Chapter Eleven

Harry Henry’s task was to track down the people behind the unsuccessful lottery bids. It might lead to no leads, he knew, but every trail had to be followed even if it lead to a brick wall on the edge of a cliff, or wherever.

He was glad the list was short.

The things people want funding! Someone wanted to set up a home delivery service, which sounded fair enough, until you read on and saw what they wanted to deliver. The entrepreneur behind Absolutely Offal certainly had guts, Harry mused. He laughed alone and made a mental note to crack that funny again in briefing.

He made a note of the contact details - a butcher’s shop in Netherton. And then his blood ran cold.

A butcher... A butcher would have all sorts of sharp implements as tools of his trade...

Someone would have to have a butcher’s hook at him...

Harry Henry chuckled to himself again. I’m really on a roll today.

The next rejected application was from a choir who wanted a new minibus so they could ‘spread their joy throughout the borough and beyond’. They specialised in bringing Handel’s Messiah to hospitals and retirement homes - anywhere there was a captive audience, it seemed. Hah. Harry’s wife had dragged him along to hear that choir last Christmas. He wouldn’t be surprised if somebody had sabotaged their old van to bring an end to their reign of terror.

But he made a note of the contact details. It was a large choir, he remembered. Every member would have to be questioned, until someone sang - um, warbled - er... Harry faltered. He couldn’t think of any more jokes.

He tried to think of anything that might suggest a member of the choir was the killer. Perhaps the choirmaster - or indeed mistress - used a baton like an orchestra conductor... It seemed a long shot.

People don’t realise the legwork that goes on, Harry Henry considered as he remembered how many people were in that choir - and none of them able to carry a tune in a bucket. Being a detective’s not like it is on the telly, all punch-ups and car chases and autopsies.

The third and final application had been made by a knitting circle. They aimed to bring the craft to young people. Addicted to computer games? Put down the joystick, their publicity material said, proving how out of touch they truly were, and pick up the needles. On drugs? Put down your syringes and pick up these needles...

Harry was not surprised the bid had been turned down. Every member of this group would have to be investigated. He wondered if they were from a close-knit community - Hah! I’m back in the room, he laughed. Something, something, casting my purls... No, Harry; quit while you’re ahead.

But needles... What diameter knitting needles would you need to make wounds in someone’s throat like those on the victims? Could it be done?

Harry Henry waddled hurriedly to deliver his findings and his musings to Chief Inspector Wheeler. She riffled through his notes and hummed and ahhed through his ramblings. It was not the enthusiastic response for which he had hoped.

“It’s a lot of work, Harry,” she sighed. “We just don’t have the manpower.”

“Or indeed womanpower,” Harry quipped. Wheeler regarded him with narrowed eyes in case he was really D I Brough in disguise.

“Narrow it down a bit,” she thrust the papers back at him. “The butcher and the knitters. My money says it’s one of them. The bastard choir can wait. Although they all want locking up - have you heard them? Rim me up a chimney; what a load of fucking shit.”

***

Brough and Miller, having accompanied Darren Bennett back to his flat to pack a few things before delivering him to the halls of residence for safekeeping, argued all the way back to Serious and from the car park to the briefing room.

“Cough up,” said Brough. “You saw the poster in the kitchen. Straight men have never even heard of La Cage Aux Folles.”

“And you saw the photo by the telly,” countered Miller. “Him with his arm around some wench, the light of love in their eyes.”

Brough scoffed. “Light of love? You’ve been at the chick-lit again, Miller.”

“That tenner, if you please, sir. I only accept cash.”

“He had green tea. Loose leaf!”

“He also had a Coldplay CD.”

Brough was stumped for a moment. “That’s inconclusive, Miller. It could have been an ill-advised gift from someone.”

“Yeah. That girl in the picture.”

“Who could be his sister...”

“She looks nothing like him.”

“Adopted!”

“Bloody hell.”

“All right; let’s just say the jury is still out.”

“Which is more than he is.”

“Thank you, Miller. Let’s focus on work for a moment, shall we?”

He pulled a folder with his name on from the shelves that served as pigeonholes. Harry Henry had provided detailed notes on the last remaining lottery applicant.

Hah, thought Miller. Focus on work... That was rich, coming from Mr Head-in-the-clouds-every-time-his-Hollywood-boyfriend-texts.

“What have we got?” She tried to peer over his shoulder.

“Oh, God...” Brough groaned. “It’s a theatrical.”

“Oh, shit,” said Miller. They both shuddered to recollect a previous case involving Dedley’s foremost am-dram society, the DICWADS.

Brough took out some publicity material Harry Henry had printed off from a website. “Shakespeare as it has never been done before,” he read with a mounting sense of horror. “One actor, one hell of a play... blah, blah, blah... set in the time of the Cod War - oh, for fuck’s sake! Is this the kind of pretentious bollocks that eats up all the funding? Perhaps we ought to leave this –” he squinted at the smaller print, “Noel Emmetts to the killer.”

“What is it? What’s he doing? Much Ado About Quotients?”

Brough gaped at her. “Actually, Miller, that would make more sense. This poor, misguided idiot wants to do The Winter’s Tale when really, something like Romeo and Juliet would be better suited. You know, ‘Two trawlers, both alike in dignity’...”

He laughed; Miller didn’t.

“Let’s go and get him,” she moved to the door. “Let’s hope we don’t have to trawl the streets for him. Heh.”

“Stop it, Miller.”

***

Local independent butcher, Enoch Marshall was brought in to Serious to assist with enquiries. A burly man, he gave the impression of being comprised of overstuffed sausages, the skin of which might burst at any second. His face and hands were ruddy, matching the red of the apron he wore over his whites. Although spotless and completely free of the detritus of his trade, he still gave off a bit of a whiff, a hint of the heady scent of blood.

Wheeler kept him stewing in his own juices, alone in an interview room. She watched him on a monitor elsewhere in the building. She knew you couldn’t always tell a murderer by looking at him, but here was a man who hacked away at corpses (albeit wammal ones) all day every day. A job like that has got to do something to a man.

And... being a butcher, he’d have all sorts of blades and skewers and shit, wouldn’t he? His shop was being searched at that very moment for the murder weapon. Surely, a conviction was only a matter of time...

Harry Henry bumbled in, spilling cocoa on himself in the process. “Whoops.”

“Never mind whoops,” said Wheeler. “Let’s get in there and cook this fucker’s goose.”

“Is that a butcher joke, Chief?”

“It’s a fucking instruction. Come on; you can lead. I’ll just be a presence, lend an air of fucking menace.”

“Um...” Harry’s spectacles fell off.

“You know: good cop, hard-as-fucking-tungsten cop.”

“Um... but wouldn’t you rather ask the questions, Chief? I could, um, take notes or something - in a threatening manner. It can be quite intimidating having someone write down everything you say. I know: I’ll get a clipboard and a highlighter pen!”

“Fucking hell. This is why I have to be the menacing one, Harry, for fuck’s sake. Of the two of us, I’m the butcher.”

“Um...”

“Don’t let me down, Harry. Not now.”

She strode out, leaving a puzzled Harry Henry to dwell on that remark. He gave up and hurried after the chief inspector, spilling the rest of his cocoa on his loafers.

***

“This is fucking hopeless,” D I Stevens complained. He was lying on his belly behind some bushes in Field Park, having dragged the scented lure all around the paths.

“You’re yanking it too hard,” said D C Pattimore at his side. “It looks like it’s playing hopscotch. Zorillas don’t play hopscotch.”

“So you’m a fucking wammal expert now?”

“No, but...” Pattimore gave up. “Let’s keep quiet. Leave it where it is and just give it the occasional twitch, like it’s sniffing something.”

“The things I have to do. If I’d wanted to run a fucking puppet show-”

“Ssh!”

The prostrate detectives lay in wait and in mud. The ground was cold and wet beneath them and Stevens kept fidgeting. Every time he moved, the painted toy on the end of the fishing line jumped as though startled.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Stevens grumbled.

“Good. Zorillas are nocturnal.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Ssh!”

The sun set behind the disused pavilion. Shadows extended across the grass like long fingers grasping. Stevens felt a flash of panic.

“Hoi, you don’t think we’ll be locked in, do you?”

“Nah,” said Pattimore. “Wheeler cleared it with the council. The bloke who drives around locking up the parks knows we’m here.”

“You mean there’s no actual park keeper here?”

“No, a bloke comes in his van.”

“Wanker!”

“Probably.”

“Not surprising people get up to all sorts in the parks then, is it?”

“It’s the cuts.”

“Doesn’t make our job any easier.”

“No. Anyway, ssh!”

Stevens let out a cry as his arm was wrenched toward the path. He had to scramble to follow. “It’s got me! It’s fucking got me!” he screamed, getting entangled in the foliage. Pattimore sprang from the bushes and onto the path.

Instead of the fugitive zorilla getting jiggy with the decoy, there was a tangle of limbs, sprawled and cursing on the asphalt. A man in shorts and a hoodie had been getting joggy. Pattimore helped him to his feet.

“Thanks,” the jogger gasped. He rubbed his knees and then, straightening up, made eye contact with his Good Samaritan.

It was Pattimore’s turn to gasp. “You’re all right,” he said. “I mean, are you all right?”

“I’ll live.” Dimples appeared in the jogger’s cheeks. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“You’re welcome,” Pattimore was wide-eyed, drinking in the beauty of the man, the gleam of sweat in the hollow between his clavicles...

“Do you often pick up men in the park?”

“Um - no, I wasn’t - I mean –” Pattimore’s blustering was interrupted by the emergence of Stevens from the bushes.

“Fuck me. Nearly lost two fingers then.”

The jogger looked from Stevens to Pattimore and back again. “I see...”

“No!” Pattimore cried. “It’s not like that. It’s not what you think. We-”

“And what the hell is this?” The jogger stooped to examine the trampled toy that had tripped him up. “Is this yours?”

“Sort of.”

“You want to be more careful where you leave things. I could have broken my bloody neck.”

“Hoi, this is official police business,” Stevens bore down on the jogger, rather menacingly. “Jog on.”

“Police?”

“Yes,” sighed Pattimore. Deep within him a feeble flame of hope was extinguished.

“I see. This is entrapment!”

“Exactly!” said Stevens.

“Not like that,” said Pattimore.

“You set a trap to get men into the bushes and then you arrest them.”

“No!”

“It’s a good idea,” Stevens conceded, “but in this instance we’m after a wammal.”

“A what?”

“A zorilla,” said Pattimore.

“A what? No, never mind. I don’t want to know.”

The jogger jogged away. Pattimore was deflated.

Stevens wound the fishing line around and around the soft toy. He wasn’t, despite appearances and conduct, completely insensitive. He knew Pattimore hadn’t had a sniff of another bloke since his bust-up with Brough. “Pub?” he suggested.

“Pub,” Pattimore agreed.