Zorilla At Large!

by William Stafford

  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.

  Chapter Twelve

  “This is disgraceful.” Enoch Marshall folded his arms - just about - over his barrel chest. His face was even redder than before. “I’ve lost a day’s trade, sat sitting here. And will I be compensated? Will I fuck!”

  “Um...” Across the table, Harry Henry adjusted his spectacles. He pushed a sheet of paper toward the butcher. “You’ve seen this before, I take it.”

  Marshall barely glanced at the paper. “I wrote it. What about it?”

  “It’s your bid for lottery funding,” said Harry Henry.

  “I know it is; I wrote the bastard.”

  Chief Inspector Wheeler sent Harry a glare. Harry coughed.

  “Tell us more about your idea. Why you wanted lottery support in the first place.”

  “No point,” said Marshall. “I didn’t get it, did I?”

  “I’m interested,” said Harry. “Go on.”

  “Why, are you going to put your hand in your pocket? No; thought not. My idea - and I still hold it’s a good one - was to set up a home delivery service. Mainly to the big houses, folk who can afford it. You see, what used to be poor man’s grub is now seen as a delicacy. Tripe and all that. I was going to undercut the big supermarkets - bastards! - and go that extra mile. Thought if I could get me a little van, all spruced up, like, with a logo on it, and set up a website and an app or something. Got to do something, haven’t I? Forcing us out, those big supermarkets are. Do you know how many independent traders have gone to the wall?”

  “Um... What wall?”

  Chief Inspector Wheeler cringed. Come on, Harry, she urged silently. Prove you’re the man for this job.

  “They undercut our prices, and they don’t know what they’m doing. I’m a qualified professional, I am. I’ve got certificates. I’m not some poor sod on benefits they’m exploiting for slave labour. Although I will be soon, if things keep going the way they’m going.”

  Harry made a few notes then, with the tip of his tongue poking out, carefully highlighted them with his bright yellow pen.

  “Inspector, a word,” said Wheeler. She jerked her head toward the exit.

  “Um...” Harry gathered up his pens, lest the butcher try to nick them, and followed her out into the corridor.

  “What the actual fuck?”

  “Um, I think he’s thawing, Chief. He’s warming to his theme. All this antagonism towards the supermarkets. Could be a motive.”

  “Harry, the victims aren’t the supermarkets, the victims are lottery funded.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Right. Get back in there and nail him. Ask him about the victims. Did he know them? Did they come in his shop for sausages? And put those fucking felt tips away. It’s a statement you’m writing not a fucking colouring book.”

  “Um.”

  She opened the door and ushered the bumbling D I back inside, hoping she would not have to reconsider her decision.

  ***

  Brough and Miller had arrived at the block of flats wherein the last lottery bid winner was believed to reside. There was a row of buttons near the entrance, numbered and with nameplates, most of which bore faded labels.

  “Emmetts,” Brough checked his notes. “First name, Noel.”

  Miller scanned the buttons up and down and up again. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there’s no Noel Emmetts. Hah! Do you remember that song?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I don’t suppose you were much of a disco bunny. There’s a couple of nameplates with no names on them. We could try them.”

  “Go on then.”

  Miller pressed the first button. A bulb lit weakly, and an elderly woman’s voice crackled from a speaker. “Who is it?”

  “Police,” said Miller. “Is there a Noel Emmetts there?”

  “Who, dear?”

  “Noel Emmetts.”

  “No, dear. Just me, dear. Why don’t you come up for a cup of tea? I think there’s some biscuits in the cupboard. Been a while since I had visitors.”

  “Thank you!” said Brough, curtly. He pulled Miller’s finger off the button. He pressed the next one. There was no reply.

  “I’ll bet that’s the one,” said Miller. Brough was already bounding up the stairs. Sod that, thought Miller, and headed for the lift, holding her breath against the stench of urine.

  She didn’t exhale until she reached the top floor. Her breathing was back to normal by the time Brough emerged from the stairs, looking rather winded. He used to go running, Miller recalled, used to take more care of himself. I suppose now that he’s off the market... On the other hand, you’d think he’d want to be in the best possible shape for his famous fella... And why, oh why, am I thinking so much about it?

  “Have you knocked?
” Brough spoke through sharp breaths.

  “Was waiting for you, sir. What took you so long?”

  Brough ignored her. He rattled the knocker over the letterbox. They waited. There was no answer.

  “He’s not in,” said Miller.

  “Someone’s on her way to promotion,” sneered Brough. “What time is it?”

  “Half past.”

  “Half past what?”

  “Seven.”

  “Come on then,” Brough sighed. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He headed back to the stairs, with his raincoat flapping dramatically behind him. A little stunned, Miller tottered after him.

  On the way to the ground floor, Brough made a call to get some uniforms or even (God help them) PCSOs stationed outside the flat. Noel Emmetts had to be taken in for his own safety, regardless of the pretentious bollocks he was trying to inflict on the world.

  ***

  Darren Bennett paced the room he had been allocated. Student accommodation was hardly palatial and so he was achieving little more than turning around on the spot. It wasn’t right keeping him cooped up like this. He was a strong guy; he could take care of himself, against any attacker, assailant or assassin that might try it on with him. He looked at the card the bloke detective had given him. Perhaps he should give this, ah, Brough, a call. Plead his case.

  Got to do something, Darren Bennett grunted in frustration. There’s no room to swing a dumbbell in this shithole, never mind a cat.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Um, Mister Bennett?” said a man.

  “Um...” Darren’s mind raced. What had the detectives told him about answering the door or even his phone to strangers? No one must know of his whereabouts if his safety was to be guaranteed.

  “PCSO Taylor,” the man continued. “I signed you in, remember?”

  “Um, oh yeah.” Darren reached for the door handle and turned it. At once, the door was shoved against him, taking him by surprise. A paw, covered in black fur, with three sharp claws slashed at the air. Darren Bennett leaned against the wood with all his might, his mind careering in panic. He let the door open just a sliver and then slammed it on the paw. He heard a whimper and the paw withdrew.