Frozen in Crime

Chapter 24 Octopus or Shark?

'He needs to go home and sleep for a week,' said Amaryllis once they were safely outside. The Council snow-plough sat in the middle of the road. 'I wonder why it's taken them so long to get round to us.'

'They may have forgotten about Pitkirtly,' suggested Christopher. 'We're a bit off the beaten track here.'

Amaryllis remembered thinking much the same thing when she had first arrived in town. Now - well, it wasn't exactly the centre of the universe, even now. But she liked living here, and she felt at home, while accepting that nobody was truly at home in Pitkirtly until at least four generations of their family had lived there.

'Come on, this way,' she said, heading for the High Street.

'What now?' groaned Christopher. Evidently he thought he deserved to go home and sleep for a week too. We'll see about that, thought Amaryllis, who liked to keep him on his toes.

'We might as well go and have a word with the jeweller, now we're so close by,' she said.

'We're not that close by. And we'll have to come up the hill again to get home.'

Not for the first time Christopher reminded her of a whiny toddler. Only he was too big to lift up and physically move to where you wanted him to be. And much too big to wheel around in a baby buggy, even one of the ones built like tanks that took up the entire pavement and got in the way on the bus.

'But once you get home, you'll just fall asleep on the sofa with the 24 hour news channel on. Then you'll grumble for the rest of the week about not knowing what's going on in the world.'

She couldn't resist harking back to a time when Christopher had fallen asleep every time the words 'Eurozone crisis' were mentioned on the news, and then couldn't understand why people were rioting in Greece the next time he paid attention. It wouldn't have been so bad if he could have just let it go and not worried about it, but he was also the kind of person who prided himself on keeping up with current events. He insisted it was part of his job, which it wasn't.

'I don't grumble,' he said with misplaced confidence in his sunny disposition.

By this time they were halfway down the High Street and she knew he had already forgotten what they were arguing about. She smiled to herself. Maybe he could help convince the jeweller that they were on the level and not scoping the place out for another robbery. Christopher had such a transparently honest face that people tended to believe him. She knew they didn't always feel the same way about her, quite rightly in many cases.

'What are we going to say to the jeweller?' he asked. 'And how will he know we're not casing the joint?'

'I don't know if people say that any more,' she said.

After they had trekked all the way down the High Street they found the jeweller's was closed.

Christopher leaned against the wall next to the shop.

'That was a waste of time,' he complained.

'I thought he might have re-opened by now,' said Amaryllis. 'Oh, well. It's nearly lunch-time. Last one to the Queen of Scots is an overweight cissy?'

'You know that's always me,' he said, not moving. 'What did you want to ask him about, anyway?'

'I just wonder if this gold octopus or shark Constable Burnett mentioned was stolen in the robbery.'

'That's a bit of a leap, isn't it?'

'Most brilliant brainwaves are,' said Amaryllis. 'And he was so embarrassed about telling us that, he must think it's important.'