Dinah was a little ashamed to admit that money was no longer a concern for her, not because she had any, but because she had grown used to having none.  It had become nothing more than normal and although her middle England, middle-class upbringing meant that she always fought to pay her way she had grown accustomed to the fact that she couldn’t always do so – at least without slipping into the kind of time-scale that could accommodate the death of an entire galaxy.  Being with Shaw, she had become resigned to things being the way they were, just because that was the way they were.  It was the way that things went with Shaw – she always knew that something would turn up before disaster knocked.  Or at least before it knocked too loudly.  She billed clients for their services whenever she could: some of them paid and some of them threatened to sue, and she went through Shaw’s pockets whenever the opportunity presented itself in search of long-forgotten dog-eared cheques and any manner of tender that, in any way, could be described as legal.  At times she felt as though she was single-handedly keeping their heads above water, but she had learned that there was nothing to gain from trying to make Shaw face up to reality, to confront issues of which he was blithely unaware.  He was even more annoying when he tried to put things right.  It was a tacit agreement: she worried about paying the bills and he worried about… well, nothing really.

To be fair, he had buckled down in some respects recently and had started to take on what Dinah referred to as ‘proper cases’: investigations requested – and paid for – by people who had found their agency on Facebook without encountering the slanderous truths expressed by some of their ex-clients, but he still had a tendency to wander off – distracted by a paradox of which only he was aware – to solve instead a conundrum that nobody else knew existed.  She would have been far happier if he could have – even just once in a while – managed to solve the case he had been asked to solve by the person who was willing and able to pay them for results, but loathe that she was to admit it, she was happy – even the way things were.  She wouldn’t have changed anything much… well, she probably would have changed everything other than the strange, ramshackle, absent-minded stick of a man she had somehow hitched her cart to.  He maddened her and gladdened her by equal measure, and somehow, when she was at her lowest ebb, he always managed to come up with the goods.  Seldom the right goods, but a girl can’t have everything…

…He wandered into the office as she was half-way through putting her coat on to leave for the evening.  He was examining a stick of celery as though he had never seen one before.  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.
Dinah groaned inwardly and slumped down into her chair, forgetting the caster that Shaw had assured her he would mend, pirouetting like the plastic ballet dancer in a child’s jewellery case behind the desk.  This was never a good sign.  Shaw’s ideas seldom took heed of consequence.  She steadied herself, somewhat lopsidedly, against the desk and looked up at what the door proudly declared as her ‘parnter’.  “Go on,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“You said you were thinking.”
“Yes, I was,” he affirmed proudly.
“And?”
Shaw looked at once bemused and alarmed.  Nothing unusual there.  Even after the time he managed to accidentally shave off both his eyebrows he still managed to look perpetually shocked.  “I’m sorry, I… what do you mean ‘And?’”
“You said you were thinking,” said Dinah.  Shaw nodded.  “So what about?”
“About?”  Dinah’s turn to nod.  “Well, nothing really, I was just thinking.  At least I don’t think it was about anything.  I forget…”  He returned his attention back to the celery.  “Do you know, you use up more calories in eating celery than it contains.  The more you eat, the thinner you get.”
Dinah stood and pulled it from his hand.  “Then I don’t think it’s a good idea for you, is it?  If you get any thinner, you’ll disappear.  Why can’t you be like normal men and eat pies and chips and chocolate?”
Shaw pouted.  He would have stamped his foot if his shoes had been up to it.  “The woman downstairs gave me that!” he said.
“What woman downstairs?”
“She said she was looking for ‘Shaw and Parnter’, said she had a job for us.”
“And she gave you celery?”
“Not straight away.”
“After you accepted the case I hope.”
Shaw had the good grace to look decidedly sheepish.  “I told her we’d think about it.”
“Well,” said Dinah, “We’ve thought about it.  We’ll accept it… What is it?”
“I’ve no idea.  She never said.”
“So how were we going to think about it?”
“Good point,” conceded Shaw.  “Could we ring and ask her?”
“Yes!”  Dinah clutched her phone.  “What’s the number?”
“Ah.”
“You did get the number, didn’t you Shaw?”
“What sort of a question is that to ask of a fully grown businessman?”
“You didn’t get the number, did you?”
Shaw shook his head apologetically.  “I got distracted by the celery,” he said.  “She had bags full of it.”
“Why would you have bags full of celery?”
“That’s what I asked her.”
“And?”
“She didn’t say.  I expect she was going to make soup.  I expect she havered when Raj asked her what she wanted.  You know what it’s like if you go into Raj’s without knowing exactly what you want.”
“She got the celery from Raj?”
Shaw nodded.  “I expect she went in for an onion…”
 Dinah rushed towards the door, grabbing her coat from the chair which, exhausted with its attempts to remain upright, collapsed and died on the office floor.  “Come on,” she shouted.  “Quickly!”
Shaw looked over his shoulder as if expecting to find that Dinah was actually addressing somebody behind him.  “Me?” he asked as Dinah fled for the stairs.
“Is there anybody else?”
Shaw thought it wise to check one last time, but he was definitely alone, so reluctantly he started to follow Dinah out into the street.  This was the trouble with Dinah, he thought, all action and no time to fully think things through.  “Where are we going anyway?” he asked, when he eventually caught her, using up what little remained of his breath following his ten yard sprint.
“Raj’s,” she said.  “He’ll know who she is.  He’ll know how to get in touch with her.  We need this case Shaw – whatever it is.  We need to pay the rent , we need to pay the electricity and you need to eat something that doesn’t actually make you thinner that you already are.”
“But…” he ventured as Dinah tumbled through the jangling greengrocer’s door ahead of him.

“The lady with the celery?  Oh yes, I remember her quite clearly,” said Raj.  “Unusual for somebody to buy so much of it.  Do you know, it uses up more calories eating celery than it contains?”
“Yes.  My learned friend here as explained that to me.  Now Raj, think carefully, who is she and where does she live?”
“Not a clue,” said Raj.  “Never seen her before.  She came in here looking for you, so I told her that kind of information doesn’t come for free.”
“You made her buy celery?”
“I did her a deal.  To be honest, it was wilting a bit…  Didn’t she come to you?”
“She did, but my gangly partner here managed to let her get away.”
“Ah.”  Raj looked genuinely concerned for the about-to-be-tearful Dinah.  “Here,” he said handing her a banana that looked like it had gone twelve rounds with Tyson Fury.  “On the house.”
Speechlessly she took the banana and left the shop with a forlorn Shaw trailing behind her.  “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked.
“No Shaw, I am not going to cry.  I refuse to cry.  I am going to go home and drink cheap wine.  I would buy a kebab if I had any money.”
“Ah,” said Shaw.  “Is that the problem?  Here.”  He passed Dinah a roll of cash which he pulled from the inner depths of his threadbare greatcoat.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, has all my training been in vain…” he said before catching a faint flash of barely submerged anger in Dinah’s eyes.  “It’s money,” he said, seeking protection in the blandly truthful.
“How much?”
“Not a clue,” said Shaw who had quickly passed his humdrum concerns threshold.
“Well, where’s it from?” asked Dinah, already unrolling and counting the polymer bundle.
“The celery lady.  She called it ‘a retainer’.  She said she would be in tomorrow to discuss the case…”
“Why didn’t you say before we went to Raj’s?” asked Dinah taking Shaw by the hand and simultaneously tucking the cash down into the very darkest recesses of  the carrier bag that was as close as she came to a handbag these days.
“Well I…  I don’t know,” he said.  Things just…”  He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and followed Dinah up the stairs to the unlocked office.  ‘Some people,’ he thought, ‘are never happy.’
Dinah turned to him, the barest hint of hopelessness in her face.  “You will try to concentrate on the case won’t you Shaw?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good,” she said.  “You know we need this.”
“Yes, I understand,” he said. 
Tension swept out of Dinah’s body.  She felt suddenly serene.  She was a jellyfish.
“There’s just one question,” said Shaw, and bones crashed back into Dinah’s frame as she prepared for the ceiling to fall in on them.
“Can I have my celery back now?…”

First published 04.12.2024

This is the last of the re-runs and the last time Dinah & Shaw appeared on these pages. Unusually for these two, I felt that this little story line might develop beyond the single episode. When I started these re-runs I had an episode in my head that I was sure I had written for them, but it didn’t turn out to be here. I checked through and after much searching I found it was an unlinked little story from The Writers’ Circle, but it fitted so well into Dinah & Shaw world, and had a plotline that neatly dovetailed into this episode that I just had to pinch my own idea. Next week sees new Dinah and Shaw episodes (note plural: you have been warned!) that I hope will bring it all back together until I visit them again…

It was almost lunch time and Dinah felt more relaxed than she had felt in… well, however long it was since she had first met Shaw.  Not even the strange fit of the swimming costume she had been forced to borrow from her mother concerned her unduly.  In an ideal world she would have worn something a little less… accommodating, but baggy was the new ‘fitted’ wasn’t it?  Or would be.  Some day…

A day at the spa was, if she thought about it, not something she had ever bothered to dream about since she had met Shaw.  The wherewithal to run the shower was, at times, beyond her wildest imagination.  The lack of a fan in the tiny kitchen of her flat providing the nearest she ever came to a sauna.  Yet here she was, up to her neck in a hot tub with, as usual, absolutely no idea why.  She had seen Shaw pay for both of them on the credit card, with no idea of where he had got it from, and even less curiosity.  He put in a PIN, they accepted the payment and she had since spent the morning drifting serenely between sauna, steam room and hot-tub.  In a few minutes she would drag herself from the tub into the fluffy towelling robe and force herself to eat the luxury three course meal before navigating the darkened path to The Quiet Room and a couple of hours of undisturbed slumber.  She rested her head back onto the tiled surround, breathed in – a deep, contented, inward sigh – and opened one eye, just a slit, but wide enough to confirm what she already knew.
“What are you doing here?”
“Me?”
“Is there anybody else?”
Shaw checked over each shoulder and under the surface of the water.  “Er, no…”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Why are you here?”
Shaw pouted slightly.  “Where do you want me to be?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question!” Dinah snapped, unfairly she knew, but Shaw, ready as he was to ask ‘Why?’ could see in Dinah’s eye that it would be unwise to do so just now.  “We came in together,” she continued, “and yet I have absolutely no idea why we’re here.  I haven’t seen you once since we went off to our separate changing rooms, so why are you here now?”
“That’s a very… interesting costume you’re wearing,” said Shaw.
“You didn’t give me any warning about coming here, did you?  I had to borrow a costume from my mum.  She’s not quite the same shape as me…”
“No.”
“So why are we here and, more importantly, why are you here?”  Shaw opened his mouth to reply, but paused just slightly too long.  “And where,” continued Dinah, “did you get that credit card from?”
“It’s a company credit card.  I applied for it.  You keep telling me we need to be more professional.  I’ve got one for you in my bag.”
“You do know that we still have to pay the money back sooner or later don’t you?” asked Dinah.
“Of course,” said Shaw, although his eyes told a different story.
“Any idea how?”
“…Have you spoken to anyone since we’ve been in here?”
“No, why?”
“It’s what we do, isn’t it?”
“Oh is it now?  Well who do you want me to talk to?  Just point me at them and I’ll trot over.  I’ll even wag my tail if you like.”
Shaw, as usual, was totally immune to sarcasm.  “Have you got your lenses in?”
“I don’t wear lenses!  I’ve never worn lenses.  I don’t wear glasses either.  I have 50/50 eyesight.”
“I think you might mean 20/20.”
“It’s even better than that!  Now, would you like to tell me why we’re here?  I’m pretty certain that you didn’t just decide that I needed the break.”
“Mm, well… take a look around then, what do you see?  How would you describe the people here?”
“Middle aged?”
“And?”
“Middle class?”
“And?”
“… A little saggy generally… if I’m honest.  It looks to me like most of them are just here for a few relaxing hours with friends.”
Shaw cast his eyes around the pool area.  “And how many men do you think are here?”
“Counting you?”
“Why wouldn’t you count me…” he asked, sounding somewhat more pathetic than he’d hoped.  “I’m a man aren’t I?”
Dinah grinned.  “Six or seven,” she said.  “If I count you.”
Shaw shuffled over into the tub and sat beside her.  “What are you wearing?” she said.
“They’re just black trunks.”
“Well, they’re not really trunks are they?”
“So what would you call them?”
“I don’t know…  Were you ever in the Scouts?”
“These are new.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, yes.  They’re definitely new to me, yes.”
“You definitely didn’t buy those, Shaw, not even you.  Where did you find them?”
“They were in my bag.”
“Are you sure it was actually your bag?”
Shaw looked down at the shorts.  “I might have got a little distracted,” he said.
“You certainly did,” said Dinah.
“Look,” said Shaw, determined to take back control of the conversation.  “How many men do you think are here with friends?”
“What do you mean?”
“As opposed to partners, how many men do you think are here with friends?”
“Do men actually have friends?”
“Not that they would come to a spa with, I would say.”
“Right, so we’re saying they’re all with partners then, right?”
“Yes,” agreed Shaw.  “We’ll say they’re all with partners… even me.  So, how many are with their own partners do you think?”
“Ah,” said Dinah.  “So we’re looking for someone who’s cheating then are we?”
“Are we?”
“I don’t know…  Aren’t we?”
“Well, according to your 50/50 eyesight, we’ve got six or seven possible philanderers to work our way through.”
Dinah stifled a giggle.  “Philanderers?  Where did you get that word from, ‘The Victorian Private Detectives Handbook’?”  She began to haul herself from the tub, but then, remembering the swimsuit she was wearing, turned instead and headed for the steps.  She looked again with disbelief at Shaw’s shorts as she made her way past him.  “You’d better come with me,” she said, holding out a hand which Shaw gripped immediately and gratefully.  “So, have we actually got a case here?” she asked.  “I mean, are we being paid by anybody, for anything at all?”
“There must be somebody here who needs our help, don’t you think?”
Dinah looked into Shaw’s eyes, but all she could see was a puppy.  She sighed.  “O.k. I’ll try to talk to some people after lunch,” she said, climbing slowly out of the water.
“You might want to get a safety pin for that costume,” said Shaw…

First published 27.10.2023

I had just spent – extremely reluctantly – a day at a spa. It is not my natural habitat. Most of the men there looked uncomfortable to varying degrees, but a few of them appeared to be just a little too close, a little too attentive to their partners. As usual, I found myself eavesdropping into the strange, uncomfortable conversations of people who are thrown into intimate proximity without really knowing one another. It would, I decided, be a great place to put Dinah & Shaw…