Stain: Dead & Gone

By James "Grim" Desborough

Stain is your stereotypical washed-up cop. He's good for nothing, surfing a life of indolence and drunkenness on past glories until he can get to retirement. Then, weirdly, he gets given a serious and important case and may have to reassess his life and career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James "Grim" Desborough
• Release date: Nov 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311819369

James "Grim" Desborough

Game designer, writer, self publisher, freelancer, rakish fop, gentleman bastard, ten times more charming than that Arnold on Green Acres.

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Stain: Dead and Gone

© 2013 James 'Grim' Desborough

Edited by Salome Jones

Stain

Dead & Gone

Chapter One – Just Fuck Off

An Englishman's home is his castle. It's a phrase that's overused to the point of driving me to fits of rage but there's a kernel, a smidge, a chewy centre of truth to it. You don't talk shit about a geezer's home any more than you would dare raise your voice about the way a woman is bringing up her kids. If you do either of these things, however deserved, you're going to get a fucking slap. You r advice’ll also be ignored, so t he whole bloody exercise is pointless from the get-go. You can only get away with either faux-pas if you're a close friend or family and even then there's going to be bitter resentment for months and a lot of hard, silent stares. The kind that can peel paint.

The thing about being a policeman, even a detective inspector, is that the money's shit and everybody hates you. You can't afford a good gaff which means you end up living around the scum that hate you the most. Most have more sense than to fuck with you, but they wouldn't be scum if they had a lick of sense.

If you've got a shit house, or in my case a flat in a leftover, Stalinist, block of concrete , you've got little motivation to keep it clean and tidy. If you're single – and a lot of coppers are – you've got no extra income and even less inclination to keep the place tidy. Compound that with being a drunk and having a reputation for getting other officers killed and it goes some way to explaining