The Naked Umbrella Thieves
Sergeant Cyrano O'Hara had lost the lost property cupboard. Its whereabouts were a mystery. In fact the entire police station had been behaving strangely of late. Corridors were there one day, gone the next. The downstairs hall sometimes ended in a motorway. The building had been rearranging itself ever since a conjuror had been locked up in one of the cells.
O'Hara stood beside a row of boot lockers and scratched his head.
"The cupboard can't have gone far," he explained to a spinster in brogues and tartan skirt. "It will turn up soon, and your books with it I dare say."
Miss Fetherby had accidentally left six novels at enquiries the previous morning whilst reporting a suspicious footprint in her vegetable patch.
"Has the footprint gone, Miss Fetherby?"
"It's moved. It's in the flowerbed now."
"Very strange that. No other related footprints round about?"
"No. Just this one. Getting nearer and nearer the house."
"Odd," said O'Hara and knocked at a likely looking door.
"Come in."
The sergeant sighed. Couldn't be that one then.
"The books are all murder mysteries," came Miss Fetherby's voice from behind him, "and I was so looking forward to reading them." Scolding herself, she followed O'Hara down a staircase that ended in a line of cells where the conjuror was being held.
"Have you ever investigated a murder yourself, Constable?"
"Sergeant."
"I'm so sorry. I keep forgetting those lovely stripes."
It was frightening, thought O'Hara, how many times a day he felt like murdering a member of the general public.
"I've investigated too many."
Miss Fetherby beamed at him.
"And I bet you've solved them all, you clever man!"
The chief inspector appeared at the top of the stairs. She stood, hands on hips, so impossibly beautiful that she made the uniform look chic.
"Did you just knock on my door, O'Hara?"
"Yes, Chief."
"Are you playing knock and run or something? I said 'come in'."
"I'm looking for the lost property cupboard."
"It's escaped. Last seen driving a stolen vehicle towards Bristol."
Miss Fetherby was horrified.
"Things have come to a pass when you can't even trust your own police station to keep to the straight and narrow!"
"Quite," said the inspector, and turned back up the corridor, only to find that her door had taken the opportunity to retire to somewhere else in the building.
"My God! You need to be a detective in this place, just to keep track of your own office!"
But Miss Fetherby was still shocked at the idea of a joyriding cupboard.
"It will probably be reading my library books, the naughty thing!"
After reassuring Miss Fetherby that the cupboard would soon be apprehended and her books returned, O'Hara went back to his desk to scratch his protuberant nose. It was a conk that an eighty year old alcoholic would have been proud of. Women took one look at the beetroot posing as breathing apparatus on his face and said no before he even asked. So it was excruciatingly unfair to post a goddess as a chief inspector over him. Just as well she was only interested in work and obscure mathematical theorems. Women were weird.
Wretched Eric, the most hopeless constable in the history of policing burst into the office wearing nothing but an umbrella which he was using to shield his nether parts.
"Where's the chief?"
"Looking for her office. Why are you stark bollock naked?"
"I've had me clothes pinched. Get me a coat or something, Sarge."
O'Hara threw over his own voluminous greatcoat. Eric slipped inside it shivering.
"Bloody kids! Pretended one of 'em was drowning in the river. When I stripped off and jumped in, the drowning one swam off and the others nicked me uniform. Should've heard the buggers laughing."
"Did you have to take your undies off to perform the rescue? Nobody gets dragged under by waterlogged underpants."
"I didn't have any on."
"I won't ask why."
Eric shifted uncomfortably.
"Thanks, Sarge."
Eric went out of another door and shot off down a corridor to find some clothes. A telephone rang. O'Hara tried hard to think of a reason for not answering it. After wrestling with his conscience and finding it had him in a vicious half-nelson, he picked up the receiver whilst beating an imaginary canvas.
"Grethwick Police Station."
A belligerent man's voice shouted down the phone.
"I'd like to make a complaint about noise."
O'Hara groaned.
"Is this to do with Old Grethwick cemetery?"
"Yes. The windows of my house have been smashed by horrible throbbing noises masquerading as music and a pair of six year olds have thrown used syringes into my garden. I think it's one of those 'grave' things."
"I'll get a squad car down there right away."
"You told me that last time I phoned, half-an-hour ago!"
"Yes, well, all our cars were requisitioned by the military for their garden fete. We've only just got them back."
"I don't care if they were requisitioned by a tribe of South American pygmies so long as somebody gets down here to stop this horrible racket!"
The angry man of Old Grethwick slammed the phone down. That was the fourteenth complaint about the cemetery in the last hour. At this rate, something would have to be done. It was no good sending Eric. And the only other constables available were interrogating the conjuror in the cells.
An electric buzzer went: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
O'Hara shouted, "Hang on!"
A fist banged the glass hatch which he had closed to keep out the general public. A voice barked angrily.
"Open up!"
The sergeant slid the hatch aside, whereupon a woman resembling a well-off Rottweiler in a headscarf snapped at him.
"I'd like to report a stolen umbrella."
Scribbling an internal memo to haul Eric in his underpants over red-hot coals, O'Hara decided to pretend the brolly had just been handed in as lost property.
"Could you describe your umbrella, Madam?"
"Of course I can!" she sprayed in reply. "It was ripped from my hands by a completely naked man, who ran off with it. It's blue. With a floral pattern decorating six segmented sides. The bottom of the handle is wooden and it folds to fit in a handbag when not in use."
"Blue? With a wooden handle?" said O'Hara, bewildered.
"Yes, you imbecile."
The umbrella preserving Wretched Eric's modesty was pink with a black plastic handle. The thought of two naked men with umbrellas marauding through the streets of Grethwick was mindboggling.
"Let me take some personal details madam and … owwww!"
Some minutes later, nursing a badly bitten hand, O'Hara went down to where he had last seen the cells. They were still in the same place, and the usual sounds of an interrogation could be heard.
"D'yer think I hit him too hard?"
"He's still breathing."
"I got a bit carried away I suppose. I see red when they don't confess straight away. And this one's been more than a week."
"Prop him up. Make him look as alive as possible."
"His head keeps going on one side."
"Well, kicking it's not going to help. I thought you were supposed to be the nice one and I …"
The conjurer was lying against a wall looking an unhealthy shade of purple. His eyes were shut and his clothing was ripped. He'd looked strange enough to begin with. Sort of oriental but with ginger hair. The cell was also full of dead pigeons and rabbits. Playing cards and squashed boiled eggs littered the floor. The two interrogators swung round guiltily at O'Hara's voice.
"You're supposed to be carrying out an inquiry, not an inquest."
Constable Studds came out of the cell shaking his head. "We're doing our best. But he keeps taking the piss. Every time we come out of here, he's pinched me watch or we're wearing his clothes instead of ours."
Constable Bass spoke as he put the finishing touches to the recumbent suspect.
"This morning he managed to get our signatures on a confession we'd brought in for him to sign. After we've finished, we come out and try to lock the door and he's got the keys."
"If he takes one more boiled egg out of my ear, I'll boil him."
O'Hara made a mental note to speak to the chief about Studds and Bass. They were on the wrong side of the bars. It was hardly safe to let them go and break up a grave in Old Grethwick. But there was no-one else.
"Lock up. You're needed on a peacekeeping mission. God knows why I'm sending you."
Studds went through his pockets.
"I thought you had them, Bassy."
Bass searched for a moment. Then heard a jingling from inside the cell. The conjuror was holding keys aloft with an eerie smile.
About the book
Sergeant Cyrano O’Hara had lost the lost property cupboard. Its whereabouts were a mystery. In fact the entire police station had been behaving strangely of late. Corridors were there one day, gone the next. The downstairs hall sometimes ended in a motorway. The building had been rearranging itself ever since a conjuror had been locked up in one of the cells.
Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with this nonsense.
Times are tough for the men and women of Old Grethwick Police Force. As if one-legged murderers, ghoulish thespians, drug-dealing vicars and human-hating buildings aren't enough to deal with, someone has just made seventy-five politicians disappear. At least that last one has cheered everybody up a bit.
Click here to find out more about The Naked Umbrella Thieves
About the author
Although Ian Wild is one of the world’s leading authorities on naturist parasol kleptomaniacs, he would like to point out that he always showers fully clothed and does not have a criminal record. He has written comedy for Ireland’s RTE Radio One and won awards for short stories – most recently the 2009 Fish International Short Story Prize, but only to take his mind off undressing Mary Poppins. He was not naked writing this book. He was wearing an umbrella which he found in the hand of someone who wouldn’t let go until he bit their wrist.
'A writer of certifiably funny stories.' - Aidan Stanley, RTE
