The Vacant Casualty by Patty O'Furniture

said, getting up. ‘Good luck. I hope you liked the custard.’
    ‘It was pretty good,’ said Sam, wiping the last from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Thanks very much.’
    ‘Pleasure. Never met someone else who likes custard made from tortoise milk before. I’ll cook some more for you next time.’
    The major (or doctor) saw them to the door, closed it and then watched with amusement through the spyhole as Sam ran to one side to avoid being ungrateful to his host and vomited a violent
gutful of grey custard onto next door’s lawn.
    ‘It’s not yet twelve, so we’ve still got a good while to go before the emergency Parish Council meeting this afternoon,’ said Bradley. ‘How’s the
hangover?’
    ‘Pretty awful,’ said Sam, then gargled with water from a bottle. ‘Surely we’ve done enough of these old duffers for a morning? Can’t we go out into the
country?’
    Bradley looked at his watch. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Who do you think we should speak to, then?’
    ‘The druid. They say she lives up here on the Hill.’
    ‘Okay, then,’ said Bradley, nodding, and just at the same moment he spotted his police car up the road where he’d left it the night before, clicked the button to turn off the
alarm with a triumphant gesture, danced a little jig and trotted up to it.
    ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Sam, following twenty yards behind.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You shouldn’t ask me where we should go next, for starters. But you certainly shouldn’t do a little dance when the car alarm release goes off, like you’re on a game
show.’
    ‘Oh what
ever
,’ said Bradley, unlocking the door.
    There was a sudden loud boom from nearby that made them both stop speaking, and look to where a plume of smoke was rising from the grounds of the school. No ordinary smoke, however, because this
was green and giving off showers of blue sparks.
    ‘My God,’ said Bradley. ‘Some sort of terrible explosion at the school!’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice, and they spotted a schoolmaster further down the lane. He was looking particularly bedraggled, his trousers hanging in shreds and his face covered
in soot. ‘Just a, uh, just a science experiment!’ he called out, sounding rather nervous. ‘No need to come and investigate – none at all! Good day! Oh dear . . .’
    And with that the strange man (who bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Jim Broadbent) tottered out of view, back into the school grounds.
    ‘Is there
anything
that doesn’t explode around here?’ asked Sam, and both men walked slowly off towards the car, casting suspicious glances over their shoulders as they
went.

Chapter Seven
    S AM WAITED UNTIL they had been driving for a few minutes before he raised the topic again.
    ‘I really think you need to be a bit more . . . you know,’ he said.
    ‘I feel I know what you’re getting at,’ said Bradley. ‘I should be more of a, er, a sort of . . . rough type.’ The detective had been leaning forward and clutching
the steering wheel nervously but now he forced himself to lean back into his seat and put his foot down, making the speed surge. ‘You were going to say I wasn’t enough of a man; that I
should be more aggressive.’
    ‘Hey, listen! When we’re alone in the car there’s nothing to gain by you being a macho cop – God damn it, slow down! I’m feeling G-force here. Mind that— My
God, did we hit it? Okay, that’s it, slower,
slower
. Okay, so the one thing I was going to say was, be more hardball in all your dealings with humans – apart from me.’
    ‘Define hardball,’ said Bradley, taking his eyes off the road and gunning the acceleration once more.
    Sam was happy to give out advice, but in his current state (and in fact, in
any
state whatsoever) he was not content to have his life put at risk simply for the purposes of making a drive
in the country slightly more brisk. He made his feelings on this subject clear in words of one syllable.
    ‘Don’t