Ricey Bob seldom got a day to himself.
The call on the time of someone who was
definitely not in the line of work that he
was definitely not in were many. It
seemed that, every time he picked up his
macramé or sat down with a warm mug
of
gin, the phone would ring and the silent
voice
on the other end of it would have
him on the next plane to Bogata,
Venezuela or Newcastle.
But stress, in a profession such as the
one
he was definitely not in, could be a killer.
Stress made you careless, stress made
you
hesitate, stress made you late. As in 'the
late Ricey Bob'. So, ever since the
incident
with Jimmy the Optician, he'd made it a
rule to spend one day a month
unwinding.
On this day, he switched off his phones,
unplugged his wireless router, connected
the mains electricity to his letterbox, and
simply went fishing.
Today was a particularly fine day, a blue
sky dotted with white fluffy clouds none
of
which, for a change, reminded him of
people he had had to Deal With over the
years.
When he got to the lake, he found
nobody
else there. Not surprising, really, given
the arrangements he had made to ensure
his solitude. He found his favourite spot
under an overhanging willow, and started
to unpack his gear.
In the line of work he wasn't in,
preparation was everything, and he had
prepared well. For the last three weeks
he'd visited the lake whenever he could,
catapaulting bait from this very spot on
the bank, until the fish were plump and
heavy with free meals, and unsuspecting
of foul play. He once again scattered
morsels on the water in front of him, and
a few dorsal fins swept the surface with
leisurely greed.
The bait was a secret recipe, given to him
by a dying Nepalese trawlerman. Quite
why the Nepalese trawlerman had been
dying was a different matter for a
different
day. Whatever was in it, fish craved it
and
would lunge for the pellets before they
could sink rapidly to the lake bed.
Satisified with his preparations, he
assembled his rod, set up his keep net,
and found his favourite reel. Feeding the
30-pound line through the snake guides
on his rod, he held he end of the line in
his lips while he rummaged in his tackle
box for a float and number 17 magnet,
fitted them securely and cast gently, a
few
metres out.
It couldn't have been more than a few
minutes before he got his first contact,
the float disappearing below the surface.
Even as he started to work the fish in
towards the bank, a sudden change in
the
tension told him he had a second catch,
then a third. By the time he had the net
under the end of the line, no fewer than
three chubb and a tench were clustered
around the magnet, flapping at one
another in alarm but powerless to
escape.
Removing them unharmed was not an
easy
business, but an old credit card, slipped
in
between each fish's body and the
magnet,
enabled him to pry them loose and
transfer them safely into his keep net.
Of course, the encounter had left them
slightly magnetized themselves, and the
two smaller chubb performed a sort of
involuntary waltz as they adhered
together
for a few moments. This, however,
would
soon wear off as their stomach contents
churned inside them. Within a few days,
they would have excreted most of the
tiny
chrome-steel pellets that were the most
important ingredient of Olaf's secret
recipe.
Another cast, another two chubb and a
bewildered crayfish. This was getting too
easy. Time to switch to a lighter magnet
and test his skills.