Who Says Words Can't Hurt?

Here we are again, you, me, Mark the sound guy and a story about a hamster kidnapping. Where did we leave it last time? I could’ve sworn I dog-eared the page. Hang on.

Ah yes, here we go. Molly had sent Patchee off to speak to someone who might have a clue as to where the hamsters are being taken. Patchee wants to stay on Molly’s good side after nearly destroying her flat by accident. And speaking of said accident, there might be one thing the young rabbit missed when he was cleaning up Molly’s flat… something about a piece of paper?

I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is Molly Whiskers and the Blue Tentacle part eight. Bring on the music!

Although Fogsworth is a small town, it is a busy one, and in busy areas, people are often crammed together. There are two areas of Fogsworth where this is especially true: the town centre, where flats sit above shops and there is little space between buildings, and Handsome Gardens, which is nothing like as nice as its name suggests.

Patchee has always had a keen interest in how geography changes the way people behave. He knows that sounds a little complicated, so he often doesn’t talk about it for fear that people will stop inviting him to parties. But as he enters Handsome Gardens, his eyes widen as he takes in the things that make this part of town different from the centre, and the outskirts, which is where he lives with his parents.

Things like the way the windows and roofs of the little shops are repaired; not with glass and slate, but with wood and, in some cases, a mixture of mud and straw. Patchee also notices how uneven the ground is beneath his feet; how the polished cobblestones of the high street are replaced with a cracked, hard, brown surface. This morning has been warm and muggy, but overhead the sky is grey, which seems to wash the colour out of everything.

“Spare a tarin?” croaks a voice somewhere below Patchee’s eye-line. On looking down, Patchee sees a small, bony frog, sat cross-legged on the floor in between two shops. In front of him is a tiny cloth cap, with a number of small, dirty brown coins.

“I can’t spare a tarin” says Patchee, guiltily, aware that he won’t be paid for another few weeks, and remembering that Molly hadn’t promised much. Fishing in a jacket pocket, he produces a small black bag which jingles slightly as it moves. Patchee tips out six grackles — half of what the frog asked for — and places them gently into the cap, where they mingle with the other, identical coins.

“Thank you, young man” says the frog. With a nod, Patchee moves on, surveying the scene around him.

For a moment, a gap in the cloud lets the sun peak its head through, and he is struck by colours and smells he hadn’t noticed before. The word “vibrant” comes to mind. It’s a word he likes, as it makes him think of things bursting with life, sights and sounds. People are cooking with ingredients he has never smelled before, the aromas wafting out of open windows. These aren’t street vendors; they’re just people’s houses. His stomach rumbling, he makes his way down the street with its cracked pavement and torn up newspaper skittering over it in the breeze.

With the sun still poking its head out and its rays beating down, Patchee is trying not to think about the frog he just met, or why he was asking for money. He has never encountered a homeless person before, and to be fair to Patchee, that’s because there are very few of them around, and most of them are elderly, so they often go unseen. They came from a time when Fogsworth was a crueler place, and while the town’s young people work to build a society that’s fair to everyone, the elderly homeless keep the memories of old Fogsworth alive, so no-one forgets how far they’ve all come.

Rounding a corner, Patchee reaches a large shop, with big, glass windows stretching much further than the other buildings around it. Unlike many of the shop windows in Hansom Gardens, Tink & Family’s are completely clear, and look recently polished. The window display shows lots of mouthwatering treats: glistening, exotic fruits, shiny glass jars full of jams and jellies, and in the centre of the display, a sculpture of a cow made out of chocolate and marshmallow.

The bell above the door lets out a friendly jingle as Patchee pushes it open. The air inside is cool, and provides a brief break from the heat.

“Welcome to Tink & Family, what can I get you?” asks the friendly voice of a small grey squirrel behind the large granite counter at the far end of the shop.

“Hello”, says Patchee, “I work for Molly Whiskers. I wondered if you could tell me about what you saw —”

“Psssshh”, hisses the squirrel, holding up a paw so as to silence the rabbit. Beckoning him to follow her, she turns to open a door to a set of stairs, leading down to what Patchee assumes is the basement.

Back at the flat, Molly is busy piecing together the clues. She’s now pretty certain she knows who has been luring the hamsters away, but why? This she cannot fathom.

She has spent the last hour combing through old documents from the Fogsworth Central Library, that list all of the army personnel.

While the police keep order inside the town, the army patrols the outskirts. Since there are no walls separating Fogsworth from the Meandering Forest, soldiers keep watch from secret vantage points, and tackle anyone who might look to do the town harm.

Why the army does this is a mystery to the younger people of Fogsworth, who have never seen or heard from anyone from outside the town. It’s never been forbidden to cross the border into the forest, but for as long as Molly can remember, no-one has ever wanted or needed to, and no-one has ever crossed from the forest into the town, so the dogs that make up the army’s ranks have been left to their own devices.

Loaded with notes taken from the library — the stern librarian forbidding Molly from taking out the army records — the clever detective has been wondering what a bunch of rough-and-tumble soldiers might get up to, since patrolling a border no-one crosses must be incredibly dull.

She spent much of her time in the library flicking through ink drawings of the army’s Defence Squad. One particular drawing had caught her eye, as she was certain she’d spotted a familiar face.

It was in an old piece from a magazine for the young dogs of Fogsworth, called Fetch!. The article was about a Captain Cruff, who had been awarded a medal for something or other (Molly wasn’t interested). The drawing showed a middle-aged pug, surrounded by a variety of smartly-dressed dogs, being given a medal by the town’s mayor.

Molly thought back to her time in jail the previous night, and the pencil drawing she’d seen pinned to the wall in Roscoe and Bailey’s office. The pug was much older in the drawing from last night, but she was certain it was the same dog.

“Someone’s had a promotion” mutters Molly to herself, thinking about the caption underneath the drawing in the police station that read “The General”.

She’s been doing a lot of thinking since she got back from the library, and one of the things that helps her to think is making paper darts, and seeing how far they can fly. Folding up one of the pieces of paper she’d taken notes on, she carefully crafts a dart and lets it gently glide across the room. She’s much better at making paper darts than she is at throwing them, so her office is currently littered with little paper triangles.

“But, promotion or not”, she continues, folding another sheet and thinking about the big pug, “you’re clearly doing something extracurricular.”

Lots of words have secret meanings, and this especially long word — extra-curricular — is one of them. Usually the two parts of the word mean “outside of school”. When the young children of Fogsworth finish school for the day, many of them take part in extracurricular activities, like football or chess or shoplifting. But the secret meaning of extracurricular often refers to adults doing something they perhaps shouldn’t do, when they should be somewhere else. Like, for example, when a pack of dogs lures a football team’s worth of hamsters into a cage, when the dogs should be keeping the town safe.

After a moment’s thought, Molly unfolds the piece of paper under her paws and takes a closer look. She’d jotted some notes from the army’s records, which listed every patrol the Defence Squad had been on, over the past year. Scanning down the list now, she notices that there hasn’t been a single patrol in months.

“So if you’re not patrolling the forrest”, muses the rabbit, “what exactly have you been up to, Mr General? And where are you hiding?”

Getting up from her desk she wanders into her bedroom, to take a look at her map. As she does so, her foot brushes against a piece of paper. Noticing this isn’t one of her paper darts, she bends down to pick it up, and unfolds it.

With wide eyes that gradually become narrower, until they look like two letterboxes, she tears up the piece of paper — which was headed Molly Whiskers Irritability Scale — and throws the pieces in the bin.

Molly is not a happy bunny. And incidentally, you most likely already know this, but you must never shoplift. Not even on a weekend.

Across town, and with no idea of what his boss has just found, Patchee is a happy bunny. His belly is full of toast and jam, and he has a paper bag of sugared almonds and spiced dried fruits in one small paw.

He’s just had a very fruitful conversation — he chuckles to himself at the use of the word “fruitful” — with Ms Tink, and he now has lots of useful information to take back to Molly. She’s going to be very proud of him.

Just as he is about to cross the street to the old army base Ms Tink had mentioned, he sees the old frog, tottering towards him, walking stick in hand.

The old man gives Patchee a small nod and a smile as he approaches, and just as he’s about to pass the rabbit, Patchee holds out the bag of snacks.

“Here, take these. I’m stuffed and I was going to give them to my boss, but she won’t miss them.” After a moment’s hesitation, the frog takes the bag gently and says “that’s very kind, son. Thank you.”

Then, catching sight of where the rabbit is heading, the frog says “You’re not wandering around in there, are you?”

“Why, is it dangerous?” asks Patchee, with concern.

“It is, my boy. Not a safe place for a nice rabbit like yourself. Those dogs in there have been cooking up something foul when they should be at work, keeping us safe. I don’t know what’s been going on in there, but I don’t like it, and you’d do well to keep clear.”

“I think they’ve all left now”, says Patchee, a hint of nervousness creeping into his voice.

“Well”, shrugs the frog, “don’t say I didn’t warn you. And thanks for this, lad”, he adds, holding the bag aloft. “You take care now.”

Patchee watches the elderly frog make his slow way down the street to his left, before turning to the large, dark, plain brick building in front.

Running the entire length of the building, and around the corner, is a sturdy chain link fence. It’s too tall for even a large rabbit to climb, and even if he could, the barbed wire on top serves as a warning that he shouldn’t even try.

The situation is much the same around the corner, where the longer side of the brick building is daubed in graffiti and other stains the junior investigator can’t identify.

The chain link fence ends where it’s been fixed to the wall, but to the left, Patchee spies a set of grey-blue stable doors. The top door is open, so, standing on an upturned bin, he is able to get just enough height to climb up and over the bottom door, and into the stable. A few bags of food give the impression that horses were here until very recently.

It’s dark in the stable, but towards the very end, Patchee can see a single door, which looks to lead into the courtyard behind the brick building. He gives the door a push, and it swings open.

He is now in the old army base. He sees the empty bottles of water, the torn-open bags of peas, a few pods littering the floor. He sees tattered bits of rope and a few chairs, and through a grimy window into the brick building to his right, he sees a few pieces of paper pinned to a far wall, with diagrams and lists on them, and a few more sacks of food.

What he doesn’t see is the black labrador hiding in a dark corner behind the stable.

What happens between the labrador and the rabbit is something we’ll have to wait to find out.