Mystery revealed- Sherlock Holmes and me muse is back
So all those weird lights out on the water at night, that I mentioned to’e before, well it weren’t little green men from Mars, nor super keen fishermen, or me imagining some’ it odd. Oh no. It turned out to be people smugglers going about their nasty work.
I expect you’d wondered what I’ve been up to these last few weeks. Been a combination of quiet reflection by me on my beloved Grace, who passed on these two years gone, and me doing the old Sherlock Holmes routine. Took me a while catch the buggers at it. They were dropping off poor sods that they’d brought up channel on a ship and then transferred ‘em into a dingy before coming ashore. All illegal to say the least, and sometimes it must have gone horribly wrong. I’m sure that a few weeks back at least one woman fell in the cold tide and died. Bodies don’t always float up here given the rip currents of the Severn.
The smugglers must have realised I was watching them, because they started messing around me camp. Moving and nicking stuff. Trying to get me agitated and well, they succeed. I was thrown off proper when some nasty creep, who must’ve heard my story , wrote” Grace” on the windscreen in the frost while I was asleep. Given that’s the name of my darling wife who died two years back it rattled me not a little. I’ve been waiting here for a sign from her, since I first got one nine months back. I knew she wouldn’t just leave me without a message. We were always so close. You can’t imagine how bad it was for me when she got sick, and then she was gone. All so sudden, within a couple of months, she went from my Grace to someone who looked a bit like her, but was like a feint impression of her, a ghost who couldn’t walk, then soon couldn’t talk. My world collapsed when she was gone. Didn’t help that the firm then went bust and I lost me job, and then the house. I couldn’t pay the bills. A right mess I was. That’s when I ended up here living in the car.
Anyway thinking what would old Sherlock do and being patient at night as I watched the river paid off and I finally saw what was going on. There was some moon that night when a couple of blokes were dropped on the beach down the cut. I followed them into the village and called the cops. Not sure where they come from, they looked so down when they carted them off. Felt sorry for them really. They were only trying to make a life, but those who deal in their tragedy is scum and they need stopping. They say in the pub that the smugglers’ coaster was boarded by the navy. Trouble is I’m not sure it will have stopped them doing it.
I won’t be going anywhere though because Grace gave me a sign and I’m waiting to see what happens next.
I caught a rabbit in a snare the other day, so that may see me for a meal of two this Christmas. It will be a quiet time. Grace always made the house look like a faraway land for the season. God I miss her. I think I ‘ve got a song coming on though, and that makes me feel better. It is called West Wind.
