POLKA

“Becky! Becky!” whispered the wind. She had this odd sixth sense somehow. Things were all the while whispering to her. 

“Cucumber sandwiches!” whispered her left slipper.

“No, Becky! You must play a quick one-two before you attempt to score!” the curtains exhaled breathlessly.

It wasn’t ideal, in her career as a first-class airline pilot, it must be said.

“Becky,” said her co-pilot Carol. “Do you mind if I open the curtains? I can’t see the runway.”

“Enough!” said Becky. “It is time.”

With that, she walked back into the broom cupboard. “Ouch,” she said, as a coat hanger poked her in the left nostril.

“Come back!” screamed Carol. “I can’t land the plane on my own!” But while Becky bumped around in the broom cupboard, Carol took a quick peek behind the curtains. Zurich airport was coming up fast.

“Oi!” said Becky, emerging from the broom cupboard in an oversized mink coat. “What did I tell you? No peeking!”

At that moment, a pig strolled in on its hind trotters, nudged Carol to the side, and calmly landed the plane at Zurich airport.

“Thank you Geraldine,” said Becky. Carol’s face was white with fear, she turned and looked at Becky. 

“All planes have an emergency landing pig these days. Oh, and by the way, I’ve booked Geraldine to sing ‘My Way’ at your 34th birthday party.”

“But I’m 43,” said Carol.

“Cucumber sandwiches,” insisted Becky’s left slipper.

“Yes, all right, all right! Cucumber sandwiches,” Becky replied, dismayed.

Carol looked at her, bemused, for she could not hear what Becky could hear.

Becky turned to Carol. “Long story,” she said. “The pig screwed up big time once, and we all died in the crash, so we had to use the time machine.”

“The time machine,” said Carol, sardonically. “How did you get to that if you all d…”

“Shhhh!” said Becky. “Don’t let the death pixies hear you! We’ll be in deep trouble!”

Later, at Carol’s 34th birthday party, Geraldine sang ‘Happy Birthday’, accompanied by the death pixies and Becky’s left slipper.

“I vaguely remember this,” said 43 year old Carol as she watched 34 year old Carol dancing  a polka.

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ONLY A PLAY

Shirelle was not sleeping well. It had been three weeks now since the 'incident'. But, you know, if you put food in front of her, she'll eat it. It's not her fault that her superhero skill was being able to eat ANYTHING. But now she knew. Helicopter blades? Never again.

At three forty-five AM, unable to take it anymore, Shirelle got out of bed and went to find something for her indigestion. The medicine cabinet was empty, so she wrenched it off the wall and began to eat it, hoping that somehow it might have absorbed from its contents some medicinal properties.

The audience clapped vociferously. Damn these crowds that followed her EVERYWHERE. She couldn't even comb her pet weasel without the paparazzi taking photos on a whim at every corner.

'BRAVO!' yelled Mr. Pollington, who was one of the worst offenders, stopping only to swallow a stapler in a respectful tribute. He'd be ready to move on the bigger things soon too. But what neither he nor Shirelle could ever have expected was the chaos this simple act caused…

"You idiot, Mr Pollington!" came a cry. It was Mrs Pope who ran the Shirelle fanzine 'Matter-Eater Gal'. "How am I to staple together the fanzine now? All the pages will fall out!" 

"Oh no! All the pages will fall out!" said everyone together, and angry muttering filled the bathroom. Miss Bunzle fainted dead away, and hit her head on the bath tap. Mr Davenport screamed, and the whole lot of them began to run around in small circles.

"Oh, for goodness sake!" said Shirelle. She hated it when they did that.

She pressed a button on the side of her dress. Immediately, Ratgiraffe came swinging on a trapeze from one corner of the bathroom. "Order! Order!" he shouted, and the throng were rounded up like sheep. It was amazing how many people could fit in this bathroom to be honest.

"But when is Act Two?" demanded Knox Werner.

Shirelle sighed. When would they realise this wasn't a play? 

"When will you realise this isn't a play?" said Shirelle.

The audience laughed appreciatively and applauded with aplomb.

Angela Gabardo approached the newspaper stand at Waitrose nervously. Her latest play, "The Woman Who Could Eat Whatever She Wanted Without Putting on Weight: An Immersive Theatre Experience" had been an unqualified success. The immense set, built inside an abandoned WW2 aircraft hangar in Hertfordshire, was filled to capacity every night. The bathroom set on its own was larger than Angela's entire West Brompton villa. So far the reviews had been fantastic, but there were always those critics who just didn't get it. That cretin from the Daily Mail, for one. She tried to avoid reading him, but just couldn't help herself. What worried her most was that her star, Sheila Bloom, seemed to be getting lost in the role. The play, at 18 hours, was nearly as long as Neil Oram's "The Warp", which had driven its star, Russell Denton, halfway round the twist. What was she doing to her friend? Eating all that zero-calorie edible furniture every day, and not to mention the thousands of lines she'd had to remember! Of course there was no question of stopping the play, but the least she could do was to check in on Sheila. If she wore that brown wig and an old overcoat, perhaps she could sneak into the audience unrecognised? It was worth a try. She abandoned her trolley and headed determinedly back to her car.

As she began to strap her seatbelt on, she noticed something in her rear view mirror. Turning round slowly, she looked on, horrified, as Sheila, embracing the role as determinedly as was humanly possible, danced down the road like the Pied Piper, her 'rats' behind her, and munching on Angela's trolley as if it were nothing more than a Twinkie. This was getting out of hand. She grabbed the wig and donned it immediately, but caught the overcoat on the handbrake and tore it. The wig would have to do. 

She stepped out of her car, raised on hand and shouted, in the most domineering voice she could muster…

"Sheila, love! Stop! It's only a play!" 

"What's a play?" said Sheila. "Who are you, and why are you calling me Sheila? My name is Shirelle!"

"HER NAME IS SHIRELLE!" said the audience, as one. Mr Pollington and Mrs Pope began fighting over who was going to eat the un-paid-for bottle of stain remover at the bottom of Angela's trolley. Kevin Prewitt, sweating inside the foam-rubber Ratgiraffe costume, privately vowed to abandon acting and become an accountant, just like his parents had wanted. 

"It's just a play, love!" said Angela. "Sheila, please stop gnawing on that trolley, you'll ruin your teeth?"

"Only a play?" said the critic from the Daily Mail, staring about him. He had become so absorbed in the narrative that he hadn't noticed they had left the hangar. He looked at the Waitrose, and the line of HGVs backed against its loading bay. Was all this really just part of the set? Was he really the critic from the Daily Mail, or just an actor? Nervously, he began nibbling at the pad he'd been using to write his scathing review. Not bad, once you got used to the taste of the ink.

A thought crossed Angela's mind. "Oh God!" she thought, "the finale...Shirelle leaps from the roof of Waitrose car park!"

Shirelle turned...sorry, SHEILA turned...and stomped up the metal, open plan steps, her zombie-like followers not far behind her. How was this going to be stopped? Angela needed to think, and think NOW.

Sheila had reached the top of the steps and was climbing athletically up a ladder that led to the roof of the supermarket. Angela fought her way through the crowd in pursuit, and began, ponderously, to follow her up. About a quarter of the way there, she made the classic mistake of looking down. Her knees wobbled at the sight, and her left leg slipped off the rung. She managed to cling on, but the wig tumbled off into the crowd below. Even in her panicked state Angela was astonished to observe Miss Bunzle attempting to cram it into her mouth. This was all getting completely out of hand. With grim determination she turned away and resumed her pursuit of the actress, who was now nearly at the top.

From the gantry on the other side of the hangar, director Michael Palantine picked up his binoculars and peered at the gigantic Waitrose set.

"My God, that's Angela Gabardo!" he said. "What the hell is she doing? She's going to ruin everything!"

Frantically, the playwright rummaged in her handbag and pulled out an egg. Sheila caught this act from the corner of her eye.

"No!" she yelled, but it was too late. Angela cracked the egg, and from it, the genial genie materialised.

"I will grant you three washes," said the genie.

Everyone looked at each other in a state of confusion.

"Washes?" they queried, as one.

A little irked, the genie said "Yes, washes. What? WHAT?"

"Is this part of the play?" said Mr Pollington. "It didn't happen last time." 

"Eat him, Shirelle!" bawled Mrs Pope, frantically snapping pictures for the fanzine. 

"Out of my way!" yelled Michael Palantine, shoving his way through the crowd. And he began to follow the playwright up the ladder.

"What is your wash?" boomed the genie as the director arrived.

"I'll give you a wash!" snapped Palantine angrily. "Panto season hasn't started yet! What are you doing in my play?"

"As you wish!" said the genial genie, and he began to make magical passes, waving his hands about mystically. At the very top of the ladder, Angela's head was swimming, and the genie blurred before her eyes. She'd made the mistake of looking down again.

"I've changed the ending!" shouted Angela. "In the new version, everyone goes home disappointed after Sheila decides not to jump and becomes a nun instead!"

Sheila turned to Angela, put her hand on her head and said "Bless you my child."

Everyone looked a bit miffed at the anti-climax, and shuffled off to the theatre, ready for the next performance.

"Wait!" said the genial genie, "what about me?"

Angela turned to face him, and said…

"It's just a play, love. It's only a play." 

Down below, standing alone in the highly accurate facsimile of a Waitrose car park, the critic from the Daily Mail took out his chewed-up notebook and wrote one word

"Stupendous."

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PEAS

It was a dry night. Nobody found it until around 11pm. When they did find it, nobody was quite sure whether it was even the thing they had been looking for. But nevertheless they dragged the vending machine out of the ditch and set it upright.

 

'Tonight', they decreed, 'tonight's gonna be a good night'. Not many people know that the story of Black Eyed Peas' biggest hit was centred around a vending machine.

But this story is not about Fergie and co. It is about the mysterious vending machine that fell from the sky. Actually it had fallen off the back of a flatbed truck bound for Peterborough, but the people of Little Munchingham had never seen its like before.

It was carnage! I mean, it had instructions and all that malarkey, but they were nigh on impossible to follow. The villagers battled on resolutely, but they were horrified to find that what they had actually built from the assorted pieces was a large wicker man. And what's more, they had accidentally loaded it with sheep and pigs, as well as Mr Rimbaud from number 43, who bore a passing resemblance to Edward Woodward.

"Are you sure this is what the Sky Gods want us to do?" Protested Professor Waffle, who ran the University. The University was only a pile of cardboard boxes on the Village Green, but the Professor could say the Alphabet all the way up to "R", which made him terribly clever.

'You lost. Get over it', repeated the villagers in a kind of mantra at Professor Waffle, adding 'Burn it MEANS burn it' into the equation. What NOBODY expected however, was for one of the trapped pigs to wander calmly out of the effigy and start tap dancing, wearing a top hat and black tuxedo. What WAS going ON?

"Witchcraft!" Cried the Professor, and then, having suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be a man of science, took a sudden interest in the state of his cuticles. Baron Poppet, self appointed head of the village, stepped forward to challenge the beast, waving aloft his chicken of office.

"If it isn't Almin Fotchley", said the pig, and stretched out his front hoof. The chicken took a curious glance for a couple of moments and said "Charlie Goherd! I haven't seen you since...since..."

"Since graduation," replied Charlie. The villagers, getting more irate by the minute, sat and listened to this painfully dull conversation for the next 36 days, before turning their attention back to the burning effigy, although to be fair they didn't have anything to light it with, so they had to attempt to heat it with a travel radiator that one of Mr Rimbaud's neighbours had picked up from the pound shop.

At this point, the Wise Woman stepped forward to make one of her pithy pronouncements. "Woe, thrice woe be to  the tides of March!" She said. Even she didn't know what she meant, but everyone knew she was wise because three years previously she'd swapped the Baron's chicken of office for a plimsoll and it had taken him a month to notice.

But the pig was wiser, as he had been talking at length to the plimsoll under the premise that they thought it was a chicken, even having gone to such lengths as ventriloquising said footwear as an extra precaution. He grabbed the plimsoll, slapped the wise woman cleanly along the top of her (it must be said remarkably high*) forehead and set about climbing the effigy up to where Mr Rimbaud had been imprisoned.

"Stop him! He's attempting a rescue!" cried the Professor, before suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be against the burning. He slunk off to bed early. Before long the pig reached the top of the effigy and, in an unexpected turn, was garlanded with a wreath of fresh roses and whisked off to start a new, prosperous life in Guatemala by unnamed benefactors. As he looked back at the baying crowd, he saw Mr Rimbaud laughing very slowly, giving the pig a knowing nod and a wink. It was blatantly obvious what had happened here after all.

It had all been another of Rimbaud's pranks. He and the pig had engineered the whole thing by covering the sign warning of speed bumps just as the flatbed left the duel carriageway.

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MUFFINS

"I wanted to make myself a cup of tea,  but frustratingly we have run out of mushrooms", complained Constance to whoever may be within earshot.

"It's a terrible nuisance that we have to go all the way to Amsterdam to buy them," replied Candice loudly. Mrs Bagshott, chairwoman of the Walthamstow branch of the W.I., shot the two ladies a disapproving glance, and furiously buttered a muffin.

She was always doing this. She never ate them, as muffins annoyed her, and as a consequence, the office bin was full to the brim with the things on a regular basis.

Mrs.  Bagshott was a curious name for a twelve year old boy, I always thought.

The motion to let men into the W.I. had been passed with only a two vote majority, and everyone suspected that Constance and Candice had been stoned at the time. Nevertheless to everyone's surprise Mrs Bagshott had proved a capable leader, and a traditionalist.

"Chocolate brownie, Mrs Bagshott?" Asked Constance. "They're my special recipe!"

What they DIDN'T know is that this 'special recipe' contained the middle eight of the song Edelweiss, the number 537, and precipitation. She was never entirely convinced until she had performed her daily trust exercise of shaping her eyebrows to resemble a mother squirrel in front of the mirror.

Today was different though. It was all about to kick off...

Unbeknownst to all, a rival, all male faction of the W.I. Had double-booked the church hall. And here they were, bursting through the thin pasteboard walls of the hall on their cardboard Harley Davidsons, led by Grand Dragon Vulthoom the Mighty. They roared across the parquet flooring towards the refreshment table. 

"Hand over the Magick brownies, ladies!" Cried Vulthoom, brandishing the deadly wand that his four year old daughter had made for him in nursery school.

Candice, however, had long since been an expert at undertaking the 'woolly sock' routine, and as she stood there naked (I'm not entirely sure that the nudity wasn't just gratuitous, if I'm honest), Vulthoom skittered and skidded like a cartoon mackerel on a plate of cold custard, eventually coming to rest upon an open vice in the metalwork room.

Mrs Bagshott wasted no time in tightening the vice around Vulthoom's skull. He roared like the Brian Blessed he closely resembled. 

"If it's brownies you want, then brownies you shall have, my laddie!" said the twelve year old boy in a twinset and pearls.

And she began cramming them into Vulthoom's objecting jaws until...

...until the revellers at this 13th birthday party had enough. As it happened, three of the presents were mushrooms so there was plenty of tea. Mrs Bagshott, oddly, never had mushrooms in her tea anyway, so it was a matter of much mirth at the W.I. for many years to come that an evil warlord like Vulthoom had met his demise at the party. 

They made a coat of arms from his remaining limbs and shared the brownies with the Bulgarian Camel Dancing Group who just happened to be passing.

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SERIOUS CLOWN HEAD

I thought clowns were meant to be funny! It's really annoying though - the ones I've hunted and hung the heads of on my wall, well, they all look truly miserable!

"You are blocking the approach road to my soul!" moaned one as I sat one evening sipping Cognac.

I went to the garage to fetch some masking tape. "That'll shut you up", I thought. But I forgot, the most miserable one of the LOT was in there - you know, the one who looks like a pigeon eating a caramel chocolate bar. You'd think that this, in itself, might cheer it up, but oh no - "the end doth cometh soon" came his maudlin voice. This was getting too much. And the female clown head I had collected back in Lagos, well, SHE was the most serious clown head of all... "We are like the dreamer", she would say, "who dreams, and then lives in the dream." It would make me think, and as anyone who knows me knows, I don't LIKE thinking. "For God's sake, entertain me!", I cried, dropping to my knees, "tell me a joke! Throw a pie!" I was forgetting, of course, that they were just heads. In the end, I came up with an ingenious idea. The female clown had a LOT of hair, so I turned her upside down and TA-DAH! No more sad face - it was now an old man with a beard...a LONG beard, and, what's more, that glum face is now smiling happily at me, below a couple of golf balls that I have painted with eyes and an out of date carrot for a nose.

The police are here now, and they LOVE this clown head. I don't think they're on to me just yet...

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SUCH INSOLENCE

It was a kind of kettle drum, I think. Raised on a plinth. Cedric thought it would be a jolly good jape if all us pretended to defecate on it for the photo scrapbook. I wasn't so sure. I never really felt like I fit in with my rugger loving, public schoolboy chums. I went along with it anyway - it was better than the immature goading and predictable forced nudity that would have ensued if I hadn't. But there was a problem. No sooner had we assumed our positions than a rather triangular looking man in a filthy tuxedo approached. If you asked me to show you, by raising a certain amount of fingers, how angry he looked, you would die of starvation by the time I'd finished. It was, of course, Herr katzenschneiderblüffendehausmann, the music teacher. His name, as near as I could translate with my fragmentary German, meant "the man of the house of baffling cat tailors". The man himself was as baffling as his name. In forty years of teaching in an English public school, he had never learned a word of English, preferring to communicate in inscrutable gestures and bizarre noises he made with the various instruments he carried around with him. Of our group, only I took music, and so it was that I was elected to serve as interpreter. This was going to take some explaining. SCREECH! went the viola, which had seen better days, followed by the fearsome shake of a tambourine, rather too aggressively near my head if you ask me. My 'friends' guffawed nervously as they waited for my translation. It turned out that it wasn't actually too bad, as Katzo had merely congratulated me on my most recent assignment, and nothing more. But I wasn't going to let my poncey chums know that, oh hell no. I turned to them and said "He says he will NOT STAND FOR SUCH INSOLENCE! Who is first for the stretching rack?" By now they were cowering meekly behind a sheath of sunflowers. Katzo was rather irritated by my prank and yelled "I never said that!" by way of a comical bassoon note and a tinkle on the xylophone. It was rather a bizarre way to convey wrath, but somehow still effective, as my yellow bellied associates shrank back still further"... I was just getting into my stride, and I would have subjected my friends to even more discomfort, but for the fact that we were interrupted by the little girl in white. She was a ghost who would skip down the corridors singing the words to Pop Goes the Weasel in a spooky, reverse-reverb-y voice. We all stepped aside and waited for her to disappear through the wall opposite. I should mention, by way of explanation, that the school had been built on the site of an ancient little girl burial ground. It was not uncommon, when wandering the corridors in search of a midnight snack, to find oneself faced with a pair of twins would would invite you play with them "forever and ever", or, upon returning to your dorm room, to find your bed occupied by a weird scab-faced urchin whose head would spin round and round whilst projectile vomiting on your nice clean sheets. We tended to give them a wide berth. Katzo let out a deep bass note of relief. "All lurk and no playing makes Katzo a dull boy", I said, deadpan, to three terrified faces. The baffled music master seemed by this point to have forgotten all about the kettle drum incident. He blew a few notes on a piccolo and clashed finger-cymbals together, which from experience I knew meant "I'm off to bed dear boy, see you on the morrow". I was having too much fun to allow this, however, so thinking desperately, I concocted a pretext for keeping him there. Instinctively, I danced like a sailor, rather quicker than I had anticipated, if truth be known, to the extent that I looked like a sped up piece of old vintage video. Katzo tinged his triangle incessantly, like a malfunctioning cappuccino machine. His face slanted to one side and he started foaming at the mouth.

"AAAAAARGHHHHHH!!!!!" yelled Tobermore, by now seriously in need of a clean pair of keks. CLOMP went Katzo's prosthetic leg, in excitement. CLACK went his wooden one. SNOODLE went his uranium one as he muffled towards the clan. Not the Klan. I thought I'd best make that clear. But Tristram had a foolproof plan involving galoshes, Eritrea, and a tin of carrot and coriander soup...

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THE STRANGE CASE OF THE METAL XYLOPHONE (STRANGE CASE 03)

Porridge, a set of pink neon lights, a heated argument about xylophones, the words 'clearly there had been a murder', ice, Morris dancers, the taming of three shrews, a portaloo, yesterday's newspaper and Horace the humble hat-maker. You wouldn't necessarily connect these things, but they all came together to create something I will always regard as the strangest case of my long career...

It had been another of those long, hot summers during which the sewers smelled as high as a kite, but there was barely a whiff of work. My telephone hadn't rung for so long that I was beginning to wonder whether the line had been cut, and it was while I was phoning the telephone company to find out, that the dame walked through the door.

What any private detective really wants is a juicy murder to solve, but nine times out of ten what we get is another sordid divorce case. Some sobbing dame would walk through the door and say "I think my husband is having an affair!" and I'd spend the next week hiding in the bushes with a camera. So you'll forgive me if I wasn't expecting much from this particular dame. Boy, was I wrong! 

"I think my husband is having an affair!" sobbed the dame. At these words, I stood to attention like a pointer sighting a covey of quail. Clearly, there had been a murder.

I suspected the Morris dancers straight off. Every morning they performed relentlessly outside the shelter. Come rain or shine, wind or wither, they would down tools and block the way, making me late for work every darned morning. Three years they'd been doing this. I knew in the back of my mind that they would be connected to this seedy underworld and, ultimately, murder.

But what were those pink neon lights on the other side of town? I had to get there, and quickly.

I pushed past the dame — Mrs Pardoe from the wool shop — without a word. Given the gravity of the situation, I was sure she would understand that there was no time for niceties.

I hailed a cab to the other side of town, telling the driver to head straight for the pink lights. The driver grumbled something about Philip K. Dick, but 8 miles and £28.50 later he got us there. I told the guy I'd pay him when I got my cheque from Mrs P, and jumped out when he stopped at the lights. There they were — in hot, neon pink that seared into the retina — the words:

UN LE SAL'S P ZZA IA

What could it mean? Either some of the letters were missing, or it was some kind of code. Whichever it was, I had to find out, so I dived into the building. It was some kind of restaurant. A fat man in a chef's hat was shovelling dough into a clay oven.

"Ciao buddy, I'm Uncle Sal. Wanna pizza?" he said.

"Enough with the wise cracks," I snarled. "This is a murder investigation! Now, tell me — the key to deciphering the code - what is it?"

"Eh?" said Uncle Sal, if that really was his name. There was something suspicious about this guy, so I decided to get a photo for my case file. But lady luck had it in for me tonight — the second I pressed the button, two people blundered straight into the frame. It was Mr Pardoe and that young woman from the perfume counter at Lacy's Department Store. They were kissing — and they'd ruined my photo! If I never solved this case — it'd be their fault!

I spent the night at home in the air raid shelter. I couldn't sleep. Images of those pink neon lights at that coded pizza place kept flashing through my brain amongst snapshots of Morris dancers. I decided to do me a bowl of porridge, which, if I recall correctly from my school days, was invented by a young lady from Norwich.

Hang on! That was it! Tomorrow, to avoid being late for work at the shelter, I would simply start work early, and go out to pick up my newspaper DURING MY SHIFT! That way I could prevent myself ever being late again!

Curious, I sloped off for another quick glance at the letters on the front of the restaurant. I was convin ed that they held the clue to the murder that I had envisaged had happened. On the way back, I noticed a brand spanking new portaloo. To say I didn't trust it would be the understatement of the minute. It had legs for a start...

I snuck up to the portaloo and took a peek inside. If it wasn't my arch-nemesis Lucie Drang! She screamed an ear-piercing shriek. The police were here in no time, obviously having worked out the same unlawfulness as I had.

"You're under arrest, pervert!" they said to me, presumably to make it convincing in front of Drang. They never said a word to me in the police car, but they bundled me into a cell. I was excited that they were recreating Drang's arrest using me as the main actor. After three days, I suggested that perhaps I was no longer required...

The officer in charge paid no heed to my words, and instead I was lumbered with a cell-mate in the form of Terry Twirling, the local high school music teacher. 

“What are you in for?” I asked.

“Thumped a bloke, didn't I?” said Terry. “Maths teacher. Said xylophones were made of metal! I said that's glockenspiels you're thinking of. Xylophones are made of wood. Bloody idiot!”

“But you've got to admit, on an onomatopoeic level, glockenspiels do sound as though they're made of wood, whereas xylophones…”

“Are you calling me a liar?” said Terry, squaring up. I noticed that his knuckles, though bloodied, were tattooed with the words "HATE" and "BACH". Desperately I began pounding the bars of the cell in order to get the attention of the guard. It sounded a bit like a glockenspiel.

Terry shot me a disapproving look. 

"That's Toccata And Fugue In D Minor," he said, in a low, terribly menacing voice. I had to say, they were taking this reconstruction to OBSCENE lengths.

"AAAGHHH!!!" yelled one of the guards.

"You wot?" said Terry.

"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" said the guard again.

And a few seconds later, "OUCH!!!!"

I decided to intervene.

"Excuse me guard," I said, "but that sounded very much to me like you'd been bitten by a shrew. Am I right, or am I right?" — I thought I'd better play along with the whole façade, as we couldn't waste TOO much time before we were to arrest Lucie Drang.

"Wrong," replied the guard, "THREE SHREWS."

"Tree shrews?" I said. "But they're normally so docile!"

"THREE shrews, you numpty!", snarled Terry, and just like that, he head-butted the cell door open. We each grabbed a chair and within a few minutes had all three shrews under control.

"We make quite a team," I said. "Have you ever considered becoming a detective's assistant?"

"Naff off," said Terry, and grabbing the half-empty can of warm Stella that had been confiscated when he was thrown into the cells, he staggered outside. 

"You've forgotten your newspaper," I said, picking up the copy of the local rag that had been sitting under the can. I glanced at the cover. There, encircled by a ring of lager, was the face of Uncle Sal! 

"BUY ONE PIZZA, GET ONE FREE", it said on the chef's hat he was wearing in the photo. Of course, that was it - how could I have missed it?

I perused the newspaper with intent. I couldn't help noticing it had yesterday's date on it, the 29st of June. Something seemed a little odd here. I was just on the verge of solving the mystery when the guard arrived.

"You're free to leave" he said.

"Oh that's sick, man!" I said, momentarily forgetting that I wasn't twelve years old, "but why?"

"You tamed three shrews for me," he replied, "so I had words with the powers that be"

"The powers that be what?" I asked.

"The powers that be....I dunno....above?"

"Above what?" - I was intrigued.

"Above...the law?"

"Like who?" - I was going to beat this confession out of him if it was the last thing I did.

"You're f...free to go...." he repeated, less sure of himself now.

"Like WHO?" I said again.

I was distracted for a moment, as I caught another glance at the newspaper. The headline read: "In ompetent thieves aught by se urity ameras."

The missing letter C! Where had I seen it before? I grabbed my notepad and scanned back rigorously. There in my own handwriting was the word "convin ed"!

All this time searching and the answer had been staring me in the face every time I looked in the mirror! I turned myself in and admitted the murder of whoever it was who'd been murdered, but I'd written "clearly there had been a murder" in my notepad, so obviously I must have murdered SOMEONE.

I felt sick to the stomach but I knew that the story wasn't over yet, as I'd also written 'ice' down as one of the things to tie the story together, as well as the hat man. What was THAT all about?

No!! Hold on!! I COULDN'T have been the murderer, otherwise how could I have seen the picture of Uncle Sal and the BUY ONE GET ONE FREE deal?!!! 

I told the guard that I had now worked out that I couldn't possibly have murdered the victim, whoever that was. He said "Yes ok, I'll let you out" and we shook hands and had a good laugh about it on the way out. Now it was time to solve it once and for all.

As I shuffled back to the air raid shelter, I passed the shop of Horace, the humble hat-maker, and remembered that I had ordered a new fedora. You can't be a private detective without a fedora.

When I got there, Horace was distraught. Three of the shrews he'd been keeping as pets had escaped. He showed me the cage they'd escaped from. There, on the floor of the cage was the same newspaper I'd found in the Police Station! How could it be in two places at once?

Either something very weird was going on, or someone had made a duplicate of that newspaper. But why?

I decided to conduct a little experiment. I would cryogenically freeze everything for a while. Well, maybe not cryogenically, but I knew there was some ice in the freezer. I looked around Horace's place for a bucket, filling it with the frosty cube thingies. I snuck up behind Horace and poured the ice over his head, aiming at an angle so that it would cover some of the newspaper too. Horace shrieked loudly. But wait, where had I heard that ear piercing squeal before?

That question would have to wait, but I HAD managed to answer my OTHER question about the duplicate newspaper, and it was my experiment that solved it...

I wrote down my findings as quickly as I could, on the only paper I could find — the back of the Polaroid I'd taken, or tried to take - of Uncle Sal. With this in one hand and my brand new fedora in the other, I rushed out into the street. There was no question of going back to the shelter now — that restaurant was at the heart of whatever was going on, and I had to get back there, fast.

I hailed a cab, and as luck would have it, the first one to pass was the same one I'd taken the last time I went there. 

"Take me to the pink lights!" I said, but to my surprise, the driver leapt out of the cab and socked me in the nose, muttering something about "lousy fare dodgers" and "Philip K. Dick nuts". The last thing I remember before everything went black was the driver taking my brand new fedora as collateral for the cab fare.

The next thing I remember was waking up on the sidewalk with a dame bending over me. It was Mrs Pardoe from the wool shop, and she was clutching the Polaroid.

"You did it!", she said.

"Did what?"

"Caught my husband with his fancy-woman," said Mrs Pardoe, dangling the Polaroid. "You know, I'm actually surprised, I had come to the conclusion you were an idiot."

"Wait," I said. "You can't have that, it's got my theory about the newspapers on the back of it!" But she was already getting into the back of the cab. As I staggered to my feet, it roared off up the road.

The next morning I turned on the television. Clearly there had been a murder. I saw the police on the news arresting Lucie Drang. I slurped on my coffee with satisfaction. I knew it was her, because that paper, the one at Horace's house, it was wet, so it couldn't have been the same one as the pizza place. It all made sense now, the missing "c", well that was obviously just a cleverly positioned clue by Uncle Sal, right near the portaloo, and was meant to be read as "see?".

That was all it took. I bristled with pride at such an impressive resolution to the case, and now I was free to do as I wished. And what I wished was that in the next case...I would have a sidekick.

But who would it be? Terry Twirling, the mild mannered music teacher? Horace, the humble hat-maker? Uncle Sal, the perplexing pizza chef? Or someone else entirely? One thing was certain —whoever it was, it would be the strangest case of my long career...

FIN

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