Simeon

Simeon

"What colour is his tie?"

The policeman posed the enquiry to the group of raw 

trainees assembled before him. This was an afternoon 

to test their powers of observation, and he was bored 

out of his tree.

Simeon, now in the winding down years of his life long 

service with the Met, felt his lunchtime soda pop returning 

up his windpipe to say hello. He stifled his feelings of 

nausea by trying to concentrate on other, more amorous 

thoughts.  He could feel his own blush deepening, so he 

raised the next question, asking the group to focus on the 

facts of a recent murder, and to give their scenarios of 

motivation and investigation in a written essay for tomorrow 

morning's  session.

Simeon wound things up and was heading out for home, but before 

he could blink, a weedy young man, dressed in mufti cornered him 

in the car park. A row of deciduous trees ran like a tramline 

along the side of the tarmac road.  Barbed wire fences enclosed 

the huge site.Simeon's car, sitting like a big expectant cheetah, 

shining blue, clean and empty,  looked as forlorn as he felt.
He just wanted to jump in and get away from work, from the tedium 

of his day. The trees, oppressive and overpowering in their weight, 

rustled and waved their branches, shedding horrid little bits of 

the bonnet of his car.

"What do you want young man?" Simeon asked.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule