The Garden Detectives

I was determined to track down the offender, and doing it in this man’s company was no hardship!

IT was like something from a horror movie. My four-year-old granddaughter was skipping along the sun-dappled footpath. She reached for a bright purple bag which hung from a low tree branch.

“Is it a present, Nana, from the fairies?”

Before I could reply, Lila ripped open the purple bag, peered inside and screamed.

She dropped the dog-poo bag, holding out her hands like Lady Macbeth.

“It’s OK, Lila.” I rushed to her. “Nana will fix it.”

At the same moment, a door in the fence flew open. “What’s going on?”

The man who’d appeared was lean and handsome, with neatly combed grey hair and Clark Kent glasses.

He obviously lived in one of the houses which backed on to the footpath.

Through his garden gate I saw a riot of colourful flowers. Garden shears hung from his fingertips.

“Do you have a hose?” I asked, keeping my voice level. Years of sangfroid in fraught political situations had prepared me for this.

“Better than that, I’ve got a boot room.” He beckoned us into his garden. “Come.”

At the Belfast sink in the man’s boot room, I lifted up Lila so she could lather eucalyptus-scented soap.

I’d never smelled anything finer.

I turned off the tap and set Lila down on the floor. She dried her hands on my corduroy skirt before I could locate a towel for her.

Oh, well. At least she wasn’t crying any more.

“Thank you.” I faced the man. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“It’s nothing.” He smiled. “Glad to help.”

As he spoke, a Dalmatian entered the boot room. Lila let out a gasp of excitement and ran to it.

“Is she friendly?”

I sensed another impending disaster. Lila’s hands were grabbing at the Dalmatian’s ears.

“Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Isn’t that right, Daisy?”

As if in response, the dog gave Lila’s face a lick.

She giggled and I relaxed.

My former colleagues from the cut-and-thrust of London wouldn’t believe how action-packed life with a four-year-old could be.

I’d been a political consultant for most of my working life, before retiring a couple of years ago.

I’d thought moving to the coast to be near my son and granddaughter might make life a shade dull. No fear of that.

“What do the blighters think they’re playing at?” I grumbled as Lila rolled on the tiled floor with Daisy. “Hmm?”

While I’d been looking at Lila, I realised the man had been looking at me.

I wished I’d put more effort into my appearance this morning. My hair was tangled and I’d skipped the lippy.

“I’m Siobhan.” I extended a hand and he shook it.

I felt a pleasant jolt of electricity at the touch of his skin on mine.

“Tom.” Two spots of colour appeared on his cheeks.

There was silence, then I cleared my throat.

“Why can’t you walk down a path these days without finding the trees festooned with bags of doggy-do?”

“It’s a menace.” Tom pushed his glasses up his nose. “Always saw a few bags on that footpath, but they’ve multiplied these last few months.”

“Terrible.”

My mind was half on the conversation and half on an attempt to tidy my hair.

“I clean them up, but they reappear like clockwork.”

“Someone should do something,” I said.

“I put up a sign.” Tom shrugged. “Wrongdoers will be prosecuted. Then the bags were left right by my gate.”

Lila tugged on my skirt. “Nana, ice-cream.”

I felt guilty. My son, James, was scandalised at how soft I was with Lila.

When he was a kid, he complained, it was eat your greens and early to bed.

But I had promised Lila an ice-cream. That meant saying goodbye to my handsome saviour.

“Sorry, better go,” I said. “I’ve some fudge icecream in the freezer,” Tom said to Lila, whose eyes lit up. “How does that sound?”

After that, I couldn’t have dragged Lila away. This place had a dog, a garden and ice-cream. Maybe she’d found fairyland, after all.

The three of us sat out among Tom’s flowers – purple hydrangeas, orange marigolds, yellow tulips – and enjoyed the homemade ice-cream.

“I wonder if there’s a way to catch the culprit,” I said, licking my spoon.

“I’m inclined to think it’s local lads messing about.” Tom nodded in the direction of the fence. “The footpath’s a bit of a shortcut to the school.” I frowned.

“They take their dogs to school?”

“What?”

“Or they bring the poo bags from home?”

“Not sure I’d thought of that.” Tom laughed. “I’m no good with mysteries. I always guess the wrong man when I watch Agatha Christies on TV.”

I, on the other hand, was very good at guessing the murderers.

“Nana, look!” Lila was turning cartwheels across the lawn.

“Wonderful!” I shouted, then turned to Tom.

“Noticed any patterns? Bags showing up at any particular times or days?”

“Now you mention it, when I take Daisy for her morning walk it’s usually clear.

“Then I’ll go and get a newspaper around eleven and there will be one or two new ones. Always the purple bags.”

“What time’s your morning walk?”

“Eight, eight-thirty.” “Some time between eight and eleven is when the culprit passes your house. You should do a stakeout.”

“A stakeout?”

I sat up straight, pounding my fist against the arm of my chair.

“Drill a hole in the fence, set up a camera. Catch the blighter red-handed!”

“Crikey, I wouldn’t have a clue how to do that.” Tom blinked rapidly.

I wilted back into my seat. I’d got carried away again, hadn’t I?

“Forget it,” I said.

I looked around for Lila who was rummaging through the flower-beds now, possibly looking for fairies.

Time to leave. I’d imposed on Tom’s hospitality for long enough. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’d need help with the stakeout. Don’t suppose you’d be my Doctor Watson?”

I looked up, meeting his warm brown eyes. A smile broke across my face.

“Absolutely!”

Privately, I decided I’d be Sherlock and Tom could be Watson, but you couldn’t puncture a man’s ego just like that.

****

Three days later, Tom and I met in his garden for our surveillance mission. It should have been my am-dram rehearsal day, but I’d given it a miss for this.

We were settled in the same wooden lawn chairs as last time, but the early morning mist meant it wasn’t ice-cream weather.

Tom tucked a tartan blanket over my knees.

“Not too chilly?”

His concern made me feel warm all over.

He poured a cup of tea for me. A laptop lay on the table between us.

My son had lent me a small camera which was fixed to the fence, its eye pointing through a hole.

I didn’t know how it worked, but James had set it up for me the day before.

Now a video feed of the footpath appeared on the laptop screen. Wasn’t technology marvellous?

“Right.” Tom’s eyes were twinkling. “Ready to start our detective work?”

I raised my cup in salute. “Ready.”

The stakeout began with a flurry of activity. Over a half-hour period perhaps 50 schoolchildren, all uniformed in royal blue jumpers, traipsed past, shouting and laughing.

A pair of boys accidentally lobbed a football over the fence into Tom’s garden. They looked alarmed at how quickly it arced back towards them.

Tom sat back down and peered at the screen. The two footballers disappeared down the footpath.

As I’d suspected, the pupils from the local school were red herrings. None of them was smuggling dog poo in their backpacks and hanging it up in the trees.

The last of the uniformclad stragglers wandered by. Everything went quiet.

“What would you be doing if you weren’t on a stakeout?” I asked, stretching out my legs beneath the blanket.

“Gardening.” Tom gave a nod. “Never had time for it back in the day – I used to be an architect. Now I can’t get enough.”

Over the next hour he told me about his gardening, his architect practice (he still did some consulting) and his passion for military history.

In turn, I told him about the good old days when I was yelled at by three MPs

I decided I’d be Sherlock and Tom could be Watson

before breakfast (and did plenty of yelling in return).

Now, I saved my dramatics for “The Pirates Of Penzance”.

At first, we made regular checks of the video feed.

But as our conversation deepened I almost forgot why I was there, until . . . “Uh-oh!” Tom pointed. My eyes flashed to the screen in time to see a woman hook a bag over a branch. I threw off my rug and rushed to the gate.

With Tom two steps behind me, I burst out on to the footpath.

“Caught you!”

“What?”

A woman dressed in pink joggers stared at me. A springer spaniel weaved between her legs.

“It is a crime to knowingly discard bagged waste!”

I knew because I’d asked my local police community support officer.

Admittedly, the penalty was only an £80 fine, but a crime was a crime.

“Quite right,” Tom added. I shot him an appreciative look. Thank you, Watson.

“I’m not discarding it.” The woman huffed. “Felix does his business right after we get out of the car, so I leave it here and collect it on the way back.” A likely story.

“We know for a fact you’ve been leaving your bagged waste

here,” I said.

“I haven’t!”

“Siobhan, this one’s a black bag,” Tom said softly. “It’s the purple ones we’ve been having trouble with.”

I turned to face him.

From the corner of my eye I saw the woman tug on her spaniel’s lead. The two of them hastened away down the footpath.

“Hey, we’re still interviewing you!” I called after her. She increased her pace to a jog. “We have your crime on tape!”

“Maybe we should pick our battles?” Tom suggested.

I glared after the woman, although I did note that she’d unhooked her bag from the branch and taken it with her.

Maybe she was innocent. That still left the purple bag maniac on the loose, though.

****

Back at our lawn-chair stakeout, we were on our second pot of tea. It was nearing eleven.

The sun had come out, so we didn’t need blankets any more, but the chances of catching the culprit appeared to be dimming.

A few more people had wandered along the footpath – and across the laptop screen – in the last hour, but no-one suspicious.

“Think we should call time?” I asked, checking my watch.

I was looking after Lila this afternoon and had a couple of errands to run beforehand.

Tom shrugged.

“Maybe.”

My heart sank. I’d wanted him to say we should stick it out.

Without this caper, we didn’t have any reason to spend time together.

I’d dropped hints about a new Middle Eastern restaurant in town, but he hadn’t picked up on them. Men could be so dense. Daisy the Dalmatian, who’d slept through the altercation with the woman in the pink joggers, was awake and demanding attention from me. I scratched behind her ears.

“Give her a treat and she’ll love you for ever.” Tom fished a packet from his pocket and handed them to me.

If only you were so easy to seduce, I thought, glancing between Tom and Daisy, who was gobbling down a bone-shaped treat.

I levered myself up out of my chair, wondering if I could remember how to dismantle the camera-andlaptop set-up.

“Well, it’s been lovely . . .” As I spoke, my gaze landed on the screen.

A burly, bald-headed man was stooped to the ground. There were three dogs with him.

I held my breath.

When he stood up, I saw that he was holding a purple poo bag.

He leaned over and hung it from the nearest branch.

Eyes wide, I turned to look at Tom.

His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were shining. A current of electricity sizzled between us.

The three of us – me,

Tom and Daisy – raced to the garden gate.

Tom threw open the door. Daisy let out a single bark.

“Sir, you are committing a crime!” Tom said forcefully.

Muscles bulged beneath the bald man’s black tank top. His face twisted into a sneer.

A German shepherd, a chihuahua and a Jack Russell swarmed at his feet.

Tom stepped into the middle of the footpath, blocking the way, but the man shouldered past him.

“You can’t leave your waste here!” Tom shouted after him.

“Where else am I s’posed to leave it? There’s no dog bins.”

At the man’s feet, the German shepherd let out a growl. That made the other two dogs start yapping.

Daisy, the big coward, retreated into the bushes.

“Then take it with you,” I said.

A smirk cracked open the man’s face.

“No. I leave it here as a protest, innit?”

“A protest?”

As my voice rose, the German shepherd bounded towards me, letting out another growl.

I took a step back and gulped down a tremor. The man laughed.

Then I remembered I was still holding the dog treats. I fumbled one into the palm of my hand and held it out.

I was half-expecting to get my fingers bitten off, but the German shepherd wolfed down the treat and looked up at me with gooey eyes.

What a softie.

The other dogs, including Daisy, were now sniffing around me like I was an idol to be worshipped.

Squaring my shoulders, I stared down the bald man.

Something about his appearance was familiar.

“How is leaving your mess out here going to change anything?” I said.

“My granddaughter opened up one of your surprises. She could have caught a disease!”

The smirk was still on his face.

“She’ll know for next time, won’t she?”

“We have your image on film,” Tom said, as I spluttered in outrage.

“We’ll be reporting you to the police.”

“You’re kidding me, mate. Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

I narrowed my eyes, a memory clicking into place.

“You’re the doubleglazing salesman!” I said. “Your ads are all over town. Harry Houdini. ‘Make your draughts disappear’.”

The man was looking nervous now. He didn’t say anything.

“Harry Houdini?” Tom said out of the side of his mouth. “That’s surely not his legal name?”

“No, but I know where his showroom is. I’ll send the police round.”

“You’re barking, the pair of you!”

Harry Houdini turned on his heel and stomped away.

He had to stop 50 yards down the footpath and whistle for his dogs, who were still at my feet, hopeful for a treat.

Finally, with the dogs scampering after him, he disappeared around a bend.

“Well.” Tom shoved his hands in his pockets. “We solved the case.”

He sounded crestfallen and I couldn’t blame him.

It hadn’t quite been the triumphant dénouement where Poirot gathers everyone in the drawingroom.

Absently, I fed Daisy a dog treat, even though she’d been frankly useless in the crisis.

“I’ll talk to my PCSO friend,” I said, “and make sure that man gets a fine.”

I felt a pang. Now that the case was closed, there was no reason for me to be here.

“I’ll be off, then.”

“No!”

Tom pushed his glasses up his nose. The tips of his ears had gone red.

“I mean, we should celebrate. How about a nice lunch?

“I hear there’s a new Middle Eastern restaurant just opened.”

In the weeks that followed, I told everyone I knew that Harry Houdini was a bad egg, and if they needed double-glazing, they should look elsewhere.

I had to admit, though, Harry had a point about the lack of dog-waste bins.

With the help of my

PCSO friend, I started a petition to fix the issue. I also organised a monthly litter pick, rounding up volunteers.

It wasn’t just dog mess that was the problem along the footpath.

****

“Crisp packet,” Tom said, indicating with his head.

I wielded my long-reach grabber and plucked the offending item out of the tree. Beside me, Tom held open the black sack.

As the packet dropped into its depths, he beamed.

“We make a good team, don’t we?”

“Absolutely.”

I leaned in to give him a quick kiss. Then it was back to work.

The litter wouldn’t pick itself.

The End.