Strange Happening with the W o O

He gathered his officers in the room and pulled the door to. They all stared at the photographs on the board. Some looked away. From somewhere came the sound of retching.

“OK,” he said, “Settle down and let’s go through what we’ve got. She was found, well bits of her were found, on the road leaving the small town.”

There were a few mutterings in the ranks.

“All right, all right, calm down. We’ve not got much to go on and there hasn’t been anything like this in my time so we’re all new to this. So, let’s play it by the book and go through what we have, crime scene first.” He turned to the board. “She was found surrounded by straw, odd bits of scrap metal and the marks on what’s left of her suggest an attack by a massive wild cat.”

“What about the shoe?” asked a young detective.

“I was coming to that,” said the weary DI. “We found one shoe at the scene.” He lifted the plastic evidence bag. Even the cloudy plastic couldn’t hide the brightness of the red reflecting the neon lights above.

“OK, that’s all we’ve got at the moment. We need to find the other shoe and whatever other bits of her we can find so I want you to comb the area working out from the yellow line on the map. You lot,” he turned to younger ones at the side. “Door to door, starting with the little town. We have to find this killer quick.”

As the officers filed out of the door stunned to silence with the horror of what they had seen the DI whispered, “Janks, can you stay behind a minute.”

Janks turned and walked towards the desk, “Yes Sir?”

“I want you to do me a favour, I don’t know, it’s just a hunch, but I think things might just be kicking off. So, can you get one of our technical team to check the structural robustness of all the chimneys in the area.”

“All of them Sir?”

“That's right. Just trust me on this one Sargeant.”

“OK. I’ll get started right away.”

“Good man,” said the DI, as Janks walked through the door and out towards the Tech team’s offices. “Good man,” he said under his breath. Picking up his hat and reaching for his coat he paused to look at one of the photographs. It showed a big green mansion in the distance.

“Right, let’s go and see what Wizard knows about this mess.”