Exile

By Stuart Nealon

Private detective Cid Steiner takes on a case to find a missing woman before finding himself embroiled in events far darker than Steiner could have initially anticipated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Nealon
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476283241

Stuart Nealon

I have been writing since 2002 and work on poetry, fiction and journalism.

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Exile

Stuart Nealon

Copyright 2012 by Stuart Nealon

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Table of Contents

I

II

III

Epilogue

About the Author

I

The first thing I notice this morning is the golf glove that’s been grafted to my tongue... it certainly tastes like someone’s worn this thing during a gruelling eighteen holes, that foul taste of ashes and salt and sand can’t be mistaken. I’m suffering from a violent headache; although that’s little more than an occupational hazard in my business... it’s the unfamiliar sensation of my dried-out tongue that’s really rattling me this morning.

I enter the kitchenette and brew up a fresh pot of coffee, gluing a cigarette to my chaffed and cracking lips before lighting it. Fortunately there’s still some paracetamol in the pack and I ingest two, swallowing them after filling a glass with water; refilling it a number of times. While the tap is still running I fill a pot with water and place it on the oven’s hob, bringing the water to the boil. There’s a single egg left in the fridge, which I boil in the pot while drinking my first cup of coffee of the morning.

Before drinking a few more cups of coffee and eating breakfast I shave and shower quickly, ensuring the hot water doesn’t get the opportunity to dehydrate me further. Leaving the apartment and getting onto the street, I secretly curse the low, searing autumnal sun that breaks through the cracks of the skyscrapers downtown before crossing the road and entering the multi-storey where my car is parked. It takes what feels like an age to drive to the office, although that might have more to do with the hangover than the traffic, which although slow isn’t dripping with the excruciating tedium of a runny nose.

Must be the humidity... sucking all the moisture out of my body like an elephant draining an oasis... the hangover is an especially insipient one and doesn’t feel like it’s gonna get much better with the day’s progression... I park the car and – at the last minute – decide to stop into the drugstore on the street corner, just a few doors down from the office. I’m drinking another coffee while reading the morning edition, the front page informing me of yet another grizzly murder that took place in Topanga Park in the early hours of the morning. It appears that another young couple is the victim in this incident and reading the article, I consider the few details of the investigation of which I’m aware... there’s been a spate of such recognisable murders going on round the city over the last few months – this is the fourth or fifth case of which I’m aware – and even by this city’s standards the murders are especially brutal: the last thing anyone needs here is another serial killer on the loose... an old friend of mine in Homicide once told me some of the finer details of the previous and unsettlingly recognisable crimes, details that would compromise any police investigations if they were find their way into the papers; those resurging facts doing absolutely nothing to help settle my stomach.

Taking the paper with me I stroll back up the street towards the office, stepping into the foyer and entering the elevator that takes me up to the fifth floor. The door to my office’s small reception is unlocked, in case any clients wish to wait around for me; as usual the reception is empty. I unlock the door to my office and step inside, opening the windows in a vain attempt to air out the perennial stench of smoke that refuses to budge. The office’s window that faces out onto the street beneath is running parallel with the sun’s rays this morning, so I adjust the blinds, ensuring that only the faintest trickle of sunlight enters the office. Reaching into the bottom drawer of my desk I remove the office bottle and a glass, downing a healthy measure of scotch in the hopes that some hard liquor will succeed in quenching the hangover where coffee and breakfast had failed.

Returning to the paper, I begin to reread the front page story... this is the first time I can recall one of these homicides taking place somewhere so open... from what I can remember of the previous murders involving such couples, the crimes were always perpetrated indoors, usually catching the couples while making love, according to the evidence gathered at the scene, at least... perhaps