A Stab in the Dark
Or four.
The relative triviality of the C—Police Force has always been a sticking point in many conversations, only as much as the wealth of T-- College or the possible uses for the expansive but ineffectual grass patches of K—College. Much like it was portrayed in the matchless Police comedy The Thin Blue Line there is not much worth policing in much of the rural, small-town UK (so senior officers make bad penis jokes and go around kicking people's doors in with garden gnomes). In fact, just a few days ago I was contemplating writing an angry letter of complaint to the C—Police about the copious one-way travel violations along T—Street after yet another errant cyclist clipped my ankles while dashing down the wrong side of the road to some imaginary appointment or the other. Having lately become used to such flagrant abuses of the Traffic Law being the pinnacle of illicit achievement I indignantly cursed under my breath and thought about some of the more colourful words I would use in this letter (inasmuch, for example, or impuissant).
But suddenly the frail peace that C—had always enjoyed was shattered, much like in the days when people holding china cups of tea looked out of their windows to see German bombers tearing houses apart and their occupants running into the streets, arms missing. Yes, suddenly our unassuming town was held captive in the grip of a deranged madman, whose sole, drugged aim was to bring hot, piping terror to our doorsteps, with a cherry on top - terror a la mode.
Lest one think that this executioner be armed with a machete the size of a large baguette, or with a revolver longer than a regulation pool cue, this scourge has the Modus Operandii of riding around on a bicycle "too small for him" and poking people with what is believed by police, after many gruelling hours of acutely ingenious detective work and immaculate forensic examination, to be a knife of some sorts, inflicting the most terrifying of injuries, a collapsed lung, on the four of his helpless, screaming, cowering, bleeding victims.
It seems the perfect satire of movies in the genre of Friday the Thirteenth and its hideous spawn of appalling sequels, but this is a true story. Imagine the large quantities of urine that I secreted in my pants when, with trepidation, I learnt that one of the attacks had occurred right outside my College, not more than a hundred paces from it, at that really dark spot with all the oak trees and high walls and graffiti.
That being the fourth attack, the police sprung into action, as if this was all they had been waiting for for the better part of their careers (and it might, unsurprisingly, be true). Warnings were issued, and the whole debacle was suddenly brought into sharp relief, capturing the part of the public imagination that was not already permanently occupied by thoughts of going to the local pub and throwing up on your shoes. You could almost imagine, once that fateful circular had been sent out by a grim-faced constable with a heavy heart, his uniform buttons pristine from several lonely nights in the locker rooms, that there was this collective swallowing sound, like when you have several friends over to watch DVDs and the final fight of Kill Bill was about to start then that would be the sound that they would make. It is probably the best thing to happen to the crime scene over here ever since those grisly double murders (they didn't even bother to take out the kidneys or write something clever in blood).
But even as the whole of C—paused to take a breath, suddenly the overtaxed, overworked ace police officers were faced with another seemingly insurmountable challenge, that of a creepy, and probably sexually inadequate man walking into colleges and TALKING TO STUDENTS. With the "assitance (sic) of students in contacting Police to tell them of (such TALKING)incidents" the Police have painstakingly assembled a composite photograph of this elusive man, probably as lethal as a zombie ninja with laser eyes and steel armour, so that his countenance of pure evil could for the first time be revealed, to collective pandemonium and fear, in front of a rapt public audience. Presumably no chin was included in the picture as it must be the source of his astounding College-invading powers where he will turn students' spleens into jelly just by humming the tune to The Poet and Peasant overture and it will just be like they have been microwaved under high power for 6.5 minutes (remove cover first) and thus it absorbs all visible light, infinitely increasing its fearsome might.
War is a dangerous place (sic) and while such criminal acts have certainly spiced up the normally quiet town it all seems terribly laughable to me, as if they were just small-time impersonators of the big-city stalkers and serial murderers that you only see in movies or read about in Patricia Cornwell novels. As I ride back home on my midnight-black bicycle vehicle of immeasurable carnage, I'll be sure to say hi.
(Please don't stab me.)
