Snapshots by Joseph Lidster

Author:Joseph Lidster [Lidster, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Collections & Anthologies, Performing Arts, Television, General
ISBN: 1844352676
Google: k85rIAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1844352676
Barnesnoble: 1844352676
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2008-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

conforms to one group or another. Work out which group someone

belonged to – it was normally obvious from their clothes alone,

although a quick chat helped narrow it down – and you had their

tastes and lifestyle tapped. It was then just a question of leafing

through the filing cabinet and bringing out the right property details.

That was how he always went about things. Until the cranks

walked in. Martin was the first to spot them. Sheila twitched in her seat as soon as they passed her desk and Indira had made her way

from the kitchen the moment she heard the door go – it wasn’t just

that they wanted the custom: any distraction from that other

business was gratefully leapt upon – but Martin had caught the

pair’s eyes first by standing and waving as they came through the

door and so they made a beeline for him.

Martin looked them up and down as they approached. Everything

about him – the crazy hair, the pretentiously long scarf, the tatty coat – screamed out, ‘Look how arty-farty I am!’ Martin guessed he

wrote novels – all of them unpublished. He’d met non-novelists

before. They liked to corner him by the airing cupboard during a

viewing and describe their rejected plots to him in bewildering

detail. But, on further scrutiny, this bloke seemed worse: he looked like he wrote pretty. That was it! He was a poet, who probably

wrote long turgid verse sagas based on Celtic myths – and always

after several pints of home-brewed ale. Of course that was never

going to pay the mortgage – or even for the home-brew kit – so he

had to have a proper job too. Uni lecturer, Martin guessed, in

something like pottery or fine art.

Yep, that was the man summed up: he lectured in the university’s

art department.

God knew what she was doing with him. She looked quite

respectable at first. Bit of posh – and gorgeous with it. Long brown hair, great figure. The dress was a bit glam for daytime but it

showed plenty of cleavage so Martin wasn’t complaining. She had

to be crackers, of course – she was with the poet. Martin would

have put her down as a kept wife – she had the air of a woman

untroubled by practicalities – but doubted the man earned enough to

keep her. She probably worked at the uni too, as a secretary or

something; maybe an artists’ model. She was too fit to be a lecturer, at any rate. When he described her later to his mates, the best way

to sum her up would be to say that he most definitely would.

205

Having got a good measure of the couple, Martin mentally ran

through the available properties. They’d want somewhere they

could restore. They were that type. Somewhere a bit countrified –

definitely somewhere old. He knew the very place. Dove Cottage

was a dilapidated old ruin that had been on the market for almost

two years now. As the couple made their way from the door to his

desk he tracked down Dove Cottage’s file.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ Martin told the pair, laying the

relevant details, facing them, upon his desk.

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