Page 3 of Dead Serious Case 4 Professor Prometheus Plume
“Are you an electrician?” Dusty asks.
“No, but I watched a YouTube video. I just thought, you know, how hard can it be?” He purses his lips thoughtfully. “In retrospect, I probably should have shut off the mains first.”
“Titbadger,” Dave blurts.
Terry frowns. “Excuse me?”
“Not you,” Dave replies.
“Dude,” Ian interjects. “You’re like Frankenstein, you know?” He holds out his arms stiffly in front of himself and mimes getting electrocuted. “IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE!” He throws his arms up and laughs maniacally.
“Honey, you need to lay off the bong.” Dusty tuts. “It’s the other way around. Technically, he’s dead.”
“You know, if we’re being technical, Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster,” I murmur and, without thinking, pick up the heart from the scales.
“OH MY GOD!” Terry exclaims for the third time. “Is that my… is that…” His eyes roll back in his head and he falls backward in a dead faint.
“Clean up aisle seven,” Dusty calls out.
I wince. “Oops.”
“Don’t worry, Tristan, we’ve got this.” Dave waves a hand in my direction. “You get that side, Ian.”
They edge around the unconscious man on the floor until they’re standing on either side of him. But as they reach out to grab his arms and haul him to his feet, several sparks shower from his hands and suddenly two blazing arcs of electricity hit Ian and Dave with a loud crackle. I watch open-mouthed as they are catapulted backwards through the air, Ian disappearing through one wall and Dave through the other, while a smoking Terry lies still on the floor.
Suddenly the door clatters open and Hen pokes her head in, wearing a paper hat from a cracker and clutching a half-empty plastic champagne flute.
“Tris,” she begins, then pauses, sniffing the air. “Can you smell burning?”
“Mm-mm.” I shake my head.
She shrugs and glances down at the table to the clearly incomplete post-mortem. “Aren’t you done yet, hun? Hurry up, or all the vol-au-vents will be gone and I’m dying to do the Secret Santa. I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to sleuth out who’s got who.”
“It’s really not that hard. There’s only like five of us.”
“Still, I got Judy and I cannot wait to see her face when she sees what I bought her.” She laughs gleefully.
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Hurry up.” She makes a shooing gesture with her hand and disappears, leaving the door to clatter closed in her wake.
There’s a loud moan from the floor and as Dusty and I look over, we see Terry stagger to his feet, his hands crackling with residual electricity from accidentally throwing Dave and Ian through the wall. They’re probably halfway to Canada judging from their velocity.
“What happened?” He groans and lifts his hands to his head. Dusty ducks, but another small arc of electricity hits the ceiling and the light explodes, plunging the room into darkness.
“Sorry,” Terry’s disembodied voice echoes.
Fuck. My. Life.
* * *
In honour of the occasion,Mr Baxter’s desk has been covered in a paper tablecloth decorated with sprigs of holly. A small spread of party food is laid out, still in its plastic Tesco packaging.
I grimace as my eyes fall on the vol-au-vents. I’ve never been able to identify what the things actually consist of, but these particular little round puff pastries seem to be filled with some kind of greyish-looking paste. Deciding not to risk salmonella over the only two days I have off to spend with Danny, I opt for the slightly safer-looking cubes of cheese and pineapple skewered onto the end of cocktail sticks.
Chewing ferociously and trying to swallow the rather rubbery cheese and limp pineapple, I take a swig of my Buck’s Fizz, wishing fervently that it was a cup of tea nestled in my hand while I was curled up on the sofa with Danny watchingDie Hard, which Danny and Chan both swear is a Christmas movie.
Honestly, I’d much rather be wearing a bloodied vest and crawling through air vents in bare feet than standing here trying to choke down a suspect-looking Scotch egg while, you guessed it, Mariah belts out a tinny version of what she wants for Christmas from Hen’s iPhone. I swear to god, she has that song on repeat just to wind me up. Is it too much to ask for a bit of Elton? Or Slade? Hell, I’d even take Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe over this endless torture. One more round of Mariah and I will seriously consider attaching myself to a fire hose and flinging myself off the top of Nakatomi Plaza, John McClane-style. Or, in this case, the top of the Hackney Public Mortuary.