by Kim M Watt
“Yesterday, a van was taken on its way to Toot Hansell. I think that may have been a miscalculation on the part of the attackers. Jasmine has told me that a second van has just been attacked, and the driver has gone missing, this time leaving Toot Hansell.”
The exclamations of surprise were louder this time, and Jasmine went pink as Teresa patted her shoulder admiringly.
Alice continued. “Today’s van would have been carrying – Miriam?”
Miriam started to speak, stopped, cleared her throat and tried again. “Ah, twelve baubles and seven boats.”
Mortimer gave an angry little whimper.
Alice nodded. “It’s a lot to lose. A lot of work for Mortimer, and income for both the W.I.’s charitable concerns and the dragons. It has also come to our attention that someone is selling baubles and boats that look very much like Mortimer’s on eBay. They are significantly undercutting us, but we don’t know if these are counterfeits or stolen. It has to be one of the two, as no one else has access to the genuine article.”
Miriam examined Gert, but she looked just as shocked as everyone else. Not that she’d really suspected Gert of robbing vans either, but, well. Gert Knew People, and she had access to scales. It wasn’t like they had many other suspects. Any, actually.
“On top of that, someone has stolen Frank’s turkeys.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence, then Rose burst out laughing, surprisingly loud and infectious, setting everyone else off. Alice let it go, smiling slightly.
“That can’t be connected, can it?” Pearl asked finally, still grinning. “I mean, stealing baubles is one thing. But turkeys?”
“This is why I feel it’s rather targeted,” Alice said. “Those were our turkeys.”
Everyone considered this for a moment, the mood in the room growing sombre. It wouldn’t be the first time the Toot Hansell W.I. had come under attack. Last time the vicar had died over it. Miriam shivered, and hoped the postmen were alright.
Jasmine put her hand up shyly from where she sat on the floor by the fire, still very pink and looking a little overheated in her Christmas penguin T-shirt.
Alice smiled at her “Yes, Jasmine?”
“Um. Well.” The younger woman took a sip of mulled wine at the same time as she spoke, and the cup slipped, splashing spicy red wine all over her T-shirt and the carpet. She yelped, and there was a sudden rush of movement and a general call for cloths and club soda and salt, and Rosemary and Carlotta started arguing over which was the best to use. Miriam hurried to the kitchen, glad of the reprieve, ignoring the rather unproductive argument as she cleaned the old carpet and told Jasmine to go borrow a top from her bedroom. Jasmine hurried off, mumbling apologies, and by the time she came back in the wine was cleaned away and everyone was settled again. Primrose followed Jasmine in and climbed into her lap, where she sat growling steadily at Alice.
“I’m so sorry,” Jasmine said.
“It’s quite alright,” Miriam replied. The old, garishly patterned carpet was threadbare in places and somewhat stained already. It was most forgiving.
“You were saying?” Alice said.
“Oh! Oh, yes. Um. The baubles? The ones on eBay?” Jasmine coughed and took sip of wine, and Miriam decided to keep a cloth close by. Just in case.
“Yes?” Alice nodded encouragingly.
“I’ve sort of been keeping an eye on them, and there were two reviews yesterday that said they were dangerous. Someone had one shoot out their living room window, right through the double-glazing, and someone else had one explode! They said they just heard a bang and came downstairs to find pieces of it all over the place.”
“Oh, dear,” Alice murmured, looking at the dragons. “Is that possible?”
“Not with Mortimer’s,” Beaufort said firmly, before the younger dragon could reply. “Is it, lad?”
“Well, it shouldn’t be,” Mortimer said, tucking his tail tighter over his toes. His shoulders were hunched up around his ears, and he hadn’t even touched the assorted mince pies the ladies had piled in front of him. “We test them really thoroughly. I leave them in the work shop alight for at least two weeks before I bring them down here, and light them and put them out twenty or so times to make sure they’re consistent. If they’re not, I start again.”
“And mine have been up since last Christmas,” Miriam said. “They were too nice to put away.”
“Well,” Alice said. “I think it’s safe to assume these are counterfeits, then.”
“But how? You need dragon scales, and the right charms – how could anyone …” Mortimer trailed off, and Miriam peeked at Gert again. She still looked as confused as the rest of them.
“There’s other Folk who can get access to scales, and know how to cast charms,” Beaufort said. “Someone must have rumbled us, and now they’re stealing your ideas.” He shook his head. “We should have copyrighted them.”
Mortimer stared at him. “How, Beaufort? I can’t exactly send a magical item off to the local patent office, can I?”
Beaufort waved a paw dismissively. “You could have put one of those little C’s in a circle on them. That would have made them think twice, at least.”
Mortimer buried his snout in his paws. “This is terrible. Someone’s going to get hurt. I have to stop making them. We have to stop selling them!”
“We won’t be beaten by these horrid people,” Priya said, leaning forward on the sofa and shaking a finger at the young dragon, who looked at her with some alarm. “We can start by all complaining to eBay that they’re counterfeit products and shouldn’t be being sold. That should at least slow them down.”
“If they’re not trademarked, they can’t be counterfeited,” Jasmine said with surprising authority, then whispered, “I’m sorry, Mortimer.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I should have seen this coming. I should have known it wouldn’t work. We should have just stuck to the market stalls. Or I should never have made them at all. I knew it.”
“Rubbish,” Beaufort said. “There is one answer, and one answer only to this. We get to the bottom of it. We find the missing postmen, and we find the culprits. No one steals from the Cloverly dragons or the Toot Hansell W.I.!”
The women looked at each other doubtfully, then Gert said, “That’s more like it!” and a ragged cheer went around the room. Excited chatter started up, and Gert waved them to silence. “Where do you want us to start?” she asked Beaufort.
“Ah. Well. Finding the spot where the postmen were taken from would be good. Mortimer and I could have a sniff around, see what we come up with.”
“Excellent idea,” Alice said.
“I could ask Ben,” Jasmine said, “but I don’t know if he’ll say. If I start asking questions he might not tell me anything more at all.”
“Have you checked Twitter?” Miriam blurted, then wondered what on earth she was doing. What was wrong with her? She shouldn’t be encouraging this. Mortimer was staring at her in horror. After all, they were meant to be the sensible ones. But Beaufort’s enthusiasm really was terribly contagious.
Alice looked at her like she was speaking another language. “How will that help? Isn’t that just a lot of people insulting each other?”
“No, it’s great.” Jasmine had her phone out already. “And that’s a fantastic idea. Someone will’ve driven past and put a photo up.”
“What on earth for?” Alice still looked mystified.
“Human curiosity,” Rose said. “We can’t help ourselves.”
“Well, maybe some of us can’t—”
“Here!” Jasmine said triumphantly. “Look, it even says, ‘What’s happened up at the start of High Fell walk? Cops everywhere and a burned-out van. #skipton #dales #news.’”
“Hashtag?”
“Are they those nice potato things you made once?” Beaufort asked.
“Um, no—”
“Never mind, Jasmine,” Alice said. “That’s wonderful. Well done, you.”
Jasmine we
nt an even deeper pink, and Carlotta topped up her mug of wine.
“Well, then,” Beaufort said. “Show me where that is on a map. Mortimer and I’ll head over there now.”
“We will?” Mortimer asked.
“No time like the present.”
“We should drive,” Alice said. “You can lie down in the back, then if it’s safe we’ll stop.”
“Flying’s quicker.”
“Someone may notice two dragons flitting about the place.”
“We don’t flit.”
“Um, Alice?” Teresa said.
“We’re not discussing this, Beaufort. You will be riding in the car.”
The High Lord looked obstinate, and Alice glared at him.
“Alice?” Teresa said again.
“On a day like this, no one will ever notice us,” Beaufort said.
“No.”
“Alice,” Teresa repeated, a little louder.
“Look,” Miriam said. “Alice is right—”
“Alice,” Teresa said, and everyone finally looked at her. “The police are here.”
In the sudden stillness that fell over the room, they all clearly heard the rat-tat-tat of the knocker, but the dog was the only one that reacted, yapping hysterically as she raced out of the room.
“We’re not meant to know anything about this, are we?” Gert asked, looking at Alice and Miriam.
“Not as such,” Alice admitted, and Miriam covered her face with her hands.
Rat-tat-a-tat.
7
DI Adams
DI Adams was not having a good morning. She blamed it on Toot Hansell in general and the Women’s Institute in particular, although they probably weren’t to blame for the fact that yet again no one had filled the coffee machine, or that she’d dropped the coffee she bought from across the road and splattered her new grey suit trousers with it. Nor were they technically the reason Detective Chief Inspector Temple (often known as The Temper) was glaring at her as she tried to creep out the door without being seen.
“Adams!”
“Sir.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Follow-up on that smash and grab in Chapel Allerton last week.”
He gave her a suspicious look. “Spending a lot of time out and about.”
“Well, that’s where the crime is, sir.” She cringed inwardly as she said it. He already acted like he was doing her a favour, letting some London cop come and join his precious team.
He frowned, then snorted laughter. “Fine, you want to freeze your toes off, go for it. We’ve got proper cold up here, not your balmy London winters.”
She sighed. “It is pretty chilly.”
“Just don’t go catching the flu and wanting signing off on sick leave. Soft southerners.” He laughed again, apparently feeling this was quite witty, and DI Adams pulled a smile from somewhere then headed out the door.
She hadn’t entirely lied. She had every intention of swinging by Chapel Allerton on the way. Or maybe on the way back. Probably that. But one of the reasons she was having a bad morning was that she’d barely slept last night, and what sleep she’d had was peopled with enormous, fire-breathing dragons of the Game of Thrones variety, furiously attacking London while she ran after them waving a scone and shouting, “Let’s all have a nice cup of tea and talk about it.” Which was a phrase she had never uttered in her life, and didn’t imagine she’d have any need to in the future.
Nightmares aside, she’d spent most of the night thinking about missing postmen. DI Collins had that whole salt-of-the-earth, hale-and-hearty thing going, but she doubted he had any first-hand knowledge of dragons, or any on his contact list. There was a protective little part of her that wanted to make sure it stayed that way. For all the horror that she’d seen in London – the things that had stolen the kids, the things that were terrible and hungry and had just about broken her – the dragons were the other side of a world she hadn’t even known existed. They were light and magic and beauty. Alright, they were frustrating light and magic and beauty, but they made her feel a little like that time she’d discovered a butterfly had built a chrysalis in the wilting bamboo plant in her bedroom at home. She hadn’t even told her mother, and certainly not her little brothers. They’d have poked it, and peered at it, and cheapened its magic with a lot of talk. Plus her youngest brother probably would have pulled it apart to see what was inside. He’d been that sort of kid. Now he was in elder care and exceptionally good at it, which precisely no one had expected.
So she had to figure out the missing postman before DI Collins got too close to the truth behind the case, whatever that might be. Which meant going to Skipton to find out what he knew, and then probably braving another visit to Toot Hansell. No one had called her, of course, but she had about as much confidence in Alice and Miriam telling her what was going on as she had in DCI Temple inviting her home to meet the missus. Or mister.
“More important things?” DI Adams asked, bewildered. She was sitting across a messy desk from DI Collins, holding a mug of tea that read You Can’t Get Owt For Nowt, which she supposed was some Yorkshire witticism. He hadn’t come out to meet her this time, just told PC McLeod to let her in and make them both a cuppa while he finished a report. He’d waved her to the chair with that same friendly smile, then ignored her while he typed with surprising efficiency. She had the uneasy feeling that he was probably better at keeping up with paperwork than she was. And now he’d just told her that the case wasn’t a priority, because, to quote, he had more important things to do. She tried to keep the disbelief from showing on her face. In a place like this? More important things to do than find the occupant of a fire-bombed van?
“Look,” DI Collins said. “We’re a small outfit. We’re stretched as it is going into Christmas, and to be honest, it looks like the postman did do a runner with the contents of the van after all. He had a girlfriend his wife knew nothing about, and apparently had been looking at flights to Majorca. He’s probably out there somewhere right now, flogging the lot. We’ve put alerts on all ports and borders, and that’s all we can do for the moment.”
“A man is missing. His van was torched.” She couldn’t quite get her head around how casual he was. Although she supposed she should be happy she hadn’t sat down to hear him say, I think it was dragons.
“Well, maybe Leeds can take it on then, since you’re obviously not busy enough.”
DI Adams gave him a tight smile. “I have a full caseload myself.”
“And yet here you are, sticking your nose in.” The big inspector pushed a pile of folders toward her. “I have two runaway kids. A stabbing. A brawl in the town centre that we’re still rounding up. A whole bunch of domestics, as per the usual Christmas spirit. A couple of break-ins. A fifty-two-year-old man who says his mother’s been abducted by aliens and a pod person returned in her place. Car thefts. Plus a load of bloody turkeys gone missing. All of which need attention just as much as a van full of missing post, if not more. The techs found nothing. There weren’t even signs of a struggle. So, really, if you’re so bored in Leeds that you have to keep coming out here to hassle us, please take your pick.”
DI Adams sighed. “I don’t mean to hassle you.”
“Yet here you sit.” She scowled, and he gave her a smile that suggested he wasn’t as put out as he sounded. “Just stating the facts, DI Adams. And, speaking of such tricky things, why aren’t you talking to my boss, if Leeds is so interested?”
DI Adams took a sip of tea, then said, “Do you always ask questions you know the answer to?”
“Only when it amuses me. On your own time, are you?”
“I am.” Now that was an out-and-out lie, but she was here now.
“Missing postmen a special interest of yours?”
“Something like that.”
“You need better hobbies.”
“I don’t have hobbies.”
“Maybe you should get some.”
“Are you going to let me take a loo
k at that file?”
He shrugged. “Sure. If it’ll make you happy. Merry Christmas.” He fished it out from between the other folders. “You can use an interview room. I expect it back on my desk by afternoon tea.”
“It will be.” She grabbed the file and retreated before he could ask her anything else.
“DI Adams, you still on your own time?”
“Yes – wait, it’s not anywhere near afternoon tea time!” she protested as DI Collins scooped up the folder. To be fair, she’d finished reading it half an hour ago, but she’d been doodling on her notepad in the peace of the interview room, looking up dragons on her mobile so she could tell Beaufort that yes, actually, she had done her research. Although none of the dragons she was finding on Wikipedia or even more dubious sites seemed to support the existence of tea-drinking dragons. If she was honest with herself, she was mostly putting off getting in the car. It wasn’t often you could find a quiet spot to sit for a while, and Toot Hansell was unlikely to offer anything in the way of peacefulness, for all its rural English idyll.
“New developments, Adams.” DI Collins looked at her expectantly. “Are you coming?”
“Coming where?” she asked, already shrugging into her coat and dropping her paper water cup in the bin.
DI Collins regarded the cup with interest. The edge had been chewed ragged. “You have a rabbit in here, or just dubious stress management techniques?”
She scowled at him. “What new developments? And where?”
“Another missing mail van, same spot, just outside Toot Hansell. Coming?”
She just about stepped on his heels as she grabbed her bag and hurried out of the room after him.
“What’s your name?” DI Collins asked. He didn’t have the dashboard light on, but he was taking the corners fast, and DI Adams was clinging to the door handle, regarding the dry-stone walls hemming them in with some distrust. She could smell farmyard smells, even with the windows closed. This was why she never wanted a country post. Farm smells and silly narrow lanes with walls on them rather than nice wide kerbs. She swallowed a protest as DI Collins hit the accelerator, swung them around a tractor, and roared down a small straight.