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Sherlock Goonson was a very interesting man, he liked to solve mysteries in the town where he visited every Tuesday like who let the monkeys escape from the zoo last decade, and he’d say it like that too, flat, like it was just Tuesday’s post and not a question with an answer buried in the damp mulch of collective denial. People said he had a look—sharp, yes, but distant too, like his eyes were always writing something down somewhere behind his forehead. A file. A ledger. The sort of expression that made you rebutton your coat or straighten your spine even if you hadn’t done anything wrong, which, of course, was exactly the point. They didn’t like him much, the ones with secrets. Nor the ones without, in fact, because it was always the same: he’d find something out and they’d have to start looking at each other sideways in the Co-op queue or crossing the road when they saw Mrs. Kinnear, who cried for two days after Goonson “clarified” the circumstances around the black pudding fundraiser of ‘04. On this particular Tuesday—the sky low, wet like clingfilm and just as suffocating—he said, not asked: “Someone’s still feeding the monkeys.” Said it in the middle of Greggs, between a lukewarm sausage roll and a stare at Mr. Malkie’s shopping bag, which may or may not have wriggled. The tin bell over the door tinkled and Goonson leaned back as if the sound itself had confessed something. He didn’t look at the baker behind the counter—she was too busy wiping her hands on her apron, too busy watching her own reflection in the stainless-steel counter to meet his gaze. He studied the window instead, where drips of rain ran down in pale rivulets, carving little trenches through the grime. It was Tuesday. Someone, somewhere, was feeding monkeys again. He didn’t need to say much more. Mrs. Kirk, who’d been eyeing him from the corner seat with the same suspicion you’d reserve for a misplaced poacher, slid off her chair as if it were suddenly too hot. Her bun fell forward, unpinned, and for a second you could see the taut line of her neck where she’d been holding herself upright. Then she scooped up her knitting and plucked her bobbin like it had betrayed her. People who knit hide things in between stitches: confessions, regret, small sins. Goonson knew this, though he said nothing. Outside, the neon sign of the Greggs flickered—a poor cousin to the zoo lights that once lured the monkeys into their cages. He watched the glow stain pavement, felt a certain pleasure in how hollow the world looked in these moments. Hollow, yes, but not empty. He’d peeled secrets off these streets before and he knew what hunger felt like. It was always the same hunger, crackling in the undergrowth of human kindness: someone, somewhere, thinks they can escape responsibility. He cocked his head. The bag of Mr. Malkie on the table beside him shifted, as though remembering a weight it shouldn’t have carried. “Why do it?” he murmured, more to himself than to the room. “Why feed old ghosts when you could—” He paused, because the answer was never simple, and that’s what people most disliked: complexity. They liked neat endings. Becky from accounts had said she’d sleep better if Goonson just packed up and vanished. Becky didn’t know how boring vanishing was. He picked up his last sausage roll, bit into the crumbly jacket as though tasting confession itself. And then, in his mind, the ledger snapped open: lines of names, dates, half-erased footprints on the zoo path at dawn. Somewhere among them, the answer rustled—a banana peel in a puddle, a cage unlatched, a shareholder’s niece left unsupervised. His teeth crunched. He knew Tuesdays were for making things visible. The rain hammered the windows.