Mystic detective (15)

[With thanks to Patrick and Josie]

Paul was having a bad night. He couldn’t sleep. He was worried about his friend Frankie, Claudia’s heroin addiction and what the hell to do about OM? To cap it all, his daughter Catherine was staying with him overnight and needed to be up in good time fro a school trip early the next morning. Paul heard his daughter get up and enter the bathroom woke up as usual by her travelling alarm clock. He stared myopically at his beside digital radio alarm which was a blur of numbers to him. He got up and met coming out of the bathroom which shocked her and caused her to flinch away from his gaze,
- It’s Ok sweetheart
She smiled in reply and went back into her bedroom and firmly closed the door. Paul made his way downstairs dog (or was it cat?) tired. His kitchen clock read ten past six, so just the right time for a brew and to pout an orange juice for Catherine and to prepare her fruity breakfast of diced pear and Greek yoghurt.
He sat down and yawned and glanced again at the kitchen clock. Oh hell, it was not morning at all but twenty to two - the middle of the bloody night, not ten past six but half past one. Back to bed lying flat out unable to sleep, not worth trying, too tired to do anything but to let his mind wander, maybe musing on Van Morrison’s Hymns to the silence which starts out about a relationship that’s being missed but ends up like a mystical love song to the divine, a vocal version of Rumi’s poetry.
Questions came to Paul unbidden. How did Claudia first become an addict? Who first turned her on? Who supplies her and how does she pay for it or rather in what currency? What was OM’s role if any in her addiction? And as sure as hell it was playing a part.
And Frankie? His old mate, well out of his depth and heading for a breakdown. (‘I can’t bear Frankie to lose it like Marie did. Who can help Frankie? I can’t. Let me talk to Keith the gay vicar about him.’) Keith – the Reverend Keith Poulson, was a one-ff. he was a passionately committed Church of England Christian, inspired by the life of Christ and the life of the Early Christian church, with a wicked sense of humour and delightfully camp manner which only barely masked a truly compassionate and loving soul. Keith’s church was in a poor beat up part of South Manchester. Somehow Keith’s own very brokenness/not fitting in made him a magnet for worried souls who needed to talk and listen to one another without judgement – ‘let he who is without sin let him cast the first stone’ was a popular line of Christ’s never very far from Keith’s lips. And it worked, it wasn’t orthodox and it regular almost gave the Bishop a heart attack on hearing even a watered down version of Keith’s ministry. Needless to say Keith’s congregation loved him to bits. Yes Keith might well work wonders if anyone could with Frankie.
[And where did Paul meet Keith? Well it was a strange book launch at Manchester Cathedral but that’s another story – Murder at the cathedral?]
Meanwhile Paul had fallen asleep again just before dawn and his radio alarm clock was sounding and the curiously grating voice of John Humphreys was speak from the Radio and invading his dreams. His bedside clock radio was saying ten past six for real this time as Paul checked it out with his glasses on.