Short Stories, Crimes, Cults and Curious Cats

by Jonathan Day

voracious. The activity of the team that searched the place may have disturbed it. I believe that the next unsuspecting person to approach will be taken. For that reason I would like you to remove my nephew and DS Clinton from the case.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Hough. I shall second them to another force before they have chance to return there.’

  ‘Thank you so much. He will be very annoyed.’

  ‘Better that than them ending up as a demon’s pâté.’ He handed her the menu. ‘Now, how about lunch.’

  DI Neville and DS Clinton were dispatched to the other side of the country early the next morning to assist in a multiple murder investigation. He didn't have chance to walk the dog or wake his sleeping wife to say goodbye. And he was, predictably, very, very annoyed.

  A few nights later, while he was rounding up suspects and taking DNA swabs, a team of army sappers arrived at the windmill under the cover of darkness. A dull thud rolled across the marsh as the derelict hulk was blown to pieces, sending the demon inhabiting it back to the lower depths of the dimension from which it had been spawned.

  The next morning there was no trace of the windmill. The land had been cleared and ploughed over to become just another part of the marsh waiting to be colonised by frogs.

  The Impossible Detective

  A shaft of sunlight from a window high in the chapel wall flashed on the blade poised to commit murder.

  Matthew tried to brace himself for the fatal blow, but sheer terror overwhelmed the potion intended to calm him.

  Was this really the way everything was meant to end? He did not want to transcend and become one with Jesus. There was a long life ahead of him and he could not care for his younger sister from beyond the grave. Was this a judgement for disobeying his senior officer and striking out to investigate on his own?

  A hand stifled his scream as the knife plunged into his heart.

  Blinding, swimming pain… a fountain of blood... then blessed shock. Matthew was borne up by the chanting of his killers, floating over the shell of his mortal remains. He could see through the timbered roof to the heavens and, on the road leading to the chapel, a convoy of police cars screaming to his rescue.

  DI Coleridge was first at the heavy, barred doors, hammering on them until they were battered down by a log waiting to be sawn for firewood.

  The members of the murderous cult offered no resistance. They were rounded up like submissive sheep, secure in the knowledge that their offering to God had been set free into his dimension of light.

  Matthew wanted to tell Manny Coleridge that it was all right, but his superior could not see beyond the heart cut from young man's blood-soaked corpse.

  If there was a diploma for domestic chaos, Gillian Sparrow should have achieved one by the age of 11. It might have been a reaction to the mismatch of a house-proud mother and laid-back Jamaican father, but was more likely the result of too many other things going on. Why bother ironing or brushing your hair when there were crime scenes to process, fraudsters' paper trails to follow, or police community constables to rescue when out of their depth?

  DS Sparrow, or Tweet as she was more generally known, had enough bolshie charisma to talk a scavenging Tasmanian devil out of a dustbin, charm hostile witnesses who loathed the police into making statements, and get away with insubordination that would have labelled any other officer a troublemaker. She was also expert in martial arts, and her car boot contained the tools and technology to deal with anything from a flat tyre to major emergency.

  The one thing her superior, DI Maurice Bolton, drew the line at was the haystack she called hair, so he had ordered Tweet to his barber who gave her a stylish bob, albeit somewhat boyish, which just needed a quick comb every morning.

  With nothing more serious than a shoplifter to charge, there was no excuse for DI Bolton and DS Sparrow to avoid the piles of paperwork on their desks any longer.

  They would have carried on with the backlog if the report of a missing child had not come in. Fortunately most of children turned up soon enough. Infants could find the oddest nooks and crannies to hide in, and officers with children were well-tuned to what they were. But six-year-old Jobey had never run off before. Perhaps he should not have been allowed to play outside on his own but, being a sensible little boy, why would he come to harm?

  After several hours had passed it didn't look good.

  Demented drivers, serial burglars and eloquent drunks with a prophet complex were all in the line of duty, but looking for missing children when there was a strong chance of them no longer being alive was the downside of the job. After the search by uniformed officers and local residents came to nothing, the next morning the case was handed to the detectives. While DI Bolton interviewed the parents for the glimmer of a clue, Tweet set out to scour the brickfields where a dog walker had claimed to have seen Jobey running away from someone. The rubble-strewn area local children played on had already been thoroughly searched; it wasn’t that large. And just how far could a child of six travel before becoming exhausted? Surely common sense would have told him to turn back at some point, which to Tweet suggested that someone else had persuaded him not to.

  So just how mischievous was Jobey? His parents swore he was a sweet, well-behaved boy, but then - they would, wouldn't they.

  DS Sparrow hadn't been a sweet, well-behaved child. From smoking in the cemetery to painting defamatory slogans on the Portland stone of the town hall with lipstick, she knew all the mischief that could go through a young mind.

  On the far side of the brickfield was a track, probably made by troops of child-sized feet, which no doubt led to some distant, secret den. Pursuing another of her annoying hunches without reporting in first would only mean a resigned reprimand from DI Bolton if she found nothing. But then, if she didn't come across Jobey, there was always the chance she could meet a Heathcliff in this windswept desolation - as though she would have been so lucky. Young men tended to flee from this disorganised young woman with an ample bosom and waistline to match, even before finding out that she was a black belt at karate. The only male at the station to show any romantic interest in her had been a police dog, now fortunately retired.

  Tweet trudged up the long, winding track to a better vantage point. Halfway there a young man appeared. He was no Heathcliff, with fair skin and hair and slight frame. And, much to her amazement, Tweet thought he was rather delicious so she immediately took a surreptitious snap with her smartphone.

  ‘Seen a six-year-old boy come this way?’ she asked.

  The young man gave a serene smile.

  She felt her knees buckle.

  Tweet pulled herself together. He was too delicate for her robust approach to life and probably spouted poetry.

  The stranger lifted a slender hand and pointed to a derelict farm building that had been destroyed by fire years ago.

  ‘They searched down there.’ Every police instinct told her it was a waste of time. Her libido insisted otherwise. ‘Show me?’

  The young man seemed to glide ahead of her through the long grass, his cotton shirt barely brushing the cow parsley, while Tweet's boots busily crushed buttercups.

  They stopped by a wind-damaged fence and he pointed to some large drainage pipes.

  Drainage pipes! Child-sized hideaways for adventurous infants.

  The detective vaulted the broken fence with a vigour that belied her ample proportions and poked her head into the widest one, which was long and curved, to call, ‘Jobey! Are you there?’ Her voice was amplified about the yard.

  There was a faint whimper.

  Tweet got on her hands and knees and crawled through the pipe. ‘Keep calling darling! I'm going to find you!’

  She reached the curve only to discover that it was blocked by an ancient pile of aggregate.

  ‘Oh shit!’

  Again the muffled sound, obviously not coming from the pipes. Unable to turn, Tweet backed out and toppled at the feet of the young man, revealing more cleavage and underwear than was decent.
She should really get round to sewing those missing buttons on her shirt. He seemed unfazed, and slightly intrigued, by the law-enforcing baggage that had landed before him. Thankfully he didn't offer to help her up, and instead beckoned her to follow him to a drainage cover. It was obvious a child could not have moved it, so where would have been the point of the search team looking down there?

  Tweet noticed the indentation where it had been propped open with a nearby pipe that had been dislodged.

  ‘Are you in there Jobey!’

  There was a muffled reply.

  ‘Sweet Jesus! He must have been down there all night!’

  Tweet immediately reported in to request assistance before tossing her jacket aside to haul at the deadweight trapping the six-year-old. All thought of dignity and the young man gone, she cursed Bazalgette and Victorian drainage engineers in general before managing to move the cover over far enough to shine her torch into the gloom below. What were they going to breed on this farm? Alligators to release into the sewage system?

  There was the wail of a child who had spent too many hours sitting in water and total darkness.

  With a supreme effort, Tweet levered the cover up and allowed it to fall aside so she could drop into the drain and lift Jobey out.

  Once wrapped in her jacket and reassured, he pointed to the young man. ‘How did he get out?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He helped me when that man chased me. I was frightened and