Chapter Six: The Second Brother
Paddington caused a stir at the station on Tuesday when he paraded his new wares: a classical blue two-piece suit, a long tan coat, and a fedora.
“Sorry, sir,” Quentin laughed. “No press interviews without an appointment.”
His mothers merely stared, her expression her question, until Paddington explained himself with the letter he’d found inside his cottage on Saturday night. Andrea examined the signature then nodded.
“Congratulations, detective constable,” she said. Paddington wanted to reach across the desk and hug her, but he didn’t. Neither did she. Her only show of emotion was a single quiver of her jaw which sent an empty pang through Paddington. He wished his father were still alive.
Andrea nodded curtly. “Lose the hat, dear. You look like an idiot.”
Paddington wanted to ask Andrea whether Conall had found and destroyed all the zombies, but he’d promised he wouldn’t and Andrea wouldn’t want him disobeying the duke. Besides, no news was good news. No news meant the zombies had been taken care of and no more needed to be said of it.
So Paddington returned to his desk. It was exactly as he’d left it, which saddened him a little. The rush was over; life continued. Even Lisa had been too preoccupied to care. He’d gone to her house straight from the manor and found her on the couch hugging a hot water bottle. When he told her of his promotion, she’d said something too quiet to hear. Paddington remembered nodding and shifting his feet, and Lisa apologising, but mostly he remembered being told that she needed a few days away from him and that it wasn’t his fault and not knowing if she was lying.
“Jim!” Quentin held out his phone. “Thomas Brown says that Beast of Giveadamn’s killed one of his Barbaras. He wants to know what to do.”
Paddington walked over and took the phone. “We’ll be there soon, Thomas. Preserve the scene.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means don’t touch anything until we get there,” Paddington said, trying to free a pen from his unnecessarily deep coat pockets. Why had he worn this coat? It had far too many pockets and he couldn’t remember which one had the pen in it.
“So I should put her back?” Thomas asked.
Paddington froze, a familiar creeping in his spine. “Put her back?”
“I remember where I found her.”
Paddington sighed. “Don’t bother, Thomas.”
“But I should take her off the spit?”
Paddington squeezed the phone. “The spit?”
“Seemed a shame to waste ’er.”
“Just…” He forced himself to calm down. “Just put the fire out. We’ll be there soon.”
“No hurry. She’s not going anywhere.” The line went dead.
Was this his first case as a detective? Or didn’t it count because it was the same case as twenty-nine days ago? Hard to say, but he knew Lisa would tell him to stop feeding his ego with irrelevant questions and solve it already.
Or, since this was Betsy’s case, she’d tell him to drop it and investigate something sensible, like graffiti.
Half an hour later, Paddington and Quentin were Thomas Brown’s. “’Ello Quentin. She’s back here.” Behind the house were the still-smouldering remains of Barbara. Or, one of them.
“Just out of interest, Thomas,” Paddington said, “what do you call your male sheep?”
“Barbara.”
“Thought so.”
Paddington crouched by the spit. Partial cooking made identification tricky, but the bites were similar to the last attack. Again the attacker had chomped through flesh, muscle, and bone. Unlike last time, however, the beast had left a good deal of the animal untouched.
Why would it eat a whole cow and only half a sheep?
“I’m sorry for your loss, Thomas,” Quentin said.
Thomas watched Quentin carefully. “It happens.”
Did the beast prefer beef? Was the wool off-putting or difficult to eat around?
“Don’t worry, we’ll get her killer.” Quentin placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
Thomas knocked it off. “Who’s worried? I got others.”
Or had the beast eaten recently? Had it not eaten as much because it hadn’t been as hungry?
Paddington turned the sheep on the spit. There were fewer bites; the beast was getting better at killing.
“So, Jim…” Quentin said. “Do you… detect anything?”
Paddington looked up, mouth open. “Quentin, that was a pun. How long have you been working on that?”
Quentin smiled and shrugged. “A few minutes.”
“I don’t get it,” Thomas said.
“Policeman humour,” Paddington said quickly. “No threats or unusual activity lately?”
“Nothing worse than Richard painting a bullseye on the back of Barbara.”
Wiping his hands on his overcoat, Paddington stood. He hadn’t touched the corpse, but still felt contaminated. Barbara’s head hung awkwardly, pleading for Paddington to end her pain. He didn’t know how to tell the sheep she was already dead.
“Right,” he said, because there was nothing more to ask. “We’ll take some samples and be on our way. Might I suggest that you leave the rest of Barbara to the fire? We don’t know what diseases her attacker might have.”
Thomas dispassionately regarded the carcass. “Right you are.”
“Also,” Paddington said, “I think it best that we stake out your farm tonight.”
Quentin’s face lit up like a pinball machine. “I get it. It’s a pun, right?”
It was nice to see Quentin making an effort. “That would only apply to cows, but sure,” Paddington said. “We’ll have a steakout.”
“You said that already,” Thomas said. “Now, I want Constable Appleby in charge.”
Paddington stood up straighter and took his hands out of his coat pockets. “What? Why?”
“Because I don’t want you here at all. We’ll handle this the proper Archi way.”
Wait, was Thomas not letting him come because he was dating Lisa? What did he expect Paddington to do, renounce her? That was never going to happen.
“Fine,” Paddington said, and set about documenting everything that seemed important. When they’d finished, Quentin suggested they have lunch at the pub to celebrate Paddington’s promotion, which Paddington declined in favour of visiting his girlfriend.
“Lisa? Are you home?” Paddington crept along the front corridor of her house, worried he hadn’t given Lisa enough time. He didn’t want her biting his head off, but he needed to use her computer for Betsy’s case again.
A point he planned to bring up gently. Or not at all.
The back room was empty and the lights on. Paddington checked the back yard. “Lisa?” Her car was out the front, so she wasn’t working in the city garden, but no head popped up to greet him. He moved farther into the nursery, checking each row in turn. In the fourth, he found a pair of jeans, Lisa’s red sweater with the hole in the sleeve, and a brown shirt.
“Lisa! Are you okay?”
Frantic, he ran along the rest of the rows. What had happened? Had some patriotic Archian taken matters into his own hands? Surely not. True, Lisa was the most outspoken, technophilic Mainlander he’d ever met, but kidnapping? And why leave her clothes?
Paddington felt eyes on him. Very slowly and non-threateningly, he turned toward the sensation. Before he could see what it was, he heard claws catch on gravel and disappear right.
That wasn’t the Beast of Gévaudan, was it? They were close to the farms, after all…
“Lisa! Where are you?” he yelled.
No reply. No movement. No cries for help. Where was she? Where was the… whatever had disappeared among the plants?
He gave each row another furtive search, then pulled his radio out of a pocket. “Unit thirty-eight to control.”
“Yes James?”
“Mum, something’s happened to Lisa. I want to report her as missing.”
r /> There was a sigh over the radio’s crackle. “One tiff and it’s the end of the world. Any evidence?”
“There’s a set of clothes in the back yard; no other signs of a struggle. Her car’s still here. No ransom that I’ve found. Plenty of people with motive, though.”
“All right, I’ll have it investigated,” Andrea said, “but not by you.”
“What?” Paddington pressed the radio’s button harder. Was she serious? Lisa could be in danger; who better than him to find her? Who more driven than him?
“I’m not discussing this, James. You are not investigating your girlfriend. Stay there until Conall arrives, then prepare for tonight’s stakeout. Is that understood?”
Paddington clenched his jaw. She wanted to treat him like an employee? Wanted to give orders? Wanted him to obey, like a good little bobby? Fine. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“James, don’t—”
Paddington switched the radio off and resisted the urge to hurl it at the side of the house. It wouldn’t make him feel any better.