been my boss, after all, and I’d known him for the whole twenty years he’d lived here. But we were a two-cop town and when one cop is the guest of honour at his own party, the other one hasn’t got much choice but to be on duty, even if she’d been on duty every day for the last month while her boss was busy organising the big event. The evening hadn’t been too onerous though I had to admit, with most of the townsfolk, with the exception of the Bycrafts, gathered at the pub for Des’ send-off. Much of my activity tonight had been confined to ferrying drunk people back home.
    I didn’t normally run a blue light taxi with the town’s only patrol car, but it was a special occasion and I didn’t want to make myself unpopular by booking people for being public nuisances or for driving under the influence. Especially after I’d spent the morning manning the radar gun on the highway approaching town from the south. That was where the long mountainous climb finally levelled out and people let their speed rip just as they came to a sixty zone. A lot of interstate drivers, as well as a few locals, would receive an unwelcome penalty notice for speeding in the mail soon. The locals should have known better though. There was always the chance that I’d be lurking behind that thicket of overgrown oleanders on the side of the road just past the ‘Welcome to Mount Big Town’ sign, because that’s where I always perched doing radar duty on that side of town. So I spared no sympathy for those townsfolk who I’d clocked over the speed limit today, but tonight I conveniently looked the other way and lent a helping hand where I could.
    I had warned Des about running an open bar until midnight at The Flying Pigs, and as usual he’d listened courteously to my advice and then patted me on the head as if I was his much-loved golden Labrador, Mr Sparkles. But soon after our chat he had left the station with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, loudly arranging for Abe to have beer, wine and spirits generously on tap until the stroke of twelve for all his guests and after that the “fucking freeloaders” could pay for their own, he laughed uproariously into the phone. I didn’t get mad at him for being so patronising though, because when I thought about it I’d rather that he treated me like Mr Sparkles than like his long-suffering and much-ignored wife,