The Defective Detective : Murder on the Links by Adam Maxwell Page A

themselves inside out.
      Of course for this round you, like me, would order yourself a coke, just in case and then you would watch as most of them drink the foul liquid down and down.  But not Mitch, he’s still sipping at his lager-shandy and he comes over to talk to me puts his hand on my shoulder and

W aking up in the bunker of the first hole of a golf course with an ear full of sand pretty much drove home to me that golf was never really going to be my game.  A crudely scrawled note was shoved in my pocket.  I knew what it would say before I even read it.
     
Clint – we couldn’t be arsed to carry you any further so when you wake up we’ll be in the bar getting shitfaced. Hope you managed to avoid getting hit. Dean.
      Narcolepsy has its drawbacks.  Dropping off to sleep without a moment’s notice can be considered problematic but other times it can help you escape the clutches of a group of thunderous morons.  I smiled as I stood up, the laxatives obviously hadn’t kicked in.  But they would.  I couldn’t decide whether to go and watch the consequences or just bugger off home.  The freedom of the choice felt really good.
      A breeze caught me and sent sand blowing from my hair and clothes, a yellow cloud billowed gracefully towards the fairway before the wind changed and hurled the tiny stony grains into my open eyes.  My hands shot up instinctively to rub them but it just made it worse.
      “Shit!” screamed a voice on the wind.  “Duck!”
      A tiny projectile thudded into my left shoulder, knocking me off balance and sending me backwards into the bunker once more. A miniature sand avalanche came down, covering the right hand side of my body and I lay still, eyes closed for a second trying to work out if the searing pain in my shoulder meant that it was broken and whether I was still sand-blind.
      “I think I’ve killed him,” the voice was shaking as it came closer.  It was probably best to play along.
      “Bloody hell, Smith,” said another.  “With a slice like yours I’m amazed you haven’t hospitalised more.”
       I breathed deeply and instantly regretted it as sand whirled up my nostrils causing me to cough, gasping for breath and struggling to stand.  My assailant screamed from a few metres away as I snapped to my feet and sent clouds of bunker sand into the air.
      I worked the last of the sand from my eyes and stared coldly at him.
      “Ah- are you alright?” he stammered.  “I mean – are you hurt?  Can I help you? Wha-what were you doing in there?” 
      “A bit. No. And sleeping,” I deadpanned.  “Is this yours?” I motioned to the golf cart that was parked on the edge of the bunker.
      He just stared, his mouth hanging open gormlessly.
      “Don’t mind me, I’m not dead.”
      The inept golfer tapped his friend on the shoulder and pointed as I commandeered the golf cart.
      “Wait! Look out!” he shouted.
      My exit was not destined to be as cool and Bond-like as I’d hoped.  The cart lurched into reverse slamming into a bag full of clubs, cannoning them down into the rough where the majority of them came to rest on top of what they had been pointing at.  It was, and this was obvious even to my untrained eye, a real dead body.  I caught a glimpse of it and then

W aking up in public with subtlety is something that’s difficult to achieve.  Even with the amount of practise I get, the place that exists where your body wakes up and your mind is still dreaming can produce some mortifying consequences. And, of course, the reverse is true when the cataplexy kicks in the mind is active, the ears are listening, the nose is working but the eyes and the rest of the body refuse resolutely to co-operate.
      And so I sat with a half-heard conversation assailing my ears and the faint smell of burnt hair and cigar smoke wafting into my nasal passages.  For around a minute.  And then it all came back, my leg twitched and the golf cart jerked