Zorilla At Large!

by William Stafford

  “Do you happen to know where he’s gone, where we might find him?” said Pattimore, in his role as Polite Cop.

  The woman seemed to weigh something up in her mind, and then gave a groan of resignation. “If you must know, he’s at the hospital. It’s his treatment day. You know: chemo.”

  “Ah,” said Pattimore.

  Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. “He knows it’s hopeless but he keeps going. For my benefit. I keep telling him he doesn’t have to put himself through it on my behalf and we should just enjoy what time we have-”

  She gripped the edge of her front door and clung to it as though it were a lifebelt. Then her eyes flashed angrily and she revealed her teeth in a savage sneer.

  “All he wanted - all he wanted was to get his choir - he loves that choir - all he wanted was to get them back on top. But they turned him down. The lottery lot. He wanted money to bring in a voice coach and to set up a stipend to bring in a replacement for-”

  And here she did break down. Pattimore stepped forward but Stevens pulled him back.

  “We’ll catch him at the hospital then,” said Stevens.

  “Thank you,” said Pattimore. “Sorry.”

  Stevens shook his head all the way back to Pattimore’s car. “You’m too fucking soft. You fucking pansy.”

  “And you’re a fucking knob.”

  “Granted.”

  They headed to the hospital.

  ***

  But the chemo-ward had never heard of Gideon Biggs. Stevens and Pattimore asked the receptionist to search the entire database. The receptionist pouted, muttering about patient confidentiality and the data protection act. Stevens thumped the counter top. Pattimore elbowed him aside and affixed his most winning smile. He explained that they didn’t want to know the gory details, just if there was a Gideon Biggs listed.

  The search came up with zero results. No Gideon Biggs had ever attended the hospital for cancer treatment or anything else.

  “Odd,” said Pattimore.

  “Is there another name?” the receptionist twirled a strand of her hair, coyly.

  “Um, no. No, thank you.”

  “This is a waste of time,” said Stevens. “Both the search and the flirting. Sorry, love, my mate’s a poof.”

  He led Pattimore away by the elbow. Pattimore shook him off.

  “So what now?”

  “Stake-out,” said Stevens. “Let’s buy snacks.”

  “Stake-out where? Why?”

  “Outside Biggs’s house, you nit. He’s been lying to his sister about his comings and goings. For months probably. It’s an alibi, don’t you get it? She thinks he’s off getting treatment when all the while he’s running around town, maybe even slashing people’s throats out...”

  Pattimore gaped. “Do you know, that actually makes a bit of sense!”

  “I’m not just a pretty face with a big cock.” Stevens got into the car. “To the suck shop, Jason my lad. And the off-licence!”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  ***

  Noel Emmetts looked at his phone. Should he call the police again? They weren’t going to leave him alone until he did. What did they want him to go in for? The bloke he’d spoke to had been supremely vague. Safety? What had that got to do with it?

  He pressed the little green phone icon and waited to be connected.

  There was no answer.

  He tried a different number.

  “Hello, Dedley Council. Saba speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Um... I’d like to speak to the boss, please. The bloke in charge.”

  “Do you mean the leader of the council, caller?”

  “Yes. Whatsisname. Woolton.”

  “I’m afraid Mr Woolton is not available at this time.”

  “His Mrs, then.”

  “She doesn’t work here.”

  “No, I know. She does the lottery.”

  “We can all dream,” Saba came over all wistful for a moment.

  “No, I mean. She’s on the committee. You know, the lottery committee.”

  “Oh arh, but either way, like I said, she doesn’t work here.”

  “I just thought she might have popped in, you know, to see her old man.”

  “He’s not here. None of them is. All been rounded up, haven’t they, for safety. Hello?”

  But Noel had disconnected.

  That word again. Safety...

  No wonder there was no answer at Roberta’s office.

  Damn.

  It was imperative that he find Roberta Woolton at once.

  Safety... Where would the cops take a shitload of shitheads for safety? Noel Emmetts paced around, chewing his lower lip.

  There was one way to find out. He called Serious.

  “Hello, Noel!” It was the same guy as before. He sounded overjoyed to receive the call.

  “I want to go to safety,” said Noel Emmetts.

  ***

  “Please try not to drop crisps everywhere,” Pattimore implored Stevens, who was already munching his way through his second bag.

  “Shit happens,” Stevens replied, spraying crumbs of salt-and-vinegar like a zorilla’s toxic cloud.

  “Benny!” Pattimore wailed.

  “You sound more like your ex bum-chum every day,” Stevens opined. “What’s that all about? You can’t be with him so you’ll be like him? Fuck that shit.”

  “No! Just because your car’s in a mess, doesn’t mean mine has to be as well.”

  “You want to worry less about your precious interior and keep your eye out for our man,” Stevens advised. “Not that we even know what he looks like - all the more reason to keep ’em peeled.” He shovelled another handful of crisps into his mouth. Crumbs clung to his moustache like unheeded warnings to other potato-based snacks.

  “Well, we know which path he’ll be going up, don’t we?”

  “Is that a metaphor, you dirty git?”

  “No. But it stands to reason. He’ll go up to that door there and he’ll have a key, I expect.”

  Stevens pulled a face, conceding Pattimore’s point. “Where’d you put my Freddos? Are they in here?”

  He yanked at the glove compartment door and pulled out a carrier bag. “Come to me, you delicious froggy bastards.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, forget the fucking chocolate frogs,” Pattimore exploded. “Look, there’s somebody coming along now.”

  Stevens snapped the head off one of the cartoon representations of a frog in a T shirt and ate it. He peered through the windscreen. “Where?”

  “Behind you,” said Pattimore, whose gaze was fixed on the rear-view mirror.

  Stevens looked. Coming up the road was an elderly man in a huge overcoat, shuffling along. The detectives held their breath as the old man approached the end of the path to Number 14.

  “It’s not him,” said Stevens, devouring the frog’s decapitated body.

  “It bloody is,” said Pattimore. “He’s going up to the house.”

  He put a finger on the door release but Stevens put a hand - a greasy, snack-stained hand - on the detective constable’s sleeve.

  “It’s not him, I’m telling you,” Stevens breathed. “He’s not the killer.”

  “But - but he’s putting a key in the lock.”

  “It’s not him.”

  “Benny! Come on. Let’s nick him.”

  “It’s not him!”

  But Pattimore was scrambling from the car, like a new-born bird, fighting its way from the eggshell, hungry for life. He tore up the path just as the old man was pushing the door open.

  “Mr Biggs?” he called out. “Mr Gideon Biggs?”

  The old man froze at the sound of the name. He turned slowly, like a
kebab on a chip-shop spit. And, like that reconstituted ‘meat’, the old man’s face was grey and sweating.

  Pattimore showed him his i.d.

  “It’s not him,” said Stevens in the car. He broke another Freddo in two and got out.

  “I can explain!” Gideon Biggs held up his hands in surrender. Three scalpels fell from his coat and clattered to the paving stones.

  “Well, well, well,” said Pattimore.

  “It’s not him,” said Stevens, catching up. But Pattimore was already stooping and depositing the scalpels in polythene evidence bags from his pocket.

  “Three blades, Ben.”

  “They’re for my hobby!” quailed Gideon Biggs.

  By this point, his sister had arrived in the doorway. “Giddy?”

  “Nice nickname,” said Stevens.

  The woman scowled. “From the treatment, I mean. Gideon, let’s get you indoors.” She glanced anxiously at the neighbouring windows.

  “Go back inside, Alice,” Gideon Biggs was trembling. “Please!”

  “One minute,” said Pattimore. He patted the old man down for further implements. He found none but a search of the overcoat’s inner pockets turned up a swatch of black fur.

  “No!” The old man tried in desperation to snatch the swatch away. He sent a look of despair to his sister.

  “Now,” Pattimore held the fur towards Stevens with a triumphant smirk on his face. “What’s the betting this come off a bear?”

  Alice Biggs gasped. Gideon Biggs wailed.

  “Fuck me,” said Stevens, through a mouthful of chocolate. He spat it onto the path and whipped a pair of handcuffs from his jacket. “Gideon Biggs, we are arresting you on suspicion of several counts of murder.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Bonk me on a donkey...” Chief Inspector Wheeler looked from one monitor to another. The screens showed Gideon Biggs in one interview room and Jessica Stamp in another. They each looked anxious - a natural reaction to being accused of serial murders. “We’m spoilt for choice.”

  Behind her, detectives Brough and Miller, Stevens and Pattimore, twitched with anxiety of their own. Mount Wheeler, that most volatile of human volcanoes, was about to erupt.

  “This one,” she stabbed a finger at one screen, “is a little old man. The other is a middle-aged woman. And you expect me to believe they have the physical strength to slash people’s throats out?”

  She wheeled around, eyebrow arched at the ready.

  “Um,” said Brough. “She does have knitting needles and a thing for bears.”

  “And knitting can build up your arms. I expect...” added Miller, unconvincingly.

  “And our one had scalpels!” Stevens put in. “Proper nasty. And three of them.”

  “And he had bear fur on him!” Pattimore piped up. “Well, in his pocket, not actually on him, not actually growing...” He ran out of steam.

  “And here...” Wheeler clicked on a third monitor. “We have Jungle Jim using our conference room as his own personal gymnasium.”

  On screen, Darren Bennett, with his top off, was doing press-ups on the long table. Brough, Miller and Pattimore gazed intently at the image, the rippling muscles, the sweat-drenched hair clinging to his forehead...

  “Poof,” said Stevens. Brough and Miller rounded on him.

  “What do you know?” they said in unison.

  “Well...” Stevens flinched to be on the spot. “I mean... blokes building their bodies like that. It’s all a bit, whatsit, isn’t it? Metrosexual.”

  “Never mind that - although if he is shagging on public transport we ought to nick him. I want him out of here. Take him back to the bastard safe house, for fuck’s sake. Harry, you can do that.”

  Harry Henry, so far silent at the back of the room, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He was about to raise an objection: his car was still ripe from the zorilla going off like an exploding compost heap, but Brough beat him to it.

  “But he was attacked there,” said Brough.

  “So he says,” countered Wheeler. “There’s no fucking proof only his word for it. Take him back but move his room.” She ran a hand over her crew cut, pausing to scratch her scalp at the crown. “Fucking time-wasters.”

  The detectives remained silent, uncertain whether the Chief Inspector meant the suspects or themselves.

  “All right, all right.” Wheeler tried to rest her backside on the edge of the desk but found she couldn’t quite reach, no matter how she jumped up. She abandoned that idea and folded her arms instead. “Question these two. Ask them everything. Even what’s their favourite colour and what size shoes they wear. Check their alibis, if they have them. Break them down. Perhaps one of them is our man - or indeed woman. Or perhaps we’m all just shitting into the hurricane while the real killer is out and about, looking for his - or indeed her - next victim.”

  “I bet it’s ours,” said Stevens. He pulled out a ten-pound note. “Any takers?”

  “Betting on a case, Benny boy?” Wheeler snatched the cash and pocketed it. “That’s frowned upon, old son.”

  Brough and Miller exchanged guilty glances.

  “Well, I don’t know why you’m all still stood standing there like statues in a fucking idiot exhibition,” Wheeler flexed her thumb in preparation for her signature gesture. “You’ve got Gym Bunny Bollocks to take back, Mr and Mrs Death to interview and a fucking zorilla to account for... Busy day for the team. So, go on,” the thumb jerked at the door, “fuck right off.”

  ***

  “So, the zorilla is still at large then, is it?” said Brough, as the four detectives walked along the corridor. “I thought you’d caught it, Ben.”

  Stevens growled under his breath.

  “Ben let it go,” said Pattimore.

  “Did I fuck?” said Stevens. “I’m telling you, I closed my eyes for five minutes and the little fucker legged it.”

  His co-workers laughed; Stevens realised he could have phrased it better.

  “I mean, he ran off. They’m smarter than you think, those fuckers.”

  “You actually admire it,” said Brough. “Hairy, smelly and peculiar-”

  “And so’s the zorilla!” quipped Pattimore. Brough gave him a cold look, disliking being interrupted - and beaten to his own punchline.

  “Fuck the lot of you,” Stevens glared. “I hope the little fella’s doing well out there on his tod.”

  “Christ,” said Miller. “Look who’s all dewy-eyed over a wammal.”

  They had reached opposing doors, each leading to an interview room.

  “Here we go,” said Brough.

  “Losing team buys the drinks?” said Stevens.

  “It’s not about winning and losing,” said Brough. “It’s about bringing a killer to justice.”

  It was Stevens’s turn at the hearty laughter. “Oh, that’s a good one, that is, Dave. That’s a bloody good one.”

  They turned the handles and went inside.

  ***

  “Stinks in here, mate,” Darren Bennett stretched the seatbelt across his broad pectorals. “Fucking ronks, in fact.”

  “Zorilla,” said Harry Henry, turning the ignition. “Had it valeted three times already.”

  “You had it in here, in this car?” Darren Bennett marvelled.

  “Um, yes.”

  “And you let it get away?”

  “Well, um, no, actually. This was a different one. This one we got back to the zoo.”

  “Oh! I didn’t realise there was two of them on the loose.”

  “Um, well...” Harry was embarrassed. He decided against telling the story of how the second zorilla got out.

  Darren Bennett wound down the window and changed the subject. “You don’t have to take me back there, you know
.”

  “I do, actually. Boss’s orders.”

  “Oh, come on, mate. I’ve got things to go, people to do, you know?”

  “Sorry.”

  “But I was attacked there, man. Turns out it’s not very safe at all.”

  “Well... we’ve taken in a couple of suspects, so you should be safe now.”

  “Two? You’ve narrowed it down to two?”

  “Um.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you? Jesus. What a joke.”

  “We’re confident.” Harry sounded anything but.

  “If you’m so bloody confident, mate, how come I have to go back to the safe house? How come you’re not letting me go?”

  “Um... I’m sure it won’t be for long. A matter of hours.”

  Darren Bennett sighed melodramatically. They had reached the busy roundabout where Chad Roe had been murdered. The pyramid was still covered and cordoned off and the traffic flow reduced to single-lane with an obstacle course of temporary traffic lights.

  “Bloody hell,” said Darren Bennett, surveying the scene. Car horns bleeped all around the island, as though trying to censor the swearwords of the seething motorists.

  “Perhaps I should have gone the long way round,” Harry was focussed on the taillights of the lorry in front. “Sorry. This could take a while.”

  “Sod it,” said Darren Bennett. “Sorry, mate.”

  In a single movement, he unclipped his seatbelt, pushed open the passenger door and was off. He nipped through the stationary vehicles and disappeared.

  “Oh, no,” said Harry Henry, trapped in gridlock. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  ***

  Wheeler watched the interviews via the monitors, flipping from one to the other, turning up and lowering the volume as necessary.

  “Wankers...” she muttered, wishing she’d told Harry Henry to fetch her a coffee before he went. Mind you, he’d probably end up wearing most of it and spilling the rest.

  The detectives went through the preliminaries, identifying who was present for the ‘benefit of the recording’ and asking the suspects to confirm their identities. Lawyers had been appointed and they sat poised to interject at any moment.

  “Better than the fucking goggle-box...” Wheeler sneered.