Flash Fiction

The bowler hats and Orientals sat comfortable on Eagle Wharf Road. Low rent traffic plied its trade against a backdrop of the seven eleven. The streetwalkers and nobodies rubbed close like cousins at a wedding, and the old German reeds man blew his horn like Gabriel’s echo.

It was into this sweat seeped scene that Silas Barnsfather made his first foray in the belittled world of detecting. He positioned himself in what was most probably the absolute middle of Eagle Wharf Road where vehicles and articulates covered him in considered abuse as he set about detection. His major strategy was observation. He allowed the vociferous traffic to pass through his plane of focus and centred all his monocular strength on the emanating aurora of the street and its environs. His beak nose pulsed with effort, perspiration dripped onto his already rancid shirt collar and veins worked their way up and across his reddened neck. He felt the solution. There had been a crime, yet no one knew.

Standing motionless and observing for the unoccupied part of a midday hour he came to a fully structured conclusion. The crime had been committed in the very near future, maybe only an hour hence. He ceased observing and walked unassaulted across the lane of traffic. Horns blared, he ignored. On reaching the pavement now grimed with a full morning of all sorts, he headed to the corner café, where he believed the future would happen. After twenty minutes of arguing with the café owner he was deposited unceremoniously onto the pavement by some of the more brusque of the lunch time customers. He attempted one last time put his case but the café door was without concern.

He shrugged, turned, walked to the far end of Eagle Wharf Road and as he turned the corner a loud explosion ripped through the bank flattening the crowded café next door. In the recognisable distance the German reeds man stumbled through a broken rendition of the last post.