Sparks Read Online Free PDF

or obvious, except for the fact that he was on the Edgware Road and – he bought an Evening Standard – it was still Tuesday. The headline on the Standard was still the one on the lunchtime edition, so there had been no significant time lapse. Therefore, Sparks reasoned, he must have just suffered some sort of amnesia thing. It happened to people, even if generally they had taken drugs and beer to get it. And he’d had some beer in the non-local. Maybe it had gone off, in a psychedelic way.
    He decided to have some more beer. He put the Standard in his back pocket and headed towards the nearest pub. Outside the pub there was a small crowd, about the right size for watching a drunk man be taken away by the police. This in fact was exactly what was happening, and the crowd were indeed watching a drunk man with a beard being led away by a policeman and a policewoman, both of whom seemed to know the drunk man, judging by their banter, which was so cheerful it might have come from a TV series about fictional policemen and women. The drunk man’s dialogue, though, might have come from a crude modern film, and referred exclusively to parts of the groin in different ways.
    Sparks watched with the crowd as the police officers jovially manhandled the drunk into their police car, got in themselves, and then drove off. It was a typical Edgware Road kind of moment, Sparks might have thought, but for one thing. As he went into the pub, something was sticking in his mind. Everything about the scene had been ordinary and normal, except for a tiny detail. On the side of police cars, on the door in fact, for as long as Sparks could remember, the word POLICE had always been written. Cars had changed, colour schemes had gone from blue to jam sandwich orange and white, but the door had always had one word – POLICE – on it. This police car, however, had two words on it. They weren’t frightening or bad or even, in the circumstances, inaccurate words, but they were two words, and that was what made Sparks uneasy. On the side of the police car Sparks had seen were written the words:THE POLICE
    Which was different.
    In the bar, Sparks had some beer. He said to the barman, who was Australian, “Bit of a commotion out there then.”
    The barman agreed. “That was Jake,” he said. “He gets thrown out of most pubs round here and once a month he gets a bit lairy and they nick him.”
    “Nice police car,” said Sparks, shoehorning somewhat. “Is that a new design?”
    “Dunno, mate,” said the barman, who liked cars but was tired from taking seven tablets of ecstasy in a gay pub the night before.
    “Only I’ve never seen that on the side of a cop car before,” said Sparks. “THE POLICE”.
    “Eh?” said the barman. “They all say that, mate. Because they are the police!”
    The barman laughed, felt a brief rush of stale MDMA as he did so, and went to serve another customer. Sparks finished his drink and went outside. There were no cars belonging to THE POLICE. For want of a plan, he went back to the dentist’s office.
    The door was open. The office was empty. The vast old woman was gone, as were the dog and the dentist. The curtain by the sink was still there, so Sparks pulled it back and
    OW!
    OW IN A SORT OF REVERSE WAY!
    Sparks found in himself in both pain and the dentist’s office. He went downstairs. In the street, a police car raced past, with no extraneous THE on its side.
    Sparks went home, and fell asleep on the sofa.
    Bit of a funny day really, he thought as his head hit the cushions.
    Duncan glanced at the old red phone with the Care Bears stickers on it.
    “Don’t even think about it,” said Jeff.
    Jeff was tapping madly at a keyboard. An address came up.
    “Good,” said Jeff. “Right, let’s get him.”
    “Oh bugger,” said Duncan, with feeling.
    One Alison gets off the train with a large suitcase with little wheels on it, which her father takes from her and puts in the car.
    “Glad to be back, love?”