A Very Old-Fashioned Idea of Detectives.

When I found out that I’d got the job at I Spy I sent the wife down town to pick me up some suitable gear: a battered trenchcoat, a fedora, a false beard and a hangdog look. She came back two hours later with everything I’d asked for plus a reporters’ notebook and pen. She thought they might come in handy. “You know, when you’re interrogating suspects,” she said. I wore all my new gear to the office on my first day of work. I wanted to impress Clive. Clive was my new boss.

Clive took one look at me and laughed. “What have you come as?” he asked. I shrugged sheepishly. “A detective,” I said. “You must have a very old-fashioned idea of detectives,” said Clive. Clive was wearing a pair of black striped tracksuit bottoms, Nike airs and a hoodie. Clive did not look like a detective to me. He looked like every other twenty five year old male in East Belfast. This, Clive took great pains to explain to me, was the whole point of his outfit. I immediately removed my false beard. I stuffed the fedora into my lunch bag. I took out my reporters’ notebook and wrote down – Try to blend in. Do not wear hat from bygone era. Buy some trainers. I was ready to learn how to be a modern detective.

I soon came to realise I had a lot to learn. Modern detectives did not follow leads or painstaking piece together clues or interrogate suspects. Modern detectives mostly sat around the office eating sausage rolls and occasionally googling things they did not know on their mobile phones. Sometimes they sent emails. More often they received emails. They never got to arrest anyone or even take part in armed stake outs. Modern detectives, it turned out, were not permitted to own guns of any sort though a small knife might be overlooked if hidden discretely upon the person when mixing with the general public.

I spent almost a fortnight working for I Spy. I am disappointed to tell you that during this period not a single murder enquiry came across my desk. One afternoon an elderly lady phoned to say she’d forgotten where she’d parked her Nissan Micra in Castlecourt Car Park and would I track it down for her. There was a small reward involved. I was so desperate to begin my detecting career I agreed to take the case on. It was to be both my first and last case. When Clive found out I’d spent an entire day casing a multi-storey car park he fired me on the spot. Modern detecting, it transpired, was chiefly concerned with fraud, embezzlement and marital infidelity, none of which appealed to me. Clive said I had a hopelessly romantic notion of what it meant to be a detective. He said I’d be better off doing something else. Ideally something theatrical.

I had to agree. Modern detective work was not for me. I sent the wife back down town to see if the fedora and trenchcoat might be returned or at very least exchanged for something more useful. “What sort of thing were you thinking of?” she asked. I asked her to see if they had any white smocks or berets in the down town stores. I’d read a really interesting article about artists online. I could see myself behind an easel, clutching a palette in one hand and a brush in the other. I could grow my mustache out. I could adopt an artistic temperament. There was a certain romance to portrait painting. It would be the very job for me.

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s 1935 novel, Death in the Clouds