The Crooked Bullet. Rotimi Ogunjobi

with my eyes while standing to cash my check,” Frank told them.

      “You don’t know any of those men from BBC?”

      “Of course not; any fool could have seen that heist coming” Frank chuckled.

      The supervisor glared; he clearly didn’t like being called any fool. But in any case, he knew that in a matter of hours he was likely to be without a job and quite likely to need a lawyer to save his behind from prison. His wife and children were going to be angry with him for a long time. They finally let Frank go after taking his identification.

      . Outside Frank found the building cordoned off behind police tape. The bank was now a crime scene. A large crowd had gathered to learn what had happened. Mrs. William was there right before them all; basking in the spotlight as a witness to the crime. A smaller and now dispersing crowd had gathered to see the remains of Ozzie being taken away by an ambulance.

      Frank usually went to the Hard Luck Café on Lower Clapton Road to catch up on the latest news and stuff. Usually never before sundown, but today he needed somewhere to go, was short of ideas, so he ended up at the Hard Luck Café for an early lunch.

      “What is the matter Frank, you’re not at work?” Lester Bowie asked. Lester was the waiter at the Hard Luck Café – once a temporary draft from the Dinosaurs Over-50s Employment Network. Lester always kept the customers irritated or amused but never alone, so Maureen Smith the owner of the café had retained him now for more than two years. At fifty-two Lester still didn’t really know what his life was about and appeared not to care anymore.

      “None of your businesses, Frank told him.

      “Well, since when have you ever come into here at a quarter past noon to order Bubble and Squeak and a Guinness? So I say what ales you” Lester chuckled, putting a pun on the “ale.”

      “Fuck off and do your job Lester,” Frank told him.

      He had picked up a copy of the Sun at a newsstand near Hackney Central, and he dived lustfully into the page three half taken up by a topless model.

      “Nekkid girl, what she selling den,” Maureen laughed behind him.

      “Hi Maureen,” Frank flashed her smile. Maureen was the owner of Hard Luck Cafe, forty-something full-breasted beauty with a motherly smile. Maureen always minded her business and didn’t hassle you with questions. Lester came back with Frank’s food at last and set it on the table with a wink.

      “Dirty newspaper pictures make you go blind you know?” he said.

      “Fuck off,” Frank waved him away, and silently ate his food while reading the paper.

      Become a Private Investigator.

      Somewhere in the last pages of the paper Frank again saw a small advertisement that he had noticed the previous day. It was about a private detective course or something like that. There was a phone number at the bottom of the advertisement, and having nothing else to do after his meal, he called the number.

      The call was taken by a giggly girl who answered, “Hi my name is Mandy, and how may I help you?” .Frank extracted the address of Eagle Detective Training Institute from Mandy. It was somewhere near Elephant and Castle, and since it was the right day for time-wasting, Frank thought why not check it out.

      While making the call to Eagle Detective Institute, Frank found that he had a missed call, and so he called his voicemail. Nancy had left another message.

      Nancy. He hadn’t seen her in years and wondered what it was she wanted. Frank and Nancy had together kept a single-bedroom apartment together for almost a year. It had been so wonderful initially, two kids just having fun in all possible ways. Then Nancy had started to want more, hinting at marriage. For a guy without a steady job getting hitched wasn’t a thought that Frank thought he wanted to mess with, so he had persistently navigated away off the topic as well as he could.

      But Nancy had also remained persistent, and it soon became that the only way to avoid talking about getting married was to avoid speaking with Nancy and eventually to avoid seeing Nancy, which was pretty difficult, for two people living together in a single bedroom flat.

      Then Thomas had appeared on the scene. Frank had initially become sure that Nancy was seeing someone else. How else to explain that some weirdo kept sending in flowers every day

      “Hey, what’s with all these flowers; the flat’s like a fucking undertaker’s,” Frank complained to Nancy.

      “None of your business,” she had tersely replied; which was partly correct because even though they shared the rent, the lease of the flat was in her name. And even though Frank was relieved that Nancy was no more discussing marriage, the flowers still kept him freaked; like they forebode someone’s funeral.

      Frank came in one night to hear moaning noises from the room which he used to share with Nancy before the living room couch became more comfortable for him.

      The bedroom door was open, and on the bed, he found Nancy with one of his friends, Thomas Pawney; both of them naked. Angry from both the effrontery and the betrayals, Frank hauled Thomas naked out of the flat. Nancy had also done the expected and thrown Frank’s stuff out of her flat that very night.

      Looking back, Frank thought that was the best thing that happened to him and Nancy. He remembered sleeping on the buses that night. Well, there wasn’t really much sleep. He just got himself on whichever bus was going the furthest distance and tried to get some sleep during the journeys. And at the terminus, he changed into another going the other way and got a bit more sleep on the way. That was how that night had passed.

      Jay Winch had been a lucky find the next day. Jay, a software guy, was going off to do some better-paying gig in Chicago or wherever and needed someone to mind his flat for a couple of years. So with no reference and without a deposit, Frank had quite impossibly found himself the proud tenant of a two-bedroom flat in Hackney. The next day he called Nancy and quite maliciously told her how much he wished her and Thomas Pawney a miserable lifetime and a house full of retarded children together.

      But somehow and quite impossibly Nancy Hughes had shown up at a rave party at Dalston a few weeks back, without her Thomas Pawney. Nancy had come along with two plump Scottish girls on a suicide mission from Glasgow, and who had spent the entire night knocking down Vodka shots, and the rest of the early morning vomiting them up on the sidewalk.

      “What happened to Thomas Pawney?” Frank found a minute to ask Nancy during the night.

      “Not my type, he wanted to marry me,” Nancy told Frank; leaving him with the conviction that most women are mad?

      “Thought that was what you wanted,” Frank reminded her.

      “Yes with you maybe; not with Thomas Pawney. I don’t love him”, she ruefully smiled. Being afraid of what was coming up Frank took off but not quickly enough to prevent Nancy from getting his phone number. He now ruefully regretted he had not given her a wrong number.

      And so, there on my phone was Nancy for the umpteenth time in a month asking him to return her call.

      Lester was watching the television with Maureen since no other customer was yet about. They were watching a football match between Liverpool FC and Arsenal. Lester normally looked to Frank as a hopeless case in his plaid apron, but today Lester really did strike him differently and invoked respect. At least Lester had a job going for him.

      “You done guv?” Lester asked. Frank gave him the OK sign, took out the money from his wallet, and bailed himself from the Hard Luck Cafe.

CHAPTER 4

      Frank found Eagle Detective Training Institute on the second floor of the mall at Elephant and Castle. It was a sparsely furnished small office, with only one desk, behind which he found Mandy seated, quite engrossed with her OK magazine. An ornately framed black and white portrait of a distinguished-looking gentleman with handlebar mustache supervised his discussion with the giggly Mandy, who was the o.