Free Dial M for Monkey by Adam Maxwell Page A

such an impression had been made I felt confident my employers would forgive the minor indiscretion currently being perpetrated. I put down the spade as I reached softer soil, took off my cap, wiped the sweat from my brow and tossed the useless garment onto the tombstone of the grave I was digging up.
    ‘Please tell me that you didn’t reduce one of history’s finest literary minds to the level of a nob gag…’ I trailed off, knowing only too well where this conversation was going.
    ‘That’s right! I got in here, chiseled it off and two days later I sold it on eBay.’ Jamie took another swig from the bottle of wine that seemed to permanently reside in his overall pocket.
    The Pere Lachaise stretched out around us like an orchestra, the arrondissements cutting through the pit with great sweeps separating the violinist from the cellist and the famous from the infamous.
    ‘Shut up and keep digging,’ I launched the shovel into the earth and with a crack that echoed in the purple night I struck a rock. The handle sheared, leaving it half in my hand and half wedged into the ground, jutting out like some sort of warning to passing vampires.
    ‘Ah shit!’
    Jamie started laughing.
    ‘For God’s sake shut up. I’m going to have to go and get another one now.’
    ‘At this time of night?’
    ‘Yes. At this time of night. Listen, I’ll go to the gatehouse and grab one from the gardener’s supplies. I’m sure I’ve got the keys in my bag.’
    Hauling myself out of the pit we had created, the loose soil around the edges crumbling back down and making more work for us, I stared for a moment at Jamie down there as he continued digging before scrabbling in my holdall. ‘Keep at it, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
    Walking away, the sound of Jamie whistling some tuneless dirge he had picked up in the café down the street when we met earlier grated. The notes hung in the air like my breath. Staring too long at middle-C, I stumbled forward, tripping on something hard underfoot. The world rushed towards me but I reached out and stopped myself at the last moment. With a clatter the contents of my top pocket spilled onto the ground.
    I got up, reached forward and scooped the decrepit old harmonica into my cold hand. I remembered it had been silver once but the corroded turd that squatted in my palm was nothing more than a tarnished reminder of my father’s wasted life. My father; the dreamer, the failed musician, the man who had tried out for The Doors but had been told in no uncertain terms by Jim Morrison himself that he was next to useless. I had taken it from my father’s house the day of his funeral.
    The door to the gatehouse was typical of everything about the Pere Lachaise, it was grandiose whilst managing somehow to look ramshackle. I turned the key and the familiar grinding of the gears I had heard every morning since starting work here rang out. I tried to slip inside, hiding behind my shadow but the door had other ideas, crying out into the night, it’s ancient wood creaking with resentment.
    It was surprisingly cold inside, my feet crunched across the flagstones as I moved swiftly through the building. It didn’t take me long to locate a new spade but as I was about to make my way back downstairs a noise stopped me in my tracks.
    The door downstairs, the one I had carefully locked behind me was screeching again, the rusted hinges echoing throughout the gatehouse. I stood, panting like a winded saxophonist, staring at the light that had blinked into life from downstairs. It couldn’t be Jamie, he didn’t have a key.
    My ears burned hot as the blood rushed to them and turned the footsteps that echoed from downstairs into a pounding drum in my head. I had to hide. They couldn’t find me. Not now. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
    I moved quickly and silently as the footsteps downstairs were joined by a man’s voice. It was definitely getting louder, moving upstairs towards me. A second later and