{"id":690,"date":"2020-12-30T13:14:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T13:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2020-12-30T13:14:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T13:14:50","slug":"the-big-wave-in-little-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/the-big-wave-in-little-england\/690\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Wave in Little England"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Technician<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mack ground his cigarette with the toe of his wingtip shoes, pulled down his fedora and rucked his collar up against the lashing rain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf all the places I coulda ended up,\u201d he grumbled, \u201cI had to land in this two-bit joint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at the body lying on the pavement, a pool of blood surrounding the exit wound. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the back of the victim\u2019s head. From the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive me the SP, Bill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFemale, forty-two, gangland bookie\u2019s runner. Name of Wilkes, Myra Wilkes according to her driving licence. She\u2019s known to us. Nasty piece of work,\u201d Bill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He glanced at the figure leaning over the body, \u201cDoc?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLow entry point,\u201d said Doc Tolbert, \u201che was probably hiding behind those bins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolbert pointed at a cluster of wheelie bins standing in front of the entrance to a strip club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s take a look,\u201d said Mack. \u201cHey Bill, I think I have something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled tweezers from inside his coat and bent down, retrieving a cigarette butt from the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe not a \u2018he\u2019 at all,\u201d he said indicating the lipstick stain on the butt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the butterfly killer again,\u201d Bill said the next day, \u201cthe lab report just came back. Same DNA on the butt as the handkerchief in Mulberry Lane, the glove in Tottenham, the cup in Whitechapel Starbucks\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d said Mack cutting him off, \u201cI don\u2019t buy it. I think we have another Phantom of Heilbronn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPhantom of Heilbronn?\u201d Bill queried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, between 1993 and 2009, Euro-cops believed they were dealing with a female serial killer. Her DNA was found on diverse crime scenes throughout Austria, France, and Germany; it turned out it was contamination at the labs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, you\u2019re saying we need to look at the technicians,\u201d Bill replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQuick on the uptake, Bill,\u201d said Mack. \u201cGet on it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They tested the technicians, and one came back positive, a young scientist called Janie Wilmslow. An intelligent, but unremarkable woman, she joined the forensic service a week before the Butterfly crime wave started; clearly, she was the contamination source. Importantly, her alibis checked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack to square one,\u201d said Mack, \u201cunless you reckon Wilmslow is our woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSquare one it is then,\u201d Bill confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janie sat on the chair in front of her boss, who was busy ripping her professional standing apart. She was telling Wilmslow she would see to it that she never worked in forensics again and Janie had just about had enough. She stood up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere do you think you\u2019re going?\u201d Her boss demanded. \u201cWe haven\u2019t finished here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have,\u201d said Janie pulling a silenced .357 from her satchel. Two to the head, one to the chest and she was out of the office, locking it behind her. Her fake passport, money and airline tickets were in her bag and her luggage was at Heathrow waiting for her arrival. The butterfly had decided to fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mack ground his cigarette with the toe of his wingtip shoes, pulled down his fedora and rucked his collar up against the lashing rain. \u201cOf all the places I coulda ended up,\u201d he grumbled, \u201cI had to land in this two-bit joint.\u201d He looked at the body lying on the pavement, a pool of blood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A new short story from SWANSEA WRITERS: \"The Big Wave in Little England\"\n#FLASHFICTION","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[379,380],"tags":[46,378,63,43],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-379","category-january-2021-crime-wave","tag-big","tag-england","tag-little","tag-wave"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-b8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":692,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}