The Fruit of One's Labour

“Good afternoon, Abe. Would you mind coming with me?”

The officer’s casual tone belied the obvious wariness he wore about him. Abe gave one of his signature sneers, the one he reserved for pencil-pushers and jobsworths. As he followed into the interview room, the neat blue uniforms of the officers and the practiced indifference provided him a burst of savage humour. Waste his time? They’d soon discover he could play that game too.

They batted back and forth for a few minutes; he endured the legal pro formas just as he did the cultural ones, with hard glares and monosyllabic answers. They gave him no names, but Officer One was clearly in charge. Officer Two was taking incessant, scratchy notes on a cheap pad with a crappy biro. Eventually they ran out of prattle, had to ask him a serious question.

“Could you tell me, Abe, where you were the night before last – the 25th?”

Oh, he could have told them, but it wouldn’t even have raised their eyebrows and where was the fun in that? Besides, when his mother heard about all this! All the nonsense they were peddling, all three of them – all going to become very academic. Instead his concocted tale did indeed raise their eyebrows, and set them flashing glances at one another and the tape recorder. He sat back, pleased with his handiwork.

“So, in the course of these ah…events, you certainly never received any package?” asked Officer Two.

Abe laughed right on cue, weighed the overwhelming likelihood that this was about to become increasingly hilarious at the expense of these stupid policemen. One niggle irked him, but he dispelled it. Unthinkable!

“Wrapped in paper perhaps, maybe a box inside?” Officer One leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowed. “Not ringing any bells?”

It was time for the piece de resistance, Abe decided with cold finality. What a merry dance he would lead these fucking timewasters on.

“Well Officer, now you mention it!” he smirked. The badly-stifled jerk of attention from Officer Two indicated his words had had the desired effect. His glee poorly-smothered, he continued.

“You know, I did receive a package matching that description on the 25th. In fact…it’s probably still at my house.” He paused to let that sink in, delighted by Officer Two’s unravelling curiosity and confusion.

“It might be the one you’re looking for?” His face was the picture of benign innocence.

Officer One recovered first.

“And this would be the house, as I understand, owned by your mother?”

“It is” said Abe. “My mother, of course, being – ”

“We know who your mother is” said One. “Her most recent re-election campaign was…memorable.”

“Well I can’t say she’d necessarily be delighted to see you” said Abe, “but I’m sure if you asked her she’d be able to help you find this ‘package’. Though I should warn you: she shares my dislike of having her time wasted.”

“I can just wait here if you like” he continued with a palpably false brightness. “You know, ‘cause of all the legal stuff”.

He had them! He could hardly contain his jubilation as they traipsed out, two lumbering blue beetles in their ridiculous uniforms. The first officer, the sharp one, had likely smelled a rat - but that hardly mattered. Off he had sent them on their pointless little errand, to return – well! Not empty-handed. He knew where the package they were looking for was of course, could picture it quite clearly in its tinfoil wrapper. But he could picture too the brown paper of the other package, the one that would make this all worthwhile. He knew a secondary moment of satisfaction at the discomfiture of his mother. How she would loath it! What a chance for him to get back at them all, the meddlers and the time-wasters and the cretins by whom he was so continuously surrounded. His mother’s hypocritical whining about injustice, about social order: how that had all come crashing down! And thanks to him, to Abe! But for the better, surely. If it wasn’t for his sharp-eyed, hard-nosed understanding of the real world, she’d be nowhere. Her constant campaigns, battles for various positions within the party – the most recent one! If she was chosen for that kind of responsibility… No, they were stuck with each other, their mutual dislike bookended by the secrets they carried for one another. She would help him, send those policemen packing, and he’d waltz out of here. What a day!

Yet despite his initial ecstasy, as the hours ground by and the officers didn’t return, Abe found himself thinking about how small the interview room was. The concrete walls seemed increasingly close to the periphery of his vision no matter where he turned his head. When he finally heard the scraping of feet in the corridor outside, he was surprised to realise that he did so with relief.

It was short-lived.

Officer One had a package in his hand, and it was undeniably tinfoil-wrapped. Without preamble he placed it carefully in front of Abe, brushing it against the handcuff ring in the metal table with the barest of hints.

“Perhaps you’d like to open this?” he asked.

Abe tried to weigh his options in the time it took him to reach towards the packet. Where was the brown papered one?! What had happened? But as his hands brushed the tinfoil, his relief and elation returned with a rush. ‘The evil old hag’ he thought to himself. ‘A switch! Trying to give me a heart attack?!’

And he tore open the package, for the officers’ benefit, with a theatrical flourish.

“What were you expecting to find?!” he asked triumphantly to the looks of astonishment.

“I think we all know what I was expecting to find” said One. He smiled humourlessly. “Nonetheless, here we have something equally fascinating.”

“My mother’s famous fruitcake” intoned Abe. “Beautifully wrapped in brown paper and tinfoil, just to be on the safe side. You should try some – it’s good stuff!” He stuffed a chunk of it in his mouth, chewed round the rubberiness of the dessicated fruit with a broad grin.

“Is that all then? Can I go?”

Without waiting for an answer Abe started to leave. The walls had receded, gone. He might as well have been staring straight out through the walls of the station, across a town where he could do anything, so viciously jubilant did he feel.

“What’s your name, Officer?” he asked. “I like you – what’s your name?!”

“Norton” said Officer One.

“Just Norton?”

That elicited a sigh, followed by a wry smile.

“Don’t be downhearted Officer Norton. You can’t get it right every time” Abe gloated. “Sometimes you end up looking like…well, a fruitcake.”

“A moment please, Abe” said Norton. “There’s one other thing. Do sit back down.” Abe paused, halfway to the door already.

“I had an illuminating conversation with your mother after I recovered this particular package. I must tell you the gist of it, but you’ll excuse me a moment as I have an urgent and important message to pass on before I do.”

He stood abruptly, crossed to the door in sharp strides, disappeared without a further word. He left Abe with his mouth open, the goldfish impression rapidly turning to an extended bout of pompous anger.

Officer Two looked at him mildly, unmoved by the suddenly verbose outburst. “Oh it’s him whose a fan of the long words” he indicated with a movement of his head to the door. “I’m more of a numbers wizard. And as it happens, there’s a few things don’t ‘add up’, as you might say.”

The officer’s apparent amusement at his own pathetic pun reassured Abe that these people were, in fact, morons from whom he had nothing to fear. On droned Officer Two, about discrepancies in his timeline and story and blah blah blah, until Abe was saved the trouble of answering by the reappearance of Officer One.

He came in and sat down with the same calmness that had irritated Abe all day long long.

“Your mother” he began. “Asked me to pass on a number of pieces of information, on the basis that I would ‘see you before she did’. First, that she was unsuccessful in her bid for party leader. Second, that she will not be seeking re-election next year. And third, as a result of the previous two, the ‘arrangement’ that the two of you have has come to an end.

The three sentences fell like blows, and at each Abe’s mind raced ahead to the next, way ahead of Norton and his companion. The final part was no more surprising.

“Your mother then chose to divulge a large quantity of what we will call sensitive information. Although when you opened that package I initially believed she had played a rather bizarre practical joke on me and my colleague, I suspect now that perhaps I was not the target after all. She seemed rather assured that we would in fact find other packages very similar to the original one for which we were searching at a number of locations she provided. Ringing any bells?”

Abe found he had very little to say. The walls of the room had crashed back in until the space was ever so frighteningly small.

The legal pro formas sounded rather different this time, and the cultural ones had been dispensed with altogether.