Precinct No. 2

Happy 40th DCI Catboy

I took the dog for a walk, up past the woods n’ over the field like every other day. Then round the bend from the sheep paddock he just stopped. He never stopped. Leo’s a mini sheepdog. He didn’t hang about when there were sheep that needed swearing at. He stood at the tree line and aimed a howl into the shadows. Two years I’ve had him and I ain’t ever heard him howl once. Would have sworn it was an echo until this other one crept forward, out the brush & into the last of the sun. It edged closer until they were nose-to-nose. It’s not uncommon for two dogs to look exactly alike but Leo was a distinctive American Shepherd, with one brown eye and the other ice blue. His iris in the blue eye wasn’t round but shaped like a daisy. The vet at the rescue centre called it actinomorphic. It looked like Leo had his nose pressed against a mirror. To see them together wasn't magical, it was unsettling. A disturbance in the natural order of things.

I don't always know what my dog is thinking but when he looked at me & huffed it was pure frustration. Audible disappointment of my human ignorance. Leo knew something I didn't. I suddenly felt embarrassed for feeding him chum from a can and relieved that I let him sleep on the bed. “Leo!” I called his name in search of some familiarity but they both turned. “Leo, come ‘ere mate!” They both obeyed. I knelt down and stared for a while at the identical face of my best dog friend. It wasn’t just the eye. It was the way it looked at me - expectantly. He knew me.

It was only then it dawned on me. The white patch of fur ran along his left shoulder, not his right. His one brown sock was on the wrong leg. Even his lip curled up on his snag tooth on the opposite side. They weren’t identical, they’re mirror-image. I noticed all this before the dead giveaway eyes. “I would make a terrible detective.” Better not tell my brother, he actually was one. “What would DCI Declan do?” I could hear his voice clear as day shout back “Check his collar you plonker” “Oh yeah.” I held my hand out and it approached, same as Leo, so I figured it was alright to touch him. The tag read ‘oɘ⅃’ “Shit me. We better go see my brother.”

My brother was no ordinary copper. For starters, he didn’t work in the police station but in a shack on his own on the edge of the village. Everyone knew him, he made the news campaigning for magic mushrooms to be legalised at Parliament. When the fuzz tried to sack him over it, he took them to court. The judge ruled that protesting against a law you are employed by the state to enforce does not supersede one’s democratic right to protest, so long as you still enforce that law while on duty. Which given there’s never even been a drug arrest in Winslock ain’t hard. It was a famous case 15 years back and it did make a name for him. Although thanks to the newspaper headline, that name was Officer Shrooms.

The local constabulary couldn’t sack him over it but they could ‘promote’ him to head of his own precinct - an old shack on an overgrown allotment. Where I have it on good authority as his brother, he grows copious amounts of magic mushrooms. Officer Shrooms is a local legend and put Winslock on the map. He was even given the key to our village which we celebrated accordingly. During the high of this jubilant celebration we buried the key in the mushroom patch to see if it would grow a door. Which I swear made sense at the time. We were so sure, we even left a doormat where we planted it.

It was my shit luck that when I went to see Declan it happened to be his day off. A consummate professional he only ever worked when the allotment needed attending. The shack is actually a disused public toilet, last open in ‘88 according to the graffiti in the Men’s. Earning it the excellent nickname ‘Precinct Number Two’. I let myself in using the key he keeps under a garden gnome. Which strictly speaking, is highly illegal. I’m sure in ordinary circumstances breaking into a police station warrants some sort of hefty prison sentence, but my dog had just become two dogs and had no time for such horseshit.

Officer Shrooms was lying face down in the middle of the floor. In his usual baggy grey suit from the waist up but bollock naked from the waist down. This was unusual even for my brother. Leo and other Leo sniffed around his face but he didn’t budge. A cold panic rushed over me as I built the courage to call out his name. It was at this moment my actual brother walks in the door behind me holding the paper a pint of milk yelling “Who the fuck let you in!” “Fucking Jesus fuck Declan! You scared me half to death. I thought you were dead.” “What? Oh him” My brother replied, half surprised I brought it up. “He’s the other me. Better sit down. I’ll stick the kettle on and explain.”

“What you on about? Is he alive?” “Should be yeah. ‘Though I did give him enough horse tranquilliser to knock out an actual horse. I see you found O’el then.” It was like my brother was tryn’a confuse me. He sees the befuddlement written across my face and graces me with some rare context “That’s what his collar says right?” “How the fuck d’ya know that - and who the fuck is the guy who looks like you - and where the fuck are his trousers?” “Tea first, then I’ll explain. I’ll give you a couple sugars for the shock.” My brother makes me sit, while he fanny’s about the kitchenette stretching my impatience. He seemed to be relishing the idea he could do the big detective reveal of an unsolvable crime and was milking it for all I could stand.

“Milk?” He wiggles the carton at me, the bastard knows I take milk. Finally, he gets on with it.“You ever do a poo so distinctive you could spot it in an identity parade?” Christ! I thought. He's gone mental. He could see I was about to change the subject so he pleads “Just hear me out." Shoving the tea in my hand. "Tell me you ain't never done one you could have played Guess Who with?” “No!” I lied. It’a not that I’m above such talk. It was that I could see we were going down this road whether I wanted to or not. “I’m not doing this Declan!” “I'm not messing mate. This is important!” He had the temerity to be more annoyed with me than I was with him. He gave me a powerful detective-older-brother look. One that says I know you’re full of it. It didn’t take long for me to crack. “Guess Poo.” He beamed at this. Not the bad joke. Just that was starting to give way to his childishness. If I had held this facade of maturity any longer he might have imploded.

He nodded for me to continue. “Alright fine. There was that time you made me that bizarre sweetcorn chilli mess from the garden. I forget what you call it.” This was obviously a lie. Who could forget a name like “My famous bombastard Jambalaya! Exactly! If it wasn’t for that dish I don’t think I’d have cracked this case. He pulled in a chair opposite me, signalling he was about to actually explain. “Well you know old mate Jack has been complaining for years that some fucker has been shitting in his potato field? Well it’s technically an open investigation. The captain sent me down there once to collect evidence as a fuck you and I’ve been stuck with the case ever since. Jack called me up Wednesday afternoon, claiming the poo bandit had outdone himself. Well I went to go see it and there she was! Dazzling in the mud.” 

“Declan! That was obviously someone else’s log you daft bollocks.” “I am a detective, you know. This thing was like a kangaroo's foot. It was definitely it. Don’t you get it? There is no poo bandit mate, they’ve all been popping up from the precinct the whole time.” “Don’t tell me you’ve been investigating your own shits for the last however many years?” My brother looked offended at this accusation but not for the right reasons. “Jack is a complete gob-shite. Believe me, the case remained uninvestigated until this week.” I go to speak but wasn’t sure where to begin, so Declan eagerly continued.

“I started flushing all sorts down the same trap to see for certain but everything showed up at the farm backwards. I flushed a pair of socks and the bastard Slazenger logo appeared back to front.” He pulled his trousers up at the ankle to show me expecting some sort of reaction. “They’re fucking inside out.” “Well I wrote my name on a packet of hobnobs and go to flush them but obviously they’re too big to go down. The next day I walk past the farm and there they are.” He gestures to the hobnobs I’ve been mindlessly eating on the coffee table. “They look normal to me.” “Ah right yeah. I ate the copies seen as the original’s had been down the bog. Anyway, I’ve been here for fifteen years now and Jack’s only had turnouts turn up on his farm for eight. Which is when I started using the ladies toilets here instead of the men’s, you know, because of the sausage incident.” He pauses expecting me to follow up on ‘sausage incident’ but I can’t take another tangent. Plus I am still reeling from the realisation he’s been feeding me bog hobnobs. I just say fantastic then gesture to the body on the floor.

“Anything that is in that loo when it flushes has a reverse copy pop up on Jack’s farm.” “Did you try to flush my dog down the toilet?” “I did aye. Sorry about that. I felt bad like. Like a bit of a coward actually. So I flushed myself not long after. Which is how we ended up with this fella ‘ere. I did bring O’el back ‘ere for a bit but he buggered off when I let him out for a piss last night.” “Please stop calling him that… I have questions…” He said sure as he handed me a wallet with a backwards driving licence and backwards money in it. “Why is he naked and can I see it in action?”

“I took my shoes, socks and trousers off ‘cause you have to stand in the bog when you flush. And if you must know, I've been too busy flushing things to put a wash on.” “Why didn’t ya just flush a pair?” I ask sarcastically but my brother responds in earnest “I did think of that like but you’d need a clean pair to begin with.” “That’s the most worrying thing I’ve heard today.” It was good to see him laugh at this. He is clearly under a lot of stress. I add “Okay, enough faffing. Let’s flush something!” What else could I do in this situation? It will either work or bring my brother back down to Earth.

I go outside looking for something to flush and come back with the garden gnome. The inside of the pan looked like a tie-dye t-shirt. There were half-empty bottles of food colouring scattered around the cubicle. “Pick a colour, any colour.” It was difficult to tell if he was intentionally trying to sound like a magician. “Orange” He dashes in some red & yellow. I pop in the gnome while Declan makes magician sounding “Oooooh” noises while waving his hands over the bowl. One had to wonder if he had been making these noises during his solo experiments. We pull the chain saying the magic words “Abra Kebabra” The name of the only take away in the village. The water vanishes but the gnome remains. I turn to Declan and say something neutral to not embarrass him “Did it work? Didn’t look like much.” “Yeah, if we hurry we should see it pop up.” He had a mad look in his eye. His confidence must have swayed me then and there.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t excited. We leave the dogs and the body, and grab a couple police torches. We run the quarter mile or so up the road to Jack’s farm, hop over the cow gate and hustle down to the potato paddock. Everyone knows the site of the poo bandit. We get there in no time. I have my hands on my knee’s panting. Look to my brother who was catching up with a brisk walk and a lit cigarette in his mouth. He looks at his watch and counts down from three. It took me a second to realise what the fucking hell he’s doing and points the light of his torch with the word “Look!” I turn and out of the small hole in the grass shoots an orange jet of water 5 foot up in the air followed by an airborne gnome before its unceremoniously dumped on the turf.

I searched for the hole for a good minute before Declan shouts from the fence he’s leaning against “You’ll never find it. I’ve looked loads of times. It must close up or summink.” He puts his fag out on the fence post as I inspect the gnome. It looked like the same one. Just some scruffy fella posing with his hands behind his back. White beard, red hat. You know the one. “Should have got something less symmetrical really.” I say more to myself than my brother. I look over to him and he’s holding up some imaginary object in his hand. Like a drama student doing his best Hamlet. He inspects an invisible gnome before turning it over in his hand, looking underneath it and feigning surprise. I checked the base of the gnome and to my irritation pulled the same exact surprise face my brother had just mocked. The stamped company logo was definitely in reverse.

I was relieved to know my brother hadn’t gone completely mad. Even if it meant that the world had. In the movies people discover ma… -well, I don’t want to use the M word- this inexplicable phenomenon in a crisis situation, leading to urgent, drastic action. But instead he'd been flushing random objects at his own leisure for days. The only notable consequence of which is that my brother’s natural eccentricity has been irreparably encouraged.

We get back to Precinct Number Two to find Officer Shrooms Number Two standing up and dribbling down himself in a daze. “What’s wrong with him Dec? Not exactly the best of copies is he?” “To be fair, this is how I usually react to Ketamine.” “Jesus. We gotta find him some pants.” “You know what? The strangest thing about this is that it’s still hanging to the left.” “No Declan, you’ve just never faced it before.” Declan put the kettle on while we bickered our way to a solution. “Well he’s your clone. I’m not getting rid of him.” “Well what about O’el. Who’s taking him?” “Don’t call him that. He must be mixed up enough without you giving him another name. And I don’t bloody want him, could be radioactive or summin.” “Good, we can give him to Nan?” We both laugh at this crassness of this. At 92 she has refused radiotherapy against doctors advice. It was during this idiocy that the kettle clicked and Officer Shrooms Number Two snapped out of his daze in military fashion. To our astonishment he started making the tea.

He stopped for a moment, half turning towards us and made a noise that was closer to a gurgle than a mumble. “mmmrrii un shureugh” Declan said “Is that supposed to mean something?” But to me it just sounded like Declan after a few too many. I understood perfectly. “Urmmm, Milk no sugar please mate.” Delcan looked at me, seemingly disturbed I understood this incomprehensible gibberish. Declan Number Two then handed us our teas. “He dribbled in mine.” “Oh stop complaining. We’ve made a tea butler.” We both shot each other a look at the use of the phrase tea butler. It was something Nan always said. “Right put some pants on him, we’re going.” I said to Declan, only this time he didn't bicker back. We were in an unholy unprecedented situation but it went without saying that the rule is you put the pants on your own reverse toilet portal clone.

We went to see Nan in the care home. We put a tea cosy on Declan Number twos head and cut some eye holes in it. Nan had crocheted it, red & white stripes. We then gave him Leo number 2 to carry. It was bound to attract some attention but better than having two officer shrooms walk through the village. People would just assume we were up to our old tricks. We weren’t out the door 10 seconds before Declan pipes up with “What yer reckon then? “Aliens or magic?” “Shhh Declan! Someone will hear us!” “Alright then. The A word or the M word?

“We can’t say ‘The M Word’.” “Magic?” “No, well yes, definitely magic. But especially ‘The M word’. You know. It sounds too much like we’re trying to not say ‘the N word’.” It didn’t take long for my brother to start singing Tupac songs, replacing the N word with the M word just to wind me up. “I’d rather be a M A G I C, so I can get drunk and smoke weed all day.” Just as two teenagers walk past doing a poor job of stifling their laughs. “C’mon, we better get off the road.” We take the woods most of the way to the care home.

When we get there I walk round the immaculately kept gardens with Declan Number Two. Declan walks through reception to occupy Nan’s regular nurse Anya. Who always greets him with “Nice to see you again Captain Shrooms.” He tries to play this down but she continues as always. “I tell everyone. You run your own precinct, you are captain. This is fact.” Anya escorts him to Nan’s room and pops her head in first and introduces him. She always announced our entrance first. I thought it was so we didn't startle Nan but Declan reckons it's because Nan likes to walk around the gaff naked. Nan greets Declan by yelling “The mayor wants his key back.” Declan rolls his eyes at Anya to suggest Nan’s lost the plot which is a little evil considering she’s spot on. He replies “Tell him it’s under the mat.” The former mayor is also a resident and never forgave us for burying the key to the village.

Anya leaves them to it and as soon as the coast is clear Declan unlocks the patio door and hands Nan a packet of fags he had in his top pocket. She whipped out Grandad’s old gold flip lighter & sparked up like a pro. She had lost the dexterity for everything else except for lighting her fags. As though she’d made a deal with the Greek god Arthritis. She took a deep drag… “Are they stolen?” “Sort of. Confiscated them off some teenagers. How do you know?” She then exhales her answer. “Taste better.” Replying matter-of-factly.

“Will you tell that bleedin nurse that the doctor said smoking is good for me. She keeps stealing mine. I know she’s smoking them!”“Oh they did not.” Then I walk in via the patio door and instead of hello, Nan yells “Tell him will ya!” I didn’t have to ask what they were talking about. “Oh right yeah. Doctor said that quitting smoking would do as much damage at this point as carrying on. Can you believe that? She’s been telling everyone that the doctor has been prescribing her fags.” “He did!” “He bloody never Nan.”

It was only at this point that Declan Number Two followed me in. “Well I neva.” Nan said this a lot but I don’t think I’d ever heard her too dumbfounded to follow it up. “Nan, say ‘ello to your new tea butler.” “He looks like you Dec. Where’d you get him?” There was only one answer to this that wouldn't elicit further investigation. “The internet.” “Oh right yeah. China I s’pose.” “Yeah… China.” Dec tutted in annoyance “Oh great. What about when Nan introduces the other me to the residents as her new Chinese Tea Butler?” “Its alright, they’ll just think she’s gone mad. I’ll tell reception you’ve had a breakdown if you're worried about appearances.”

"So he ain't from that portal down the road then?"

Part 2. Nan is a Satanist.