Your Neighbour by Jeremy Patton

 Your Neighbour 

By Jeremy Patton

In the world of commerce, negotiations take place between two parties; the seller and the buyer, the service provider and the customer, the dealer and the user. Harry’s business model involved Harry, the hitter, and a low level criminal often referred to as the debtor, the scum, or, on one occasion 2 years ago, as the body. 

Harry was a fat man with a very bad temper. I’m sorry, I know you shouldn’t call people fat, but he was, he knew it, and it made him angry if he thought people were judging him. In fact, nobody ever commented on it due to his temper and the pickaxe handle he kept in the boot of his BMW. 

On that day two years ago, he would have just threatened the drug dealer until he paid up, but the little idiot had called him an ugly FAT bastard and something snapped in Harry - then many things broke in the drug dealer. When the red mist had lifted,  Harry looked down at his work and knew that retirement day had come. 

In the two years since that negotiation had led to his early retirement, he had kept his head down and lived a quiet life with his childhood sweetheart, Marcie. 

He had been laying plans for his retirement for years. They bought a villa, where they holidayed twice a year as Doug and Marcie, and slotted into the Arboleas social whirl. 

Even before the body was found he was announcing to his friends in the bar that he was finally ‘living the dream’ for good. 

He had not only chosen Spain for the sun, he had decided that it would give him the Mediterranean diet and, after decades of embarrassment, he would throw off the extra stones he had carried all his life. 

He and Maureen threw themselves into the experiment, he even learnt enough Spanish to order his favourite healthy snack, “Dos cervezas y muchas patatas fritas, por favor!” It was not going well.

And now, unexpectedly, he was sitting, handcuffed, in a police interview room in Mojacar and a man in a green uniform was going on at him in Spanish. 

Another officer came in with a piece of paper. He studied it, and  Doug, closely. 

Doug watched him with a superior sneer, after all, it was just a bar fight, he would get away with a caution or, at worst, a fine. 

Then the guardia looked at him and said slowly, “Allo, Señor, Arry Davis. I think you are wanted for murder, no?”

Doug, and Harry, knew the game was up. 

At lunch Doug had been drinking, and worrying about his increasing weight when the waiter called his wife a pig. Actually he had said “Pork belly” as he gave her a plate. 

Doug’s self-restraint was giving way to Harry’s anger. He knew he should say nothing, but if he kept quiet, the waiter might think he was a…

“Chicken, sir” said the waiter.

For the next twenty minutes, Doug and Harry struggled for supremacy, but gradually Doug’s patience began to win. 

All would have been well if the waiter had not looked down at Doug and said, “Pudding!”

Doug looked down at his plate, then Harry looked up at the waiter and hit him on the head with a bottle…