THE GRAVE DIGGER

Glen Hartwell, May 2024AD

Hetty and Arthur Maverick were roaring along Williamstown Road, the closest thing Glen Hartwell had to a highway, in their flame-red Bentley convertible late that Friday night.

"Slow down, Jack Brabham!" cried Hetty as the speedometer reached 120 Kays: "Are you trying to set a new land speed record?"

"Ha-ha, it is to laugh," said Arthur, or Artie as he preferred to be called - mainly because it sounded more American. Arthur had always been fascinated by Hollywood's largely fictitious portrayal of the United States. Although being both afraid of flying and a victim of seasickness, he had never even been to Tasmania, and would certainly never get to his beloved United States: "The current land speed record is over 763 miles an hour. That's over twelve hundred kilometres an hour!"

"Trust you to know that, Alan Jones."

"Ha-ha," said Artie again.

"And what suicidal moron would drive a car at over twelve hundred kilometres an hour?"

"Planes go that fast."

"Yes, but there are a lot less things to hit up there."

They were still arguing over safety versus daring speeds when the derelict stepped out in front of them.

"Look out!" shouted Hetty, a second before they hit him; sending the derelict flying almost a hundred metres further down the road: "Jesus, you probably killed him!"

"We'll never know," said Artie. Without slowing, he expertly swerved the Bentley around the bloodied man on the Macadam road.

"Stop, Artie, stop! You can't just leave him, he might still be alive and badly in need of an ambulance!"

"Have you forgotten that I've only got two points left on my licence? We stop and I lose my licence and we're stuck at home. You know how much you like going out to the opera and the cinema in BeauLarkin."

"Not as much as I care about a man's life!"

"Tough, we ain't stopping!" insisted Artie, planting his foot upon the accelerator, taking them up to 140 kilometres an hour.

Beside the road where the derelict had landed, the Grave Digger, a tall ox-like man in tradie's overalls watched the fleeing Bentley for a moment, then walked across to where the man was lying in the road.

Kneeling on the Macadam, the Grave Digger felt for the man's pulse. Detecting a strong, but erratic pulse, the man stood up and took a short-handled shovel from a backpack of tools he carried. He swung the shovel hard three times into the injured man's face.

Kneeling he checked his pulse again. It was now weak, but still there. So standing he smashed the shovel head into the man's face twice more, before kneeling to check again.

At last satisfied that the derelict was dead, he picked the man up and carried him a dozen metres or so into the forest just passed the road.

Then, checking that he was out of sight from Williamstown Road, the Grave Digger dropped the corpse, and began carefully digging a grave, nearly three metres deep for the man.

"Everyone deserves to be buried, even Deros," he said as he climbed out of the hole.

He rolled the corpse into the grave, then filled the hole gain. He then said a short prayer, before returning the shovel to his backpack.

He walked back to Williamstown Road and started whistling in satisfaction as he slowly started after the red Bentley Convertible.


"We can't just leave him to die!" insisted Hetty Maverick.

"And I can't afford to lose my licence," insisted Artie: "Don't worry, there's a phone box in Blackland Street, we're almost at Glen Hartwell. We'll put in an anonymous call saying we saw a man lying in the middle of the road."

"Okay, but step on it!"

"You were just telling me to slow down."

"Well, now I'm telling you to step on it."


As the Mavericks entered Blackland Street, Glen Hartwell, the Grave Digger entered his own private shortcut, a time-space portal that allowed him to jump any distance. This time, to just across the road from the telephone box the Mavericks were using. He ducked down behind a green wheelie bin and watched as Artie Maverick took a dirty-looking handkerchief from his trouser pocket to muffle his voice, before ringing Triple-O.


"Hello," said Annie Colfax, Nurse-in-Charge at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital, when the Triple-O operator switched the call through to her.

"There's a body lying on Williamstown Road, about twenty Kays outside Glen Hartwell."

"Mr. Maverick?' asked Annie, thinking she recognised his voice.

"Shit!" said Artie hanging up.


"What?' asked Hetty.

"She recognised my voice, you dozy cow!"

"Well, we couldn't just leave him there to die!"

"Now I'll lose my licence for sure!"

"You might not have if we'd stopped at the time and rung them from there. I'm a witness that he just stepped out in front of the car."

"A car doing a hundred and twenty Kays!"

"I told you to slow down."


Annie rang through to the ambulance bay to notify them of the call, then rang to wake up Tilly Lombstrom who was the doctor sleeping over that night.

"Okay, I'll be down there pronto," said the attractive fifty-something brunette forcing herself out of her nice warm bed. Despite the strong desire to go back to bed, Tilly managed to force herself to dress, then headed out into the corridor, to stagger toward the elevator bays.

Downstairs she found the hospital's two senior paramedics, Derek Armstrong, and Cheryl Pritchard yawning as they leant against their favourite ambulance waiting for her.

"Evening, Tils," said Cheryl. At sixty-three she was officially four years from retirement age, but hoped to keep working into her early seventies. Like Derek, she took physical fitness very seriously and worked out on Saturdays at the Muscle-Up Gym in Glen Hartwell.

"Chezza, Strong Arm," said Tilly as she climbed into the back of the ambulance.

"Tils," said Derek Armstrong, a forty-nine-year-old black American who had worked at the hospital since his early twenties and was currently dating Sheila Bennett.


Half an hour or so later they were scouring Williamstown Road for any sign of a body.

"Looks like it's a wild goose chase," said Tilly: "Unless he wasn't dead and crawled off into the bush."

"God, I hope not," said Derek: "We'd never find him in time."

"What do you think? Should we wake up Terri and co. to give us a hand?" asked Cheryl; just before seeing a long blood smear on the Macadam. Braking the ambulance, almost throwing Tilly out of her seat, she said: "I think we've found him."


Over at Lawson Street, Glen Hartwell, Artie Maverick parked the red Bentley convertible in the garage and climbed out:

"I'm gonna miss driving you ... for the next two years or so," he said to the car, gazing at it with loving eyes.

"We had to ring the hospital!" said Hetty breaking his reverie: "We couldn't just leave him there to die!"

"No, I guess not," said Artie sadly, following her into the pale blue weatherboard house.

Just a few metres away in the darkness, the Grave Digger watched them and waited for them to go to sleep. He then managed to raise a rear window to climb into the house to deal with the Mavericks:

"Maverick by name, maverick by nature," he said as he entered their bedroom.

"Hmm?" said Hetty half hearing the voice in her sleep.

The Grave Digger wielded his shovel to dispatch Hetty first, before finishing off Artie:

"Now you won't need to worry about losing your licence," he said comfortingly, as he started struggling to carry Artie toward the back lawn.


Climbing out of the ambulance, Cheryl, Derek, and Tilly used military-style torches to examine the blood stains, and then to follow the trail where the Grave Digger had dragged the derelict's body.

"A fresh grave if I've ever seen one," said Cheryl, pulling out her mobile phone: "I think it's time to wake up Terri and co."


Over at St. Margaret's in Blackland Street Glen Hartwell, a full white wedding was in progress.

At the altar, Father Thomas stood reading from his book, as bride and groom stood together both looking radiant: Beautiful blonde Terri Scott in a long flowing white gown; tall handsome Colin Klein, a redheaded Englishman, stood beside her in a rented tuxedo upon the polished teak floorboards.

"By the powers invested in me by God and the state of Victoria," said Father Thomas: "I now pronounce you..."

That's when Terri's mobile phone started shrilling, waking her up.

"Shit!" said Terri, realising she had just been dreaming. She listened to Cheryl Pritchard for a minute, then elbowed awake Colin: "Come on sleeping beauty, time to get up."

"It's not even daylight," the redheaded man protested.

Starting to dress in her uniform, Terri hammered on the wall to the next bedroom: "Wakey, wakey, Sheils! Our next murder case beckons."

"I'm tired!" complained Sheila Bennett.

"You'll be bruised and sore, if I have to go in there and get you," called Terri. Turning on Colin, she demanded: "And why haven't you carried me down the aisle yet?"

"I don't carry you down the aisle," said Colin, donning his uniform: "I carry you across the threshold... and what brought this on suddenly?"

"We've been engaged for months."

"A couple of months. People in my family believe in long engagements."

"Not in my family!"


Forty minutes or so later, Terri and Sheila were standing beside the grave site, while Derek and Colin used shovels brought from the Mitchell Street Police Station to dig up the grave.

"Don't we need a court order or something for this?" asked Colin.

"Not when it's a suspicious-looking mound in the forest," pointed out Sheila. At thirty-five she was the second-top cop in the area and a Goth chick with orange-and-black-striped shoulder-length hair.


Over at Lawson Street, the Grave Digger had struggled the Mavericks into the back garden, then hastily dug a double-width grave to roll them in. After filling the grave again, he said a quick prayer, opened his portal again, and stepped into another area of Glen Hartwell.


"Bingo!" said Derek as they found the remains of the derelict.

"Heave him out, so I can have a look at him," said Tilly.

"A hit-and-run?" asked Terri Scott. Also thirty-five, Terri was the top cop in the BeauLarkin to Willamby area, and had been a friend of Sheila's since kindergarten.

"Originally, perhaps, but then someone bashed his head in with a shovel."

"That doesn't sound like Artie Maverick," said Derek.

"What's he got to do with the price of fish on Sundays?" asked Sheila.

"According to Annie Colfax, who took the phone call, it was definitely Artie Maverick who rang. He tried to disguise his voice with a hanky or something, but she recognised him anyway."

"Clever Annie," said Colin.

"I can't believe Artie would have done this either," said Terri: "But if he rang it in, we'd better go see him."

"It's nearly two AM," pointed out Cheryl Pritchard.

"Why should Artie and Hetty be the only ones in Glen Hartwell allowed to sleep?" asked Sheila as the three cops headed back to Terri's police-blue Lexus.


An hour later they had found where the Grave Robber had broken into the Lawson Street house and had interred the two corpses in the backyard.

"Well, I guess that lets Hetty and Artie out," said Terri, reaching for her mobile to ring for Cheryl and Derek: "Even if they killed and buried the derelict, and somehow killed each other ... they couldn't have then buried themselves."

"Even I could work that out, Chief," said Sheila: "So we've got another psycho murderer in Glen Hartwell."

"But not necessarily a monster," said Colin; referring to some of their weirder cases over the last year. [See my Stories, 'The Lily White Boys', and 'A Banshee Shrilling'.]


Lennie Hendrix, a tall fair-haired man of forty-something, had made the mistake of leaving the safety of Glen Hartwell township for the forest outside, to take a shortcut to Blackland Street. He had hardly left the township when he encountered two sleazy-looking types: Billy Holland, a tall anæmic man with blond hair, which was blackened by the filth of sleeping outdoors, and a short half-breed Aboriginal man who called himself Teeoh, for reasons that nobody knew, and after decades of drug and alcohol abuse, he'd probably forgotten himself. [See my story, 'Into the Arms of Morpheus'.]

"Got any money, mate? asked Billy. He was careful to display the rusty Bowie knife that he kept in a scabbard on the left-hand side of the white electric cord that he used as a belt.

"Yes, and I'm keeping it for myself," Lennie made the mistake of saying.

"He's cheeking you, Billy, cut him," said Teeoh, with a glazed, doped look in his eyes.

Withdrawing the Bowie knife, Billy said "Hand me you moolah.'

"Sure ... sure thing," said Lennie, handing over his wallet...

Behind Billy and Teeoh, the Grave Digger suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

"Thanks, but I still gotta cut you for smart mouthin' me," said Billy, before slashing Lennie across the left cheek, almost severing the cheek from his face.

That's when the Grave Digger smashed his shovel hard into the back of Billy's head, knocking him out.

"What...?" said Teeoh spinning around to face the Grave Digger; who promptly slashed open his carotid vein with the razor-sharp edge of his short-handled shovel.

"Thank God..." muttered Lennie, seconds before the Grave Digger smashed him in the throat with the round edge of his shovel, breaking his Adam's Apple, and sentencing him to death.

While Lennie slowly died from asphyxiation the Grave Digger began repeatedly smashing his shovel into Billy's head until he had reduced it to a bloody paste.

"Whistle while you work," sang the Grave Digger as he began digging two separate graves; a large one for Teeoh and Billy, and a smaller one for Lennie: "Can't put strangers in together; wouldn't be decent."

He kept singing and whistling in turn as he finished the two graves, then rolled the three men into the right ones. Before carefully filling the graves again:

"Gotta show the proper respect for the dead," he said to himself, before opening his portal and vanishing to a different part of the surrounding forestland.


"So, anything new?" asked Terri, as they stood around in the freezing morgue in the basement of the Glen Hartwell Hospital.

"Other than pneumonia?" added Sheila, keeping her hands tightly in her jacket pockets.

"Bracing girls, it's just a little bracing," teased Tilly Lombstrom; giving the lie away as she suddenly sneezed.

"Bracing my arse," said Sheila.

"No thanks," said Colin: "I'm engaged to Terri, and she doesn't like me bracing other women's arses."

Ignoring the banter, Jesus said: "Just like the derelict by the roadside, Artie and Hetty were bashed to death with a round-bladed shovel."

"Well, it makes a change from guns and knives," said Colin.

"Or claws and fangs," said Sheila: "So can we go outside into the warmth now?" [See my story, "Across the Plains Comes the Verdillac'.]

"You do know it's only a couple of weeks shy of winter?" asked Terri, as they headed upstairs to leave the hospital.

"Winter outside, can't be as cold as being inside that morgue," insisted Sheila as they headed across to Terri's blue Lexus: "So where to now?"

"Home to have lunch at the Yellow House, unless any more gravesites turn up," said Terri.

"Bonza, I'm famished," said Sheila starting the car.


All that afternoon the Cavendish brothers, Noel aged fourteen, Barry aged thirteen, and Topher aged eleven, had been out treasure hunting. Knowing their Uncle Bob always drank himself insensate on Saturdays, they had waited until he had flaked, then 'borrowed' his 1990s vintage metal detector to hunt for treasure in the forest around Glen Hartwell.

"What if he wakes up and finds it gone?" asked Topher, a mousy blond, like his mother.

"He won't, he'll sleep through till Monday morning. Then wake up moaning about his headache and swearing never to drink again," said raven-haired Noel, the oldest and most reckless of the brothers.

"Then by this time next Saturday he'll be blotto again," said dark-haired Barry from lifelong experience.

"Well ... okay," said Topher, who usually gave in to his brothers' bolder and dumber ideas.

By seven PM the air had turned cold and they were ready to give it up. So far they had found a total of forty-five cents change, a few foreign coins, plus dozens of bottle tops.

"Time to quit?" asked Topher hopefully.

"I guess..." started Noel, stopping as the metal detector shrilled excitedly when they tried it upon a large newly dug plot.

"Eureka we have found it!" said Barry excitedly, as he and Noel started using their mum's gardening hand trowels they had 'borrowed'.

"Yeah, more bottle tops," said Topher.

"Don't be such a negative Nellie," said Noel, tossing away the hand trowel to start scooping away the dirt by hand.

"Hey!" said Topher, running to pick up the trowel: "Mum'll kill us if we lose that; especially since we didn't ask before borrowing it."

"Don't be such..." said Noel, stopping to stare in terror at the faces of Teeoh and Billy Holland staring up at him: "Jesus!"

The two boys jumped out of the grave they had excavated and backed way away as Topher went across to take a look.

"It's those two plonkos who are forever begging for money," he said.

"Not anymore," said Barry: "What'll we do?"

"Fill it back in," suggested Noel.

"No way, we have to ring the cops," insisted Topher: "They've been murdered."

"Then Mum'll know we borrowed her hand trowels," said Barry.

"Not if you two take them back home, while I wait here for the cops," offered Topher.

"What about the metal detector?" asked Noel.

"If Uncle Bob asks us, we'll say we asked him and he said yes," said Topher: "Plastered as he is, he'll never remember us not asking."

"Good thinking, little brother," said Barry just before he and Noel set off at a run.

"And be sure to tell Mum about what we found," called Topher: "So I can tell the cops that's why you left."

"Yeah ... okay," said Noel, unenthusiastically.


Over at the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, they had just finished their tea, when Deidre Morton, their landlady placed bowls of vanilla ice cream in front of everybody, before going across to start mixing in a skillet at the stove.

"Can we start eating it yet, Mrs. M.?" asked Sheila.

"Don't be so impatient," said Natasha Lipzing, the oldest resident at age seventy, who already knew what Deidre as preparing for them: "You're just like a big child."

"She always was, even when she was a small child," teased Terri.

"And what's with the cooking board in the middle of the table?" asked Tommy Turner, a recent retiree. Tommy was short, fat, with shoulder-length yellow hair, with just a few strands of grey.

"You'll see," said Deidre. Turning off the stove, she placed the skillet full of cherries on the table and poured some plum brandy over them.

"Is that my plum brandy?" demanded Tommy.

"Yes, you've generously lent it to us for the occasion," said Deidre. Taking a box of long-stem matches from the sideboard, she lit one and set fire to the brandy on the cherries.

"What the...?" asked Sheila, jumping to her feet.

"Relax, Sheils," said Freddy Kingston. Also, a recent retiree he was tall, stout, and mainly bald: "That's how you make Cherries Jubilee."

"Oh," said Sheila, sitting down as Deidre started to top their ice cream with the flaming cherries.

"It was invented for Queen Victoria's fiftieth Jubilee celebration," put in Colin: "Since it was widely known that she loved cherries."

"You can tell he was a journalist for thirty years," said Terri proudly.

Sheila took a mouthful and said: "Yum, I'm with Queen Vickie on this one ... it's fabuloso!"

"Wait till you taste the Eggs Benedict that I'm going to prepare for breakfast tomorrow," said Deidre.

"What's Eggs Benedict?" asked Sheila.

"A fancy way to eat poached eggs; you'll love it!"

They had barely finished eating when Terri's mobile phone rang.

"Hello, oh Alice. Aha..." She talked for a few minutes before disconnecting and saying: "Alice says Topher Cavendish rang the station to say they've found a grave with two bodies in it. By her description, they sound like those two rogues Teeoh and Billy Holland."

"No real loss then," said Natasha.

"Except it means we've still got a serial killer in the area," pointed out Colin.

"We'd better head off," said Terri: "Although she said she'd rung the hospital and Stanlee and Jessie."

"That explains why we didn't have the Two Silly Twerps interrupting our meal again," said Sheila as they started outside.


A short time later they were at the murder site, where Jesus, Elvis, and Tilly were examining not two, but three corpses.

"Who's the third one?" asked Terri.

"Lennie Hendrix," said Elvis Green, nicknamed due to his lifelong devotion to Elvis Presley, and his long black sideburns.

"He wasn't the type to hang around with scum like Teeoh and Billy," said Sheila.

"Maybe they were mugging him when whoever the killer is came along," suggested Colin, guessing correctly.

"In which case we have a vigilante killer on the loose," said Terri.

"Not quite," said Jesus (pronounced 'Hee-Zeus') the coordinator and chief surgeon at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital: "Lennie had his throat smashed in with what could have been a shovel..."

"So the grave digger killed all three of them?" asked Sheila.

"We think so," said Tilly: "It would also explain who killed the derelict before killing the Mavericks."

"So he kills the innocent as well as the guilty?" said Colin.

"Seems like it," agreed Elvis Green.

"So how does he turn up whenever a crime is being committed?" asked Terri.

"Maybe he's a time-travelling alien from another dimension, like the Bone Collector?" suggested Sheila. [See my story, 'The Bone Collector'.]

"Sheils, you've been watching way, way too much Doctor Who," said Tilly with a laugh.

"How dare you! It's impossible to watch too much Doctor Who! You can watch enough, or too little, but never too much!"

"So now we know where she gets all of her kooky ideas from," said Colin, making everyone except Sheila laugh.

"Although he does seem to have prior knowledge of the crimes," pointed out Terri: "So I wouldn't rule out the time-travelling bit entirely."

"You've been hanging around with Sheila way, way too much," said Colin.

"How dare you?" said Sheila and Terri as one.


Although drug dealing was usually rare in country areas, with five thousand people in Glen Hartwell and another six or seven thousand spread around the neighbouring towns, Mosey Mawson had moved into the area two years ago. Along with his two goons, both built like oxen, and looking half as smart: Tony 'the Terror' Milton, and Ivan 'Killer' Johnson. Both men had wrap sheets as long as an orang-utan's arm and lived down to their nicknames.

Mosey himself was only passably attractive but looked like Brad Pitt compared to Terror or Killer: Tall, lanky, with stringy black hair, and a long scar from a teenage knife fight when he was just starting out in the rackets. He was forty-two, but could easily be mistaken for fifty-five.

They were currently awaiting three of their drug runners, Leon Richards, Billy Holland, and Teeoh. They had been due around ten-thirty PM, but it was already nearly midnight.

"If those three are screwin' me about, you two might get to have some fun tonight," said Mosey.

Killer and Terror grinned idiotically. They both loved having fun; especially the kind that involved breaking arms or legs, or killing people.

Just as Mosey started toward his lemon-coloured EcoBoost Premium Fastback Mustang, they heard rustling in the bushes not far from where they were waiting, just outside Glen Hartwell. The three men grabbed their weapons of choice: Killer took two Glock 19 Gen 5 out of his overcoat; Terror preferred a sawn-off Remington 870 Tactical shotgun; Mosey preferred an IWI Tavor X95 submachine gun (formerly known as the Micro-Tavor, MTAR or MTAR-21), which replaced the Uzi as the submachine gun of choice amongst gangsters worldwide, when the Uzi went out of production in December 2003.

"Who's there?" demanded Mosey, braver now that they were weaponed up.

"Just me, boss," said Leon Richard, a short, stout thirty-something man, who due to his grey hair was often mistaken for sixty. He was carrying a brown paper bag full of cash.

"Where the Hell are Billy and Teeoh, they haven't turned up yet."

"Didn't you hear boss? Someone whacked them yesterday."

"Who would dare whack two of my drug runners?"

"Don't know, boss."

"Isn't there an old saying, 'Shoot the messenger'?" asked Mosey.

"Actually, boss, it's, 'Don't shoot the messenger'."

Taking the brown paper bag from Leon, Mosey looked inside then looked up again, glaring at the runner: "What gives? This is at least a grand short. Have you been skimmin' me?"

"No, boss, it's been a bad week, due to the cops being everywhere due to this nutter who's whacking everyone. The Grave Digger the papers are calling him."

"I never read the papers; they've never been flattering about me. And I'm certain you've been skimmin'. Nobody steals from Mosey Mawson!" Standing back, he said: "I think we'll make it 'Shoot the messenger'. Killer, Terror, live up to your names."

Grinning idiotically, the two thugs stepped forward as Leon turned to run. This was the part of the job that Killer and Terror loved most: gunning people down. As Leon tried to escape, the two thugs each pumped a dozen rounds into his back - to them, the front or the back didn't matter; you still died either way.

Laughing more like a retarded chimp than a man, Killer said: "That's one Bozzo who won't try rippin' you off again, boss."

When he received no reply, he turned to see the Grave Digger, who slashed his throat open with the sharp edge of his shovel. Then as Terror turned, the Grave Digger smashed his larynx with the round base of the shovel, guaranteeing that both men would be dead in minutes, if they weren't already. He waited until he was certain they were both dead, then returned his attention to Mosey Mawson, whom he had already bashed unconscious. He smashed the blade of his shovel eight or ten times into the gangster's face, making certain he was dead.

It would be unthinkable to bury someone alive, thought the Grave Digger, as he started to dig a grave big enough to hold four men. Two of them huge bull-like creatures: A man must consider the niceties!


Over in nearby Wentworth Street, Old Granny Dawkins, hearing the gunshots, phoned the Mitchell Street Police Station.


As she often did, Terri Scott was dreaming impatiently of the white wedding that she and Colin Klein were going to have, hopefully soon, when the hammering came upon her bedroom door.

They had just reached the point where Father Thomas was about to pronounce them Man and Wife - none of that politically correct Husband and Wife stuff for Fr. Thomas -- when Deidre Morton's hammering finally awakened the ash blonde and her fiancée, Colin Klein.

"Will you get that, honey," asked a still more than half-asleep Colin.

"Okay," muttered Terri climbing out of the warm bed into the cold room: "But when we have babies, you have to take your turn."

"Of course, honey," said Colin trying to escape back into slumber.

"Who is it?" called Terri opening the bedroom door to see Deidre Morton standing there.

"Old Granny Dawkins just rang to say she heard shooting in the forest just outside of town."

"She's always imagining shooting ... it's always something else."

"She said this time there were dozens of shots, like a massacre."

"Okay, you go wake up the mad Goth chick, and I'll try to convince my beau to wake up again."

"Fair enough," said Deidre.

"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey," said Terri pushing at Colin. Only to have him grab her and pull her back into bed: "Settle down, Casanova, we've got potential murders to investigate."

"Wouldn't you rather have some Roly Poly and cream," teased Colin.

"Yes, but murder waits for no horny couple," said Terri.

She managed, with difficulty, to extradite herself from Colin's grip, then picked up his uniform to throw in his face. Then she started dressing herself.

"If you're not up in thirty seconds, I'm giving your knackers a mighty squeeze," she said.

Finally climbing from the warm bed, Colin complained: "We're not even married yet, and already I'm getting threats of domestic violence."


Fifty minutes later, they were standing outside town in the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest, while Stanlee Dempsey and Jessie Baker dug up the newly discovered grave site -- helped by Mosey Mawson's lemon-coloured Mustang parked nearby.

As an ambulance finally pulled up, out stepped Jerry 'Elvis' Green, the coroner, and a dark-purple-haired girl, looking no more than sixteen, or seventeen.

"Hi," said Elvis: "This is my grandniece, Purple."

"Yes, we can see," said Terri: "But what's her name."

"Purple is my name, Purple Green ... I changed it by deed poll because the Colour Purple is my favourite film. And my old name, Mavis, was far too girly."

"What's wrong with a girly name, when you're a pretty young girl?" asked Colin; receiving a contemptuous look from the teenager.

"Another Goth chick, like me," said Sheila.

"I prefer to be called an EMO person."

"What's EMO?" asked Terri.

"It's short for emotionally hardcore," explained Sheila: "Usually they're counter-culture and into hard rock."

"You betcha: AC/DC, the Avenged Sevenfold, Dirty Honey, Black Bell, Greta van Fleet ... You name 'em, I love 'em," said Purple Green.

"So, you're an EMO chick?" asked Colin.

"Person!" Purple corrected: "I'm a non-binary human."

"What's that?" asked Terri.

"She rejects the concept of male and female," explained Sheila.

"Sheils, how come you know all the wacky, hip, in speech?" asked Colin.

Sheila shrugged, and said: "I'm just naturally a hip, wacky person.".

"Actually, we had a little trouble with Jesus hiring Purple, even with my recommendation," explained Elvis: "Purple likes to be called they or them."

"I've never felt like a 'she' or a 'her'," she explained.

"But Jesus pointed out 'they' and 'them' are plural terms, and purple is singular. He offered to say 'it' or 'that', but Purple took offence. Then I saved the day by remembering the 1980's term 'heesh', a non-gender personal pronoun."

As they were talking Derek Armstrong, Tilly Lombstrom, and Leo Laxman (a black Jamaican-born male nurse) all piled out of two more ambulances that arrived at the site.

"Ah, come on," said Elvis: "Some of you must be old enough to remember the 1980s?"

"Not me," said Tilly: "I was just a little girl then."

"You must have been twelve by the start of the eighties!"

"How dare you, you never ask a lady her age."

"A heesh," corrected Sheila, before going off to speak to Derek Armstrong, her boyfriend.

"We were told there could be more than two bodies," said Derek, as Sheila went across to talk to him.

"Found something!" called Stanlee as his shovel made contact with something more solid than earth.

Ten minutes later they had excavated the four bodies.

"Mosey Mawson, Tony 'the Terror' Milton, Ivan 'Killer' Johnson, and Leon Richard," said Jessie Baker, a tall ox of a man with rusty red hair: "Not one that anybody will miss."

"Leon Richard has been turned into Swiss cheese," said Stanlee Dempsey, a tall, muscular, raven-haired man in his forties.

"If it weren't for the Mavericks, the derelict, and Lennie Hendrix, I'd say stand back and let him do his business," said Colin: "Add Billy Holland and Teeoh to these four, and he's doing a pretty good job of wiping out the dregs of Glen Hartwell."

"Yes, but we're sworn to protect the public," pointed out Terri: "Even scum like Mosey Mawson, Billy Holland, and the others."

"Trust you to point out the one fatal flaw in my otherwise brilliant plan," said Colin with a laugh.

"If you lot can take over here, we'll head back to bed," said Terri.

"It's nice to know someone will be getting some sleep tonight," teased Tilly, as Colin and Terri went across to pry Sheila away from Derek.

"So anyone important amongst the dead?" asked Sheila as they returned to Terri's blue Lexus.

"Only four of the Glen's worst lowlifes," said Terri going on to tell her who the victims were.

"Hey, he's doing better at cleaning up G.H. than we are," said Sheila: "Uh-oh, don't let Russell Street know, or they might fire us and hire him."

"Unlikely, while he's killing innocents as well," said Colin.

"Besides Victoria Police frowns on hiring Dirty Harry-style vigilantes," said Terri: "It makes for bad publicity. And they take good PR very seriously!"

"Thank God ... our jobs are safe then," said Sheila, making Colin and Terri laugh, as she headed toward the Yellow House.


"Anyone important killed?" asked Deidre Morton, having waited up for them.

"Nah, just Mosey Mawson, and three of his scumbag associates," said Sheila.

"There really is a God," said Natasha Lipzing having been awakened by the sound of the Lexus pulling up outside.

"And he's on our side," added Sheila, before heading to her bedroom.


The next morning, straight after breakfast, Terri, and co. were sitting around the huge black wood desk in the front room of the Mitchell Street Police Station, discussing their options.

So, here's my Plan A," said Terri: "The Grave Digger only seems to appear after a crime has been committed or is in progress."

"The hit-and-run killing of the dero, the mugging of Lennie Hendrix, the murder of Leon Richard," put in Colin.

"Exactly," said Terri: "So we fake a crime and he'll appear to stop us."

"Won't work," said Sheila: "He'll see it on TV, or video-screen, or whatever they have in his time, that we faked a crime to catch him, so he won't appear."

"You really have been watching way, way too much Doctor Who, Sheils," said Colin.

"All right, here's my Plan B: We mobilise every cop we have, including the pro-rata women, maybe even borrowing a few cops from Sale, then have them working double shifts to try to cover as much of Glen Hartwell as possible for the next few days. So that when he commits his next crime, we get there a lot faster."

"That means letting him kill again before we catch him," said Colin.

"Besides, even with all those cops on duty," pointed out Sheila: "Most of Glen Hartwell won't be covered whenever he strikes again."

"Which leaves me with Plan C," said Terri: "I ring Russell Street, let the Assistant Chief Commissioner shout at me while I explain the situation to him. And hopefully, he'll send a couple of hundred cops from Melbourne to cover the whole of Glen Hartwell."

"I love that plan!" said Sheila, enthusiastically.

"Except, won't the Grave Digger still read historical accounts of what happened and therefore change history and avoid being killed?" asked Colin.

"No, because I have to stress to the Assistant Chief Commissioner how important it is that no records of the case are kept in any form. As they say at the Boxing Day and midyear sales: 'Everything must go'!"


The following day a hundred and eighty cops descended onto Glen Hartwell, led by a tall forty-something brunette, Major Darlene Prescott.

"So do we call you Darlene? Or Dahls?" asked Sheila.

"You may call me, Marm," said the Major: "And stay out of my way as I assign the teams to the various parts of this burg. As of now you and your team are all on paid special leave."

"Glen Hartwell actually, Marm," said Sheila, immediately regretting it.


Over the next three days, Glen Hartwell was aswarm with cops without a hint of the Grave Digger.

"I've just thought of something, babe," said Colin as they sat around the black desk in Mitchell Street: "What if with all these cops everywhere, no one tries to commit any crime, so the Grave Digger doesn't appear?"

"I had been wondering about that myself," admitted Terri: "I wish we could be out there helping with the ops."

"Ah-ah, Marm told us to stay indoors and let the real cops do the groundwork," reminded Sheila.

"Who does she think she is, taking over our territory?" demanded Terri standing up.

"A Major, while you're only a Senior Sergeant," pointed out Colin.

"Oh yeah," said Terri sitting down again.

"We could always murder Marm," suggested Sheila: "Then when the Grave Digger appears, we gun him down."

"That's Plan D," said Terri.

"Technically we're off duty," pointed out Sheila: "So there's no reason why we couldn't change into our civvies and go outside ... just as gawkers."

"That's Plan E," said Terri excitedly. Then, when Colin showed reluctance: "Come on lover boy; sometimes a man's gotta do what his woman tells him to do."

"I think Germaine Greer may have first said that," said Sheila: "Or doesn't she use such sexist terms as 'man' and 'woman'.


Half an hour later Terri and co. were walking in plain clothes through Wentworth Street Glen Hartwell when they saw two familiar figures just ahead of them: Drew Braidwood, a constable from LePage who was a tall thin blond man in his late forties, and Greta Goddard, a tall, shapely silver-blonde, who at age 69 in 2024 was still fit and worked pro rata when needed. Both were carrying large plastic shopping bags.

"This is a conspicuous coincidence," teased Terri.

"What ya been buying?" asked Sheila.

"Nothing, just out walking," lied Drew.

"So what's in the bags?" asked Colin.

Drew and Greta exchanged guilty looks before Greta said: "Our handguns, about a hundred rounds of ammo, and a lot of screwed-up newspaper."

"You always take your hands guns with you when you're off duty and just out walking?" teased Terri.

"You have to these days," said Drew, stepping back to allow a tall blonde to walk past him.

"Aha," said Terri, just before bursts of gunfire occurred in the next street, Blackland Street: "Damn I knew we should have taken the car."

"You're the one who said it would be too conspicuous," pointed out Sheila as they set off at a run toward the next cross street, Abel Tasman Drive, to run through to Wentworth Street.

When they arrived twenty or so uniformed cops were standing around with drawn weapons, but there was no sign of the Grave Digger.

"Did you get him?" asked Colin.

"Damned if I know," said a tall, dark-haired constable: "We started firing, then he just sort of vanished into thin air."

"Yeah, he does that," said Sheila.

"That's why we needed help dealing with him," said Terri, as Darlene 'Marm' Johnson arrived, at a run.

"Did you get him?" she asked and was given the same answer as Terri. Then to the four off-duty police officers: "What are you doing here?"

"We were out walking together when we heard the shooting, Marm," lied Terri.


Moon Base Delta, August 3242AD

The moon base was painted all in white, to cheer people up. But most of the staff found it bland and depressing. Also, their white uniforms tended to bend into the walls and floor.

Standing in front of the wall-sized monitor, in the main observation room, Base Commander Sapphire Uno asked: "Any sign of Alonso Forrester, yet, Quadrant Leader?"

"No, Base Commander. We thought we had him detected in the 21st century in Australia..."

"Australia?" asked Sapphire, a tall, fashionably anorexic blonde.

"That was its name back then. It is now called Korriland," said the Quadrant Leader, Naomi, a short night -black woman of Zimbabwean origin: "Anyway..."

She stopped as alarms started sounding, and then with a flash of bright light, the bullet-riddled corpse of the Grave Digger appeared on the floor in the observation room.

"Problem solved," said Sapphire with a broad smile.

"He looks like he's been shot with some form of projectile weapons," said Naomi.

"No problem; it saves us from having to terminate him for his time crimes," assured Sapphire.

"Yes, Base commander."

"So," asked Sapphire, who had always fancied Naomi: "What are you doing over the weekend."

"Nothing I can't cancel," said Naomi, blushing in pleasure.


Glen Hartwell, May 2024AD

"All right everybody back to work," ordered Darlene. Then to Terri and co.: "And you lot, are on paid hols., so get off the streets."

"Yes, Marm," said Terri saluting - somehow resisting the temptation to use only two fingers.


A week later they had not sighted the Grave Digger again, and the Melbourne cops had to return to the City.

"Now what?" asked Colin, as Major Prescott and co. piled onto the Melbourne train.

"Now, we wait and hope," said Terri: "Hope that they did manage to shoot the Grave Digger.

"Gee, I'm gonna miss them," said Sheila, making everyone laugh.

THE END
© Copyright 2024 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia