by steve higgs
‘Yeah,’ said Hilary. ‘You guys are being awfully secretive. I thought us men were in this together.’
‘Hah!’ laughed Anthea. ‘When you have quite finished with the macho rubbish, you had better count us in as well. Isn’t that right, Alice?’
‘Welllll,’ said Alice.
‘Damn right,’ Anthea said before Alice could give her opinion on the matter.
I looked around. Usually it was just me on these cases or sometimes me and Big Ben. Now I had a squad and I thought back to my earlier concern about them being in danger here. ‘Gather round folks, I’ll tell you what I know.’ We all came into a huddle as I explained my thoughts.
‘You don’t know much, do you.’ Anthea pointed out helpfully when I finished. I think she had planned to say that no matter what I revealed, but in this case, considering we might be targets, she was right.
‘So, let me see if I have this right,’ Jagjit started. ‘You think that the Yeti isn’t a Yeti but is something else, but you don’t know what yet and the three people it has killed have all been murdered by someone who is using the legend of the Yeti to cover up the murders. Is that about it?’
Alice said, ‘You missed out the bit about the Yeti being under someone’s control and the possibility that the man that hired you being the killer.’
‘Don’t forget my favourite bit where the client and the police chief are involved in a conspiracy to murder his rivals, the Chevaliers or perhaps frame them for the murders,’ added Hilary.
I waved them into silence. ‘Okay, okay, you think this is farfetched? Amanda just solved a case where she had aliens tampering with the milk while it was still in the cows.’ I faced a sea of bemused faces. ‘What I am saying is; this sounds incredible to you, but for me it’s just Thursday. I get this every day.’
Jagjit nodded his head in acceptance. ‘You plan to get to the victims tonight and find some evidence?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘I can do that with you,’ he volunteered.
‘What about Marie Caron?’ asked Hilary.
I pursed my lips and shook my head. ‘Her body was taken away on the day it happened. Her mother identified her from a birth mark, but I don’t think an autopsy was conducted. Whatever the case, we can’t get to her.’
‘What do we do between now and when we go sneaking about tonight?’ Jagjit asked.
‘We make a weapon.’
Weapons and Theories. Thursday, December 1st 1453hrs
I felt like Hannibal Smith of the A team as I outlined my plan and sent the squad in different directions to perform tasks. We were all to meet back in the Honeymoon Suite in four hours or however soon we could get things done. After dinner, a select few of us would break in to see the bodies and get the evidence that they had been tied up and fed to the Yeti. Before that of course we had to find out where the bodies were going.
Jagjit and Alice were going to find me a microscope if there was one here to be found. I judged that there must be, there was a pharmacy after all. Big Ben was to set up an observation post to watch for Francois returning with the bodies so we would know where to find them tonight. Anthea would research ingredients required to make a tranquiliser and Hilary was going to work with me as we found parts to make the weapon.
As everyone headed in different directions, some were giddy with excitement at the mission they felt they were undertaking and others, like Hilary, were just feeling a bit sick. He said, ‘I thought you were going to see if the police chief had access to a tranquiliser gun.’
‘I was.’ It was what I had suggested I would do when I brought the subject up last night. ‘I’m not sure I can trust him.’
Hilary didn’t like that. ‘If you cannot trust the only policeman in the resort, who can we trust?’
‘Each other,’ I replied. ‘He might be completely innocent, but someone tied those boys up and it was the police chief’s group that conveniently found them. Their bindings were removed by the time I arrived, which could have happened as soon as they were dead. Or might have been just before we got there. I just don’t know.’
‘Okay then, how on earth do we make a weapon to shoot and knock out a Yeti in the space of a few hours?’
‘That, my friend, is a good question. The answer to which is only part formed in my head.’ That I didn’t have a set of engineered plans to show him clearly worried him even more. ‘Look, I find that having an exact plan works so rarely that I don’t bother making them. I have a rough idea of what we need and how it should go together, I just haven’t had to do anything like this for a while.’
‘Since you were in the army?’ he asked.
I just nodded as we walked. ‘The first thing we need is a propellent, something that will fire the tranquiliser darts. This should do nicely.’ Bull had stopped to sniff a pair of fire extinguishers. One was water and the other was CO2. The water-based extinguisher was no use at all, but the carbon dioxide would provide a blast of gas. ‘We’ll need a few for testing so grab another two from different points in the hotel and bring them back to my room. We’ll assemble the components there, okay?’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ he asked. ‘Taking the fire extinguishers, I mean.’
‘Only if there’s a fire.’
He conceded the point and left me to find two more while I grabbed a second myself and put them in the room. Over the space of the next hour, we found bits of pipe in different gauges, duct tape because you can fix anything with duct tape, springs, chunks of rubber and all manner of other paraphernalia we might need including a tool box that I liberated from a corner of the garage where they kept and maintained the Ski-Doos.
Jagjit sent a text to tell me they had a microscope but the chemist in the pharmacy wasn’t going to let them take it anywhere no matter what they offered him. I replied with an acknowledgement and advice that I would be with them shortly.
‘How’s Anthea getting on?’ I asked over my shoulder as I tried taping a fire extinguisher to a piece of pipe. I was on the carpet with pieces of junk we had collected spread all around me. The dogs had seen me sit so had taken that as an invitation and climbed onto my lap. Now I was balancing two Dachshunds on my legs and trying not to snag their fur with the duct tape.
Hilary made an I don’t know face but went to check while I continued playing with my makeshift gun. As he left the room, I hefted it and gave the extinguisher an experimental pull on the trigger. A blast of gas shot from the end of the pipe. I was going to need a shoulder strap though. Looking around, I wondered about using a belt then remembered the bath robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The belt on it was easy to tie and then tape in place so I hefted the pipe and fire extinguisher combo again. This time it was easier to use but I was shooting from the hip rather than the shoulder so aiming was going to be hit and miss. Unless I made it so it went over my shoulder and someone behind me aimed by looking down it.
That might work.
What I really needed was a projectile to try out. Behind me, the door opened again as Anthea came in trailed by her husband. She said, ‘I have a list of ingredients we need that we might be able to find here. They are all complex pharmaceutical products that we will have to get from the pharmacy though.’
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘For starters we need an opioid. I had to read a whole bunch of advice to understand even what I was reading, but everything starts with an opioid. Then, how you mix it depends on the type of species you are going after.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, for carnivores it is common to use a cyclohexamine like ketamine combined with a sedative like midazolam or diazepam.’ I had been listening while I continuing to fiddle with the gun but looked at her now to confirm she was reading from notes and hadn’t memorized the complex names.
‘What else,’ I prompted.
‘Actually, we can probably get away with Ketamine and diazepam if we can find them in a large enough quantity. We need to know what it weighs though in
order to calculate the dose,’ Anthea explained.
Hilary’s eyes widened. ‘Babe, this thing isn’t going to get on a scale for us. Its weight is really heavy. Like half a ton or something.’
Anthea was right though. ‘Overdosing it will kill it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t give it enough and it will just get woozy and distressed and probably be more dangerous, too much and you stop its heart. Somewhere in there is a sweet spot where we can knock it out for a while. How long will you need?’
I sniggered at myself. ‘I have no idea. I don’t even know where to find it. Not yet at least, but I do have an idea about that. I’m heading to the pharmacy now with the fur sample I have. Shall we all go?’ Two minutes later, with my room looking like a junkyard and the dogs leading the way, we went in search of Jagjit and Alice.
Outside it was almost warm. The breeze through the centre of the small resort village had dropped to nothing and the sun was blazing down from a cloudless sky. For the first time since we arrived, the dogs were happy to be outside. Their paws were sinking in the snow but the snowblower machines had been used to clear routes between the buildings so foot traffic could easily pass, and they were skipping happily along in their normal excited way. Bull stopped to sniff a piece of snow that he thought smelled of something, then lifted a back leg to sign his name on it. It wasn’t attractive but he had to go somewhere and everywhere was white.
The pharmacy was easy to spot with its internationally recognised white cross on a green sign. It was a small place that doubled as a supermarket as shops do in tiny resorts. Jagjit opened the door as we got to it; he had been watching for us in anticipation.
‘How’s the weapons factory going?’ he asked as the dogs dragged me inside, then he caught my expression. ‘Don’t worry, the owner doesn’t speak a word of English. Alice has been translating.’
‘Good,’ I replied. I didn’t think it a good idea to publicise my attempts to build a gun. ‘We need drugs to make the tranquiliser and something to dispense it with but otherwise I think I have something that might work. It just needs some testing.’
‘What drugs?’ he asked.
‘I have a list,’ said Anthea as Hilary shut the door behind her. ‘It’s not a long one but I doubt the pharmacist will be willing to hand over the things I want.’
Jagjit looked confused. ‘Why not?’
‘Because they are barbiturates and opiates and can be used to kill people in the correct doses?’
He looked at me for a second, then grinned. ‘Oh yeah. Come on, he’s in the back.’
Alice was with him we discovered when Jagjit led us into a room just behind the counter and cash register. The counter doubled as the pharmacy dispensing area. It was all very bijou.
‘Oh, hey, guys,’ Alice looked up and greeted us as we went in. The pharmacist in my head was going to be an old man with grey hair and pair of bifocal glasses. In contrast to my expectations, he was twenty something, wide in the shoulder and narrow at the hip from time in the gym and had a mop of scraggly black hair that complemented his grungy skier look. Around his right wrist were thin leather straps he had tied, there were more around his neck and a silver earing in just his right ear.
I said, ‘Bonjour,’ as I went in. Then said, ‘I have some fur to examine,’ as I held up the small baggy it was in.
He laughed and rattled off something in French that I didn’t understand, but he moved to the other side of the small room and pulled a cover from a microscope I hadn’t even spotted.
‘I told him we had something we needed to look at when he refused to let us take the microscope. He kept asking what it was, but I wouldn’t tell him. He is asking again now.’ Alice explained. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Tell him I found some fur near one of the attack sites and I want to know if it is fake or real.’ Alice translated, which made the man’s eyebrows reach for his hairline. He held out his hand for the little plastic bag I was holding but I didn’t hand it over, it was precious evidence. Instead I selected a single strand to carefully present.
He pursed his lips but said nothing as he held it up to the light then put it between two thin pieces of glass to slide under the microscope lens. Seconds later he was jabbering in French again.
Alice listened, asked a question and then looked up at our expectant faces. ‘It’s animal fur,’ she explained, which to be fair, I already knew. Then she said, ‘He thinks he can narrow down what genus it is.’
‘Tell him all I want is a photograph of the cross section of the hair. Can he do that?’ I asked.
While Alice translated, Jagjit whispered a question, ‘Why don’t you want to know what it is?’
‘Because I think I already know, and I don’t want anyone else to know that anyone else knows.’ He frowned at my poor explanation, ‘I will have to explain later.’
The pharmacist shrugged at Alice’s request and began doing something complicated with the microscope.
I leaned to whisper in Hilary’s ear, ‘We will have to shoplift the drugs we need. I’m going to get him to show me something outside and you two will need to snag the drugs from the shelves in here while he is distracted. I will come back and pay him once we wrap this up but I can’t ask for them without giving the game away.’
He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded his compliance and began whispering to Anthea. She shook her head emphatically. Thankfully, the handsome, trendy pharmacist pushed back his chair and began babbling in French again as, with a smile, he dodged by us and went out into the shop.
‘He sent the picture to the printer in the shop next door,’ said Alice following him. ‘He also said it’s on the house because I am so nice.’
‘Oh, did he really?’ enquired Jagjit. He stared at his wife with mock jealousy for a moment, before adding, ‘You know I can speak French too, right?’
Alice giggled as she followed the pharmacist out of the back room, closely followed by her husband. ‘We’ll wait here then?’ I called after the departing figures as Jagjit chaperoned his wife to make sure the other man didn’t get any ideas. My French was rusty but even I knew the man hadn’t used the French word for nice when he complimented Alice. He didn’t look back as he left his premises though, I guess it was the laid-back hipster/skier persona that made him so relaxed but Anthea, Hilary and I all stared at each other for a split second, then burst into action and started raiding his shelves.
No one was watching for his return though. ‘You two keep looking,’ I called as I took up post in the front of the shop. Hillary and his wife were being as tidy as thorough and as fast as they could as they scanned the shelves and picked up boxes to inspect.
‘I found Diazepam,’ shouted Anthea. Then two seconds later, ‘I have the Ketamine as well.’
‘Get more than one. I don’t know how much we will need, and we need some kind of spring-loaded syringe to deliver it.’ I continued to watch for Alice and Jagjit returning with the pharmacist, my heartrate booming in my chest as the clock ticked away.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Hilary called through.
I called back, ‘There’s still time. Keep looking, please.’ A spring-loaded syringe. Basically, I wanted them to find a tranquiliser dart. Why would a pharmacist stock those? I had failed to think this all the way through. How was I going to get the drugs into the animal if I couldn’t shoot them from a safe distance? Maybe it is a lady Yeti, I thought, in which case I can just get Big Ben to seduce it and we can jab it in the bum when it’s not looking. Grinning at my own joke, my heart stopped as I heard the pharmacist’s voice behind me.
They were coming through the back door!
The dogs spun around and barked loudly, doing their best to alert me to the presence of a person as they always did. Alice saw my panicked expression and was bright enough to understand what it meant. She had been following behind the man but snagged his arm now and looped hers through it in a flirtatious way. He stopped talking as, surprised, he looked down at her arm touchin
g his and then glanced at Jagjit; the man clearly wearing a gold ring that matched hers.
Alice was using her arm, looped through the other man’s as it was, to steer him around the shop. I couldn’t translate what she was saying fast enough but she seemed to be asking him questions about his life and his skiing prowess. I heard him telling her that he preferred snowboarding, but I could still hear the Clintons opening drawers and cupboards in their search and clearly he could too as he kept swinging his head across to look in the direction of his back room.
I saw his facial expression change as he reached a decision and tried to pull away. He was going to catch Hilary and Anthea raiding his shop and that was going to be hard to explain.
Then two things happened. I guess Hilary heard voices because he poked his head out just as Alice got the pharmacist’s attention. I watched his eyes flare before he ducked back into the small room out of sight. The second thing was that Alice distracted the pharmacist by grabbing his chin to pull it around to look at her and then stuck her tongue in his mouth as she proceeded to snog him.
The noise from the backroom stopped but I guess they didn’t know what to do because they didn’t come out and Jagjit did a very passable impression of a volcano about to erupt as his new wife kissed another man two-feet in front of him.
Alice broke off the kiss and let her arms fall to her sides. I hoped the tactic had given Hilary and Anthea enough time to put things straight because the moment the pharmacist’s senses caught up to him, he dashed across the shop and into the back room from whence we then heard an explosion of inventive French swearwords and a tirade of abuse in return from Anthea.
I was stunned, rooted to the spot and unable to think up a reasonable lie to explain any of what was happening. I didn’t need to though. The next second, Anthea came out of the back room, her clothes all askew and what looked like her knickers in her hand, dragging Hilary along behind her as with one hand he tried to pull his trousers back up.
They had been pretending to have sex! Or maybe they had actually been having sex. I couldn’t tell but it was clear the pharmacist bought it as he yelled abuse from the doorway of his back room. Some of the abuse was aimed at Jagjit and Alice, who he labelled in turn as a sex-mad slut and a wierdo that liked to watch his wife with other men.