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Spencer woke up to the sound of his phone alarm. It played an annoying melody that every morning he swore he'd change, but promptly forgot. He sat up and looked towards the end of the bed. There was the tortoise. Staring at him. It was exactly where he’d left it last night, sat in an old cardboard box he’d found at the end of Mr Singh's garden, with only a limp piece of lettuce for company.
The light seeping through his fading curtains was dulled, suggesting it was another grey day in London. Either that or a lorry had parked outside again blocking the light. He yawned, making his way to the tiny bathroom, aware of the tortoise's eyes burning a hole in the back of his head.
He blearily splashed his face with water and brushed his teeth. His hand reached down to his stomach which was starting to form a very small paunch.
I really need to start looking after myself, he thought. He had noticed that his face had become more puffy recently. He was fully aware that his face was fairly normal. No dashing good looks here, but nothing too unfortunate in the appearance stakes either. This waxy look his skin seemed to be developing would not do at all though. Recently he had been eating badly and drinking too well. Or eating well and drinking badly depending on your particular view of these things.
In truth, he wasn’t very good at the day to day life stuff. Organisation came as naturally to him as sky-diving is to a limpet. This was a disappointment to his foster parents who had been the kind of people to lay the table for dinner with a set square. They had tried from an early age to get him to conform to their strict routine. The more they pushed, the more the young Spencer rebelled. He ignored the neatly drawn timetable which hung in the kitchen which divided up the household chores. He refused to acknowledge the designated time to eat his daily allowance of fruit and instead, wantonly ate a banana whenever he felt like it.
Endless schooling on the importance of good paperwork, planning and how to keep a meticulously tidy and clean house, had had the effect of forging in Spencer's mind a longing for mess, disorder, and generally anything that didn't involve him having to scrub a surface. They'd meant well, but his natural uselessness at so many things, including (according to Lisa) his inability to form meaningful relationships, shone through. This might be why the tortoise was worrying him so much, he could well forget it only to discover its grim skeletal form in years to come hidden behind a radiator. It was, he considered a form of OCD, but in reverse. He craved chaos, wanted disorder.
They had though succeeded in one aspect of their child indoctrination program. They had taught him to be a good person. A person of strong moral fibre. This was the part that Spencer could not forgive them for. Spencer knew, as he had been taught, that the good will you showed in the world would be returned to you. It was just a shame that almost nobody else felt this way, it was a bit of a flaw in the theory really. Yet annoyingly, he still believed it. Faith is a funny thing.
If he was being honest, he was bored. The idea of becoming a private detective had thrilled him when he had first started. The thought of tracing stolen jewelry for a lady of the aristocracy who, while inviting him to her manor house in the country for afternoon tea, would reward him handsomely. Or tracking down a former bank clerk who had disappeared with thousands and had taken up a new identity. The reality was cases like Edie's, or worse, the cheating spouse, were what made up the bulk of his work. The shock of the number of people suspicious of their partner's fidelity was only outdone by the shock of the number of people who actually were being unfaithful. He would always do his job thoroughly, but nobody likes the bearer of bad news. It was all a far cry from what his imagination had provided him as a child. He briefly pictured himself sliding over the bonnet of a car before apprehending a criminal mastermind and sighed.
He was in a rut. He needed something to get his teeth into, something to get excited about other than a takeaway curry and a single malt.
He winced as he rubbed the lump on the back of his head and walked the four or five strides it took to reach the kitchen worktop. A persistent, dull beam of half light forced its way around the side of the grey curtains which covered the only window. It caught the the gold leafed edge of the business card the odd Mr Spangler had left yesterday. He reached for his laptop and tapped 'Ingress Bushy Park' into the search engine. 1,678,854 results. It didn't help though. There was no result that included 'Ingress', just many, many listings for Bushy Park. Odd he thought. He'd expected some sort of hit.
He picked up the small, thick business card again and turned it over, hoping maybe for directions on the back. Nothing. He read the brief message again, '8pm, Ingress, Bushy Park, London. Bring the tortoise'. Something clicked in the depths of Spencer's mind. The click sent alarm bells ringing through his synapses alerting every quivering fibre of his body that the impact of what he had just realised had made it vitally imperative that he have a cup of tea this instant, and that it almost certainly would need to be followed by another one.
The business card had been printed with the words 'bring the tortoise' on it. A tortoise Spencer hadn't had until around 10pm when he had arrived home to find it waiting for him, only half an hour or so before Spangler had turned up. He had known that Spencer had been let go by the council too... Ok, he had to go and find this place. He glanced at the kitchen clock which told him it was already 8:30. He would be late, but he was going. As soon as he'd had a bacon sandwich, a cup of tea and dug out some lettuce for the tortoise.
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Bushy park sulked under heavy grey clouds. Deer sheltered under trees from a breeze whose icy fingers poked in delicate places. There was a dampness to the air as a lone figure appeared around a corner of trees, his coat collar pulled up covering the lower half of his face. He was of average build and average height, he had pretty averagely brown hair and didn't have any easily identifiable features such as a peg leg or an eye patch. All in all he was a police sketch artist's worst nightmare. He would have been completely inconspicuous if he hadn't been carrying a tortoise with 'Prat' written on the side.
Spencer looked down at the business card again. After not finding any reference to an Ingress online he had simply turned up and gone to the local pub. A move which he had found in the past had often resulted in some information, but more importantly, always a pint. The barman hadn't been overly keen on the tortoise though, and had been pretty insistent that, 'The little shelled sod isn't staying in here.'
Spencer had used this to his advantage, explaining that he'd be delighted to leave as soon as he told him where Ingress, Bushy Park was. Unfortunately, 'Never heard of it, now bugger off,' hadn't been hugely helpful. It was a big park.
He was pretty sure this had been a stupid idea. Who offers people a job by turning up at their house late at night and asking them to meet in a London park with their newly acquired tortoise, which you suspected they themselves had left on your doorstep? Only a madman surely? He paused. He could hear music. He spun around trying to find a direction. It was a lone fiddle playing a long, slow, sad tune. He walked towards where he thought the sound was coming from, the wind making the sound ebb and flow as it came to him in waves. It was floating from a copse of trees, and he quickened his pace in its direction. As he got closer he could see flashes of white walls through the thick trunks. He moved inwards until he could see the edge of the tree-line which opened into a clearing and peered around a tree. About a hundred yards in he could see the base of a large house, the upper levels hidden by the treetops. From tree to tree he edged closer until he saw what was clearly the rear of the house. Large windowed doors were open wide, allowing the melancholy music its freedom.
Spencer approached the doors slowly. He had no idea why he was being so cautious, but something didn't feel right. He could feel a tight knot growing in the pit of his stomach. The closer he got the more ill at ease he felt. The air was thick, clinging to his skin and his lungs, his heart beat faster, the knot in his stomach grew in intensity. He realised he was struggling to walk forward, the air was like drying cement, getting harder and harder as he moved. He was starting to breathe heavily, forcing himself forward against the pressure as he reached the doors. He was leaning forward as though walking into a gale, but the air was calm. Calm and solid. A few metres from the door and he was having to dig his toes into the soft earth to push forward. As he strained in slow motion, he noticed the tortoise staring up from under his arm, seemingly oblivious to the forces around them. It blinked slowly. Spencer's mind was clouded, scrambled. He couldn't think about what was happening, when he tried it slipped away like mist. All he knew, with every fibre of his body, was that he had to keep going. This may have had something to do with his bladder somehow reacting to the pressure in an alarming way which suggested that getting inside to a toilet would be a rather good idea. Something strange was happening to his body, he could feel it... stretching some how. Like he was being pulled apart by tiny hands. It wasn’t painful... yet, there was the sense that it was going to be. It felt like it was going to hurt a lot.
He heard a voice, muffled and distorted, cry out in front of him.
“Wait!”
Not being one for following orders, he pushed forward with one last effort and fell forward into blackness.