Fatal Fiction

FLASH FICTION: An open and shut (book)case

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

The crime scene investigator unwrapped yet another mint humbug from her stash and sucked on it thoughtfully as she gazed at the pair of size six feet, clad in fancy leopard-print stilettos, that stuck out from beneath a toppled bookcase.

Isla found herself transported back to good times spent watching the Wizard of Oz on telly when she and her brother were kids. No freakish flying monkeys here though. Or even rainbows, come to that.

The deceased’s substantial hardwood bookcase had been stuffed full of what used to be called bonkbusters back in the ‘80s but were now coyly rebranded as Women’s Fiction. To buy some time while making her preliminary assessment, Isla counted up how many different Jackie Collins titles lay strewn across the parquet flooring. Just shy of thirty. Impressive. Practically the full set.

The other occupants of the room held their collective breath while Isla’s internal deliberations were in full flow. She was renowned among the force for her laser-sharp summing up of a crime scene, which inevitably saved many man hours of dispiriting door-to-door conversations with unreliable eyewitnesses.

“Murder,” she eventually proclaimed, before dipping her hand back into the crumpled paper bag of sweets sold from a jar by that nice chap who ran the corner shop.

“Feels personal to me. Motive? Obsession, perhaps. Or revenge...”

Local plod raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Burglary gone wrong?”

Isla treated him to an eye roll in return.

“Unlikely. No self-respecting professional thief would’ve left those box fresh Jimmy Choos behind. Worth about five hundred quid per foot.”

“Well, who then?”

“I suggest you cherchez l’homme.”

“Do what?” plod blinked in confusion.

“Find the burly bloke that killed her,” Isla explained in the tone of someone speaking to a small child. “It’s always the husband or boyfriend. Probably hates romance novels. More of a Baldacci aficionado, I’d say, if the half-finished book on the side table’s anything to go by.”

“Just a shame the victim didn’t buy a cheap self-assembly bookcase from IKEA instead of this weighty slab of designer shelving, then she wouldn’t have ended up in her present squashed state.”

And with that parting shot, Isla left them all to it.

Another crime wrapped up in the time it took for her to eat a few hard-boiled sweeties.