‘Someone changed the locks and then posted the new keys through your letterbox?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you happen to know who might have done such a thing?’
‘Yes. I know who did it. He’s called Parker Swells.’
Bethan spelled Parker’s name out loud and checked as the constable wrote it on his pad.
‘I have his address and all the details you could want about him, only everything’s still at work . . .’
The policeman nodded. ‘And what, exactly,’ he said, ‘apart from changing the lock on your back gate, did he actually do?’
‘Come outside.’
Bethan took the police officer into her back garden. She pointed. He looked around him. There was little to see. A neat lawn, flowerbeds, nothing amiss.
‘He stole my ponds,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Your what?’
She pointed. He saw five, large, beautiful fish in a curious selection of small, clear-glass containers.
‘He stole my ponds.’
Ponds, the policeman wrote down in his book. Stolen.
Bethan watched as he wrote this. His writing, she saw, was round and girlish and immature. She wished they’d sent someone else. He clearly wasn’t going to prove competent.
‘And why do you think he did this? Why did he steal your ponds?’
Bethan didn’t know. She couldn’t answer. She felt so ridiculous.
‘He had a duck, a pet duck,’ she said, eventually. ‘Maybe he stole them for his duck.’
She glanced up and saw the policeman was smiling at her. She looked away.
‘Those are beautiful,’ he said, indicating towards the fish. She nodded. Her fish hung, suspended, in their small, plain glass bowls; tight and bright and golden. Their gills moved; in and out, in and out. Bethan could clearly see every tiny little detail now.
About the Author
NICOLA BARKER is a short story writer and novelist. She is the recipient of the David Higham Prize for Fiction, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Hawthorden Prize and is a joint winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award.
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Also by Nicola Barker
Novels
Reversed Forecast (1994)
Small Holdings (1995)
Wide Open (1998)
Five Miles from Outer Hope (2000)
Behindlings (2002)
Clear: A Transparent Novel (2004)
Darkmans (2007)
Burley Cross Postbox Theft (2010)
The Yips (2012)
In the Approaches (2014)
The Cauliflower (2016)
H(A)PPY (2017)
Short Story Collections
Love Your Enemies (1993)
Heading Inland (1996)
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE THREE BUTTON TRICK AND OTHER STORIES. Copyright © 1993, 1996, 1999, 2018 by Nicola Barker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Sara Wood
Cover artwork © Harriet Lee Merrion
Originally published in 1993 by the Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2001.
SECOND ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2018.
Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-290509-3
Version 10102018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-287171-8
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The Three Button Trick and Other Stories Page 23
