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The Bramford wolf, part3This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by richard bromley | |
| Friday, 11 April 2008 | |
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Mc Kintyre watched as the ambulance containing Turnbull and the two fire engines drove away. Looking at Turnbulls notebook he saw that Mrs Jean Evans the proprietor of the spar shop was the person who discovered the severed foot of Mr Green and reported it to the police, this seemed as good a place as any to start, he crossed the road and approached the shop. Running the gauntlet of teenagers around the door with their mountain bikes, skateboards and pushchairs. "No, I can't get you a bottle of cider, push off you little sod." As he ducked into the shop it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. He went over to the large and noisy fridge in the corner and selected a can of pop, at least it was cold. He walked down the aisle toward the till ducking slightly to clear dusty merchandise which had been pinned to a low beam and wondered what a Bramford resident might need a selection of false moustaches for. He passed the papers magazines and the most extensive top shelf he'd ever seen. Behind the counter sitting on a stool by the till was an attractive girl in her late teens, attractive in that overly made up, dyed blonde, low cut blouse kind of way. She looked up from the copy of teen magazine; her cheeks bulged as she blew a bubble of gum between her pink glossed lips. "Sixty pence." She said, her jaws chomping unceasingly on the gum. Mc Kintyre reached into his pocket for change, and then his jacket pocket for his I.D. "Detective sergeant Mc Kintyre." He said "Do you know anything about that old car parked opposite?" "No, but it was my mum that reported it to you lot, she saw it when she took the dogs out first thing this morning." "So it was your mum that made the report?" "Yeah that's right." She leant forward obviously excited about the drama, crossing her arms, her already ample cleavage became still more prominent, her breasts straining against the thin fabric of her top, drawing his eyes ever lower. "Here, are you looking at my tits?" "Certainly not." Said Mc Kintyre his cheeks reddening. "Suit yourself." She seemed oddly disappointed. "I'll have a packet of embassy number1." Mc Kintyre said trying to hide his embarrassment. "I'll have to get my mum to serve you cause I'm not sixteen yet." ‘JESUS', thought Mc Kintyre. "MUM." "Yeah," came an answering shout from the bead curtained doorway behind the jailbait assistant. "Can you serve its fags?" The bead curtain parted and a large woman in her mid forties, cigarette dangling from her bottom lip, edged between two tall stacks of boxes accompanied by the smell of stale smoke, stale sweat and elderly dog. "Embassy number 1,"Informed her daughter. "Four eighty love." "Detective sergeant Mc Kintyre," he said showing his I.D. "Do you know anything about the old car over the road?" "Not really sergeant, I reported it because I saw that foot lying there in all that blood, it gave me quite a turn I can tell you." "You never saw the driver then, or heard anything last night?" "
"No, not a thing, sorry sergeant. When are you lot going to come and investigate our break-in." "Break in Mrs Evans?" "Yes, about a month ago, something broke into the chicken run and killed all my hens." "I'm afraid foxes aren't answerable to the law Mrs Evans." "Weren't no fox sergeant," she said, "the door was completely smashed, nearly torn off its hinges, you come and have a look." Mc Kintyre felt he couldn't really refuse and followed her through the bead curtained doorway, through a squalid little room containing a sofa and T.V. and an elderly st. bernard dog curled up asleep in an old armchair. He was shown into the back yard where beady eyes regarded him from a dozen or so cages and hutches "My husband's ferrets." She said, "Horrible things aren't they." A heavy ledge and brace door, or at least what remained of one was leant against one of the sheds adjoining the yard, its thick planks smashed like matchwood. He looked more closely at the deep scratch marks scored deep into the wood; they looked a lot like claw marks. "We think it was the wolf." She said with obvious satisfaction. The wolf she was alluding to was a story which had been picked up by the local rag the Tidton Chronicle, a bastion of inaccuracy and partisan reporting. The first story appeared about three months previously when a local farmer claimed an enormous wolf had attacked his sheep in a small paddock adjacent to the farmhouse, roused from his comfy fireside chair by the sound of terrified sheep he had emerged in his carpet slippers with a torch and his trusty twelve bore to find several sheep dead and the rest of the flock being harried by what appeared to be a huge wolf, ‘six foot long if it were an inch' he wasted no time and had ‘let fly', with both barrels at the beast, he swore he hit the creature fair and square but that it seemed to have little or no effect other than scaring it away. As dawn broke the full extent of the carnage became clear, six dead ewes and four more badly mauled, two of which were subsequently put down by the vet. The police had been called in but there was very little to go on. A plaster cast had been made of a large canine footprint found in the soft mud of a gateway. The plaster cast was shown to the nearest thing Tidton could offer by way of an expert on wolves, the head keeper of the local safari park; he said it was either the paw print of something like a great dane or a hoax, saying that the print was at least twice the size of any wolfs paw he'd ever seen. The story and a photograph of Mr Jones with his dead sheep and plaster cast footprint were regarded even by the likes of the chronicles staff as deeply suspicious and only earned him the bottom quarter of page four opposite a story of a judges misconduct in the judging of marrows at the Tidton flower and produce show. The next reported sighting of the Bramford wolf, as it had come to be known, took place on Bramfords village green. Alfred Dawson of number four the mews Bramford, owner of Dawson's cycles twenty eight the high street Tidton, with a range of cycles to suit any pocket, claimed to have seen the wolf eating the ducks on the small pond at the greens centre. However on closer inspection police discovered the remains of a trail of breadcrumbs which led them to Mr Dawson's back yard where they found seventeen mallard ducks, all in good health. The reports however continued to flood in, more livestock was attacked, more unlikely footprints were discovered. Experts examined carcasses, spoke to witness's and made plaster casts and to a man declared the whole thing to be a hoax. This view was shared by Mc Kintyre, the police force in general and even by Cromford, although the latter reportedly believed in alien abduction, crop circles and the healing power of crystals. Everything concerning the Bramford wolf tended to end up on Mc Kintyre's desk. Being Cromford's sergeant, now that Cromford was so out of favour with his superiors meant that all the cases which other officers regarded as unsolvable, or rubbish, or both, ended up on his desk, he thought going back to the station and trying to do something about the teetering strata of paperwork in his in tray, which threatened an avalanche of catastrophic proportions which may one day soon engulf his entire office, and decided what he really needed was a drink.
Copyright 2008 richard bromley |
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