Zorilla At Large! (5 page)

It was the final of some dancing programme on the telly that night. Like cooking, people would rather watch zed-list minor celebrities do it than get their arses off the sofa and do it themselves. It was a sad and sorry reflection of society but Zoe would not be deterred. This was her own business, damn it, and she was buggered if she was going down without a fight. She decided to check the coffers; there might be enough of the start-up grant she'd received for a couple of them plasma screens (if that wasn't offensive to haemophiliacs) like they have in pubs. Zoe could show the blimmin' dancing show and her ladies could Zumba along with their favourite non-entities.

I could call it ‘Zumba To The Stars'... I'll get some new flyers made...

Heartened, Zoe locked up the Big Room (it had used to be called the auditorium when the place was in the habit of putting on shows) and took the key to Reception. The caretaker was nowhere to be seen - but then, he wouldn't be, would he? He wasn't expecting the Zession to be over for another hour and a half.

What to do? What to do?

Shit.

She couldn't leave the place unattended. Kids or tramps or somebody might get in and get up to all sorts.

On the wall a faded sheet of paper listed contact numbers, handwritten in biro. Among them was the caretaker's mobile. Hallelujah.

Zoe rooted around in her bulky holdall. Where was her damned phone? Christ - if it wasn't one thing it was another...

A shadow moved across the panes of glass in the front doors. Zoe froze, phone in hand. Perhaps the caretaker had come back early after all.

She waited but no one came in.

Kids then... or tramps...

She squinted at the number on the wall. Oh seven eight...

A loud bang startled her enough to drop her mobile. What on Earth?

It had sounded like something falling over. She returned to the doors to the Big Room - perhaps she hadn't stacked the chairs properly and gravity had finally prevailed.

She was loath to unlock the doors and go back in. Let the caretaker take care of it; it's his blimmin' job.

A hand clamped her shoulder - no, not a hand: a claw!

It forced Zoe to turn around. A large animal towered over her, a silhouette of fur and fang. Zoe backed against the doors - oh, why hadn't she unlocked them? - and opened her mouth to scream. Before she could utter a sound, the animal swiped at her throat. Three diagonal gashes opened in Zoe's neck and the blood began to pour.

Gurgling, gasping for air, with her eyes wide in shock and disbelief, Zoe crumpled to her knees and keeled over onto her face. Her final thought before oblivion claimed her forever was that this would never have happened if those blimmin' ladies had turned up for class.

***

Chief inspector Wheeler was working late in her office. The councillors and other assorted buggers were all being housed in student halls of residence with a strong but discreet police presence.

On her desk was a stack of files. She reached for the first and opened it. The handsome, boyish face of Detective Constable Jason Pattimore smiled back at her from a black and white photograph.

“Hello, chicken,” Wheeler muttered with a heavy heart. She turned the photograph face down; she didn't want him watching her as she went through his notes.

Could Pattimore be the one for the chop?

After all, he was the most recent addition to the team - and wasn't it common practice to get shut of the newbies? Last in, first out - some kind of shit like that.

And he'd be cheap to pay off. His package would be small. Wheeler laughed at that, despite herself.

There was tension in the team. The breakup between Pattimore and Brough still rankled. Wheeler was against intra-departmental relationships of whatever stripe but then, to be fair to both men, Pattimore hadn't been a member of Serious when he and Brough had got together.

And then it had turned sour. Brough had confided the reasons why to Wheeler, had been on the brink of submitting his resignation. Now Pattimore was getting professional help with his ‘issues' and things had calmed down considerably... but...

Even so.

What would it do to young Jason to lose his job while contending with his mental health problems?

Wheeler couldn't do that to the boy.

And besides, the pragmatic side of her mind chimed in, saving a detective constable's salary is not going to make all that much difference to the overall budget.

No.

Not Pattimore then.

She closed the file and reached for the next one. The telephone rang.

“Chief,” said D S Melanie Miller. “There's been another murder.”

“What the fuck?” Wheeler's mind reeled. How could this be? Everyone who had been at that cocking skunk reception was safely under benevolent lock and key...

Miller seemed to anticipate Wheeler's next question. “It's none of the bigwigs off the council,” she said. “It's the woman what runs Zumba classes at the arts centre.”

Wheeler sat back in her chair. “And is it the same m.o.?”

“Looks that way, Chief. Throat slashed to ribbons. And, Chief?”

“Go on.”

“It looks like there's fur under her fingernails.”

Chapter Six

Miller happened to be first on the scene simply because, having dropped Brough off at his flat, she had swung by the arts centre to enquire about joining a Zumba class herself. Finding the instructor murdered was a blip, a bump in Miller's road to better fitness and actually having a social life of some kind.

She hadn't had a good night out for yonks, it seemed like, and there had been no new man on the scene since Jerry the cemetery grounds man had gone all weird - to put it mildly. Miller had been telling herself it was work's fault. Work was always getting in the way.

That evening was a case in point. Miller had come along to sort her life out and there it was - work - waiting to derail her plans.

She stood on the doorstep, guarding the scene. Forensics and uniforms were on their way. She called Brough.

“Oh, bollocks,” he said. “I've just run a bath.”

An image of him naked but for a towel cinched around his hips flashed across Miller's mind. She forced it away by thinking of the poor woman drenched in her own blood just behind the door.

“You'll have to get a taxi,” she told him. “I need to talk to the SOCO.”

“Damn and blast.”

She considered suggesting he ask Jason for a lift but decided Brough was probably in a bad enough mood as it was.

“See you in a bit,” she said and disconnected. Her thoughts returned to the victim. What a horrible way to go! The killer was obviously deranged.

An animal!

Miller shuddered.

She supposed she could take up jogging.

***

“Luntu Kabungo! Jeffrey Newton! And now Zoe Brownlow - a Zumba instructor from Pensnett. Three victims, the same m. o.” Chief Inspector Wheeler scowled at her team. The briefing room was still littered with plastic cups and chocolate bar wrappers from its recent occupation. The team preferred to look at the faces of the murdered on the screen over Wheeler's shoulder than look her in the eye.

D I Harry Henry, having cleaned his glasses on his knitted tie and put them back on, found himself transfixed by Wheeler's gorgon stare. She arched an eyebrow.

“Um... er...” Harry Henry floundered. “Was the third victim not in attendance at the reception then, um, Chief?”

“Not unless she was togged up as the fucking zorilla, no.”

“Oh.” Harry Henry sank back in his chair.

“The lab report,” Wheeler continued, “reveals traces of animal fur under the latest victim's fingernails. They're trying to identify what type of animal-”

Stevens interrupted. “I bet it's a - fucking wossname. Any money.”

“Bound to be,” said Pattimore, with a mocking laugh. He looked to Brough to share the moment but Brough looked away.

“Hark at David fucking Attenborough,” said Wheeler. “If by ‘wossname' you mean ‘zorilla' - well, we're not ruling anything out at this stage but the nature of the victims' wounds suggest something much bigger.”

Miller's hand went up like an eager schoolgirl. “You said ‘something', Chief, not ‘somebody'?”

“We'm not ruling anything out.”

Stevens was astounded. “You cor tell me it's some fucking wammal doing all this?”

Brough nudged Miller.

“Wammal,” she translated, “Animal.”

Brough nodded. Just when he thought he'd come to terms with the Dedley accent and dialect! ‘Wammal' indeed!

“Actually...” he sat forward, tapping his lips. “It does remind me of something...”

“Here we fucking go...” said Stevens.

“Go on,” said Wheeler.

“I'm sure you've all read
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
...”

Blank faces greeted Brough's assertion.

“No? Oh, well, it's one of the earliest detective stories, and there are all these murders-”

“We gathered that from the fucking title,” snapped Wheeler. “Get to the fucking point. I'm not running a fucking literary festival.”

“Well, it turns out the murders are committed by an ape. Or a monkey of some kind.”

“And?”

“Well, that's it, really.”

“Fucking hell,” said Stevens. “Well, he should be easy to spot.”

“Who?” said Pattimore.

“King fucking Kong.”

“I didn't say it was a giant ape,” said Brough.

“You didn't say it wasn't,” countered Stevens.

“Girls, girls!” Wheeler intervened. “Let's not have a playground spat about a fucking piece of fiction. Brough, Miller - back to the zoo. Find out if there's any other animals missing - particularly the big ones. The big, furry ones. Also, see if you can winkle out any connection between the zoo and Zoe Zumba. Harry, check on private owners - people who keep wild animals as pets in their back gardens, or as I like to call them, ‘stupid, fucking bastards'. See if there's any with circus experience. Perhaps they trained the family orangatang or somert - Brough?”

“It's orang-u-tan, actually, Chief.”

“Piss off.”

“Hang about,” Stevens got to his feet. “Am you really taking him seriously? A trained fucking monkey is our killer?”

Wheeler looked him up and down. “Why not? Some of them get jobs as fucking detectives. Like I keep fucking saying: we'm not ruling anything out. Right? Now, you and Jason still haven't found the bastard skunk thing. So I suggest that's where you focus your energies. OK, everybody,” she jerked her thumb towards the exit in time-honoured fashion. “Fuck off.”

***

A short while later, Stevens and Pattimore were moving cautiously through Field Park, checking every bush, shrub and compost bin for signs of the escaped zorilla.

“Man of my talents...” Stevens muttered. “Reduced to ferreting around for a - a fucking ferret.”

“Talents?” queried Pattimore. “I don't think being able to wank yourself off to Albanian porn videos five times a night can be considered a talent.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Stevens hissed. His cheeks reddened to the extent that, on either end of his moustache, they looked like tomatoes on a seesaw.

“There's nobody else here,” Pattimore pointed out. “Not even the zorilla.”

“The what?”

“You know - the thing we'm supposed to be catching.”

“Oh, yeah...”

Pattimore consulted the web browser on his smart phone. “It says here the zorilla's natural habitat is the savannah or open grassland. Although nocturnal in the main, it can climb trees to evade predators. Or shelter itself in rock piles.”

“So it could be anywhere? Either way, we'm not likely to find the bastard footling around this bastard bandstand - is that what you'm telling me?”

“Well, it's just as likely here as at Sam ‘n' Ella's...”

“Don't remind me,” Stevens rubbed his gut. “I was on the shitter half the night.”

“So the Albanian lovelies had to go without your attentions?”

“Don't be saft. I still managed to knock two out - or do I mean ‘knock one out twice'? Told you: I'm a talented bloke and - Well, fuck me with a rusty chainsaw!”

Stevens wore the stupefied expression of someone who had been slapped across the forehead with a plank.

“What?” Pattimore's eyes darted around in all directions. “Have you seen it?”

“It's all zeds, isn't it?” Stevens's eyes were wide.

“What is?”

“The murders. Zorilla-whatsit, the zoo, Zumba...”

“And the woman's name was Zoe!” added Pattimore, cottoning on. His fingers danced over his phone. “I'm calling the Chief.”

“Tell her it was me what cracked it,” Stevens nudged him.

“Ssh,” said Pattimore. “It's ringing.”

Meanwhile, a little way off, the fugitive zorilla trotted nonchalantly through the ornamental garden of remembrance, pausing only to leave a shit at the foot of the memorial.

***

The head keeper denied all knowledge of any escaped animals. There had been nothing, he said with no small amount of pride, since the great wallaby outbreak of 1973 and that - he was quick to add - was long before his time.

He directed Brough and Miller to a suite of offices. There, he assured them, they would find Chelsea who would be able to tell them whether Zoe Brownlow was a so-called ‘friend' of the zoo because, hand on his heart, the head keeper had never heard of her.

Chelsea, a red-faced young woman with an asymmetrical bob and tissues stuffed up the sleeves of her knee-length cardigan, was reluctant to divulge any information, no matter how much the detectives waved their i.d. in her face. Client confidentiality, she said primly, and Brough told her she watched too much television.

“If it was you,” said Miller, “And you'd been brutally slain, wouldn't you want your killer brought to justice? Wouldn't you want the authorities to be able to do everything they could?”

“Hmm,” said Chelsea. She tapped her keyboard and pulled up a spreadsheet. “No,” she said.

“No what?” said Miller. “You wouldn't want your killer brought to justice?”

“No!” said Chelsea. “I mean, no, there's no one of that name in our database of subscribers.”

“Oh,” said Miller.

She and the office worker stared at each other in silence for a couple of minutes and then Miller noticed Brough was staring into the distance. She gave him a nudge.

“Um - what about former employees?” he said, blinking.

Chelsea pursed her lips. “I wouldn't know; you'd have to ask H.R.”

“Could you?” Miller smiled, nodding at the phone on the desk. Chelsea drew in breath as though steeling herself to make some great personal (or indeed, personnel) sacrifice. She jabbed a beringed finger at some keys.

The call was relayed via loudspeaker so the detectives could it hear it directly from the horse's mouth.

“Yo, Divonia. S'Chelse.”

“Orl roight, chicken. Ow bin ya?”

Brough winced at the thickness of the unseen Divonia's Dedley accent.

“M'orl roight, arh,” said ‘Chelse'. “Listen, bab, I've gorra coupla coppers here asking if there was ever a - What was that nairm again?”

“Zoe Brownlow,” said Miller.

“Zoe Brownlow as worked here?”

“I dunno, chick,” said Divonia. “I doe know if I should be giving out that kind of info.”

“Only her's jed,” said Chelsea, “and the coppers want to bring her slayer to thingy - justice - doe they.”

“I bet they does. Hold up...”

There was a brief interlude during which the clacking of fingertips dancing on a keyboard could be discerned. Miller and Chelsea smiled patiently at each other; Brough checked his mobile.

“Nah, love. Nobody by that nairm,” said the disembodied voice. “Unless - unless her got wed and changed it?”

Brough looked helplessly to Miller who paraphrased. “Perhaps she's listed under her maiden name.”

“Shouldn't think so,” said Brough. He thanked Chelsea and, by extension, Divonia, and headed out. Miller followed.

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“You don't run a Zumba class if you're married.”

“You could do. You could be divorced.”

“In that case, you'd revert to your maiden name. You're trying to start again. Get yourself out there. Have another bite of the cherry.”

“What a load of bollocks! - Sir,” she added. What would Brough know about women? Sweet fuck all - that's what.

“Either way,” Brough conceded, “there is nothing to link our Zumba instructor with the zoo.”

“You can say that again,” Miller paused in the unlocking of her car.

“I shan't bother. Just get in and drive, Miller.”

“Think about it, sir. Zorilla, zoo, Zumba and - and Zoe.”

Brough's eyebrows dipped. His phone buzzed. It was Wheeler. He listened for a moment, sifting information and instruction from the invective.

“Right you are, Chief.” He pocketed the phone. “It's all zeds, Miller.”

“I just told you that.” Muttering darkly, Miller got into the driving seat. She unlocked the passenger door to let Brough in.

“It was Stevens who figured it out.” Brough was incredulous. “Fancy that.”

“You're all wankers,” mumbled Miller, drowning her observation with the starting of the engine.

***

While she waited for news, Wheeler shut herself in her office. She pulled the next personnel folder from the stack on her desk. It was Harry Henry's. He grinned up at her from his photograph. What a twat, Wheeler thought. His official i.d. shot and he looks like he's having the time of his life at a picnic or something.

Harry Henry had somehow attained the rank of detective inspector many moons ago. No - that was unfair; he was a solid member of the team. A bit of a plodder and clumsy as fuck but his research skills were second-to-none.

Even so, if he were to get the chop... Serious would save a D I's salary. And - another plus - he invariably worked alone, so Wheeler wouldn't be splitting up any partnerships... and-

Her shoulders slumped.

Yes, it would mean quite a large pay-off but that wasn't the problem.

All the while she was being pressured to include diversity on her team. She'd got a couple of gays (who were no longer a couple) and even a woman but Harry's was the only non-white face among the lot.

Was that reason enough to keep him? For the sake of ticking a box to keep the pricks in H.R. happy?

She closed the file.

No.

Harry was a hard worker, reliable and conscientious. He'd got where he was through dedication and perseverance not because of trendy tokenism. Fuck that for a game of bastards.

He was also the only married member of the team, the only one with dependants. Wheeler supposed she could dress up his dismissal as ‘an opportunity to spend more time with his family' but that kind of bullshit was the preserve of bent politicians caught with their dicks in the cookie jar.