Free Candied Crime by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen Page B

says he thinks you´re a teorist.”
    “ Of course
I´m not a terrorist, silly. What on earth makes you say that?” A
drop of nervous sweat trickled all the way down my
spine.
    “Teddy says! Teddy says
terrarists wear gloves and those tight things over their heads.” He
held Teddy up in front of him as if trying to hide behind the ugly
creature.
    “ Oh come off
it. Where´s my bomb if I´m a terrorist?” I was quite impressed by
my own resourcefulness in a tight spot. Perhaps I could still worm
my way out of this fix.
     
    ********************
     
    “Teddy says we can´t see what
you have in that satchel, can we? Under my mummy´s old forks. If
you want forks, why don´t you take some of the new ones from the
kitchen? Those old things taste funny when you put them in your
mouth.”
    “ I´m taking
them away cause your mother asked me to polish them.” Again I was
quite pleased with my quick repartee.
    Annabella had
babysat in this particular house a few nights ago. She had assured
me there was no alarm and plenty of old silver. What she had
forgotten to tell me about was this ticking bomb. If ever there was
a terrorist… Kids. How does one handle them? Theft and burglary is
one thing, but strangling a horrid little monster no matter how
much he has provoked you! They´d lock me up for so long I´d have
forgotten what money was for anyway.
    He stuck his fist down into the
drawer and stirred the remaining silverware around, laughing like a
maniac at the loud, metallic clangs.
    In my increasing panic I
continued stashing away this and that without paying the least
attention to the hallmarks. If only Annabella had been here. I was
the one who planned, she was the one who improvised when things
were going wrong.
    “Tommy? Tommy, is that you down
there?” A high, querulous voice penetrated the air from
upstairs.
    The grating RP accent gave me
gooseflesh. Well, that settled it. Now I would have to clear out. I
picked up my rattling bag, ready to run for dear life.
    “ Hey, mister,
that is the wrong …” They boy listened intensely for a second.
“Teddy, I think he has figgered out it´s the basement
door.”
     

6 . End of Christmas – a tragic tale in approximately four
parts
     
    I Very early in the morning of
December 24th, Constable Archibald Primrose found a
red-and-grey-clad old man in a huge snowdrift right outside
Knavesborough (though the village seems to have been mislaid
somewhere in Scandinavia in this story).
    Dead?
Primrose pulled off one of his woollen gloves and prodded and
probed cautiously, fearing a local alky would jump up and accuse
him of harassment. Well, one could not be as cold and stiff as this
old geezer and be alive, could one? Primrose looked around him,
wondering what to do. Thieves, rogues and drunkards could be put in
detention overnight to keep them off the streets, but an ice-cold,
thickset corpse? No one had quite prepared him for a situation like
this. And right now, with Christmas looming up and all his
superiors gallivanting in Copenhagen to guard top politicians and
arrest hotheaded demonstrators during the climate
conference.
    First of all,
Primrose put his glove back on as it was really disagreeably cold.
He looked around him again, but everybody else in the little
village seemed to be sound asleep. Second, he pulled his mobile
phone out of his pocket and took a few photos of the crime scene.
That was what the CSI guys always did.
    What next? Fingerprints?
Primrose had never heard of anyone lifting fingerprints off cold
and wet snow, so maybe this was his chance of fame and a medal
(promotion had been phased out years ago). Looking around him, he
could not see any signs of fingerprints. Yet there were several
traces of hoofs. Again, Primrose secured the evidence as best he
could. Not horses, surely, more like roe or deer. Wasn´t that a bit
odd, really? Well, not the missing fingerprints, as anybody would
wear gloves or mittens tonight, like the old guy in the heap of
snow,