Whodunit?

—Poetry by Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, UK
—Illustrations Courtesy of Public Domain


 

 

MISSING


This is where you’ll find yourself

for weeks and months afterwards,

maybe for years: rewinding

your memories of that day,

analysing playback frame

by frame, sifting normalcy

like a prospector panning

 

for the sun-struck glint of

that one clue everyone missed,

the anomaly hidden

in the sleepy suburban

rhythms of a normal day.

This is the wall-length cork board

tacked with post-its, press clippings

 

and print-outs from Google maps

linked by fraying lengths of string

that has made of your spare room

an altar to obsession.

These are the many volumes 

of notebooks filled with theories:

a chance remark days before

they disappeared, the torn page
from a journal, a strange blip
in their behaviour, a call
in the middle of the night
shrugged off as a wrong number,
a car parked across the street
that suddenly pulls away.

 

 

LAKE


Out at the deepest point, the police
vessel rides the swell. A hard breeze
shoulders the surface: whitecaps
scud. A press photographer snaps
a tableau humming with stasis.
It’s fifty-fifty whether the front pages
go with the body in the lake (assuming
one’s found) or some sleb caught doing
the nasty with someone else’s wife.
On the boat, a frogman’s about to dive.
Mouthpiece in place, air cylinder
checked, he nods; thumbs up sign.
Tumbles backwards over the side
with easy grace. He’s done this before.
Birds lift from trees on the opposite shore.

 

 

DOOR TO DOOR

Nothing back from forensics.
CCTV’s come up short.
No-one’s emerged as a witness.
It’s raining. Door to door
is how the ranking officer wants
to play it; a joyless trudge
round the terraced houses
you’ve door-knocked twice before.
Do it again. Keep at it. Someone must
have seen something, heard
something, know something they’re
not telling. They must. It’s absurd
to think otherwise. You just need
to ask the right question. Work
the streets. Knock on every door.

 

 

CORDON

Broad daylight. The same shuffled card pack
of shop fronts you’ll find anywhere in England:
Wilco’s, William Hill, Co-op, Poundland,
a vape outlet that used to be a Tie Rack,
a newsagents, a chippy. And out of place
along this arcade, a white tent preserving
the integrity of a scene forensics are combing
with microscopic precision for traces
of what happened here, why, and who it was
ran, disappearing into the crowd, after
the stabbing. Random? Premeditated?
A short-fuse reaction? A long-gestating
feud? Black and yellow tape blatters
in the wind. Uniformed PCs enforce
the cordon. Crowds form. Traffic’s diverted.


______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy—and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...

―David Videcette, The Theseus Paradox

______________________

Welcome back to Neil Fulwood, Honorary Sheriff of Nottingham, and one of our fine British poets from over the sea! Neil says he’s been watching a lot of detective-story TV lately, so he sends us poetic snatches of a whodunit.  By the way, Neil, who DID dun it?

And congratulations to Neil for his new book, Service Cancelled, coming out July 29 from Shoestring Press (www.shoestring-press.com)!

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Cover of Neil’s new book-to-come

—Painting by Louise Newton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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