time, but it never does, and I don’t expect it ever will.”
“They say that just to get you off their books,” she said, “tick the boxes and sayonara. Move on to the next.”
She wondered why this chance encounter could have laid bare such raw emotions, exposing her fragility to a man she didn’t even know, pulling herself up short she didn’t tell him about the bungled suicide attempt, the razor and the scalding bath. The water turning slowly from rose to red until they found her bloody and bedraggled. Why would she know you had to slice the wrists down rather than across to bleed out fast? He didn’t need to know any of that.
He nodded. “That’s about it, when the chips are down, we’re just so much collateral damage.”
"Well,” she said, her eggshell exterior threatening to crack if she didn’t make a move. Fighting back tears she made a show of checking her watch, “it’s been nice talking to you, but if you’ll excuse me, I’d better be running along. Got a story to finish and get off to Ellery Queen’s.”
“Oh,” he said, “What’s it about this time, another true confession?”
Despite herself, she smiled. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, it’s about a war widow, a risk junkie who becomes a compulsive shoplifter.”
Now it was Russell’s turn to smile. “Does she get caught?”
“You’ll have to read it to find out,” she replied, “give me your email and I’ll send it to you.”
Russell pushed his chair back and stood up. Decision time and his last chance was slipping away.
She brushed past him as she headed for the trolley park and he caught her scent strong in his nostrils, amazed that those few moments in her company had evoked such powerful emotions, realising too late that he didn’t even know her name. The old ache flickered in his leg. It was decision time.
He watched her take a few steps and then, as if struck by an after-thought, she turned to face him, her hand fluttering up to her mouth. “You take good care, Jane Russell, remember, you’re a Pinkerton.”
As she trundled her trolley to the checkout he made his decision; went over to the security console and used his master key to turn off the theft alarm. He’d get a rocket from fat Eddie sure enough, but he no longer cared.
She passed through without incident, the bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape she had slipped into her shoulder bag along with whatever other contraband she had concealed, undetected.
When his shift ended John Russell went home, back to the Southwark bed-sit he had retreated to after his wife left him, no longer able to cope with the incessant rows and his black moods. The encounter at the café had unnerved him, brought it all back; scrabbling in the dirt, hammer blows of shock slamming his system, toppling every time he tried to stand; distant voices shouting things he couldn’t unscramble, the look in the medic’s eyes as they scooped him up; glancing desperately back from the stretcher, a severed leg left behind, the boot still twitching in the dirt. It all came flooding back.
He received his discharge in his rehab bed; it came by post, nobody came to see him, the outcast, the pariah. All he’d ever wanted to be was a Marine and now they’d unceremoniously cast him out, a liability, an embarrassment, a diplomatic incident in a war they wanted to abandon and forget. It all came back like bitter bile.
The civvy street jobs he’d applied for, bodyguard work, security on container ships running the gauntlet of Somali pirates, all politely turned down, blackballed, he later discovered, by the MOD. The unpaid bills, the mortgage arrears, the lies and worst of all the recurring nightmares; the vicious screaming rows, spiralling down into dark ravines of despair until the day she finally gave up on him and walked out as the bailiffs walked in.
Now look at me, Russell contemplated himself as he opened up his laptop, a supermarket security guard with little or no prospects, the ignominy complete. The maddening ache in his right leg was becoming unbearable. Carefully he slipped out of his trousers and bent to massage the offending calf, but, just as he knew all along, the ache was merely a phantom which disappeared when he removed the towel taped around the rod of his transtibial prosthesis to bulk out his trouser leg.
Russell set the artificial limb to one side and slowly peeled away the gel pack and massaged the knee stump with a bag of frozen peas, a ritual he had performed a million times. The alabaster of his thigh livid with purple scars from the IED blast, which had shredded his leg.
He was still kneading the stump when the laptop chirruped her incoming email. It read: Here’s the story as promised Jane Russell, hope you like it.
He clicked on the attachment to open the file and read the first line: He walked over to where she was sitting in the corner of the supermarket coffee shop sipping a cappuccino.
His eyes flicked to the top of the screen and the desperate black mood which had plagued him ever since that fateful day in Khukumati, Nadi Ali District, Helmand Province, began to lift. That Dashiell Hammett guy would’ve been proud of her.
She’d entitled it The Sheriff of Tesco.
From the author:
I hope you have enjoyed reading the sheriff of tesco as much as I enjoyed writing it, please if you have any comments or would like to get in touch you can contact me via twitter, my web site or Facebook. Any mistakes are my own and I duly apologise for them.
Other Titles by: Roger Busby
Trafalgar - Dispatches
South Bank Blue
High Jump
Crackshot
Snowman
The Hunter
Fading Blue
Garvey's Code
New Face in Hell
Pattern of Violence
A Reasonable Man
Deadlock
The Frighteners
Robbery blue
Main Line Killer
Authors Website: Roger Busby.Com
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Biography:
BUSBY, Roger (Charles). British. Born in Leicester, 24 July 1941. Educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School for Boys; Aston University, Birmingham, certificate in journalism, 1968. Married Maureen-Jeanette Busby in 1968. Journalist, Caters News Agency, Birmingham, 1959-66, and Birmingham Evening Mail, 1966-73. Since 1973, 1976 Force Information Officer, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, Exeter. Lieutenant Commander RNR Sea Cadet Corps
1977 - 2012.
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