by Brian Hughes
No matter how furtively he entered the building, or how carefully he took off his Macintosh, Superintendent Hodges always somehow managed to hear him. “When you’ve got a moment, Reg!”
Nesbit froze. In his mind’s eye he could see Hodges behind him, poking his fat head around the doorjamb like some sort of monstrous big toe. He dropped his coat on the floor and then clumped into the wooden office. As always Hodges was back behind his desk absorbed in signing papers as though he’d never left off. There followed the customary shuffle of feet. At length:
“Listen Reg...” The fountain pen went down and the superintendent fumbled for a McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive, excellent value and full of creamy goodness. (The manufacturers of Hob Nobs haven’t rewarded me yet. You’d think a few packets wouldn’t be too much to ask, wouldn’t you? Anyhow, McVitie’s...now’s your opportunity to take over the recurring product placement gag.) “What’s goin’ on out there on the streets?”
“There’s a leaking water main on Norman Drive.” Nesbit crinkled his brows and thought about the uncriminal streets of Greyminster. “And there was an ’edgehog on Thelwell Avenue dicing with death! Mind you, it might ’ave been Mrs Tulip’s missing lavatory brush...”
“I meant, Inspector, what’s this sudden crime wave all about?” Hodges always dropped informalities such as Christian names whenever his temper stretched thin. This happened fairly often because Hodges’ temper was generally as perished as his underpant elastic. “All these reports about little green men an’ pepperpots with ray guns! It’s getting too much for our boys to ’andle!”
“Most of the incidents ’appened near the Gasworks’ View Retirement ’Ome, Sir!” Nesbit surreptitiously lifted a stray piece of bureaucracy and looked underneath. A delicious Fox’s Classic stared back at him. (Offers from other confectioners are, of course, still open!) “Perhaps they’re puttin’ somethin’ in the tea.”
“It’s gettin’ like a carnival out there, Reg!” Hodges toyed over a saucer of Cadbury’s Bourbons. “I’ve got Sergeant Partridge checkin’ out some incident that ’appened at Eccles Grocers this morning. Somethin’ involvin’ a pirate and an upside-down pig apparently!”
Nesbit frowned, scratching his bald patch with his oxford. Without having the report in front of him, it did seem a little odd. Even by Greyminster’s standards.
“Incidentally...” Hodges stuffed a Sainsbury’s Chocolate Fudge Cake in his mouth. As he continued the words found themselves muffled beneath a duvet of delicious crumbs. (Editor: All right...that’s enough you greedy fat bastard!) “Where’s that bloomin’ Duvall woman gettin’ ’er information from?”
He patted his mouth daintily, one crumb having scaled the slope of his cheek. “She’s turnin’ up at the crime scene before we even know it’s taken place!”
“I don’t rightly know, Sir.” Nesbit watched as Hodges swaffled down a blueberry muffin. “’Appen she’s Parkins in disguise. Gordon Bennett! No wonder you’re obese!”
“What?” A spray of crumbs filled the air like a flock of starlings.
“Er...I mean the door, Sir...I noticed on me way in. No wonder the door’s a bit leece...loose...” Nesbit coughed and tried to turn the word round on the end of his tongue. “Lee-oose, Sir.” He really ought to learn to keep his thoughts to himself.
Hodges’ piggy eyes narrowed as Nesbit took a hasty step towards the aforementioned door.
“I’d better get some oil from me office for the hinges.”
“Listen t’ me, Reg!” The superintendent leaned threateningly across his desk. “Without wanting t’ repeat myself, you’d better get your act into gear and solve these crimes. I’ve got your cards in me desk!”
Hidden by his moustache Nesbit’s lips moved in syncopation to the often-heard phrases.
“So get off your arse an’ sort this lot out! And while you’re about it, y’ can off-load this lot for me!” A battered shoebox was produced from the bottom drawer. Hodges slammed it down with such determination the congealed coffee slopped over the rim of his mug. The box was brimming with pale green tickets. “The policeman’s ball’s next Saturday and so far we ’aven’t sold a single ticket! Apart from the one which Parkins bought, of course. But that’s only because his mother-in-law’s still stoppin’ over!”
He steepled his fingers as though saying his prayers. Then he prodded the scone of his nose. “Doesn’t look good for the force this sort of thing, Reg. Public confidence isn’t ’igh at the moment.” A nervous twitch took control of one eyelid. “Imagine having to hand over a cheque for five bob to Help the Aged. The press ’ud have a field day!”
He shook himself out of his nightmare and cocked one brow towards his subordinate. “Any’ow, I don’t want t’ see your face again until this lot’s solved!”
“Y’ could try not callin’ me into your office every time I come in.” Oh God, I’ve done it again. Nesbit faltered as he caught the admonition written across Hodges’ features. He hastily snatched the box from the blotter. “I’ll do me best, Sir. And I’ll get Parkins to ’ave Mrs Duvall publicly executed before I forget.”
The rain tap-danced across the corrugated roof. It trickled in streamers from the primitive guttering and beat its tattoo across the straw-covered cobbles. The shed at Nine Acres farm was suddenly lit by lightning. Six pairs of eyes glowed blue with fear.
This was the day that Cyril the cockerel had hoped would never arrive.
Crowded anxiously around their feathered protector, Giles Barley’s bantams squawked and clucked, staring at the blood-soaked barrel in the middle of the floor. Hunched over this macabre altar, sharpening his hatchet on a strop of leather, was Giles Barley himself. A grubby, yellow-toothed man, his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders and cap twisted backwards on the top of his head.
He plucked the blade with his grubby thumbnail and grinned as the cleaver rang. Another flash tore through the window. It twinkled in Ethyl’s eyes as she struggled beneath Giles’ grip.
The feathered onlookers backed into the corner. Grunting the contents of his nose into his throat, Giles raised the axe above his head.
Fortunately, at this point, there was a crash. (I’m sure the reader didn’t want too much suspense. People can sometimes grow impatient worrying about the fate of poultry.)
The rickety door smashed open. For a second or two it hung from its hinges, squealing and creaking. Then it toppled into the slurry. From the blanket of rain beyond, a small grey figure entered the room. It had huge black eyes, a swollen forehead and what appeared to be no nose. The Martian (because that’s what it was) raised a comical ray gun in Giles’ direction. It was the sort of weapon that Buster Crab so unconvincingly carried around in the nineteen-thirties.
Giles scratched his bristled chin. Several scabs came loose. “Bugger me!” Pound signs almost appeared in his eyes. He tried to remember what he’d done with the video camera. Not that it mattered. An unconvincing bolt of electricity shot out of the nozzle towards his forehead.
Giles Barley was lifted off his sweaty feet and thrown against the wall in the fashion of a toad being fired from a twelve bore.
Ethyl blinked. Then she scrambled back onto her feet as the other chickens nervously bobbed from the darkness.
The alien clumped across the shed, licked a ticket it had produced from goodness knows where (it didn’t have any clothes let alone pockets) and slapped it onto Giles’ nose. Then it ambled back to Ethyl and forced a tiny helmet on her bobbing head. (Bantams’ heads always bob about because they control their legs with the muscles in their necks, a simple pulley device that allows them to propel themselves forwards with each thrust of the beak.) The helmet had tiny antennae sprouting from the top. There was a buzz and Ethyl blinked at her monochrome saviour.
“I feel peculiar!” Astounded she looked down at her beak. Then she grinned. There’s nothing quite so odd, I ought to point out, as a chicken with a set of pearly white teeth. “Well, this’ll be something to tell the grandchicks. Thank you.” She o
ffered a wing to the spaceman, who shook it heartily.
“Chirucachackupic!” the alien replied, helping her down from the barrel and leading her towards the door.
Ethyl stuck her beak in the air haughtily and strutted past her confused brethren.
Okay, just in case you’d thought I’d forgotten, for those of you interested in such matters, this is what the ticket stuck to Giles’ nose read:
“Six: An embarrassed penguin. Second is First: Fifth is Second: First is Third: Third is Fourth: Fourth is Fifth.”
“Now then, dear...” A number of people had gathered around Mr Eccles’ ransacked dressing table. Mr Eccles himself was staring expectantly at the upside-down pig. There was now a crack running the full length of its snout that concluded in a starfish-shaped fracture. Constable Parkins was standing in the corner, sniggering at his copy of the Beano. His overcoat had never fitted him snugly so now it was being used as a shield from prying eyes. Sergeant Partridge was peering over everyone else’s shoulders, blustered by the intrusion of Miss Duvall and her associate. Or rather blustered by Millicent Broadhurst who was tugging violently at the badge on his helmet. In the midst of it all, like Noah commanding his ark, stood Miss Duvall, swelling into her self-appointed role of chief-detective with obvious pride. She tapped the saddleback with the point of her brolly. Then she cocked her head on one side and listened to the chink for nuances. “Now, did the burgullar have any distinguishing features?”
“Apart from the ginger beard an’ the pirate’s costume, you mean?” In all fairness, Pip was having a bit of a bad day. Correction...Pip was having a bit of a bad life!
“Beards can be shaved off and costumes changed,” Miss Duvall continued. “What I meant was, did he have, for example, any unusual moles?”
“He had a parrot...” Pip thought about that. For the briefest of moments Winifred Duvall could almost see part of an eyeball behind her long black tresses. What this gal needed was a haircut. How could you work out somebody’s character if you couldn’t see their face? “At least, I assume he had a parrot. There was a small mound of guano on his shoulder.”
“Ahha...Sergeant! Look over here. Millicent Broadhurst, if I find out what you’re up to I’ll have your guts for garters, so help me I will!” Millicent stepped away from the policeman, hanging her head and kicking the rug in shame. Behind her back Jack Partridge’s badge dug into her palm.
“Now...” Miss Duvall sledgehammered on. “See this thumbprint?”
Jack crouched down to study the dusted pig closely. He was sure that Miss Duvall wasn’t supposed to be conducting matters in this manner, but she was the only thing keeping the grey-haired spider monkey behind him from ripping his uniform to shreds.
Miss Duvall blew a gust of warm breath across the pig’s trotters and a cloud of dust span into Jack’s eye.
“I really don’t think y’ should be interfering, Mrs Duvall. Not until forensics turn...”
“This isn’t a real thumbprint at all.” Miss Duvall appeared to inflate herself into an upright position. “There’s a distinct lack of personality about it. See? Only three squiggles pretending to be human! Now then, what’s this?”
Trembling from excitement she picked up an ancient parchment hidden behind the shattered mirror. It must have fallen from the pirate’s pocket in all the confusion.
From somewhere overhead there came the sound of scrabbling toenails. Several corkscrews of dust followed their path across the ceiling. Everyone gathered closer around this latest find, including Millicent who prodded it pointlessly with one wizened finger.
“Looks like a treasure map.” Miss Duvall sniffed the edges. It had obviously been designed to look old from the outset. Somebody had stuffed it into an oven. Not only was the paper singed but there were thick brown bars running from one side to the other where the grill had been too hot.
“The handwriting looks familiar,” Miss Duvall continued authoritatively, recalling the scraps of puzzle they’d recovered from the other incidents. “I’ll take this for my collection if you don’t mind.”
She tried to cram the page into her bag. Jack Partridge reached out to grab it. Unfortunately Millicent Broadhurst was now having a go at his belt buckle. As he fought her off, Winifred Duvall folded the map into a small enough square to stuff between her bosoms, and then promptly did so.
“Y’ mustn’t remove evidence from the scene of the crime, Ma’am...” the gallant sergeant reprimanded her as he tumbled backwards.
Thrusting her nose into the air ignorantly, Miss Duvall turned back to Pip. “Now, Miss Morgan...are you absolutely certain this intruder couldn’t have been an orang-utan in drag?”
Chapter Four: Of Missives and Mysteries
By dinnertime an ugly smudge had spread across the clouds, proclaiming itself as the heart of a gathering storm. It was yellow with purple splotches. Remarkably similar, in many respects, to the bruise on the cadaver’s leg that Spotty Dribblesthwaite was now hunched over menacingly.
Spotty (or Roger as he was named on his birth certificate, though that was the full extent to which that particular epithet had ever been used) was wearing a welder’s mask and large asbestos gloves. It was ‘Open Day’ at the pathology shed, his own unauthorised idea it should be noted, and Spotty was about to put on a display for his nephew that the eight year old would never forget.
The body itself was the one that Mrs Prune had found in her lavatory. Its clothes and jewellery had been piled up in a pyramid beside the leaking sink. Now all that was left was a short pink woman with the face of a basset hound and the torso of an over-ripe melon.
Spotty had covered her most intimate bits with Bounty kitchen roll, because of its extra absorbent strength. (Offers now extended to kitchen products.) After all, he didn’t want Lawrence being exposed to anything that might corrupt him. That was how Spotty’s mind worked. Similar to American television audiences. Couples making love he considered unnatural whereas graphic violence was perfectly acceptable.
With one half of a cardio-resuscitation unit clasped in each hand, Spotty brought the ends together on the corpse’s temples. A beaming grin was clearly visible beyond the dark glass in his mask. The only thing visible of Lawrence, Spotty’s nephew, were his eyes above the rim of the operating trolley. They widened with delight as the body buzzed, the legs frog-kicked and one big toe shot through the window in a twist of smoke.
Spotty lowered the wires and lifted his visor.
“Wow! Cool Uncle Roger!” Lawrence grinned, rubbing his hands together with such excitement they almost burst into flames. “What else can y’ make it do?”
“Ever seen a human brain, Loz?” Spotty picked up the chainsaw and gave his nephew the thumbs up signal.
“All right! Go for it, Unc!”
The rip of the starter cord being pulled! The cough of the engine kicking into life. The angry growl of the chain rattling at high speed round its housing, and Spotty Dribblesthwaite brought the tool slowly down onto Queen Victoria’s skull. For a moment its pitch changed as the blade dug deeply into the flesh.
Lawrence watched, his eyes growing in amazement. Spotty leaned into his work with deliberation, slicing the cranium with the ease of a hot knife through a buttered egg. At length he stood upright confused, blinking at the sight that confronted him. “That’s odd!” He gave Queen Victoria’s head a prod. “I’ve never seen owt like that before!”
At this point in our adventure we must make a short detour. If the reader would like to accompany me to the rain-swept hills, we’re about to return to Old Crompton’s Crag. The inky clouds had sunk into troughs. Now ghostly legs of marsh gas had risen from the damp turf as though attempting to make a marquee of the sky.
Creating divots with his walking stick, Flinders Peterson scanned the patch of earth immediately before him with his metal detector. Every so often a whine would echo from his headphones. Flinders stumbled on, almost blinded to the weather by his eagerness.
The ruins of Greyminster Abbey were s
eldom frequented, shrouded in legend and superstition as they were. And, on this occasion, a blanket of dirty mist. Enough boggarts reputedly existed around these ancient stones to put the mainly-retired population off ever visiting. Most old folk still lived in the previous century, their staunch beliefs in Pagan matters being impossible to temper.
The abbey itself wasn’t so much a building as a scallop of rocks. A couple of gargoyles were all that remained to guard its secrets with snarling mouths and unfeasibly large genitals.
Flinders whistled as he stalked the gravestones, his false leg forcing him to move in the fashion of a tin soldier. The rain was drumming on the soggy brim of his hat. It had been flattened out over the years and a feather added to the colourful band for the sake of style.
Exactly how Flinders had lost his left leg was a bit of a mystery, despite having been the topic of several drunken conversations in the Thatch.
Regardless of how Hollywood might portray disabled people, Flinders wasn’t what you’d call a stunner. Some would describe him as ‘serious’ in disposition although ‘serious’ can often be confused for ‘bloody miserable’.
He reached the altar and noticed a pair of bespectacled eyes staring over the remains of the chapel window. They blinked through the rain, seemingly bemused by his being there.
They were attached to a plump white rabbit wearing a chequered waistcoat.
For a moment the two of them stared at each other with mutual suspicion.
Then the rabbit sprang down and charged across the lawn. The spikes in its feet, that had once held it to the floor of some taxidermist’s cabinet, made its progress difficult.
Moments later it head-butted Flinders in the stomach.
Flinders crumpled, the earphones flying from his head as he hit the ground.