Wortel pulled up outside the house of Alex Pine, turned off the car engine and looked up to see if he could see any movement inside. Nothing. He closed the window and climbed out of the car. ‘Nice and quietly now’ he thought to himself just as his mobile beeped into life.
Cursing under his breath, Wortel grabbed his phone and looked at another text message which was once more in a language he didn’t understand.
‘Usted no respondió. ¿Por qué? Ellos me van a matar.’
Flicking his phone to silent he made his way to the front door and peeked carefully through the letterbox. He heard no movement inside and stepped onto the front garden to look through the French window. Cautiously placing one foot next to a dying brown shrub and the other alongside a smaller, barely living spiky green plant, he peered through the window. Again nothing. And yet his senses said something wasn’t sitting quite right.
He made his way down the side of the house and into the overgrown back garden. Some wooden placards lay discarded among the grass including one which Alex was carrying the night he had been seen on the CCTV confronting Professor Partridge.
Wortel looked through the kitchen window and saw some newspaper cuttings and photographs spread on the dining table. He inched along carefully using his heightened sense of smell to see if he could pick up any scent of Alex Pine or Victoria Plum. Nothing. He reached the back door and noticed that it was ajar. Not forced open, just ajar.
Wortel opened the door and entered the kitchen. While the furnishings were modern they had not been cleaned in more than a little while. He moved closer to the kitchen table and looked at the newspaper cuttings. The Blacktail murders and the killing of Professor Partridge looked back at Wortel. Sitting alongside the newspaper cuttings sat a video tape which was marked up for the night of the murder at the Strawberry Strip Club. Wortel let out a long sigh and shook his head realising that Pine himself must have sent the footage to the Food Related Crime Division. He had played Wortel and his team like a fiddle.
He moved the cuttings to one side to get a better look at the photographs. The Blacktails were there with a red cross drawn through the face of each of them. So was Professor Partridge, again with a red cross adorning his face.
Wortel turned to the next set of photographs and felt his heart sink. Victoria Plum looked back at him, the red cross matching her damson coloured skin. And Charles von Blimff, but just his picture with no cross through his face.
Wortel called the office and relayed the scene to Oranges and Lemons who, while shocked at the discovery, were secretly enjoying the thrill of their first murder hunt. In return they told him that Dorothy was still in the mortuary pulling the place apart searching for something, although what that thing was, she didn’t yet know.
Wortel listened to Oranges and Lemons as he moved through the rest of the deserted house. He slowly made his way up the stairs and opened the door to the spare bedroom. His gasp caused Oranges and Lemons to fear for their boss’s safety.
“Sir what is it?” asked Oranges.
“Are you okay boss? Talk to us,” implored Lemons.
“Boys. Go and fetch Dorothy and tell her to get down here with a forensic team. I’ve got blood and, wait; yes there’s a sticky residue. I think this is where he was keeping Victoria Plum.”
“Where are you going sir?” asked a concerned Oranges.
“He’ll be going after von Blimff. I’m heading for AstraArms.”
Wortel burst into Charles von Blimff’s office, pushing past his startled secretary who bore the look of a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming car. Wortel noticed her look and his mind conjured the image of Warren in that pose. Pushing the image from his mind, not without taking a little pleasure at the thought, Wortel stopped as quickly as he’d entered. The office was empty.
“You shouldn’t be in here. Please leave or I’ll call security.”
“Where is von Blimff? Tell me, it’s important,” shouted Wortel.
“This is his private office. The police then, yes, I’ll call the police.”
“I don’t have time for this,” snapped Wortel as he tossed his ID across the room to the increasingly panic stricken secretary. “I am the police. Now tell me. Where is von Blimff?”
Realising she did actually have the police already in the office, albeit a genetically modified carrot Detective Inspector, just served to confuse the secretary further who mumbled something about wishing she still worked at the funeral parlour as the dead never talked back, before turning on her heel, tossing the ID card back over her shoulder, and leaving never to be seen again.
“At least tell me where he lives. No, well thank you very much. You’ve been a great help,” called Wortel after the departing secretary.
Wortel walked over to von Blimff’s desk and looked for anything that could tell him where he lived. Nothing. Wortel tugged at the desk drawer and found it locked. “Bugger, bollocks and double shit,” said Wortel, thankful that the secretary had now left the room.
His mobile telephone in his jacket pocket started to vibrate. Wortel removed it from his jacket while trying to work out how to break into the desk drawer without causing too much damage to what appeared an incredibly old, and therefore expensive, desk.
“Wortel here.”
“It’s Dorothy. I’ve found what Dr Richards wanted you to see.”
“Tell me.”
As Dorothy relayed her news Wortel sat himself down in von Blimff’s chair. “And you’re 100% sure?”
“More than 100% Wortel. It’s definitely the double A emblem and it’s made of material not eggshells. It must have come from the murderer.”
“It doesn’t make sense. I need time to think. I’ll call you back.”
Wortel hung up and stared at his mobile trying to make sense of what Dorothy had just told him. He looked at the desk and willed the drawer to open. It didn’t budge. ‘Ah well, Archibald will cover the cost I’m sure’ thought Wortel to himself as he reached for an ornamental paperweight holding down some documents on the corner of the desk before bringing it crashing down against the lock of the drawer.
He heard wood splinter but the drawer refused to buckle. Again he raised the paperweight up high, using all of his carrot strength, which to be fair was not that much, and crashed the paperweight down against the locked drawer. This time he heard wood and metal crack and the drawer yielded.
He pulled out the papers and started to skim read. The home address of Charles von Blimff was there in black and white. But it was the rest of the papers that held Wortel’s attention.
What he read hit him hard. He looked again at the desk drawer and found his eyes being drawn to the small leather wallet staring back up at him. Wortel took out the wallet and flicked it open. Wortel pulled out a mass of credit cards and other items and began to thumb through them. Finding what he was looking for he turned and stared out of the window, taking a moment to admire the view all the while rotating the membership card for the Strawberry Strip Club in his hand.
Wortel took the lift to the ground floor, papers in one hand, membership card in the other. As the lift doors opened he burst out and sprinted through reception, sending the revolving doors into a tailspin. Unlocking the car he leapt into the driver’s seat, started the ignition, put the car into gear and screeched away from AstraArms.
As he drove Wortel called into the station.
“Send back-up to Withering Heights.”