SHORT FAT STUBBY FINGER STORIES PRESENTS:  THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

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Episode 89

“Now, Chief Inspector O’Reilly, this is where your untimely end fits into the story.   There will often be an innocent or two who gets in the way of the minions who are working for Rangor, and the minions need to remove this disruption to their duties, but murder is not the way they can always go because it brings too much attention to them, and what they are doing for Rangor.  Instead, they utilise the proxy because it can not only destroy the victim, but it can hide the fact that murder had even taken place.  All the authorities will be on the look-out for is a missing person or two, if, in fact, the victims are actually reported as missing. The minions arrange for the proxy’s involvement by placing a ruby on the intended victim without their knowledge.  Remember, these are not normal rubies, they are nuclear bombs in the waiting.  There is no time limit on the proxy to perform his task, but I have been advised it is usually within a few hours of the ruby being placed in the possession of the intended victim.  On receipt of the secret message the creature will follows the trail of the ruby and destroy the victim with so much force there is usually less than nothing left to be recognised as once been a living, breathing, human as was the case with the witches who died at the farmhouse. or even poor Vittorio, for that matter.”

  “This is ridiculous, Joseph.  How can they simply plant a ruby on somebody without them knowing about it, or at least finding it at some stage?”  Chief Inspector O’Reilly objected.
  “I know that it sounds unbelievable,” Joseph continued, trying his best to remain calm knowing that time was running out, “but there is a way that I can prove it to you, or at least in part.”

  “How?” 

  “Which pocket, Harvey?”  Joseph asked; Harvey thought for a moment before settling on the right-hand pocket.
  “Look in your right-hand coat pocket, please, Chief Inspector”

  The Chief Inspector looked at Joseph and Harvey like they were mad men, but to appease them he placed his hand in his pocket where he found something hard lying at the bottom.  Curious as to what it was, he pulled it out to inspect it.  His face paled, and he dropped the ruby onto his desk, as quickly as if it had been burning a hole in his hand. “Where the devil did that come from?”  He asked in a voice reeking of curiosity, fear, anger, and suspicion, “Did you put it there, Joseph?” 

  “Like when?”  Joseph laughed, “I’ve been nowhere near you since you turned up at the farm, and if that had of been the case, I doubt that we would be having this conversation now.  You would most likely be dead.  Even now you are in imminent danger.  One of the men that you had here a few minutes ago slipped it into your pocket back at the hotel when Sharkie seemed to have lost his balance and crashed into you.  Harvey saw it happen on the monitor, but didn’t realise what it meant until he spoke with me.”

  “How do you know so much about all of this, Joseph?”  The still disbelieving chief inspector asked.

   “We haven’t got time for all of that at the moment.  What is more important is that your men also have a ruby on them.  As do you, Harvey.”

  “No,” Harvey snapped defensively, shocked that Joseph had doubted his honesty, “I gave you the only one I had in the garage,”

  “Yes, I know that, but did you know that Sharkie replaced it in your jacket when he forgave you.”

  “He what?”  Harvey gasped as he began to check his clothes and got the shock of his life when he discovered he was indeed carrying a ruby which he quickly threw on the table to join the chief inspector’s gem stone, “I never felt a thing.  I am glad that you saw what he did, Joseph,”

  “I wasn’t certain.”  Joseph admitted with an embarrassed grin, “but his little pantomime of forgiveness seemed unnecessary and overplayed, and after what you had told me you had witnessed it stood to reason that you should be included with the others.  If I had been wrong in my assumption, it would have caused no harm.  However, at the moment, I think, for everybody’s safety, including your compatriots downstairs, we should get rid of all of the rubies before it is too late.  If my thinking is right, there will be hell to pay any minute now.  Chief Inspector, would you mind calling your colleagues into the room, at the double, if you don’t mind .”

  “Do you expect them also to have these rubies in their possession?”  The chief inspector’s face was one of great concern; the finding of a ruby in his pocket was worrying enough in itself, to find them located on the two policemen was going to force his mind to accept Joseph’s nightmare as being real, and the self-preservation part of his mind was not wanting a bar of it.  But it too was slowly succumbing to the inevitable.