Colin Bateman was born in Northern Ireland in 1962. He was a journalist before becoming a full-time writer of novels and television and movie screenplays. His first novel Divorcing Jack won the Betty Trask Prize and was filmed based on his own screenplay. He has also written screenplays for the feature films Crossmaheart and Wild About Harry. More recently Colin has been working on the small screen with the TV Drama Murphy's Law, starring James Nesbitt, and has just released a sequel to the novel of the same name, entitled Murphy's Revenge.

Colin read this story during his 2004 visit to No Alibis. Some of the characters and settings may seem strange familiar.

There aren't many private eyes in Belfast, and now, apparently, there's one less. I know this because his shop was right next to mine. His name was Malcolm Carlyle and he seemed a decent sort; he would call in for a chat and a browse now and again when business was slow. His business, that is. His business was called Private Eye, big yellow letters on a black background. Then one day he didn't open up, and I never saw him again, and that was the start of my problems because he was still listed in the Yellow Pages, but when people couldn't get a response on the phone well, they thought, he must be good, he's so busy, he's changed his number, gone ex-directory, so they'd come down to plead their case, find the door locked, stand back and take a look at the place and see my shop next door and think there must be some kind of a connection because you don't have a shop called Private Eye and a shop called No Alibis sitting side by side for no reason at all. So they'd come in and furtively browse through the crime books, all the time eying me up behind the counter, trying to work out if I could possibly be the private eye they were looking for and if there was a connecting door between the shops, and whether I did this bookselling thing as a kind of respectable cover for my night time manoeuvres on the cold, dark streets of Belfast. They'd gotten it wrong of course. Book selling is more cut throat than you can possibly imagine.

The first fella who actually approached me was called Robert Geary; he was a civil servant in the Department of Education in Bangor, he was married, he had three children aged from nine to twelve and he supported Manchester United. He told me all this while making a meal out of paying for an Agatha Christie novel, so I knew something was up. No one had bought a Christie in years.

He said, 'My wife wears leather trousers.'

This, I thought, was starting to enter the realm of too much information.

'She's forty-two,' he said, and I raised a concerned eyebrow . 'I know, I keep telling her she's too old for them, but she doesn't listen. The problem is she asked me to get them cleaned at our usual place, it's the only dry cleaners she trusts, except I was late for work and so I took them to this other place, do you know it - it's called Pressed for Time on the Castlereagh Road? - but they lost them and they were very nice about it and paid me what they cost, except my wife threw a fit anyway and called me all the names of the day and then a couple of weeks ago I was out shopping and I saw the exact same trousers walking down Royal Avenue, except no sooner had I seen them than I lost them in the crowds , so I went back to the dry cleaners and said I'd seen them walking down Royal Avenue but they said there was nothing they could do, so I didn't want to phone the police because they'd tell me to take a run and jump and so I phoned Malcolm Carlyle, Private Eye, and he said he'd see what he could do, but then when I didn't hear back from him and he didn't answer his phone, I thought I'd come down and see him. Except he's not there.'

'No he's not,' I said.

'And now I have to get them back, because as sure as hell the wife's going to be out shopping one day and she'll see them and then there'll be blood on the streets, and some of its going to be hers, and some of its going to be the other woman's, and some of it's going to be mine and I can do without that. I'm five years from retirement. We retire early in the Civil Service. We're going to buy a place in Cyprus.'

'Why don't you just get her some new ones?' I asked.

'Because these were a designer pair, I bought them in America, in Texas, near the Alamo, it's my favourite film, there's not another pair like them in Ireland, and possibly continental Europe. '

'I see,' I said, and charged him £4.50 for the Christie.

*

He left me his number in case the private eye turned up again, and I said it seemed unlikely, but he said keep it anyway, and if there's anything you can do I'd very much appreciate it, and then he hurried out because there was another customer who'd come in and now wanted served, so I didn't get the chance to ask what he meant by if there's anything you can do. The next customer was just looking for directions. He wanted to know where Queens University was. I said I wasn't sure and sold him a street map. It was only around the corner, but the profit was the difference between burger and steak.

Over the next couple of days I was up to my neck in stock taking and didn't give the leather trousers another thought, but then I finally got back behind the till and found the note I'd made of his number and seeing as how I'd an average of forty-three minutes to kill between customers I started thinking about the possibilities, and that's how I came to phone Pressed for Time to enquire about the mysterious disappearance and even more mysterious re-appearance of Mrs Geary's leather trousers.

'And you are, who?' the man at the other end said with enough suspicion for me to say the first name that came to mind, other than my own, for I had a business and its reputation to protect, 'Lawrence Block.'

'Like the crime writer,' said the man, unexpectedly.

'Like the crime writer,' I said. 'Except I'm definitely not in the book business.'

'What business would you be in then? You know, I can't go giving out confidential information to just anyone who phones up asking.'

I said, 'I'm representing Mr Geary and Mrs Geary in the matter of their leather trousers, and by the by, what kind of confidential information would a dry cleaners have to be worried about giving out anyway?'

'Oh you'd be surprised,' he said. 'We do police uniforms and prison officers uniforms and….. ' And then he caught himself on and said, 'But that's confidential. I'll, ah, get the manager.'

The manager came on and said gruffly, 'I've had it up to my back teeth with these leather trousers. Even though we don't accept responsibility for lost or damaged items we paid for them. I don't see what his problem is.'

'Well they had sentimental value,' I said.

'Sentimental leather trousers?' said the manager, then he sighed and his tone lightened a little and he said, 'It takes all sorts. Mr Block, is it?'

'Call me Larry.'

'What are you, a solicitor?'

I cleared my throat in a positive manner and said, 'If you don't accept any responsibility for lost or damaged items, why did you pay Mr Geary for the missing trousers.'

'Well the fact of the matter is we didn't pay Mr Geary, at least, not directly. We send our leather items out for specialist cleaning. They said they were damaged in the cleaning process, and they instructed us to pay Mr Geary and promised to reimburse us. Although I'm still waiting.'

'Well if they said they were damaged, how come those very same leather trousers were last seen hurrying down Royal Avenue at a great rate of knots?'

'Well I don't know. You'd have to take it up with them.'

So he gave me their number and said they were on the Newtownards Road and I thanked him for his time and I was about to phone them when the shop door opened and a tourist came in and asked if I could recommend the new John Grisham and I said, yes, if you're a moron.

*

Well it turns out John Grisham was on a signing tour of the UK, and not wanting to cause pandemonium wherever he went he was just calling at bookshops unannounced, which struck me as an inefficient way to do things, but each onto their own. Still I managed to pass it off as a joke because his face is right there on the back of his books, so I get to look at him at least six times a day, and of course I recognised you straight off I said, although in truth, shorn of good lighting and make-up he looked a lot heavier and his hair was longer and unkempt and his skin was blotchy and he seemed to have some kind of a rash on his neck. It's lucky that I myself was born with an honest kind of a face, as he seemed to accept that my off the cuff remark was a typical example of our much heralded troubles humour, etc. etc..

I made him a cup of coffee while he signed copies of his books, and seeing as how he was an American and not wishing to seem overawed by his wealth and celebrity, I related to him the story of Mrs Geary's leather trousers, putting extra emphasis on the fact that they'd originated in Texas, which is somewhere in the general region of where I believe he hails from originally, but he didn't seem very interested and kept trying to steer the conversation back to exactly how many copies of his next novel I planned to order, which wasn't a subject I was keen to explore. When he finished signing his books, he moved on to signing copies of books by other authors, which I thought was a little strange, but there didn't seem any harm in it, in fact, it was quite novel and I thought it might help me to move a lot of dead stock. There probably wouldn't be a huge profit in it, but it could mean the difference between eight slices of cooked ham in a re-sealable packet and a fresh gammon steak. But after he had gone and I was beginning to put the signed books out on display I realized that he had signed most of his books 'Johnny Grisham' and some of them 'David Grisham' and several 'The Lord God of All Hosts' and one 'How much does your piano weigh?', and I began to reflect on the capacity of the Irish to fall for anyone with an American accent, be they pauper, paranoid or president, and whatever gibberish they might care to spout.

I was not, therefore, in the best of moods when I finally came to phone Stick to Me, the leather goods cleaners, shortly before closing time. I made a point of not identifying myself this time, saying merely that I was phoning on behalf of a client, a Mr Geary, but before I could get on to the substance of my complaint the man at the other end said, 'Is that Mr Block?'

I cleared my throat in a positive manner and demanded to know what had happened to the leather trousers.

' They got torn up by the machinery. They were damaged beyond repair. '

'And yet they were spotted galloping down Royal Avenue.'

'We heard that. We can only presume that somebody rescued them from the skip behind our shop and stitched them back together.'

I immediately pounced on that. 'I thought they were damaged beyond repair.'

'Beyond the standard of repair we pride ourselves on. How close was your witness to them? They probably looked like a dog's dinner. Mr Block, Larry, the trousers are gone, we paid up, we paid up above and beyond, I think you should drop this - while you still can.'

It sat in the air for several long moments.

Then I cut the line. I put the receiver down and stood there, quite shocked by this unexpected turn of events. While you still can. I was being warned off. Threatened, even. It wasn't even a veiled threat. It was explicit, if understated, like a grenade in a cemetery..

The phone rang and I thanked God for the distraction. I said, 'Hello, No Alibis.'

And the same voice said, 'Is that Larry?'

My voice rose a couple of octaves as I gave him an innocent, 'Larry?'

And he said, 'Larry Block. I was speaking to him a minute ago and I got cut off and I hit caller ID and then I called the number and you answered the phone.'

'Well, I'm sorry, there's no Larry here.'

'What's the name of that place again?'

'What place?'

'You answered the phone and said hello no something.'

'Ah. No. You misheard. I said hello, Noah. Noah Alibees. That's my name. It's French Canadian originally. I design hats. Are you calling about a hat?'

It seemed to do the trick. He quickly apologised and rang off. When I put the phone down I found that my hands were damp, my shirt was sticking to my skin and my heart was beating ninety to the dozen.

*

Two days a week I employee a student called Jeff to mind the shop while I sit in the back office trying to make my books balance. He's young and keen and writes poetry and belongs to Amnesty International, but he'll grow out of all of these things. My office is close enough to the till so that I can hear what's going on in the store, in particular if Jeff is misusing the phone to call either his girlfriend or some Government agency to demand that a political prisoner be repatriated to Sierra Leone. In light of the previous day's threat I had considered not allowing Jeff to answer the phone at all, but a cursory examination of the books told me I wasn't in any position to turn away potential business, so by way of compromise I instructed Jeff to answer any incoming calls with a French accent, which he managed passably well, and to be as vague as possible until he was able to ascertain the nature of the enquiry. Vagueness for Jeff, truth be told, wasn't going to be a huge stretch.

I made him repeat Noah Alibees over and over until he got it just right. Then I said that if anyone called and asked for Larry he was to reply, 'There is no Larry here, would you like to buy a hat.' Towards noon I was just beginning to think that I might have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. There had been four phone calls, all of them either from customers or publishers reps. But then the fifth call came in and my carefully constructed cover story quickly began to unravel. I heard Jeff say, 'Noah Alibees, would you like to buy a hat, ' and then, 'Yes, hats, all different types.' And then. 'No there's nobody called Larry Block here.' I moved from my desk in the back to the body of the shop. ' Nope, no Lawrence Block either.' Then with a piece of inspired improvisation Jeff added. 'You'd have to go to a mystery book shop to find Lawrence Block.' Jeff saw me; he smiled and gave me the thumbs up. Then he said, 'No trouble at all,' and hung up. When I approached the till he said, 'You look a little pale, what's the matter?'

I put my hands on the counter to steady myself, took a deep breath and said, 'I'm being intimidated by the owner of a shop which specializes in the cleaning and repair of leather goods.'

Jeff gave this due consideration. Then he said, 'Somebody's scrawled all over the John Grisham books.'

*

By the next day, and still being alive, and the shop not having been burned to the ground, I decided that I'd misinterpreted what the leather care man had to say, that his threat had been more about consulting his lawyers than tanning my hide. However, I didn't wish to push my luck by calling him again to confirm this or to ask further questions about Mrs Geary's trousers, so instead I turned to the internet. I keep a database of loyal customers and send them an e-newsletter once a month. It's all about building a relationship. I try to sell them the latest releases and they burden me with their personal problems. It's tiresome but necessary. On this occasion, however, I wasn't selling anything, I merely asked those of my lovely customers living in the greater Belfast area to keep an eye out for a pair of leather trousers, and described their design in considerable detail. I included the words 'substantial reward' without specifying that it was a £10 book token plus a signed copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, albeit signed by Jehovah's Vengeance Grisham.

I didn't hear anything for another three days, but then, slowly, reports began to come in, and then what had been a trickle became a fast flowing stream. The trousers were spotted again in Royal Avenue, at a cinema on the Belfast Road, at a concert in the Waterfront Hall featuring three black men who had once known someone who was in The Drifters, and twice again in Royal Avenue. It seemed like Royal Avenue was the place to be. Each of my informants who saw her there had observed the trousers between 12.30 and 1.30 pm, and reported their occupant as, and I quote, 'a big girl' wearing too much make-up and a short white beauticians' smock over the trousers. Putting two and two together, I decided to visit Boots the Chemist. As it happened I had a prescription that needed filled, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone. While standing in the pharmacy queue I kept a close eye on the make-up counters, and before very long I was rewarded with my first sight of Mrs Geary's leather trousers, which sent a shiver of anticipation, if not excitement, down my spine. I watched them for several minutes, moving up and down on the customer side of the counter as the large woman who inhabited them applied make-up to a pale woman in a pink woollen trouser suit; she was saying, 'Oh yes, that shade really suits you, and I'd tell you if it made you look like an old slut.'

The pharmacist then asked if I'd taken this particular type of anti-depressant before, and I said yes, twice daily for the past fifteen years. He asked if it worked for me and I said it was early days yet. I paid for the prescription, and it now being 12.30 I was pleased to see the woman in Mrs Geary's leather trousers finish with her client and hand over her cash desk key to a colleague. She then pulled on a short coat over her beautician's jacket and left the shop.

I hurried up to the beauty counter and said, 'Damn, I missed her….' The girl behind the counter looked unconcerned, but asked if she could help. 'Your colleague – in the leather trousers, she was checking out the availability of a certain perfume for me….but now I've missed her.'

'She'll be back at two.'

'Damn I have to get back to work - but I could phone to see how she got on – who should I ask for?'

'Ask for Natasha.'

'Natasha…..?'

'Yes, Natasha.'

'Her surname…..?'

'Just ask for Natasha. Natasha on the make-up counter.'

'But in case there's any confusion, her full name is….?'

'There's nobody else called Natasha.'

Mrs Geary's leather trousers were coming back at two, so there was no immediate panic.

'To tell you the truth,' I said to Laura, which is what it said on Laura's badge, 'she's not really helping me at all. I've been in three times and she keeps fobbing me off with excuses. So I'm really here to make a complaint. Can I speak to your supervisor?'

Laura looked surprised, but she nodded and went to the phone. A couple of minutes later a woman in a smart business suit approached me and said, 'I understand you wish to complain about Miss Irvine. '

*

Natasha Irvine returned from lunch forty minutes later. I was in position just to the left of the Boots front doors. She was a moon faced girl with big eyes. There were flakes of sausage roll pasty in the corners of her mouth and she gave a little jump when I said, 'Hello Natasha.'

She stopped and began to smile but then she realised she didn't know me, and she might have blushed, but it was difficult to tell with all the make up, which looked like the Max Factor equivalent of stone cladding.

'It is, Natasha Irvine, isn't it?' Her mouth dropped open a little. 'I wanted to talk to you about your leather trousers.'

I gave her my hard look, which is like my normal look, but harder. At this point, if she'd had any sense, she should have asked for ID, and I could have shown her my Xtravision card and my Kidney Donor Card and then rattled my prescription at her and dribbled off into the distance ranting about this or that, but as it happened my hard look proved more than adequate.

'Oh Christ,' she said, 'they're stolen, aren't they?'

I raised an eyebrow.

'Jesus wept,' she said, 'I took one look at them and I knew he couldn't afford them. My family owns this leather repair place on the Newtownards Road, so I know what costs what. But he swore to God he saved up. Christ.' She blew some air out of her cheeks and said, 'To tell you the God's honest truth, I don't even like them, I've piled the beef on since I had the twins, and they're cuttin' the hole off me. I only wear them to keep him happy. What am I going to do now?'

I gave her another long look. A thick sweat had broken out on her brow, and I decided to move quickly in case it set off an avalanche of make-up. 'Here's what we're going to do,' I said, and this time I did take out my wallet. 'I can't be bothered with pursuing this to court, the paperwork's a bloody nightmare. As it happens the owner's offered a reward. You tell your man they got stolen from your locker at work, he buys you another present, plus you're two hundred pounds better off.' I took out the money and held it out to her. 'Owner gets the trousers back, I don't have to do any pen pushing, you're in the money. How does that sound?'

'Too good to be true,' she said.

'It's a once in a life time offer,' I said.

She thought about that for just a few moments, then nodded quickly. 'But could you make it two-fifty?' she asked.

I shook my head. 'It's not your call, darlin',' I said, then held firm at two hundred and forty five.

*

When I got back to the shop I told Jeff to take the hats out of the window, then gave him the rest of the day off. I also gave him a nice bonus. 'What's this for?' he asked. 'Danger money,' I replied. I was feeling generous.

When he'd left I sat by the till, rested my feet on the counter, unwrapped a celebratory Twix and then called Mr Geary between the destruction of one stick and the devouring of the second. 'Guess who?' I virtually sang.

He made five unsuccessful guesses, so I told him, and he still seemed a little confused, so I reminded him, and then he said, 'Ah, right.' I didn't plunge straight in with the good news, I wanted him to know how much work I'd put in. So I described how I'd established the crime line from the moment he'd left his wife's leather trousers into Pressed for Time: how they'd sub-contracted them to the shop on the Newtownards Road, how the owner must have commented on their unique qualities to Miss Irvine's boyfriend who'd decided that they'd make a perfect gift. He'd then persuaded the owner to fabricate the story about them being damaged and then the owner had panicked when I'd applied just the right amount of pressure. Despite being in mortal fear for my life, I'd nevertheless managed to track down the trousers and make them secure. 'I have them back, Mr Geary,' I said, raising and admiring the chocolate covered biscuit, 'I have your wife's leather trousers.'

He seemed rather under whelmed. 'Oh – well, that's…..ah, that's nice.'

'It cost me five hundred pounds, but I suppose it's a pretty cheap way to save a marriage.' He cleared his throat. I said, 'So do you want to come and pick them up?'

'Well, no,' he said.

'No?'

'Well the fact is, it turns out she never liked the trousers in the first place.'

'But……….'

'She threw a wobbler out of my stupidity for losing them, not because of the trousers. I misunderstood.'

'But……they're beautiful trousers…..'

'I know that, but apparently they cut the hole off her.'

'But I've spent……'

'Well that's your problem, I'm afraid.'

'But ….but what am I supposed to do with…….'

'Well perhaps you could give them to your own wife.'

The Twix was now melting in my hand.

'Yeah, I wish,' I sighed.

*

So I was two hundred and forty five pounds out of pocket on the trousers, not to mention the sleepless night, the rocketing of my blood pressure or the sixty five quid I'd spent on cheap hats from Dunnes. One day I'd meet the man who'd come up with the phrase, if you want to get ahead, get a hat, and I'd have a strong word or two. But in the meantime I'd a business to run. Besides, I have found that when all else fails, you can always fall back on fine writing to see you through a dark patch. The very next day an aspiring book collector came in enquiring about signed first editions, and I showed him one of the Grishams. He turned it over in his hand like he knew what he was doing and said, 'How much?'

'If you have to ask…..' I said with as much disinterest as I could muster.

'No, really,' he said.

I made a quick calculation. Two forty five, plus sixty five for the hats, two hundred for my time and another fifty for being an unscrupulous cad. Five hundred and sixty, I said, and I could tell by the way he blanched that it was way over what he had in mind. But I have learned over all my years in business, that if you price something high enough, some sucker will eventually come along and fall for it. And so he pulled out his credit card and bought the Grisham and I was finally back in profit and also, I suppose, a wiser, more cautious man to boot.

I put the book in a nice bag for him and said if he was interested I could maybe lay my hands on another one or two. He smiled nervously and quickly changed the subject.

'I really like your trousers,' he said.

I glanced lovingly down at them and nodded. 'Thanks,' I said, 'they are nice, but they really do cut the hole off you.'

Copyright © Colin Bateman