Parallel Lives Chapter 25

Alan had tried the hospital for information as well, but had treated the reluctance to reveal information with professional admiration. He had learned to avoid taking such responses personally, indeed he often had to do the same to protect others’ confidentiality. The nurse had been polite but firm, both attributes necessary to ward persistent enquirers off, and he had learned to use them, too, in his line of work.

Deciding against breakfast he left his flat, wrapped in a camel coat stained with take away food and stale beer, witness to many nights of pub crawling and frequent visitations upon fast food establishments afterwards. He would need to spend the morning in the office completing his reports on the factory explosion, among others.

The events surrounding John Staples had provided a welcome diversion, in fact an absorbing change to a fairly humdrum routine. Although accidents as dramatic as the one at the factory were a rarity, the procedure he followed was routine and it was all a matter of scale after that. Moreover it all ended up in paperwork, and although Alan was very good at sifting through detail, he was notoriously reluctant to produce the endless documentation that followed all incidents large and small. False alarms were particularly irritating to him, providing a double whammy of wasting his time, usually in inclement weather long after the pubs had opened, and resulting in the same paper chase that a major disaster warranted.

At least Staples’ problem had proven interesting, if not bizarre. He had absolutely no intentions of mentioning Staples’ revelations, his notebook or his incarceration in the local hospital beyond the statistical reference to the non emergency treatment carried out. Staples would be lumped, injury-wise, with the two ladies from the canteen treated for shock and their colleague who suffered from minor scalds occasioned when she spilled tea over her hand accidentally when the explosion had taken place. He would be named in the technical report, though, as the last maintenance fitter to work on the fixture prior to the accident. However, Alan was convinced in his own mind that Staples had simply carried out all he had been required to do; the explosion was a result of a poor design coupled with a tragic string of events.

Sat at his desk, waiting for the computer to complete its start up checks, Alan allowed his mind to drift back to Saturday night. He knew he irritated Karen; he had that effect on many women. But he knew she would be intrigued by him even if his tendency to linger below the neckline was blatantly obvious, experience told him that. And even if he was wrong, which he believed he rarely was, he’d enjoyed the view and the whisky. Eventually the computer was ready, the word processor loaded and a blank, white screen beckoned. Alan sighed heavily and started to type.

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Copyright Ray Sullivan 2011

The characters, places and events described in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, places or events, past or present, is coincidence.  All rights reserved

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