The Vacant Casualty by Patty O'Furniture

from
somebody
?’
    ‘
No.
I mean not even from me. You’re a proper detective, you’re headstrong. You don’t give a fuck what no motherfucker thinks.’
    ‘Right,’ said Bradley, nodding with concentration as though someone had just explained a specifically difficult method of parking. Behind them both, Walerian Exosius had taken out
his camera and was photographing his ex-breakfast, while still weeping.
    ‘You don’t
care
,’ said Sam.
    ‘Right,’ nodded Bradley.
    ‘If I argued with you right now you’d have a fit and handcuff me to the table, even though we’re friends. That’s how tough you are,’ said Sam.
    ‘Right,’ said Bradley, closing a metal cuff over Sam’s wrist and linking it into the arm of his chair before he could protest. ‘I’m going to the loo.’
    Sam swallowed several violent compound expletives as he watched his companion rise and go inside.
    ‘I can’t even reach my iPhone with my spare hand,’ he muttered. ‘This would make a great tweet.’ He leant forward to see if he could pluck it from his top pocket
with his teeth just as the waitress arrived again.
    Raising his startled face to see hers as she took the plates, Sam realized that for once in his life he had the chance to give the impression of being a dangerous young man (locked as he was to
the furniture). Trying to make this impression while having a brain that felt like it was filled with cotton wool and shattered glass, he succeeded only in simpering pleasantly while she picked up
the plates, refusing to meet his eye or acknowledge his existence but, as she turned away, giving the artist a cheery little wave.
    ‘See you tomorrow, love!’ she said.
    ‘Cheerio,’ said Walerian, wandering off, mopping his tears with his neckerchief.
    ‘Where have you been?’ Sam whispered viciously as Bradley sat back down. ‘I’ve been humiliated in front of that deliriously beautiful waitress, you
pig
! Did you
see her hair? It
cascades
!’
    The detective unlocked the handcuffs with slow clumsiness.
    ‘Okay,’ said Sam, rubbing his wrist, ‘I have to admit that was an excellent first step. You have to take that attitude into literally every walk of life. You don’t take
no for an answer from nobody. But let’s make me the exception . . .’
    With one of his freed hands he took a pepper cruet and stuffed it up Bradley’s nose.
    ‘What-AHHH-ah-ah-AAAH-AHCHOO! I’m sorry about that, Sam – ahCHOO! I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to try it out on anyone else.’
    ‘If you want to get more advice along those lines, I’m the one you’re protecting, you understand? I’m Al Capone. Or . . . Well, the protected one, whoever that would be.
Come on, let’s walk. Wash that!’
    His last words were addressed to the waitress, who had reappeared from within the cafe and to whom he handed the pepper cruet wrapped in a tissue.
    ‘We’ll be
back
!’ he added, pointing at her in what he realized was a not very charming and possibly somewhat threatening way. ‘Okay, style it out,’ he said
to himself, turning back round and brushing down his jacket and tie.
    They were only halfway up the street towards the small car park where Bradley’s police carpool vehicle was parked, but the detective now put a hand on his arm.
    ‘I can’t drive it,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, come on, Cinderella,’ said Sam, before he felt the tremor in Bradley’s arm. Then he saw the man was standing stock still. He recognized what was going on, and he knew what
to do.
    First, he sat the detective on a low, thick stone wall from which he would find it nearly impossible to fall. He spoke to him as loudly and clearly as to a child trapped in a lift.
    ‘THIS IS THE FIRST MAJOR SYMPTOM OF YOUR HANGOVER KICKING IN,’ he said. ‘THEY ARE REALLY RATHER UNPLE— Wait a minute, I can’t keep shouting like this, I’ll
give myself an aneurism.’ He sat down next to the detective instead and held his hand.
    ‘You see, you have much too much