Bloody Partnership

 WWG Bloody Partnership

I was expecting a quiet day in the office. After yesterday’s post-verdict celebration, as a rare non-drinking copper, I was hoping that today would be a chance to finish my paperwork and even have a bit of a lazy day. 

So when the call came in, I was the only one there and was in just the mood for a break from form-filling.  

I bounced cheerfully up the steps into the Grand Theatre foyer and had hardly flashed my badge before the woman in the box office, sobbing into a tissue, had silently pointed me to the stairs down to the dressing rooms. 

Once in the dingy corridor I was wordlessly shown into a dressing room by a flustered little man wearing a “Manager” badge, at which point my carefree mood changed abruptly. 

They talk about people bleeding out. The woman on the dressing room floor had not so much bled out as been opened out. Her organs were on show in a way that suggested butchery rather than murder. There was so much blood. Her shoes which were covered in sequins had taken on a Wizard of Oz vibe. A vibe that continued. 

I deduced that the murder weapon was a 9 inch chefs knife, one of those fancy steel japonese ones. This deduction was based on the fact that just such a knife was a few feet away from me, covered in blood and held in the hand of a small person with his glassy eyes fixed on me. He was about three feet tall and his mouth was open like a German nut cracker. 

I realised that of the three of us, I was the only one breathing, and breathing hard. I walked to the other end of the room, leant my forehead against the rickety wardrobe and concentrated on gaining control of my breath. IN OUT IN OUT IN in OUT out in. 

I held my breath..in out in, I was wrong, I wasn’t the only person breathing in that room. 

I stepped back and opened the wardrobe. A man in a shiny suit smiled diffidently up at me. I crooked my finger at him. He stepped out of the wardrobe and I looked him up and down. 

“Do you need an interpreter?”

He looked puzzled. 

“Are you Polish?”

“No, why would you think that?”

“Your Polish socks”

He looked down at his socks, white above a thick red stripe. “No, that’s not a flag, that’s bl…”

His voice dried up. 

“You don’t have to say anything”

He momentarily looked relieved, 

“But it may harm your defence…”

“That’s not right, you can’t arrest me!  He did it!”

 As he pointed at the small dummy with the knife, it toppled forward and its wooden head slipped into the open torso below, where it came to rest smiling up at us. 

“ You can’t blame me, I’m just his partner. “