Clocks Locks and Danger

by Lizzie Lewis

  As we get towards Button Up, I’m desperately hoping Pete Wilders will be standing in the coffee shop window and realise something suspicious is going on. He likes playing detective, so he told me, and he might phone the police, but probably too late. This man is going to grab the book, kill us, and disappear before the police can make an appearance. I’m guessing the gun has a silencer, but I haven’t been able to see it.

  Of course, there’s no sign of Pete when we reach Button Up. As I get the door keys out of my bag, I’m holding the Sherlock Holmes key ring Liam that gave me. the kid is going to be devastated if anything happens to me. Well, I hope everyone is going to be devastated, including my parents. Unfortunately, the figure of Sherlock Holmes is plastic and not a weapon in any shape or form. And the keys are too short to try to stab the gunman.

  I take my time opening both locks on the outside door, but still no one comes.

  “Unset the alarm, Mrs Jones,” the man says. “No tricks. We wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t made this place so secure. We had plans to come in one night and give you a surprise.”

  “I’m glad about that,” I mutter under my breath. But he’s obviously heard me.

  “Different story, same ending. It’s going to look as though you shot the Inspector and then killed yourself, because you blame the police for your husband’s death. These things happen. Go on, up the stairs. Both of you.” The door closes automatically behind us as we start slowly up the stairs and I hear the latch click firmly into place.

  Without the key, the man isn’t going to be able to escape after he’s killed us. Abi is certainly in for a shock tomorrow when she comes round with her own key to see why I haven’t come into Button Up for my cappuccino and croissant!

  “And no talking ‒ or I shoot you here.”

  I believe him. The man sounds drunk enough to do something crazy like that.

  Roger Dickinson leads the way. I get the feeling he’s about to tell me something, but he stays silent. The gunman’s breath smells like Bruno’s. I’m hoping he’s unsteady on his feet. We’re nearly at the top, when I pretend to stumble. The man comes closer. Much closer. His breath stinks so strongly of alcohol that I cough.

  He prods me in the back with his gun, and it hurts. “Keep moving.”

  I raise my right foot as though I’m about to take the next step, but instead I kick back as hard as I can. The man is completely taken by surprise, and I hear him stumble backwards, but not before he manages to fire off a shot. It’s not loud. The gun probably has a silencer.

  I don’t think I’ve been hit, and even if Roger Dickinson has, we’re so nearly at the top that I can help him through the door.

  I can see a splash of blood on the floor. I don’t think it’s mine.

  I quickly unlock the door and shove the detective inspector into my office so hard that he falls over, but I’m not bothered. I slam the door shut and fix the metal bar in place, making us secure for the moment.

  Roger Dickinson seems to be in a daze, holding his arm as though in pain. He must have been hit. I was expecting him to take charge, but no matter. My phone is where I left it on my desk at the detective inspector’s instructions. I pick it up.

  The man is pounding on the door, and throwing his weight against it. So far, the bar is holding. Roger Dickinson has suddenly come to life, and he grabs my phone from my hands, and dials. It’s not the usual 999, because he gets straight through to some special emergency number.

  The man is still throwing himself against the door. I hadn’t expected it to stand up to this sort of treatment when I ordered it.

  “Armed police are on their way,” Roger says. “We’d better go through into your living room, in case he starts shooting through the door panel.”

  “We can do better than that,” I say. “I’ve got an emergency escape through the back window. I take it you can climb down a rope ladder.” I point to his arm. “Do you think you can manage?”

  Roger puts his arm round me. I think it’s the one that’s bleeding, but I don’t mind. It’s good to be held at a time like this. “Just a flesh wound.”

  Roger is right about the gunman. He takes a couple of shots through the door, and then we hear him run down the stairs. Hopefully, the automatic lock at the bottom of the stairs will prevent his escape. There’s a panic button in my bedroom, as well as under my desk. I never expected to need it in circumstances like this. I know help is on the way, but I press the button by my bed as Roger opens the window.

  The DI is sharp. He sees where to hook the end of the coiled ladder onto the secure fitting below the windowsill inside the room, and throws the rest of it out. Meanwhile, the alarm is sounding loudly both inside and outside the building, and even more loudly on the staircase where it’s designed to be loud enough to drive someone out of their mind.

  Roger seems to be debating whether he or I should go first. Another shot comes from the staircase, penetrating the door. I don’t care if it’s damaged my lovely desk. At least he’s not able to hit one of us.

  Roger tries to lift me over the low windowsill, but I can see he’s in pain now. I can manage by myself. Within seconds I’m on the ground, and I feel the ladder above me trembling as Roger Dickinson already has his feet on it. I really hope he can manage to hold on, in spite of his arm injury.

  Above the noise of the alarm, I can hear emergency vehicles arriving. Within seconds, armed police are at the front and back of Button Up, and the team at the front are shouting to everyone to stay inside the café.

  I go to grab my phone from Roger to warn Abi and everyone to get out of sight, but he’s using it to convey instructions. I suppose in a film this would be exciting, but I’m scared stiff. Absolutely scared stiff.

  It’s nearly half an hour before we’re allowed into the coffee shop to recover. It seems that Abi, realising that the police needed to get into my apartment, hurried out and offered them my spare keys.

  The man has now gone, tasered and handcuffed, but the press are still hanging around. I need to speak to them. We were told on our course not to miss the opportunity for self advertising. Although I’m not going to take any credit for the capture, I want to put in a personal appearance, and hopefully get booked for a full interview and photo shoot at a later date. The sooner the better.

  Roger Dickinson seems to have taken charge, and he assures the reporters and a television crew that a statement will be released shortly. He’s already been examined by the medics and refused to go to the hospital, in spite of their insistence. So for the moment his arm is bandaged. It seems the bone didn’t get hit.

  I stand proudly as one of the photographers takes a low-level picture with me and my sign in the office window above. I don’t want to attract clients who are on the business end of a gun, but it does make me feel professional. I’ve been told that the Button Up Detective Agency will shortly be on national television. How good is that!

  I doubt my parents will be able to see any news about this in Poland. And how good is that!

  Epilogue

  It’s gone six o’clock now, and although Abi has officially closed the coffee shop and locked up, Pete has pulled several tables together so that the whole group of us can sit down.

  Roger Dickinson has gone. No doubt he’s busy questioning the gunman. There’s Abi and Danny here, Abi’s friends Rupert and Alice Forrester who I’ve not really met yet, Melanie and Steve Donovan with young Liam, and Pete – with Hayley sitting on his lap even though there are plenty of empty chairs.

  Outside, I can see people slowing down to have a good look through the large windows as they walk past, but the police and the press have gone, and there’s nothing to see. Judging by the interest from the passers-by, I think Abi would do a roaring trade if she opened up for business.

  There are three bullet holes in the door at the top of the stairs, and I’m wondering whether to leave them to impress clients. Perhaps it will scare the wrong people off. If Victor Armitage comes storming up the stairs to compla
in about my interference in his love life, I’ll just nod and smile, and point to the three holes. And I gather Liam Donovan is already demanding to see them!

  Mrs Miller contacted me a few minutes ago to tell me how successful my plan had been with her daughter and Mr Armitage. She had contacted Mrs Cooke and asked her to leave the back gate open for her and Laura, and at five o’clock on the dot the brazen hussy had arrived in all her finery, to quote Mrs Miller.

  I gather there had been such a scene in the road that most of the residents had come out to witness the fight. Do I feel sorry for Laura? Not a bit of it. I wish I’d had a mother like that, instead of one who more or less forced me into a relationship with Bruno.

  As soon as the apartment was declared safe, Roger Dickinson and I made straight for my small collection of books. The Police Driver's Handbook was among them. I had once studied it in case there was some useful advice about high-speed chases, but I would have been wasting my time with my little Nissan Micra. And I still haven’t taken it to Rupert Forrester for him to sort out.

  Then it came to me. I remembered how Sam had seemed obsessed with that book in the days before he was killed. I pulled his leg about it, saying there was some hope of us chasing anyone in our Micra. He said he wanted to jot down a few things while he remembered them.

  Roger Dickinson and I checked the book page by page from front to back, and couldn’t find anything handwritten. It’s a paperback so there was nothing hidden in the spine. What had Sam wanted to jot down, and where had he done it? I couldn’t remember seeing a pad of paper with him. Just a silver ballpoint pen.

  Of course! I remembered the game Sam and I played at Christmas with our secret messages written with UV ink with our special silver pens. In my kit I keep a bright ultraviolet lamp. I grabbed it and switched it on. Written inside the back cover we found several names, in Sam’s handwriting. Roger Dickinson said he felt frustrated that they had missed it on the search of the house immediately following Sam’s death, but I told him they were hardly expected to check every single book for invisible ink.

  Roger Dickinson has taken the book as evidence. Although for security reasons I wasn’t allowed to examine the names closely, apparently Sam had written possible suspects in the gang of drug dealers. Why there? Perhaps he wasn’t confident enough about the names to pass them on, but had jotted them down using the UV pen so I would be unlikely to read them and get involved. And the book was handy at the time. Had he gone that fatal night to follow up one of these names, to meet someone he trusted?

  Someone with more brains than the gunman must have worked out how to access Sam’s phone ‒ eventually. But if they had got hold of the book, would they have had enough brains to search for the UV ink?

  I almost feel sorry for Detective Inspector Roger Dickinson, having to send his wife and children into hiding. He seems uncertain as to when it will be safe for them to come back. The gunman on the stairs was, to use the DI’s earlier description, no more than one of the branches. Hopefully, he will lead the police to the root, and the tree of evil will die. So at the moment I may not be completely safe.

  Perhaps Sam has left more information behind. I’m going to search every single page of every single book in my apartment with my UV light.

  I’m fingering Sam’s gold cross, still on its thin leather cord. It meant a lot to Sam, but I’m still not ready to wear it – not yet. Maybe never. I don’t want to be a fraud. Abi’s just invited me to her church on Sunday morning. I can’t really believe there’s something there for me. I prayed a few times when Bruno was at his worst, when I lost the baby. Anybody would pray in those circumstances. Did God hear? Abi and some of the others seem to have found something I’m looking for.

  Liam has been listening, and he comes over and whispers that I can sit near the front with him and his friends, Sophie and William. He says everyone may sing what he calls his “best ever church song.” As far as I can gather, it’s about a sheep lost in a storm in the snow on a dark mountain.

  Apparently the shepherd in the song looked for it because he loved it, even though it had deliberately run away. Maybe I need that sort of love and acceptance. No, perhaps I need that love! What would Sam say?

  THE END

  The Abi Button Book Series

  Tall Men and Strangers is the first Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance.

  Abigail (Abi) Button is thirty-one, and in spite of kissing a few frogs she has yet to find her prince. On the lookout for a tall, dark stranger (but not too strange) she realises he has been living nearby all the time. It’s just that she has not really noticed Jack Thornley until she meets him in her road late one evening, standing by an emergency ambulance.

  Abi’s elderly neighbour is Ivy Smith, and she’s ninety-one. She gives Abi a small silver key, telling her to keep it secret from her nephew Jack who is helping to care for her. What the key opens, Abi has no idea.

  Ivy worries that she hears someone moving around her house at night, when she should be alone. Abi tries to reassure her by saying it’s only the old house settling at night, or noisy neighbours, but Ivy Smith is unconvinced. Soon Abi is unconvinced, too.

  As Abi’s friendship with Jack develops, he invites her to his local church where she meets Danny. Much to her embarrassment she remembers kissing Danny at school. Old memories start to surface, threatening to put the relationship with Jack in jeopardy.

  A cozy mystery romance taking place in a small English town, told by Abi Button.

  Poetry and Mayhem is the second Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance.

  Abi Button gets involved with the lazy nephews and nieces of their elderly uncle who lived in the creepy house at the far end of her road. Isaac Whittard Magritte Newton, to give him his full name, has set a cryptic clue in his will for the siblings to solve. The will says the first nephew or niece who can solve the clue is going to be extremely wealthy, but the puzzle seems unbreakable. The old man once set crossword puzzles for two of the national newspapers, and other puzzles for various magazines. Abi, with her modest skills in cryptic crosswords, has to admit defeat.

  Also on Abi’s mind, perhaps as a matter of greater importance than solving the clue that will help four squabbling siblings, is her developing friendship with junior solicitor Danny Wells. She wonders if she has at last found the right man. Melanie Upton ‒ Abi’s co-owner of Button Up coffee shop ‒ assures Abi that this one is definitely a keeper. But as Abi points out, Melanie says the same thing about every man Abi gets to know.

  Cake and Calamity, the third Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance.

  “Organising a wedding is a piece of cake,” to quote Abigail (Abi) Button. She could be right, because a local wedding shop provides the whole service: bridal gowns, venue, cake, food, cars ... everything that makes the perfect wedding. Apart from husbands!

  Meanwhile, Melanie Upton ‒ Abi Button’s co-owner of Button Up coffee shop ‒ confides in Abi that romance is in the air with an Italian property investor called Romero Rocco. Can it be true?

  Abi’s new friend and neighbour is also getting married. She now owns the house Abi calls Creepy Mansion. She says getting a builder to restore the old house should also be a simple matter. So with a joint wedding planned for Abi and her new friend, Abi asks, “What can possibly go wrong?”

  A cozy mystery romance taking place in a small English town, told by Abi Button.

  Ghouls and Jewels, the fourth Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance.

  Abi returns from her honeymoon to find a threatening letter on the doormat. Her new friend Alice says her sister and brothers are claiming she’s secretly in possession of a priceless Russian tiara and associated jewels, and they insist on having their share ‒ and they are already arranging to take her to court.

  This is news to Alice, so Abi and Alice, with their new husbands set out to search the creepy old house that Alice has recently purchased.

  A neighbour says she has heard wailing coming from the house, and Abi’s childhood fear that the house is haunt
ed seems to be confirmed when she sees a woman’s face staring out between the bars of a basement window at night.

  The search for the Russian treasure leads to an unpleasant encounter with a dominating father and aunt. More problems for Abi to solve, in between running Button Up coffee shop with her co-owner Melanie Upton, who has romantic news to share. This time it sounds as though it could be promising ‒ with just one small drawback.

  Doughnuts and Disaster, It’s late February and the area is experiencing an unexpected cold snap with snow. Liam, Steve Donovan’s eight-year-old son, is staying with Abi while Steve and Melanie are on their honeymoon.

  Abi is concerned when single mum Bethany reports a man wearing a long raincoat, hanging around the local play area taking photographs. Bethany is afraid that her father and disagreeable Aunt Erica have sent him to spy on her, with a view to snatching baby Freddie. Abi thinks there are two men watching. Why two?

  Young Liam is clearly upset by all the changes in his life, and Abi tries to win his confidence with jam donuts. Abi warns Liam and his friends to keep away from the deep pond in the woods, because the ice is too thin to walk on. But Liam is on the hunt for Bigfoot, convinced he lives somewhere amongst the trees.

  Bethany’s friendship with Harry the builder seems to be turning into a romance, maybe even a wedding ‒ if Bethany’s father and Aunt Erica can be kept away. Pete and Hayley also wonder if this is a good opportunity to discuss marriage!

  A cozy mystery romance taking place in a small English town, told by Abi Button.

  Apple Pie and Follies The final in the Abi Button series of six books taking place in a small English town. Alice and Rupert Forrester have just moved into the house Abi used to call Creepy Castle. The basement apartment will soon be ready for newlywed Bethany and Harry with baby Freddie. Alice finds an old map of the area in the college library, which leads to some exciting discoveries.