Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  Louis had come to pick him up in the patrol car at seven this morning. She had already got an assignment for them.

  “We have a multiple murder in Hurndell,” she said as he got into the car.

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yep seriously, at least half a dozen bodies down at the reservoir,” she said.

  “Holy shit. How many people have been killed?”

  “None,” she said with a smile breaking out over her face, “they’re ducks.”

  Greg’s face screwed up into a frown, Louis laughed until she turned bright red and tears began to run out of her eyes.

  “You really are a dick Louis,” he said and she was off again. She produced a handkerchief out of her pocket and began to mop her eyes with it. He couldn’t help but smile himself, Louis had the most infectious laugh he had ever heard in his life. He waited whilst her laughing fit had passed and he shook his head at her.

  “Hey, come on, you laughed too. How many murders have there ever been in this town,” said Louis.

  “Eerrm, let me see….How about none. I thought we were on to something there. So what’s the story with the ducks.”

  “Not sure of the details yet, but we have a young mother out with her baby daughter. They went up to the reservoir to feed the ducks and she found them all dead. From what she told dispatch, they have been disembowelled. Perhaps we have our first Hurndell sicko. We are going to the bakery. That’s where the young lady is, and we can have a chat with her.”

  “We had better go and check on the murder site too hadn’t we?”

  “Yep, and then get someone out there to clean it all up before it traumatizes every child in the village.”

  “Busy day then.”

  “You betcha Greg. Better make sure we get a cup of tea whilst we are interviewing. I will leave that one to you so you can use your natural charm on them.”

  Greg shook his head at her again and she stuck her tongue out at him. She put the car in gear and they set off towards Hurndell.

  Pam had a nice little set up at the back of her shop. There was a small round table near the corner of the room with four chairs that was just perfect for the drinking of tea, eating of cakes and other activities that could offer you a warm and welcoming feeling that could set you up for the day. Cory was sat at the back end of the table right now with Abby asleep in the buggy next to her. Her face was almost completely drained of colour and she was staring straight ahead and not saying a word. Pam was bustling around, brewing the tea for them both. It had been Pam who had called the police not long after Cory had arrived back at the shop much sooner than expected. The expression on Cory’s face had been enough to ring alarm bells for Pam. When Cory had told her about the grim discovery up at the reservoir, she had got her husband Bob to take over the counter so she could take Cory through to the back. She had listened to Cory tell her what had happened and then she had called the police straight away. Cory was going to go home and wait but Pam had insisted that she stay and talk to them there where she wouldn’t be on her own. Cory hadn’t put up a fight. She hadn’t relished the idea of being alone at the moment anyway. She had never seen such cruelty to animals in her entire life. She knew that if it didn’t get sorted out and cleaned up soon then there would be some sick bastard taking pictures of it to put on facebook or twitter to remind the world what a horrible place it could be.

  Pam brought the cups of tea over. She had old style cups and saucers that always reminded Cory of her long departed grandmother who had the same type of cups. She had also used tea leaves as well, meaning that if you forgot about them you would always end up with a gritty mouthful if you decided to drain your cup right to the bottom. Thankfully, Pam used tea bags which she would brew inside an overly large metal tea pot.

  “Makes you wonder what the world is coming to, people murdering poor innocent animals like that,” said Pam sitting down at the table.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t a person, perhaps it was an animal of some kind, like a fox or something.”

  Pam shrugged and slurped her tea, “I don’t know my love, I don’t think a fox would go into the water and besides, don’t they usually take their kills away with them?”

  “I don’t know. All I do know is, they looked like they had been torn apart by some sort of an animal. Poor Abby, she was so upset.”

  Pam looked at Abby asleep in the buggy. Her dummy had fallen out of her mouth and it was resting on her chest. It was rising and falling in time to the baby’s breaths. “Awww, she is so sweet. Don’t you worry about it, this little one will have forgotten about it in a few days.”

  “I hope so Pam, she doesn’t often cry like that, I think I must have scared her really badly.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about it. Young children are so resilient you wouldn’t believe it. My Daniel saw a pigeon get run over by a car when he was four years old, it’s guts splattered all over the road. He cried all day about it, but the next morning he was there just playing out on his bike like nothing had happened. Fancy a biscuit?”

  Cory looked at Pam to see if she was joking. How on earth could she think about eating anything after that little nugget of information. Only Pam could come out with something like that. Cory began to laugh and then she found that she couldn’t stop. Pam sat looking at her a little bemused which made Cory laugh all the more. She laughed until she could no longer produce any sound out of her mouth and her stomach began to ache with the effort. After she had settled down, she found that a lot of the internal tension had gone away and she did indeed fancy a biscuit, one for her to dunk in her tea prior to drinking it.

  “You are a card, our Cory,” said Pam rising from the table to grab the biscuit barrel.

  Cory was on her third biscuit when the police arrived to talk to her.

  3.

  Greg and Louis listened to the story that Cory told them about the dead ducks. Greg took as many notes as he could, including Cory’s name and address. They got through two cup of tea during the course of their chat and Greg found himself starting to feel a little bit sleepy. He tried his best to stifle a yawn, but Louis saw it.

  “Well, you need to be getting to bed a little earlier,” she said with her usual wise arse grin on her face.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. It nice and warm in here and that tea is going to work on me pretty well,” he said.

  “It’s always the same in here. I come here because I know that Abby will flake out and I can sit and have an adult conversation for once,” said Cory.

  “So, what happens now?” said Pam.

  “Well, we will go up there, check it out and then we can get somebody out to clear away the bodies. I agree that it sounds like it was an animal of some sort had itself a little feeding frenzy out there last night. When there are any developments, we will let you know,” said Louis.

  “Is it safe to go up there?” said Cory.

  Louis shrugged, “I would guess so. I have never heard of there being any trouble up there before and likely it was a one off. But again, we will let you know if that changes.”

  “We have your names and numbers, so we will be in touch,” said Greg.

  Louis stood up and thanked Pam for the tea and biscuits, Greg followed suit.

  They made their way out of the shop and back to the patrol car. Greg yawned again, covering his mouth with his fist.

  “Right then mister, I think we need a little fresh air. Let’s go for a little walk up to the reservoir shall we?”

  Greg nodded. He needed to walk that tea off, no doubt about it.

  It was only a two-minute drive up to the reservoir. There was no car park to speak of but there was a quiet side road that they could park on that ran parallel with one of the all-weather paths that had been created for the local hikers to use. They got out of the car and Greg tried to suppress a little shiver as his tired body hit the slightly cool air. They made their way to the path that led to the far side of the water and the outcrop where Cory had made her grim discovery an
d they began to walk across. One section of the path turned into a bridge that went over the overflow. The overflow ran straight down into the River Dell that ran under and through most of the town until it connected with the canal basin. Louis had always wanted to get herself a nice little canal boat and live on it. She wanted to be able to relax, read her books and be able to just sail off whenever she felt like it. It was something that she was planning for her retirement, and even though it was twenty years away, the dream of it kept her going. They were halfway across the bridge when she stopped for a moment and leaned on the barrier. The view across the water was truly breath-taking. Louis didn’t have chance to come up here very much and she wanted to take a moment just to drink in the majesty of Mother Nature. Greg had walked another ten steps before he realised that she had stopped. He went back to where she was stood and leaned on the barrier with her. The view was amazing, but he really wanted to get on with the task in hand.

  “We have work to do Louis,” he said.

  “Greg, let me tell you something, and this might be one of the most important things you will hear today. If you can’t stop and look at something as beautiful as this and appreciate it for what it is then there is no point in you doing this job.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  Louis smiled, God bless you, you’re just a kid, she thought.

  “Why do you want to be in the police force Greg?” she said.

  He thought for a moment. “I want to protect people and uphold the law,” he said.

  “Yes, but ask yourself why. Don’t just spout some bullshit that they told you at the academy, ask yourself the real reason why you want to do this. Don’t answer from the brain, answer from the heart.”

  Greg took a deep breath, he tried to disengage his training as much as he could, forget everything that had been drummed into him during his basic training and then he answered.

  “I want to make the world a better place. Not like, on a global scale, because that is pretty much impossible. But I want to do my bit, so that decent people have a chance to live without being scared, or bullied.”

  Louis smiled at him and cocked her head to one side, “That’s a pretty good answer Greg. Now I want you to look out over this reservoir and just appreciate it for a moment. Have a good look at it. This is the kind of thing that you are protecting. Without guys like us, then the whole thing falls into ruin. It gets filled with shitty bits of litter, the trees get cut down or set on fire, the whole thing gets fucked big style. We are that last line of defence for beautiful places like this. Without us then all of this will eventually be gone. That’s pretty important wouldn’t you say?”

  Greg looked out over the water, there was no denying how amazing it all was and how much he wanted to live on the doorstep of a place like this.

  “Yes I would say, which is why I want to know what happened to those ducks.”

  Louis sighed, there was no stopping him, but she knew the kid’s heart was in the right place. “O.K. Greggy, let’s go have at a look at those dead ducks,” she said, shaking her head. She followed him across the rest of the bridge and they went straight to the outcrop that Cory had told them about. Greg went to the fence first and looked over into the water. There were dead ducks there alright, but it was just like Cory had said, this was like nothing he had ever seen before. Louis had joined him at the barrier.

  “Now, what on earth could have caused that?”

  Greg shook his head, he really had no idea. It looked like the ducks had been skinned and filleted and thrown back into the water. He walked over to the left side of the barrier and had a look over. He saw the disembowelled remains of a duck right there on the rocks.

  “I think we should get a closer look at this,” he said to Louis. She admired his balls, he wasn’t squeamish about getting stuck right in with the action and she respected him for it. She tipped him a nod and they both made their way to the rocky shore of the reservoir. Greg looked over the rail and saw the mangled remains of one of the ducks. It was the pool of dried blood and the small collection of internal organs nestled comfortably inside the animal’s ribcage.

  “I need to get a closer look at that,” said Greg. He walked away from the outcrop and round to the rocky shore where the corpse was situated. Louis followed him round, but kept a couple of steps behind him. She wanted to see how he was going to deal with this situation. If he was going to make it to the top of the promotional ladder (which she believed he could) she wanted to test him out. She knew that it was only dead ducks, but one day it could be dead people that he was dealing with.

  Greg squatted down by the battered remains of the duck. He looked closer, ignoring the rancid smell that was filling his nose and tried to establish if there were any obvious signs of how it had been killed. He looked it over for a good few minutes and then he stood up.

  “Well, what do you think?” said Louis.

  “It’s weird Louis, I can’t see any obvious signs that it was attacked by anything. There are no obvious bite marks, none of the bones have been broken, it just doesn’t look like it has been attacked by anything at all,” he said.

  “What do you think happened?” said Louis.

  “To be honest, I haven’t got a clue. If I was in charge, I would get a vet in to try and establish what killed it, perform an autopsy? I don’t even know if they do that sort of thing for a dead duck.”

  Louis smiled, she had a good feeling that this young shaver was going to do well for himself. All he had to do was start believing that he was good and he would be a made man in the police force.

  “I tell you what Greg, I will give the local vet a call and see what he can do for us. I can tell you that this is a bit of a strange one, and I want to know what went on here just as much as you do. I will get hold of the local council, see if they can get this shit cleared up before the local spectators get here with their cameras.”

  “Hey, can I get the yellow tape out and make sure that nobody disturbs the scene before the vet gets here.”

  Louis smiled again, “Go for it chief, it’s probably the only time you will get to use it round here.

  Greg went running off, back over the bridge towards the car. It gave her a chance to assess the scene for herself, just to double check Greg’s assessment. She trusted his judgement but she need to be sure that there was no stone unturned. She took a close look at the remains that were splattered on the rocks and she agreed that it didn’t look like an animal attack. The bones of the deceased duck were pretty much intact and the blood around it definitely suggested that this was a pretty fresh kill. She was about to turn back and go and sit on the bench that was on the outcrop when something caught her eye. Something glinted in one of the bushes to the side of the rocky beach. She carefully stepped across the rocks to the bush and lifted up one of the shrubs that covered the edge of the path. There was a dead fox in there and as she lifted the shrub higher she found that the fox’s head was perfectly intact but the rest of its body looked pretty much like the duck on the rocks. The skeletal structure of the animal was perfectly intact but had been stripped of all skin and muscle from the neck down and its internal organs were spilling out onto the grassy floor underneath it.

  “Jeez,” she said to herself, her nose wrinkling in disgust

  She pulled her radio from the front of her uniform and called it in. She made a request for a clean-up and for a vet to come down to see if they could make any sense out of how these animals had died. She went up to the bench on the outcrop and sat down. She was going to wait for Greg to come back with his precious tape and then they were going to wait for the experts to get here. This was certainly the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Hurndell since the dawn of time. Possible the only thing that had come close was old Mr Redmond, the local pharmacist had accidently set fire to the contents of his wheely bin after putting his afternoon cigarette out in it. It had brought out the fire brigade and everything. It had even made the front page of the local paper which made him
a celebrity for at least four and a half hours.

  4.

  Greg had spent most of the day guarding the outcrop whilst the clean-up happened. The team raked the remains out of the water and bagged them up. They were suited and gloved up almost as if it was a radioactive spill rather than a few dead ducks. Greg had been given the unenviable task of turning away other parents with children that had come to feed the ducks. He couldn’t even give them a reasonable explanation of exactly what had happened. Still, it was better to send a few children home crying rather than traumatise them for life by showing them the dead things that were floating in the water out there. The vet, John T. Rogers had shown up just past four in the afternoon. He was bleating about some call outs that he had to do for the local rich boys who had horses that had caught the odd sniffle. In his words they pissed him right off and he was glad to get back to the local community to look after the people and animals in his own town. By the time he had got there the remains that had been left for him to examine had been out in the sun all day and they were beginning to smell exceedingly unpleasant. He had a look at the remains of the duck on the embankment.