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CHAPTER 7

  THE MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET

  One day when Brian Conlan was just a small boy, he overheard his mother and father talking about a very sad secret, a very rare instance of a child of a poor family nearby who was born with two left feet. Unfortunately this poor child had been whisked away and placed in care by the local authorities, as the child’s parents were totally incapable of providing him with the specialist care he would obviously need throughout his life.

  Brian’s parents could never forget this dreadful occurrence because the dear, sad, little boy had been born on the very same day as Brian. Every year on Brian’s birthday his parents gave thanks to God that they and their dear child, had been born spared any such awful suffering.

  Young Brian was always thirsting for knowledge and became a very good student indeed; so much so, he received the very highest of marks in his final year. As he was so obviously keen on writing, his parents encouraged him to try and make the most of his natural talent and he eventually became a journalist. First with a small local paper and then, a few years later, with a major national newspaper and later still, became a well-known and popular feature writer. He was particularly known for his thought provoking features that poked fun at politicians and government and semi-government institutions.

  One day after a somewhat heavier than usual liquid luncheon, he wrote an amusing if not cutting exposé about a child with two left feet who had been abused, by being taken cruelly, he suggested from his parents and never seen again! He was both critical of the way the local department handled the case so roughly and of the parents for giving in to them so easily. He actually said the parents had ‘washed their hands’ of their son! Suggesting they neither knew nor cared, where he was now!

  If he had doubts about writing that piece he never showed it. But it was common knowledge that some of his colleagues and close friends were more than a little concerned he may have gone a bit too far!

  But he dismissed all such criticism. Professional Journalists he believed should understand that yesterday’s newspaper and all the stories in it were dead and done with, being fit for nothing but fish-and-chip wrapping! As soon as one story was finished the Journalist had no time to dwell on it, none at all, for the simple and unavoidable fact that the pressure was always there for another story. If they were lucky, another, and another. The sausage machine factor, he called it! A factor that career minded Journalists simply could not ignore.

  Sometime after publication of his story about ‘The Man with Two Left Feet’, he began to receive hate-mail about the piece. It initially caused him no concern because he felt it was ‘par for the course’. All Journalists got some hate mail. The more successful you were, the more you inevitably trod on other people’s toes. Those who didn’t like it tended to respond using hate mail, in the misguided belief it hurt you. It could, but only if you let it!

  Initially the hate mail merely accused him of being uncaring for his fellow men, the weak and the infirm and so on. Later he received some more hate mail containing somewhat generalized threats aimed at writers like him.

  One said: ‘You Journalists. You think the pen is mightier than the sword. A pity you don’t live by the sword. Your death might be a bit quicker then.’ That really worried him. After a month or so of mail like this, Brian began tossing anything he suspected of being hate mail straight in the bin, or put it through the shredder if it was really bad.

  After about six months the hate mail stopped. Brian was relieved. But relief was only short lived, for he began to find some odd and at first, a trifle amusing, PAY DAY IS COMING notes left at places he visited. When he went to a bar or a restaurant they would be found in the toilet, or on his seat when he returned! The stark fact that he was being stalked had to be taken more seriously now. It was quite unnerving.

  The fear mounted as more notes were found at his place of work, on his seat, his desk, his computer and as could be expected, they soon appeared at his home. On his gate, on his mailbox, on his front and back doors!

  He began to sweat at the expectation that sooner or later they might appear inside. Brian’s friends urged him to talk to the Police, but he argued that without firm evidence the Police were powerless.

  As a Journalist he always carried a small camera and now he began to surreptitiously snap ‘suspects’. Anybody he thought might be following him and collecting the images in a folder; recording dates and times. He would check them over and over again, looking for a pattern of any kind. He felt strongly that things were definitely coming to a head. Whoever it was and Brian suspected the father of the child in question, would likely make a move soon; showing himself. Hopefully, in so doing, make some kind of a mistake that would be his undoing and make a great story.

  One day as Brian neared his home, a boy on a skate board forced him off the footpath, deliberately he thought! Later that week, he was nearly run down by a motor cyclist. Later still, some large concrete pipes fell off a passing truck and just missed him by inches!

  Brian’s state of distress did not go unnoticed by his wife, or friends and colleagues. But he steadfastly refused to discuss the problem. He continued to shred any mail that looked odd, or which he did not easily recognize as being genuine. He also took to drinking, somewhat heavily too.

  One day as he walked home from the railway station, somewhat unsteadily due to drinking, he became convinced, obsessed even, with the idea he was being followed. Holding his small camera in the palm of his hand, he took secretive picture after picture over his shoulder of those behind him. Though he mostly got nothing more than odd shots of the pavement, the sky, or various shop windows, he kept on snapping! He also quickened his pace as best he could and just as he reached his home, a passing courier van swerved up onto the pavement. The van knocked Brian down before crashing through his front gates and bringing down a column of the small portico at his front door.

  As he lay there dazed, barely conscious and partly buried in debris, he heard the van driver mumbling apologies and promising he would get help and his company would make reparations. He left him, leaving a small parcel. Gathering as much strength as he could, Brian grabbed the parcel and flung it out into the street and passed out.

  Brian eventually came round to find a man in clerical garb bending over him and assuring him he would be alright; that help was on the way. Brian watched unbelievingly as the man, who had obviously retrieved the small parcel from the road, shake it and hold it his ear, before placing it down on his chest. Brian struggled to scream ‘No. No. Oh, God, please no!’

  The man took something that looked like rosary beads from his pocket and wound them around Brian’s neck and began to tighten them savagely.

  ‘You, you…’ Brian gasped, as he passed out again.

  As the man in clerical garb removed the beads and stood erect, the keystone of the damaged portico suddenly dislodged and fell, striking him a fatal blow to the head!

  ‘My God! What on earth have we got here?’ queried the first Paramedic arriving on the scene.

  ‘Well the driver reported that something went wrong with his van, putting it beyond his control and sending it up on the pavement, through the fence and into the portico,’ said the Police Sergeant. ‘The one with the parcel on his chest is still breathing, but he stinks of alcohol. His friend in clerical guard on the steps appears to be sober, but his head is split open and he’s obviously dead.’

  ‘Hmmm, yes. It looks like his head was smashed to pulp by the keystone, the biggest stone of them all!’

  ‘You’re right there,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But I’ll tell you something odd and something funny. The odd thing is, the man in clerical garb had his rosary beads in his hand, like he was about to administer the last rites; suggesting he thought the other man was dying!’

  ‘Yes, but clerics don’t always get it right. If they’re not sure, they’ll give the last rites for peace of mind,’ said the medic.

  ‘Right,
I’ll go along with that possibility,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But here’s something else that’s funny, really funny! Either he got dressed in an awful hurry this morning and grabbed the wrong shoes: or he’s got two left feet!’