The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2964 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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247 dozen for dodecaphiles.

I practically ran up the drive and into the house Andy Bond was laughing and joking with Tom in the kitchen, “This is good coffee, Professor,” he said indicating the mug in his hand.

“Perhaps ye’d like to tell that to my dochter, she thinks it’s awfy stuff.”

“It is,” I said quickly, “d’you know he gets it free from some company who clean the gunk out of old diesel engines.”

Andy smiled.

“Are you here to arrest him for making disgusting coffee?” I joked hoping to find out what he did want.

“Uh no, Cathy, the Somerset and Avon Police asked us to ask if you’d thought about the body they found in the canal; have you thought of anything new that may help them?”

“No, a boat went past and this bag of rags seemed to be floating in the canal by the reeds and it moved slightly in the wake and I realised there was something inside the rags. I sent the girls to stop any further traffic and called the police.”

“That was exactly the right thing to do, but they’re still trying to identify her.”

“It was a woman, then?”

“Yes, sorry I thought you knew that.”

“Do they know if she just fell in or was she pushed?” I asked.

“It looks like murder.”

“Poor woman.”

“Quite, she had head injuries and a stab wound.”

“Oh.”

“They think she might be of Indian or Pakistani origins. Doesn’t ring any bells?”

“No, why should it?”

“You sometimes get these insights.”

“Not on this one, I’m afraid.”

“Nothing else comes to mind?” he pressed.

“No, I think I told them everything at the time.”

“Okay, if you think of anything however small, call my colleagues in Avon and Somerset, won’t you?”

“Of course, Andy.”

He left and I made myself some tea, putting the milk in the fridge as I did so. “Did he say she was Asian?”

“Aye, Indian or Pakistani.”

“I wonder if she was born here or came here.”

“Whit difference wud it mak’?”

“None, but it seems even sadder if she travelled halfway round the planet to get murdered here.”

“Aye,” he said then left me to the kitchen which suited me fine as I wanted to reflect upon the scene.

The problem with trying to think myself into someone’s mind, is I’m never sure how accurate it is. I’ve seen psychics who seemed amazing in the things they ‘give’ people about the deceased but then I’ve also seen NLP practitioners do the same sort of thing all by careful observation of the person they’re working with. Now, I can’t do the latter, I’m not trained for it, I’m an ecologist not psychotherapist and beside my client is somewhat dead, poor woman.

I visualised the poor person floating in the canal and the feelings I got from it were disappointment, possibly even betrayal and then anger. It felt as if the woman had been betrayed and then angry about it before she was killed and her body dumped in the canal. She was dead before they put her in the canal. Okay none of that will be usable in court but it might help discover who murdered her. Was it a racist attack—not unknown in England nor in Bristol, though both it and nearby Bath have multi ethnic communities and both are big university cities, with two or more universities in each. Did she go to one of them?

I tried to focus on the feeling of betrayal. What would cause that? Goodness, lots of things but it usually involves someone the victim trusted and that trust was broken for whatever reason. Is her ethnicity important, or was it just that she was female that caused her to be killed. I had a feeling that this wasn’t entirely the case and that she’d been killed because she was Pakistani and female. Oh no—perhaps she was in an arranged marriage or destined for one and she refused or fell in love with someone else? That could explain it but I suspect so could many other things, including being pregnant outside of wedlock.

If things happen for a reason, other than pure happenstance, why did it happen when I was walking past? Coincidence—probably, but what if I was the best chance of her finding peace by discovering her killers? I felt all goosebumps and shivered then the first wave of offspring seeking breakfast arrived and I had to deal with more mundane activities.

After breakfast, I was clearing up while Stella and Julie took the younger girls outside to play catch on the lawn when Trish came up to me. “Did the lady speak to you?” she asked.

“Which lady is that then?” I asked loading dishes in the washer.

“The one in the river.”

“River?”

“Yes, yesterday.”

“Canal you mean?”

“Yeah, whatever. She came and spoke to me but I couldn’t understand her.”

“When was this?”

“In the night. She mentioned your name, Mummy, that was the only bit I got, the rest was all mumbo jumbo. She was murdered, wasn’t she?”

“Probably.”

“Does she want us to catch her killers?”

“Trish, that’s what the police are for.”

“Yeah but we can help them. She wasn’t very old but very pretty an’ she wore those trouser things under a dress.”

“Trouser things?” I queried wanting more information from her without telling her anything.

“Yeah, like foreign women wear with headscarves an’ things. Muslins aren’t they?”

“I think you mean Moslems because the only thing that usually wears muslin is a cheese.”

She thought that was hilarious.

“It’s true, before they had all these plastic packaging for everything they used to wrap cheese in thin cotton cloth like muslin or cheesecloth to keep it clean while it was matured.”

She didn’t believe me.

“Why d’you think they call your favourite cheese Cheddar?”

“Because it’s better than—Fred.”

“No, it’s because the cheese was originally made by dairies in the Cheddar area of Somerset and they used to store the cheeses in the caves to mature them.”

She thought that was nonsense so I sent her to look it up on the internet. By the time she returned David had arrived and I was just finishing the clean up in the kitchen.

“Clever clogs,” she said to me.

“We all know your mum is clever, she’s a professor.”

“She knows all about cheese and how they wrap it in moslems.”

David gave her a very strange look, “I suppose it would give a new meaning to cheese dip,” he said smirking.

Trish was not amused, “They used to wrap cheeses in moslems to keep them clean when they put them in the caves at Cheddar.”

“Moslems are people who worship Allah through Mohamed. Muslin is a thin cotton cloth they used for cheese.” I rapidly explained and David’s smirk got bigger.

“Well how was I supposed to know the difference?” she said hands on hips as if her confusion was my fault, then she stormed off to see the others in the garden.

I looked at David and said, “Cheese dips? What has that got to do with Moslems?”

He shrugged, “I was grasping at straws, cheese variety of course,” then he fell about laughing.

Sometimes I wondered if closing all the asylums was such a good idea?