The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1137 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Mummy, woss vose sparky fings?” asked Mima as they ate their ice cream.

“Diamonds, sweetheart.”

“Woss diamons?”

“Diamonds are jewels, which can be very valuable. Usually only the best ones become jewellery, but very small ones are used to make drills and things, because they are so hard. My nail file is lined with diamond dust.” I took the file out of my bag and showed it to the girls.

“Is this very valuable, Mummy,” asked Livvie.

“Not really, certainly those diamonds aren’t but they are useful because they will take years of filing my nails before they wear out.”

“Why did the men kill Mr Edwards?” asked Billie.

“I don’t honestly know. Perhaps he saw then using his pond or something like that. We don’t know if the diamonds are stolen or smuggled into this country. In fact we know very little, except we have the money and the stones.”

“What stones, Mummy?” Trish now wanted clarification.

“Diamonds are gem stones, so for quickness I called them stones,” which was a waste of time because then I had to explain it.

“Why are diamonds valuable?” asked Trish.

“Because they are quite rare, at least the better ones are. They come out of the ground and have to be cut by experts in order to show their structure and then they are categorised by how many carats they weigh.”

“Carrots?” laughed Trish, “That’s silly, why not potatoes?”

“Not carrots but carats, it’s a system of valuing diamonds and other precious stones, and in a different way the purity of gold.”

“Your ring is silver isn’t it?” Billie pointed at my wedding ring.

“No, it’s white gold, which means they’ve added another semi-precious metal to the gold to make it appear silver not gold. I think it’s rhodium they use.”

“Why can’t they just use silver, sounds silly to me.”

“I believe gold and silver have different properties when they use them for making jewellery.”

“It all sounds silly to me,” said the perspicacity kid.

“Well that’s people for you,” I declared before escorting them back to the car, just in time to see Martina drive past. She was so absorbed in me with part of my brood that she very nearly crashed into the car in front and had to do an emergency stop.

I hoped she thought some of the girls were friends rather than my children and I felt a little afraid for them. I quickly got them into the car and drove home. I’d thought about getting some shopping, instead I ordered a take away from the local Indian restaurant and everyone but I was happy to have some curry. I made do with a poached egg on toast.

Simon called that night and I explained how Trish had helped me find the money and diamonds. He was suitably impressed, and wondered how long it would be before she was running the bank. I told him I hoped she’d take on an academic career because it would do much more good than simply making money. He countered suggesting that the money she would need for pay and resources had to come from somewhere and banking made a load more than manufacturing.

I pointed out that hedge funds had helped an indebted US company acquire a healthy British one, so not all banking and finance was good for us, meaning Kraft and Cadbury. He passed that off as a government mistake, which would never have got past the monopolies commission had he been the trade minister but at the end of the day, capitalism is often seen as greed, and occasionally it is, as my example proved. However, British governments of all persuasions had thought it appropriate to allow the markets to reign supreme when they sometimes needed regulation, and it was also often a case of double standards. The US government calling for free markets while whacking on trade tariffs.

After I spoke with Simon, I read the news on the internet and saw that the Nobel peace prize had gone to a Chinese dissident, which the Chinese government declared a ridiculous thing to do. Personally, I thought it was brilliant and better than giving it to Mr Obama whose main peace offering had been to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan.

The Commonwealth Games were producing some excitement, but my mind was fixed on different things–like the death of a schoolteacher and Martina and her threat risk to my kids.

That night I dreamt I was in the orchard calling for Trish and Danny and I heard Martina’s voice saying I wouldn’t find them. I woke up feeling very anxious. Despite this, I went to see Toby after dropping the girls off to school, and brought him up to date on the findings from the pond.

“So is that it then–a storage place for criminals which he happened to see by chance and they killed him?”

“It could be, I suppose if they used it by day, he’d be in school most of the time. Who looked after his garden? It looked far too well cared for for a busy man to be doing it.”

“I dunno, why?”

“Well, wouldn’t they be the obvious person to investigate?” I offered.

“Yeah, could be.”

“Aren’t you going to be suggesting it to your super?”

“He’s probably done it by now.”

“What if he hasn’t?”

“I can hardly do it can I?”

“No, but you could suggest it if he hasn’t.” I offered him my phone and he rang his office and spoke with his sergeant. They chatted for some time and finally, he said, ‘Oh’ with a degree of displeasure.

“What happened? I asked him.

“The gardener has turned up dead.”

“Oh,” I said feeling a degree of disappointment.

“He got mowed down,” said Toby chortling before his laughter caused his wound to hurt.

I didn’t laugh at his sick joke, as it sounded as if another human had become yet one more murder statistic and that was a reason for sadness not humour, more myrrh than mirth.

“So was he murdered?” I asked, he could have fallen down the stairs or died in his own bed for all I knew.

“Looks like, unless you happen to sleep with a knife in your bed and roll on top of it, several times with your hands tied together.”

“A very determined suicide, then?” I said smirking.

“Yep, a bad case of gardener’s prune.”

“You mean where the gardener gets pruned.” I suggested.

“Yeah, I wonder if he was stoned first?”

“Oh, Toby, that is so bad.” I groaned and we both laughed.

Unbeknownst to either of us, Martina must have been watching because when I went back to my car, the tyres had been slashed. It cost me two hundred quid and a call to the police to get my car back to driveable. When I saw her again I’d have something to say to her and it wouldn’t necessarily be polite.