DI Lansbury and Sergeant Tuck have taken my wood-burner off to forensics ‘for further analysis’.

They carried it up the front garden. Mrs McNulty was looking on interestedly out of her window. Dave, Martin and Marvin were at theirs, too, which was unusual as they always seemed to make themselves scarce whenever DI Lansbury and Sergeant Tuck came to visit.

‘Let me know if you find a body in there!’ I joked.

DI Lansbury and his beard wheeled around simultaneously.

‘You find all this amusing, do you, Mr Bilston?’ he said.

‘No,’ I responded sheepishly.

‘I’d like to remind you that a man has disappeared – and may very well be dead. Which, as far as I’m aware, is not the usual stuff of comedy.’

‘No, it’s not,’ I said in a small voice.

From the whoop that emitted from behind her net curtain, Mrs McNulty appeared to be most delighted by this whole exchange. There was some support on offer from Dave, who stuck his middle finger up at the policemen’s retreating figures as they continued down the path, only to pretend he was scratching his nose when DI Lansbury turned around suddenly and glared at him.

Thursday November 29th

I’d gone back to pondering Toby Salt’s poem. I was trying to read between its lines, and wishing it was comprised of only the bits between the lines and none of the actual lines at all, when the doorbell rang and there was Sergeant Tuck. He’d popped round on the off chance I was in so he could return the back issues of Well Versed I’d lent him, he said. As he brought them in, I could sense him nervously eyeing up my bookshelves.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to borrow while you’re here?’ I asked, keen to put him out of his misery.

Gratefully, he seized an anthology of twentieth-century poetry, and collections by Emily Dickinson and W. H. Auden.

‘I’ll get these back to you next week,’ he said and skipped off up the path.

I went back inside and took one final look at Toby Salt’s postcard poem in search of meaning. It stared back at me in defiance once more. No, that was it. I’d tried. I’d failed.

l ripped it up and threw it in the recycling. The lorry will come for it tomorrow.

Friday November 30th

Bring Your Cat to Work Day

It will look good on your CV, he said.

Pfff. What needs have I but to be fed,

stroked – when I wish it – upon my head,

and a lap that’s warm to call a bed.

This is how the photocopier works.

He thinks I’m his goddam office clerk.

I size up the A4 tray as it whirrs.

It’s not so comfy. But I’ve had worse.

Perhaps you could get on with some filing.

I wait until he’s walked out the door