Blood Sport (DaDa Detective Agency Book 3) - Pete Adams

Blood Sport (DaDa Detective Agency Book 3) by Pete Adams

Book excerpt

Southsea Cricket Club

Zing, sting … splat.

They say you become aware of a passing bullet long after it has passed and thankfully missed, or only grazed. Sometimes you are not even aware you have been shot at, or, shot.

Near misses can be a stimulus to reflect upon life. Angie did this. He reflected on his short stature and, his short life.

‘What was that sound? Ooh look, a puff of dust from the pavilion brick wall beyond,’ Angie said out loud, forgetting he needed to whisper. Sarge had said to be careful, baby steps, which he found ironic, being vertically challenged, as he was. He had heard something zing, or was it a buzz? A wasp? Yes, he presumed it was a wasp and that pesky insect may have stung his neck.

Why was Angie whispering? When he remembered to whisper that is. He was simply meeting the Chairman of the Planning Committee after all. However, something was not right, and Angie could not put his finger on it. Sarge had warned him and, for Angie, she was all he could think of. Sarge had opened his eyes by opening his heart; he was for the first time in his little life, in love.

Angie had noticed the puff of brick dust as he clapped his hand to his neck to soothe the wound. He patted the sore area, looked at his hand, some blood spotting. He put his hand back, just in case. He always ate plenty of fruit, it was the Japanese way, so he shouldn’t have spots, but the proof was on the palm of his hand; spots, big red ones. A wasp would not produce that much blood, would it? He presumed the puff of dust was the wasp going so fast it couldn’t stop before it hit the wall.

Angie was no David Attenborough, unless Mr Attenborough was a half Japanese, midget son of a homunculi Japanese trapeze artiste, with a passing knowledge in entomology? A ladybird, perhaps? They are red and have spots? Maybe there was a swarm? Do they sting? Sarge did. She had stung Angie’s heart, so gorgeous in her uniform and, if seen in a prudential light and he was standing on an orange box, she was not that much taller than himself. Maybe six inches? Less? How tall is an orange box?

Angie did look around for the wasp to see if it was alright. To see if he could offer it any help, even though it had ruthlessly stung him in the manner of a swarm of ladybirds. With the attention span of a gnat, however, he gave up the fruitless mercy mission. He couldn’t see a thing or even hear a buzz, except from the Chairman of the Planning Committee.

A buzz, or was it a gurgle? Was the Chairman of Planning a cricket umpire? Because he had on the white coat of a cricketing official. Why was he wobbling? Was it because his trousers and underpants that resided around his ankles, were affecting his ability to balance?

Angie considered the Chairman had maybe taken the opportunity for a quick snifter at the pavilion bar, or perhaps, mixed his cheese and onion with his salt-and-vinegar crisps. Mixing flavours of crisps certainly made Angie wobble and he would always lay off savoury snacks before he was due on the trapeze.

It was a hot summer afternoon and maybe this was why the Chairman had his trousers and underpants lowered to his ankles, accentuating, or at least drawing attention to, his now upwardly pointing toes. The Chairman had to have fallen over when Angie was not looking and, he had bare feet? No cricket plimsolls? It would appear the Chairman had decided to take the opportunity for a lie down and take the air to his pedal extremities.

The Chairman was indeed indecorously attired in a white umpire’s coat, which was okay, Angie supposed, but why would his trousers and underpants be lowered? And, presumably, because he had decided upon a lie down, the chairman was no longer buzzing the buzzer to the cricket pavilion front door. This had been Angie’s first thought to explain the buzz that may have been a gurgle. So, ipso facto, it must have been a gurgling wasp, intent on attack.

The look of horror on the face of the Chairman, however, was perplexing to Angie, who had a dread of wasps himself, but he prided himself that he could stand steady in the face of an insect attack, unless he was flying through the air on a trapeze, naturally.

Was it a disported visage of embarrassment at being caught with his trousers down, so to speak? Or, had the Chairman been stung by the same wasp that had done for himself? Maybe the wasp had gotten inside the Chairman’s trousers and stung him in his nether regions, which, Angie presumed, was somewhere near Holland or, below the blood-stained white coat in the Chairman’s very own low-lying regions.

The Chairman was one, Brian Refus. His father had been a French Croissantier, hence the name Brian, after the family pile back in France, Chateau Brian. His mother had been a famed champion pie-eater for the Craneswater Tubbies, which club, interestingly, shared the pavilion with the cricket teams; there being a natural synergy between the sports. The Tubbies still provide pies for the cricket teas during a Sunday afternoon match; their Kate and Sidney pies being legend in this well-to-do Craneswater area.

Or, was the buzzing not a wasp but some other form of gurgling source and, why would the Chairman be buzzing the buzzer when he most likely had a key? Angie ruled out the buzzer.

Angie edged forward two paces. They were little paces, baby steps if Sarge was any judge and she was, because Angie had little legs. Sarge had gorgeous legs that started at her bum and glamorously stuck out below her pencil-style uniform skirt, like shapely Betty-Boop fizzy water bottles.

There were now pretty red bubbles being blown from the prone umpire’s mouth; it coloured his otherwise pale thin lips set in his fat face. The Chairman had, Angie observed, lips like those of the neck of a balloon. Could this be the source of the gurgling and not a wasp buzzing, the air bubbling past the knot in the neck of the balloon, not adequately secured? Sarge had fulsome lips and, upon those crackerjack sumptuous petals, she wore a striking crimson lipstick that struck a vivid contrast with the pale skin of her face (not a bucket, unless you can have bucket skin which would be paler, in my imagination) and the navy blue of her uniform.

Angie had a highly attuned sense of hearing. Well, you would have to have if you were a trapeze artiste. You wouldn’t want to be swinging mid-air, somersault off the trapeze and not hear your mother shouting, “Grab my fucking hands, you little shite.” Angie sensed his dread then, not for the umpire, but because he frequently missed his mother’s hands, despite her loving maternal words mid-flight. The vision haunted him and, in his nightmares, there would be no safety net, just the Circus Ringmaster, an excessively tall and swarthy Italian, Signor Siderney Emcee, calling out to the audience in his deep baritone and inordinately loud voice, “Ladies and gentlemen and little children, behold, Dominic, a veritable, shite trapeze artiste”.

At least people no longer called him Dominic. God, he had hated that name. Sarge had called him Dom when their paths first crossed as he was climbing out of the safety net. Sarge had gestured with her hand, which was on the end of her elegant arm, that she intended to help him dismount; unfortunately, he fell onto the gorgeous uniformed lady.

What was amazing was, she laughed. She didn’t get angry at his innate clumsiness and, for a brief moment, Angie sensed bliss. He was lying atop a beautiful woman in a police uniform and the bliss morphed into the stuff of his wet dreams, not the dream of falling off the trapeze, but the sexy ones and, when she smiled at him, oh heaven; their faces were close; love in the sawdust.

Angie had looked around, there was only his mum still swinging on her trapeze, so, the smile must have been for him. Later on, and after meeting his long-lost father, Jack Austin, who had renamed him, Hai Angie Sun, in Japanese, he did manage to correct her, saying, “Sarge, my name is Angie” and, she didn’t laugh. She simply smiled more radiantly. Angie, the virginal midget, shite trapeze artiste sap, was in love and, he still was.