If you have a good memory and you read the local papers, you may recall an article from the Birmingham Review in the autumn of last year which made reference – a somewhat inaccurate reference – to the peculiar behaviour of a certain Mr. Elliott Baynes of King’s Norton. Mr. Baynes was not a particularly remarkable man, though not so unremarkable that I should be justified in remarking on his unremarkability. Before the events that I am about to describe took place, he worked as a middle manager for a contractor that processes immigration applications on behalf of the Home Office. He was separated from his wife of twelve years, but maintained cordial relations with her for the sake of his daughter, who lived with her mother in Harborne. Since he considered his brother to be slightly disreputable, he restricted his social life to a circle of longstanding colleagues. He rarely got drunk, and when he did he rarely did anything more scandalous than to ask the floor supervisor for a kiss – and perhaps he was not always entirely unsuccessful if she was adequately inebriated. In the main however, he was resigned to the fact that he lacked a certain sex-appeal and so was likely to remain romantically frustrated. Nonetheless, he made an effort to look fashionably dressed, kept his face clean-shaven and sometimes omitted to wear his wedding ring. He still had a respectably low hairline but he had not altogether lost his adolescent habit of stooping somewhat so as not to draw attention to his height. He was moderately well-off: he drove an estate that was less than a year old, kept up with his mortgage repayments, had a little tucked away for rainy days, and took his holidays on the Costa del Sol – though last summer he had ventured as far as Granada.
