Chapter Seven

While the Serious team was listing words beginning with zed, like a foul-mouthed edition of Sesame Street, up the hill, in the town centre, Mavis Morris, attendant in Dedley’s museum, was tidying up.

They’d had a school party in and they were always trouble. First there was the litter. Sweet wrappers, crisp packets, crusts torn from sandwiches. And chewing gum. The bastard who invented that abomination ought to be shot, in Mavis’s opinion. And, if he was already dead, he should be dug up and shot and then strung up from a lamppost. Yes! That was one exhibition Mavis would pay to see.

After the litter, there were the fingerprints. Mavis attended to these and other assorted smears that besmirched the glass cabinets. It was as if DO NOT TOUCH was in a foreign language. Or the little bastards couldn’t read - What were they teaching them in those schools these days?

Glass all polished, Mavis steeled herself to brave the worst of the horror: the toilets. They would be like a dirty protest at a sewage plant during which several bombs had gone off. Stink bombs and all.

She retrieved the equipment and cleaning products from the walk-in cupboard and donned a second pair of rubber gloves over those she was already wearing. She muttered prayers to Messrs Sheen and Muscle for strength.

It was always like this. Every time they mounted a new exhibition the school parties would come flocking in. As usual, the children couldn’t give a monkey’s for the new exhibits; all they cared about was the old stuff: the fossils and the dinosaur bones. The Viking axes. And what they could filch from the gift shop, the sticky-fingered bastards. If Mavis had a quid for every T. Rex pencil topper that had disappeared up the sleeve or into the pocket of a sticky urchin - well, she might just about break even.

And so the latest display required the least of her attention. History of the Moving Image, it said on the posters. The kids weren’t bothered. Not now they’ve got their YouTubes and their selfie sticks and god-knows-what in the palms of their hands.

On her way past the doors, something moved in the corner of her eye...

Glad of the distraction from the Herculean task of cleaning the toilets, Mavis poked her head through the doors. All was stillness, all was in shadow. The screens were all off and the equipment was dormant. Photographs of film stars from pale-faced Buster Keaton to the tanned and buff Oscar Buzz smiled down at her from the star-spangled ceiling.

Oscar Buzz... He’d been to Dedley only last year. Mavis would like five minutes alone with him and her rubber gloves. Pity he’d turned out to be one of them. What a bloody waste!

She could put it off no longer and withdrew her head from the doorway. She turned and squawked in alarm. Then she laughed. She addressed the huge, stuffed bear that had startled her.

“Oh! Bloody hell! Had me going for a minute.”

She swatted at the bear with a J-cloth and wheeled her trolley toward the toilets.

Hang about, she froze.

Since when have we had a stuffed bear?

***

It was inevitable. The local papers got wind of the murders, despite the police’s best efforts to keep a lid on, and in the interests of boosting their circulation, splashed frightening and erroneous headlines across the front pages. It was as though exclamation marks were going out of fashion. From claims of a serial killer to reported sightings of the marauding, murderous monster that was stalking the good people (and some of the misbehaved) of Dedley and slashing their throats to ribbons.

Superintendent Ball was incensed. He slapped the late edition of the Dedley Organ on Chief Inspector Wheeler’s desk. “Where are they getting it all, Karen?” He sounded exasperated. Wheeler wouldn’t deign to give the newspaper a glance.

“They’m making it up, Kevin. Like newspapers always do. I wouldn’t wipe my arse on it.”

“Well, it might come to that, the way these cutbacks are going. Have you got a leak, do you think?”

“Hoi! I was buying those pads for an elderly neighbour.”

“No, I mean, do you think anyone in Serious...”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Wheeler jabbed the air in front of him with an angry finger. Superintendent Ball flinched.

“Look at you, mother lion protecting her cubs! Which reminds me...” he opened the paper. “It doesn’t help that our friends at the zoo are running some kind of competition. They’re offering a reward for information leading to the recapture of the missing zorilla.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Wheeler sneered at the photograph of the creature’s face. “On one page they’m warning people to stay indoors and on the next, they’m sending them out on a wild beaver hunt.”

“It does seem a tad contradictory,” Ball agreed. “I shall prepare a statement.”

“I’ve got one ready,” said Wheeler. “And it’s only two words long.”

“I can imagine. I’ll handle the press, Karen. You carry on with –” He didn’t need to complete the sentence. Wheeler knew time was running out. She had to make her decision soon.

Ball strode out. Wheeler sat at her desk and peered at the shot of the zorilla.

“Little bastard.” She pulled out a marker pen and adorned the photograph with spectacles and a goatee beard.

***

Brough excused himself from Miller and secluded himself in a cubicle in the Gents. The one nearest the window got the strongest signal - according to that wanker Stevens who was always nipping in for what he called ‘a crafty squint’ at a special interest video clip. Even so, Brough found through a process of trial and error that he had to sit on the cistern and place his feet on the lid, holding his smart phone at arm’s length as though his eyesight was failing. Perhaps that wanker Stevens would know about that too.

Hey babe whats up

So said an instant message from Oscar Buzz. Brough had trained himself not to cringe at the absence of punctuation and appropriate capitalisation; he would allow his handsome Hollywood boyfriend to get away with anything.

Work is doing my head in

Brough replied.

When can I see you?

There followed an agonising wait for Oscar’s answer. A little speech bubble appeared, containing an ellipsis. It seemed to take forever for words to come through.

Can skype u later hun

Brough felt a twinge in his trousers. Skyping with Oscar meant a private movie, a live performance and, as exciting as these always were, it was not what Brough was after.

I mean ‘see you’ see you. When may we get together?

Don’t know babe am down under for 6 more wks

Brough groaned.

“That you, Dave?” came a voice from the neighbouring cubicle. Brough froze in alarm: Stevens! “Having a crafty squint?”

“I most certainly am not!” was Brough’s indignant retort.

Stevens laughed. “Don’t mind me. You carry on. Only things are about to get a bit explosive any second now. That kebab I had at lunchtime is about to make a bid for freedom - oogh!”

Brough fled from the Gents before he could hear any more.

“Fuck me,” Stevens wiped tears from his eyes. “Stinks like a fucking zorilla in here.”

***

“You took your time,” Miller accused Brough when he joined her in the car park.

“Well, you know,” Brough blushed, “When nature calls...”

“Or when Oscar bloody Buzz calls, more like. Get in. There’s been another murrr-dah!”

“If that’s meant to be a Scots accent, Miller, it’s a dismal failure - and why a Scots accent anyway?”

“Never mind,” said Miller. “I forgot you’ve never watched ITV.”

She drove them into town and pulled up outside the museum. The forensics were already swarming over the place, their little white tent the hive.

“Same m.o.” said the SOCO upon seeing the detectives’ i.d. “Same three slashes, same remnants of fur. I must warn you though,” he addressed Miller directly, “There’s a lot of blood. It’s more like an art installation than a crime scene.”

Miller awarded him a cold stare. “I can handle it.”

Brough followed Miller under the strips of police tape across the entrance. “This fur,” he spoke to the SOCO over his shoulder, “Do we know any more about it? What kind of animal?”

“Still awaiting results,” the SOCO shook his head. “But I’d say it was something large.”

Miller grunted. “You can’t tell me you believe an animal is responsible for all this.” She gestured to the corridor where the walls and floor were slick with the blood of Mavis Morris.

“Well –” the SOCO began.

“I mean,” Miller cut him off, “Is there any sign of the victims being eaten? Animals don’t usually kill for the sake of it.”

“Well, no...”

“So, Miller, how do you account for the animal fur at each scene?” Brough smirked, folding his arms to mirror the SOCO’s stance.

Bloody men! Always siding with each other, Miller fumed inwardly. Well, it wouldn’t do Brough any good trying to get into the SOCO’s plastic over-trousers - Miller had already clocked the wedding ring beneath the latex glove.

“Piece of piss,” she said. “Our murderer wears fur. Honestly, sir, the way you’re going on, anyone might think you think the bloody zorilla’s the killer.”

Brough gaped. He had been thinking nothing of the sort but he couldn’t bear to be out-thought by his detective sergeant. “Good thinking, Miller,” he managed to squeeze out through clenched teeth. “The next question is why.”

“Well, we can ask the bastard that when we catch him.”

“And why here? And why here?” Brough waved at what was left of the museum attendant, currently illuminated by more camera flashes than at a fashion shoot.

“Where’s the zed, you mean?” Miller glanced around. “Perhaps they’ve got a zebra here. Or a Zulu.”

The SOCO nudged Brough. “What is she babbling about?”

“Our latest thinking is that all the victims are linked by the letter zed. Any ideas?”

“I don’t know...” the SOCO pursed his lips. “I haven’t set foot in a museum since I was in primary school.” He nodded to a poster advertising the history of the moving image. “That any good?”

Brough’s eyes widened. “Possibly... I wonder...”

He pushed through to the exhibition hall. Miller followed.

“Sir?”

“Eureka!” Brough stood proudly at one of the displays. On a plinth was a slotted drum on a stand. Around the inside was a series of pictures. “You spin the drum,” Brough explained, “And the little man jumps up and down.”

“Really?” said Miller.

“No, not really, Miller. It’s an optical illusion. The persistence of vision. You see-”

“So what?” Miller interrupted before he could launch into a lecture.

“Here’s our zed, Miller,” Brough rolled his eyes. “This remarkable device is called a zoetrope.”

Miller blinked. The SOCO wrinkled his nose.

“And you think that’s what got that poor woman ripped open?”

“Well...” Brough didn’t know what to add.

“Personally, I’d run with the large animal idea. A trained gorilla or some such. Could happen.”

“Unlikely,” said Brough. “I think Miller’s right. Our killer wears fur, not grows it.”

Miller’s chest swelled with pride. She smiled sweetly at both men and returned to her car.

As soon as she was in the open air, she gasped. The cloying stench of the blood had made her nauseous but she’d be buggered if she was going to let those chauvinists know that.