Thin Men, Paper Suits by Tin Larrick

Author:Tin Larrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, suicide, drugs, espionage, police, psychological, detective, gangster, sussex, vice, eastbourne, cid

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Dead Slow by Tin Larrick

To Craig’s surprise, being suicidal was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. Amidst the sensations of despair, misery and abject hopelessness, Craig found other emotions – exhilaration; a curious sense of liberation.

This may have been because Craig was not entirely suicidal, not in the true sense of the word. Sure, he had packed a length of hosepipe and an industrial clamp in the boot of the Nissan, but he had also packed a large suitcase and withdrawn nearly three thousand pounds cash, which was bunched up in a wad in the breast pocket of his shirt.

Certainly Craig was a man who liked keeping his options open. This was why right now he was parked on the beach at Normans Bay. The tide was miles out, the Nissan sitting on the mud flats; Craig having carefully negotiated his way down the steep shingle. To the west lay his town, his job, and the life he had known. To the east lay the road to London – two minutes and he could be gone for good, with enough cash to cover his tracks for several weeks.

And to the south lay the Channel, and the certainty of oblivion – if he chose it.

He didn’t want to do it yet. He felt that he should at least ruminate for a bit – on his failings, on his misery, on the reasons he was sitting here in the first place. Moreover, he had yet to decide on the method. He wasn’t keen on pain, which was why he had the hosepipe and two hundred paracetamols. He certainly had no intention of drowning – the sea was purely for the view, to add a bit of romance while he reflected on his life.

It was nothing really, just the sum of several negative ingredients adding up to less than zero. His job might have had something to do with it. A mortuary attendant was a bit of a conversation killer at parties – not that he went to many. He actually enjoyed his job – perhaps a little too much. Certainly he found the dead infinitely more tolerable company than the living. And dead bodies did not bother him. He arranged, moved and sorted them in the same way an office manager might organise his stationery. The dead were his paper clips.

Yes, the job might have been part of it. The on-off casual relationship – seven years with Celandine – might have been another. Soft porn, the odd recreational drug, pointless gadgets and trinkets for the flat he had never invited her to move into – were little morsels of excitement, and the satisfaction they induced evaporated almost immediately. The steadily mounting debt generated as a result of these little wraps of indulgence did nothing to help, especially when he started falling behind with his payments.

Over to the west he watched the winking lights of two alternating buoys – one red, one green, demarcating the entrance to Sovereign Harbour. A dredger sailed past in

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