I Could Tell That Dame Was Trouble

I could tell that dame was trouble the minute she walked into my office. As a private investigator, you learn to pick up on the sort of things others might miss. Maybe it was a look in her eye, a nervousness in the walk, or the fact that she pulled out a snub-nose revolver and shot me.

I don’t know why she did it, and she didn't hang around long enough for me to ask. Insult to injury, if you ask me.

I managed to drag myself to call for an ambulance. Arrived in six minutes flat. That’s a response time that should be applauded, even if they told me to stop clapping on account of it ‘exacerbating already serious blood loss’.

As we drove to the hospital, siren blaring, I reflected on how the whole experience had left me feeling pretty shaken up. Mostly because the ambulance’s suspension had gone. They apologised – budget cuts and all that. I said not to worry as I pulled a scalpel from my leg, sent there by a particularly ambitious pot hole.

When we got to the hospital the doctor took one look at my chart and pronounced me dead on arrival. I tried to point out it said “Ted” but he was having none of it. Asked what medical training I had. I said none. He said “well there you are then”. But, fifteen minutes and one very disgruntled mortuary worker later, he agreed to take another look.

The staff told me I was lucky – if the bullet had been just three inches to the left I'd have arrived in a body bag. I pointed out that if the bullet had been three feet to the right it'd have missed entirely, which would have been far luckier.

The doc bandaged me up. Told me to take a couple of paracetamol and rest. No strenuous exercise. No hard liquor. And certainly no blood-soaked quests for vengeance against those who wronged me. I said sorry doc, I can’t promise that. He said fair enough and handed me the bill. I said wait, wait, wait, can you cut the cost if I can promise it? He said no.

I said “wait Doc, what about the NHS? Surely that covered this sort of thing?” He said “With the guns and noir aesthetic, isn’t this set in the US?” I said most certainly not, to which he mostly seemed more relieved than anything in case the writer ever had to read this ordeal out loud. Then he left.

I was alone with nothing but a huge bill, an unquenchable anger, and no pants. I was truly Donald Ducked.

I headed back to the office to work on a plan. The kind you see on TV, with scrawled notes connected by bits of string. Time to raid the craft box.

As I sat, alone, I started to realise why detectives so often have an assistant they can explain the case to without it straying into pointless exposition. The kind of exposition I used to do in my younger days when I grew up in the big city where my father was a beat cop killed in the line of duty while I was still just a kid at Showdont Elementary.

I looked up at my board. All the notes. The ideas. The theories. Who was she? Where could I find her? Then I saw it. It was so obvious. A quick Google search to confirm a few things, and I was on my way.

A yellow-cab ride, a Tube journey, tram ride, funicular railway trip, and a rickshaw hop across this confusing mish-mash of a city, and I was there. At her door. I knocked, and felt a note of satisfaction at the look of surprise on her face as she saw me.

“How did you know it was me?” she asked.

“Simple”, I said.

“Ah, you traced the bullet casing I forgot to clear away to the store I bought them from and worked out the obviously fake name was actually an anagram of my real name?”

“What? No, I saw the title of the story – “I Could Tell that Dame Was Trouble”. So I cross-checked all dame commanders of the British Empire with the physical features I could recall from our encounter, along with approximate age”.

She pulled the gun on me again. I felt no fear.

“Approximate age? How old do you think I am?”

I felt true fear.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she continued. “I’ll just have to finish the job”.

“I have to ask” I, well, asked. “Why? What was the motive?”

“Motive?” she said. Then she said something about the writer having had just three hour’s sleep, an imminent deadline, a vague idea leftover from attempting a crime story one time, and having watched Casablanca the previous day. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I felt the sting of her words. No, sorry, bullet. The sting of her bullet, as she fired again, right at my heart.

“It was the perfect plan,” I said, “but you forgot one thing – our broken privatised healthcare system” I said pulling the phonebook-sized hospital bill from my jacket pocket – with one bullet embedded into it.

As the police carted her away (oh, I forgot to say I’d called the police before I went in, and in retrospect I probably should have waited for them). But as they carted her away, the Sergeant turned to me and said “that was some good work you did. We could use someone like you on the force.” I told him I wasn’t interested.

Then he mentioned it came with health insurance.

“Sarge,” I said, placing my arm over his shoulders, “I think this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.

He told me to remove the arm, or he’d remove it for me. Which is fair enough, he has the right to bear them here. I think.

The End