55 Cancri - Part 1

The Concrete Cows

It was clear that something strange was going on. Seventeen people had disappeared in seven days, all from the area around Bradwell and Stacey Bushes.

What a name, it sounded like something from a porn film, but that was Milton Keynes for you. Brook shook her head in wonder, and returned her gaze to the rather bizarre scene before her.

“Well, what do you think?” Brook asked.

Fox shrugged his broad shoulders in response.  “Just look like a bunch of cows to me. Very object d’art.”

They were standing in front of a herd of concrete cows, planted in the middle of an otherwise empty field, like a bovine rock garden. It had rained heavily the night before and the field was a quagmire of mud and saturated grass.

A dual carriageway ran less than a hundred yards behind them, the cars whooshing by. The only other noise was the guttural wail of some unseen bird. Fox and Brook stood with their heads cocked to the side, appraising the cows.

“They are quite something, that’s for sure. I’m not sure what, but definitely something. There must be a clue around here somewhere. Seventeen people can’t just go missing and there be no trace of them.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I heard a story once about this group of college kids who went on a field trip to Warwick Castle and they disappeared. Only a finger was found, next to a rather plump looking peacock. You don’t think…”

“Shut up, Fox, you’re babbling again. And where exactly did you hear this little gem about man-eating peacocks? The Sun?”

“I’ll have you know that there is no better example of quality investigative journalism than The Sun.”

“Except The National Enquirer perhaps. Or is that where you get all your leads?”

Fox glared at her and pouted. Brook smiled back at him mischievously.

“Joking aside, can you work out what the hell is going on?”

“Nope. I was hoping that you would be able to work it out for me, make me look like a member of a crack crime-solving team.”

“Nice try, buckaroo. Gonna need your help on this one.”

Fox grunted. “Yeah, figured you would say something like that. Man’s work is never done”.

Brook rolled her eyes at him. They had been partners for nearly two years and yet she still found him exasperating. It was like being married, but without the tax breaks. Could be worse, she guessed.

Brook had been partnered with a gun-totting, man-hating psycho woman named Janet. Janet the Gannet had been a nightmare to work with and had an offensively bad taste in fashion. At least Fox was cute.

“You’re looking at me funny. What are you thinking?” Fox asked Brook with an eyebrow raised in worry.

“Nothing. Just trying to see if there is some kind of connection between the victims.”

“They’re not technically victims yet. We don’t know if anything has actually happened to them.”

“Whatever, that’s just semantics. It still doesn’t preclude the need to work out if there is a connection.”

“Sure, sure, the due process of detective work, yahdah, yahdah. Okay, let’s see.”

Fox started to count on his fingers.  “So far there we have had a professor, a doctor, a policeman and an actress go missing. Shame about the last one, she was on the telly. Great tits. Anyway, where was I? Um, then there was a beautician, an accountant, and a lawyer who disappeared. Last two were definitely not missed. That makes seven. A student vanished a couple of days ago, followed by a gymnast, a shop keeper…"

"-the Butcher, the Baker and Candlestick maker?"

Fox scowled. "Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, the missing included a carpenter, a plumber and an IT guy. Then yesterday, a family reported that mum disappeared after dropping said nippers off to school, an artist from the Great Linford Craft Village never showed up for pottery classes and a farmer just vanished into thin air, his tractor left doing circles in the field."

"You missed out the librarian."

"Oh yeah, the librarian. Well, they all disappeared this week, all from different parts of Milton Keynes and the surrounding villages, but some of them were reported as having been last seen near here by various sources. Don’t know about you, but I can’t see much more of a connection other than the fact that they won’t be going to Tesco this week."

"You’re an insensitive git, you know that?"

"Your momma. But come on, there is hardly a great link between them, is there? Unless they are part of a suicide cult and all jumped into the canal."

"See previous comment. But that is a possibility you know. Ever since the millennium there has been a definite rise in nutters joining doomsday cults. Perhaps that is what happened, and they met here by the cows before taking the final plunge."

"What, like some kind of East Midlands Stonehenge?"

"Yeah, but with udders."

Fox laughed and patted Brook on the back. "Come on, let’s have a look around. See if we can find anything in this swamp other than worms."

The two of them traipsed around in the mud for twenty minutes, starring at anything that could pass for footprints, and picking up objects poking out of the grass. They found nothing except a beer bottle and a used condom, and then the rain started again.

Brook sighed. "Great," she mumbled, "now my hair is going to look like a fur ball."
 
Fox came over to her. "You find anything?"

"Nope, but I have just ruined a lovely pair of Hush Puppies though."

"Let’s leave it for a bit. I’m hungry, I think I’ll go up to the petrol station up on the road, see if they have anything edible. D’ya want something to eat?"

"Yeah, could you get me a Twix and a cup of black coffee?"

"Sure thing. See you in a few minutes." Brook watched as Fox trudged back up the field towards the road and hike up the hill towards the petrol station. She hugged herself to keep warm and waited for him to return.

Ten minutes later, Brook had finished her chocolate fix and was sipping delicately on the scolding coffee that tasted rather worryingly similar to canal water. Fox was carping on about some amp he had just bought for his home cinema, and was debating whether to go for some Mordaunt-Short speakers.

Brook blocked out the droning, and stared at the ground below her feet. She was leaning against one of the cows and she saw something shine next to a concrete hoof. She must have dug it up with her heel by accident. Brook bent down and scraped at the soil to further uncover the object.

Fox halted in his narrative of the veritable benefits of silver cabling to watch his partner kneeling in the mud, scrabbling at a cow’s foot.

"Um, what are you doing?"

Brook looked over her shoulder at him, then waved the small gold object in triumph.

"Ta da! Success! I don’t know how we missed it." She stood and went over to Fox, wiping the object on a handkerchief to remove the mud.

"What is it?"

"Haven’t a clue, but it might be something that could help us."

She held her palm out towards Fox, the object glinting despite the overcast day. It was triangular and made of gold and inlaid with gems that appeared to be diamonds. Fox whistled under his breath.

"Looks expensive. Who would have dropped something like that?"

"I don't know. I didn’t realise that anyone in Milton Keynes would even own something like this, let alone drop it. Here, look, there’s a pattern on it".

Brook wiped more of the mud away to reveal a swirling pattern of twelve circles lined up in four rows of three. The middle circle of the second row embraced a large diamond in the centre.

Smaller diamonds were interspersed at irregular intervals around the larger stone, some lying on the circumferences of the circles, others floating in the centre of the circles in clusters.

The item was as flat as a coin and the height and width of her palm. It was extremely beautiful, and obviously valuable, which made it all the more strange that someone had left it. She wouldn’t have taken it out of her house, let alone into a field. Unless it was stolen, of course.

"I think we should put this in an evidence bag, and go and dry off. We can come back here tomorrow when the rain has cleared a bit. Besides, I want to do a bit of investigating, see if anyone remembers one of the missing seventeen owning this little gem."

"You think it might be relevant to our case?"

"Probably not, but we have nothing else to go on."

"True. I’m cold. Let's go back to the hotel and get warm."

"Now, that’s an offer I wasn't expecting." Brook smiled a Fox and winked.

"That's not what I meant, you little tart." Fox laughed.  

They headed back to their hire car, a silver Ford Fiesta (no expense spared) and drove back to the Holiday Inn Express and a hot shower.