The detective's chair
threadbare, stained
with old Guinness, splashes of double malt.
Rebus sits into the
early hours pooled in moonlight, neon,
dappled with
despair, ensconced in smelly, smoky fug.
He looks unseeing
over night-time Edinburgh, shoos ghosts
back into the past,
ignores conflicts with the brass, other cops,
even manages to
bypass self-recrimination, regret, that
quagmire of his
multiple failings. He comes to the centre
of concern, the
current case. He may not be quite sober but
the blur is better.
You can't bludgeon hunches out of hiding,
have to be willing
to hang out in their vicinity, hope they
show their heads. He
sinks another inch or two of whisky,
the better to see
into the shadows, last the night through.
He nods off, as
usual, the LP crackling as it spins, still
seeking the glimmer
of clues nestled between hard facts.
Erlundur comes home
after a brittle day. Nothing has broken
open in the case of
the murdered boy, no motive, weapon
not even a maybe
suspect to pin their hopes upon. His chair
sits by the window,
blond wood waiting to welcome him.
He leaves the light
off, sinks into low-slung, leather-
upholstered ease,
letting his mind loose from its leash. He
offers his tired
thoughts, his despair to the open sky. They
dissolve in its
infinite space. His ghosts visit him – unsettling
spectres from the
past. He sighs, allows them their due. Gone
midnight, Reykjavik.
He always means to get up, go to bed,
but dawn often finds
him curled into the contours of the chair,
cold, cramped. He
goes over the facts one more time, teases
them apart to see
what can be glimpsed through the cracks.
Wallander jerks
awake, heart jumping. He's on the sofa again
grabbing a few
hours, still surrounded by dirty laundry. Not time
enough this case for
a leisurely chair by the window, letting
patterns emerge,
even Puccini is relegated to a back seat.
This time its a
serial killer. He snatches thinking-space
between developments
on a bleached beach at Malmö Harbour,
Copenhagen smudged
in a haze across the Sound. Or shut-eyed,
slumped on vinyl in
his Volvo at the Ystad crime scene. Even
flat on his back in
a locked conference room, desperate for
a few motionless
moments to let his thoughts roam unfettered.
A niggle, just out
of reach, an uneasy ache he knows holds
vital clues.
Something someone said or didn't say; elusive
since the first
murder. If only he could sit and listen long
enough for it to
unfurl, it could crack the case wide open.
This poem really
sparked with me, ever since Anne tabled an early draft at our
workshop. It's not just because, I think, I hope, that I am a huge fan of detective
fiction, although I am, but also because I was so energised by the way Anne infers
that the writing of a poem, usually with a bum in a chair, has intimate parallels with
the parading of clues through a nerveless mind. So the premise of the poem
caught my attention, and then there's the way Anne handles it so deftly. It's a
lovely triptych of technical and artistic delights.
workshop. It's not just because, I think, I hope, that I am a huge fan of detective
fiction, although I am, but also because I was so energised by the way Anne infers
that the writing of a poem, usually with a bum in a chair, has intimate parallels with
the parading of clues through a nerveless mind. So the premise of the poem
caught my attention, and then there's the way Anne handles it so deftly. It's a
lovely triptych of technical and artistic delights.
I really enjoyed this, both in itself as a poem and as a tribute to three great characters of police procedural fiction.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I have just received my copy of "This City" and am looking forward to spending time with it once I am out of current copyedit mode.