The Towie

“Dead Motorcyclist Found 100m From Road” reads a newspaper headline. Gary is sitting at the breakfast table sipping orange juice. He’s a retired truckie, and he knows a bit about everything. He examines the accompanying photo. It says it’s a picture of the stretch of road near the place where the body was found. Gary’s mind is working overtime.

“There was no trace of the motorcycle,” reads the article, “nor was there any sign of skid marks on the road nearby.” Gary calls out to his wife who’s smoking on the lawn. “Lynne! Hey Lynne!” “Whaddya want?” She hollers back. “Whaddya make of this?” He barks. He waits as she snuffs her cigarette and meanders inside, her flip-flops flipping all the way.

“What!”

“Check this out Lynney-girl.” Gary says in a thick Aussie drawl. She used to ride a Harley, so she knows all about bikes, and she rode it in the seventies, which means she knows all about weird stuff too.
“They’re saying this dead bloke ended up in the scrub a hundred metres from the road. No bike, no skid-marks, no clues… nothing.”
“Nice piece of road.” Adds Lynne.
“Blood oath. You reckon what I reckon?”
“Towie?”
The two leather-skinned companions look each other in the eye and give a knowing nod. They figured out the mystery with the exchange of a single word.

“You reckon we ought to tell the boys in blue?”
“Nah, they’ve got those forensic blokes on the job. They’ll figure it out.”
“Too true.”

Meanwhile, the “boys in blue” pack up their forensic equipment. They’re stumped.

Elsewhere, a flatbed tow truck sits in a truck lot with a motorcycle skid mark on its bed. It was out the other day picking up a little car that overheated on its way up the hill. The bed was inclined like an Evel Knievel jump-ramp. How no one noticed a speeding motorcycle flying over the top is a wonder. The bike flew two hundred metres from the road where it was consumed by the trees. The motorcyclist cartwheeled off his flying machine, falling where he was found.

The next morning Gary reads his paper whilst sipping orange juice once more. “Hey Lynne!”

“What!”
“It’s the immigrants today!”
The flipping of sandals approaches furiously…

T