Free Dial M for Monkey by Adam Maxwell Page B

I was in the tool cupboard, hastily pulling the door closed behind me and trying not to knock over the spades and hoes inside.
    My breath had quickened its tempo, moving to staccato, the vapour more obvious in the moonlit room. I pushed myself further back into the cupboard, clutching the harmonica hard in my hand. The door to the room swung open and the light flicked on as the walls of my hiding place began to close in.

    ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ Jamie had said at the top of his voice.
    ‘Please shhhhh,’ I gestured to all the other people in the café.
    ‘They’re all fucking French - no-one understands a word we’re saying. Do you?’ he stood up and addressed the café as a whole, squinting at the sun dancing in through the bay windows. ‘Does anyone here speak English?’
    One or two hands went up, some words were muttered and then a more were tentatively pushed into the air. After a few seconds the café wasn’t visible for raised hands.
    ‘Ah. Okay then let’s go. So what was it that you wanted to tell me that was so secret anyway?’
    Jamie may have been lacking a lot of traits but dependability certainly wasn’t one of them and it was this I was relying on for the task ahead.
    ‘You see Jamie,’ I said as the door of the café shut behind us.
    ‘They’ve always been the same if you ask me,’ he interrupted.
    ‘There’s this thing I’ve been thinking about doing.’
    ‘All eating their fucking croissants and being so bloody aloof.’
    ‘I think it’s the only way I can start to move forward as a musician.’
    ‘Music? Don’t talk to me about music - all they bloody listen to is that sodding Edith Piaf…’
    ‘Well not just as a musician as a person as well.’
    ‘I tell you what Dan if I ever get the chance I’m gonna take a piss on that woman’s grave.’
    ‘I’m sure that will help,’ I snapped. ‘Now listen I need your help.’
    And so I told him. I mean I glossed over some of it. Made it sound like the sort of student prank we used to play but for the most part I told him the truth. How I wanted to go to the Pere Lachaise and pay the late Jim Morrison a visit. How I wanted to take his femur and have it made into a trumpet.
    ‘You are a good trumpet player,’ Jamie nodded in agreement.
    ‘It’s a Tibetan thing. Apparently their sound is so deep it has a resonance you just can’t imagine.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    ‘No, it’s not just that.’
    There was a pause and we looked at each other for a moment.
    ‘It’s your Dad isn’t it?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Anything to get one over on these Frenchies mate,’ he said.
    ‘Jamie, you’ve lived here for eight years and your fiancée is French. Please shut up.’

    Back in the incendiary void of the cupboard things weren’t going quite so well. We didn’t have a contingency plan for getting caught.
    ‘Yeah, I told you,’ said Gerry, one of my co-workers. ‘I’ve just got to find my house keys and then I’ll pick you up.’
    Footsteps clattered by, circling the room, with Gerry occasionally pausing to rummage in a bag or box. I tried to crane my neck, to see if the light that was breaking in illuminated any keys around me.
    ‘No sweetie, I really mean it. Of course I’m not with another woman, that’s ridiculous.’
    It was only a matter of seconds before he would be discovered. If only I hadn’t hidden in the cupboard. At least then I could have got away with pretending I had fallen asleep.
    ‘I’ll be right over as soon as I - aha!’
    I waited, not daring to breath, to move or even blink. I stared at the crack in the door.
    ‘Yes. Oui. Oui. C’est ça ma petite lapin.’
    The light went out, the door shut and I exhaled.

    ‘Where the hell have you been?’
    I waved the new spade at him and he waved his wine at me in return.
    ‘I decided to stop.’
    ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘We haven’t got time for you to stop!’
    ‘Calm down. I had to stop for two reasons. Firstly because I needed a piss.’
    ‘Oh you