DCI Cobley Crime File
The night was thick with fog as Bill Brewer drove cautiously down the winding country road. His headlights barely pierced the murk, but then – a sudden thud. He slammed the brakes, heart pounding. He scrambled out, frantically searching the shadows for a body, but the night offered only silence.
Then he saw it: a woman’s leg, clad in laced boot and stocking, lying eerily still on the ground. He called out into the void, but got no reply. Trembling, he wrapped it in his coat and drove to the nearest police station.
The leg stood propped behind the front desk. Officers took turns peering at it as if it might walk off on its own. Was it real? they asked one another. They could do some pretty good artificial ones these days.
Detective Chief Inspector Tom Cobley had no medical training but he knew a leg when he saw one. ‘Put it in the fridge in the staff canteen,’ he ordered Sgt Peter Gurney. ‘While you’re there get me a cup of tea and a biscuit. Chocolate if they have it.’
As if on some cue, the lights flickered and they froze as the front door blew open and a soft clack of boot heel on tile echoed. There stood a woman, ghostly pale, tall, draped in damp lace. Her eyes fixed, ‘I believe,’ she said, voice smooth as velvet, ‘you have something of mine.’
Then, with a smile too wide for her face, she stepped forward – on one leg.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 