Kit Handsome and the mysterious strangers 1

Kit had spent the weekend on the mainland with Sally. It had been fantastic, the best weekend of his life. They’d barely left the bedroom – she had a widescreen TV they could watch in bed, en-suite toilet, a bedside coffee-maker and a drinks cabinet. It was luxuries like these that made Kit question why he lived on Boonhill.
 
Boonhill.
 
To date, he’d kept his relationship with Sally a secret, but there would be no hiding it now. He was seen getting the ferry to the mainland on Friday evening and never returned. By the time he stepped back on the early morning boat on Monday morning his weekend with a mainlander would be the talk of the island.  No gossip was as highly prized as a relationship with a mainlander.
 
He took a toilet break before getting onto the ferry, a chance to mentally prepare himself for the grilling he was about to undergo. He preened his moustache in the mirror – Sally liked it big and bushy so he’d let it grow, but without regular care it was liable to resemble an aroused hedgehog.
 
Boson had operated the Boonhill ferry for over thirty years, and consequently knew everybody, everything and every piece of business, news and tittle-tattle there had ever been on the island. He was, to a policeman like Kit, a regular fountain of information.  He was also the worst gossip on the entire island.
 
Oh well, Kit consoled himself, at least nobody knows who I was with. He hoped to keep that secret for a lot longer.
 
“Morning Kit. Business on the mainland?” Boson asked pleasantly. 
 
“Just enjoying a bit of a social life, Hal, painting the town a bit.”
 
“Well you may as well while you’re young Kit. And she’s a fine lass is Sally.”
 
Kit didn’t react, but cursed himself for, well whatever slip he’d made. How on earth had Boson found out? If Kit’s police force was half as efficient as the Boonhill gossips, then there would be no crime to solve. He’d have had the missing halibut case wrapped up months ago.
 
Once on Boonhill, he walked the half-mile distance from the ferry port to the police station. Megson was on the front desk when he arrived.
 
“Morning Kit. ‘tache looks spruce, been visiting Sally?”
 
Kit grunted good morning, unwilling to confirm or deny any knowledge of Sally. You had to be careful what you admitted to the police, especially when you were the police. He helped himself to a coffee from the jug, but Harkaway was on coffee duty that morning, which meant that the coffee was so weak it might as well have been homeopathic coffee.
 
Kit’s mood didn’t get any better when he reached his desk, as the first thing he saw was a thick brown file. The halibut case! He looked through the latest papers, Megson had updated it over the weekend, but the latest leads had come to nothing. The case had become an embarrassment, he’d made no progress at all. It was as if 5,000 halibut had just vanished into thin air.
 
Kit wondered how Boson and Megson had found out about Sally. Even if they’d guessed he was seeing someone how did they know who? Nobody knew Sally’s name, she’d never been to Boonhill and he’d been careful to avoid mentioning her. He’d even saved her phone number under the name Kevin P, in case Megson ever had cause to check his phone.
 
Unless Megson had suddenly needed a phone number for Kevin P and had searched his phone. But the only Kevin P he could think of was the former mainland cricketer Kevin Pietersen, and why would Megson want Kevin Pietersen’s phone number? Perhaps it was Sally, maybe she’d called the station to ask about him. Or perhaps she’d phoned Boson to ask about the ferry. Maybe she’d rang Wenders at the Tower thinking Kit was flying to the mainland. Or perhaps she’d phoned someone else, maybe she knew someone else on Boonhill. It was possible, he'd not thought of that, maybe Sally was the mole. Or maybe Sally had a friend who was a mole.

 

The telephone rang, just as well, Kit’s mind could easily have gone through the entire Boonhill phone book speculating on the possible ways in which his visit to Sally may have been discovered. He picked up the phone.
 
“Handsome,” he snapped, then realising he sounded brusque, added “How can I help?” in a friendlier tone.
 
“Kit, it’s me, Anderson.” It was Kit’s boss from the mainland.
 
“Oh hello, chief.” 
 
“You’re snappy today, Kit. I thought you’d be in a good mood after your weekend with Sally.”
 
“How can I help?”
 
“I’m afraid I’ve received a complaint about you, Kit,” he said.
 
“A complaint? You mean the halibut?”
 
“Not this time Kit, this one’s a completely different cock-up. A failure to investigate sinister strangers.”
 
“Oh, god,” Kit said. “You mean Ms Overton? She imagines she’s seeing Muslims and foreigners.”
 
“Now Kit, don’t get all PC on me, you can’t refuse to investigate a case just because the suspects are from ethnic minorities."

 

“There aren’t any suspects. There are no ethnic minorities on the island. She’s imagined the whole thing. She watches too much TV.”
 
“You can’t just dismiss her concerns Kit, you’ve got little enough to do as it is, three policemen on that tiny little island. Check it out – I would myself but I’ve got a murder case which is taking all my time. Frankly, I’ve no time for picking up your loose ends.”
 
Reluctantly Kit agreed to pursue the investigation. Ms Overton’s house was walking distance from the station, but he asked Harkaway to give him a lift, as this would mean that Megson would have to make the refill of coffee, meaning it might actually be drinkable.
 
Ms Overton was, as her name suggested, an elderly spinster, who regularly telephoned the station, usually after having read the mainland newspapers and their constant supply of scare stories about Muslim invasions, immigrants taking our jobs and immigrants refusing to work.

 

She opened the door immediately after he'd rang the bell, as if she'd been stood by the front door looking through the peephole.
 
“Oh you finally managed to tear yourself away from Sally then,” she said. “Never mind that I could have been murdered in my bed, the important thing was you had your dirty weekend.”
 
Kit grimaced, but answered politely, he knew that everything he said would be reported back to Anderson, as well as making its way round every gossip on Boonhill.
 
“I’m pleased to see that you weren’t murdered, Ms Overton, perhaps these strangers you’ve seen aren’t as threatening as you believe. Could you tell me more about them?”
 
“Oh yes, I can tell you all about ‘them’. I see 'them' every night, creeping about outside my house.”
 
“And you say that they’re all men.”
 
“Well not normal men, they're all darkies.”
 
"Shall we just say dark-hued, we don't know their ethnicity so maybe just stick to the facts.” Kit said patiently, pretending to write something in his notebook.  “So how tall would you say these strangers were?”
 
“I couldn’t tell, they were black.”
 
Kit again wrote something notebook and proceeded to the next question.
 
“What were they wearing?”
 
“I couldn’t tell, they were black.”
 
“Would you recognise them if you saw them again?”
 
“Oh yes, they were all darkies. I could tell them anywhere.”
 
Kit raised his eyebrows at this response, but decided not to pursue it.
 
“How many of them were there?”
 
“Six or seven.”
 
“I’ll put down four or five shall I?” Kit said, (Ms Overton tended towards exaggeration).    
 
Eventually Kit had feigned enough interest in the case to be able to leave.
 
“That was the most pointless waste of time. Listening to a dotty old pensioner go on about about foreigners, I might as well have been interviewing Nigel Farage.”
 
“Are we done then?” Harkaway said.
 
“No, I’m afraid we’re not done. Anderson’s on my back so I’ve got to pretend this is a serious complaint.”
 
“So what are you going to do, question all the ethnic minorities on the island?”
 
Sometimes it was embarrassingly apparent that Harkaway knew next to nothing about the island.
 
“Of course I’m not going to question all the ethnic minorities on the island,” Kit said patiently. “There aren’t any.”
 
“What, none at all?”
 
“We’re not that sort of island,” Kit explained. It’s not like we ban them, or treat them badly, it’s just that Boonhill isn’t the sort of place that ethnic minorities ever come to.”
 
“So if there are no suspects and we’ve interviewed the only witness, what are we going to do next?
 
“We’re going to interview Boson, check whether any dark-hued strangers have visited the island recently.”
 
Harkaway drove the short distance to the ferry and for the second time that day Boson greeted Kit.
 
“Kit, you’re looking well, how’s Sally?”
 
“I’m fine thanks Boson, just like I was an hour ago. I’m perusing and investigation. Have you seen any strangers on the ferry recently, in particular anyone with a dark complexion?”
 
Boson laughed. “You looking for Ms Overton’s mysterious dark strangers are you Kit? Thought you’d have better things to do, what with them missing hallibut and all.”
 
“So have you seen anyone or not?”
 
“No Kit, there’s been no strangers. Not on this ferry. Certainly not any darkies. They’re imagining it if you want my opinion.”
 
“That’s all I needed to know. Thanks for your time, Boson, see you soon.”
 
“See you Kit. Love to Sally.”
 
Kit left the ferry, only to turn around a few yards down the road (metres hadn't reached Boonhill yet).
 
“They?” he said. Boson looked confused. “You said ‘they’ saw dark strangers. Not just Mrs Overton?”
 
“Ah, no, it was herself and Ms Trill.”
 
Mrs Trill – this changed everything. Mrs Trill lived opposite Ms Overton, which gave credence to her claim. Not only that, Mrs Trill was sane. Which meant that there really were mysterious dark strangers creeping around Boonhill.