The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2904 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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We parked the Porsche down the road from the two houses that the phone was in. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet—I tell a lie, the church a couple of streets away, chimed eight. I counted them, next week the clocks go forward so altering that one should be more challenging than any we have at home. My computer alters the time itself, so why can’t my bloody phone—no, I have to alter it by hand and the clock in the car, yet you can buy watches that adjust themselves—just typical.

Instead of futile internal dialogues I should have been trying to tune into Ingrid, but neither house seemed wanting to cooperate. I suppose there is one way to find out if she’s in there, knock the door and ask. Had I been tidier dressed I could have pretended I was some Christian canvasser reminding people about it being Easter next weekend, unless you’re Eastern Orthodox—don’t ask me why, because I thought it was all due to phases of the moon or some such thing, but then I don’t believe in it anyway, but I probably know enough to bullshit my way on a doorstep.

“We could always set fire to both of them and see who comes out,” suggested James.

“What if the program which locates the phone got it wrong?”

“The police would probably evacuate houses either side so we’d have checked four of them.”

“How would you propose setting fire to them?”

“Petrol on a bit of rag through the letter box.”

“Go on then,” I said yawning thinking I should have stayed in bed.

“I was joking,” he said.

“You think I wasn’t?”

He shrugged.

“Gee thanks, James, what d’you think I am, some sort of monster driven by goal achievement?”

“Uh...”

I shook my head, “Look, I know there are women who are monsters, the Nazi death camps employed a few of them. But I’m not one of them, okay?”

“I know—you’re too young for starters.”

“You what?” He was about to run away when we saw a curtain twitch and we knew which house.

We walked back to the car and waited. I called the police and reported what we’d seen. They logged it. While we were waiting the mini shot out of the garage and flew down a lane behind the houses. It was barely wide enough for the Porsche and at least one dustbin or black bag got squished against the wall. At the end of the lane we came to a T junction and we hadn’t seen which way she’d gone, but there was a transit van coming down towards us at speed, knocking bins flying.

“I think they might be hostiles,” I said as James swung the car down the right hand part of the junction pulling out into the road we’d just come from. He quickly parked behind a four wheel drive car and the van was past us before they saw us. They stopped and began reversing back. James jumped out of his car and urged me to do the same. James ran to the driver’s door of the van and in one very fast movement, wrenched it open, punched the driver and dragged him out onto the road, where he hit him again and bloke went down like a sack of spuds. Obviously his friend tried to follow him out of the van and James kicked the door shut on him. His head shattered the window and he fell back into the cab of the van.

At the same time as this was happening the other thug got out the passenger door and went to attack James from behind obviously not seeing me. I ran up behind him, kicked him at the back of the knee and as he groaned and started to fall, James hit him and he fell face first onto the tarmac.

“These the three who wrecked your car?”

“I think it highly likely.”

Of course this was when the police arrived and we got a free ride in a police car—back to the main police station in Portsmouth. The three men were taken off by ambulance.

We both demanded to call our lawyers. When the desk sergeant took my name he groaned quietly something about being too young to lose his pension. I simply stood and smiled innocently at him. I was pleased that James wasn’t carrying a gun, because then it could have proved awkward.

We agreed to give a statement by which time Jason had arrived and approved it and we were free subject to a complaint by the three injured men. I explained that they were chasing us and we had taken defensive action, especially given the previous attack on my car when they frightened my kids to death, not to mention my own fright. Given that they’d all been battered, I felt more or less even on that count. However, Ingrid had escaped again.

Jason grumbled the whole time he drove us back to collect the Porsche until I reminded him he was paid for his assistance. “Double time on a Sunday,” he suggested and I told him to speak to Simon about it.

“Can I test a hunch?”

“But of course.”

“Take me round to her original address.”

When we got there a dark coloured mini was parked on the road a few doors away. It had one or two scratches on the sides which looked very recent. She’d gone home.

“Can we burn this one down?” joked James and I began to wonder if he was a bit crazier than I usually thought.

“No.”

“Spoilsport,” he whinged like a six year old.

Almost while we were still arguing Ingrid ran out of her house and towards the car carrying two cases. I was out of the car and after her in an instant. She didn’t see me until she turned to open the door of the car. I think she was surprised that her three little piggies hadn’t nobbled us, but then I had back up today in the shape of the big bad wolf.

She hurled a suitcase at me and I managed to catch it and throw it back at her, it caught her on the back just as she opened the car door pushing her between the door and the car, just as a car came down the road the other way and clipped the door of the car and the other case.

The door shut against her neck and... the blood was everywhere. The case shattered as the car hit it and twenty pound notes began swirling round the road. The driver of the car fainted in shock and it took me a moment to deal with the situation I’d just witnessed. James was on his phone for police and ambulance.

As no one had actually witnessed what had happened I explained that she’d try to board the car but had slipped and the rest was history. The street was quite narrow and the man driving the other car was going too fast but even so. He was still hysterical when they took him away.

“So how come you’re not?” asked the chief inspector.

“What good would it do if I were?”

“You’re a bit too cool at times, Lady Cameron.”

“Am I, well Chief Inspector, I now have to go home and explain to her daughter what happened.”

“I’d spare her the detail if I were you.”

I looked at James and he just rolled his eyes.