Sewer Mayhem Read online

  SEWER MAYHEM

  Jacob Hicks Murder Mysteries Book 2

  Annie Appleton

  Copyright Annie Appleton 2019

  All rights reserved

  Smashwords editions

  Published by FTK Publishing

  Cover design and formatting by Indie Designz

  British English is used throughout this book, which is set in the UK. Please note that some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  www.annieappletonwriter.com

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY ANNIE APPLETON

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Was that sirens he could hear? Ricky Haddon threw a quick glance over his shoulder at the door of the shop, his hands hovering over the display of bracelets he was about to ransack.

  No, he had imagined it. Quickly he went back to work, filling his backpack with as much jewellery and watches as he could get his hands on. It had been a total stroke of luck that he’d found the door of the jewellers stand open by a crack. And when an opportunity like that presented itself which right-minded thief wouldn’t grab it?

  His backpack was getting heavy and Ricky looked around the dark shop. Only the window in the door let in some light; the shop windows themselves being shuttered. Perhaps he should have a quick look behind the counter and see if he could open a glass topped drawer full of rings. After that he could get out of here.

  Ricky tiptoed around the counter.

  His foot kicked something that was lying on the floor, almost making him trip. What on earth was that? He pulled the flashlight out of his hoody pocket and shone the light down. It landed on the body of a man, lying face-up behind the counter.

  What the—?

  His heart was in his throat and he felt the flashlight slipping from his hand. With difficulty Ricky managed to stifle the scream that welled up in his throat.

  His hand trembled as he shone the light down again. The man was clearly dead, his eyes staring at the ceiling, a long needle-like thing sticking out of his chest.

  Ricky stumbled backwards. He needed to get out of here, asap.

  Lugging his heavy backpack with him, he hotfooted it across the shop to the door. A quick glance outside showed him a deserted street. Sticking close to the shops, he walked along. If he could just get some distance between him and the jewellers, then he could wait at a bus stop for the early bus to take him back to Low Woolaston.

  Ricky stopped walking. There it was again! Sirens. And this time he wasn’t imagining it.

  He listened for a second, catching his breath, trying to keep out of the light of the lamp posts. Sweat dripped down his nose. The sirens kept coming closer, or maybe it just sounded like that. Didn’t sound always carry further in the quiet of the night? After all, it was three o’ clock in the morning. Still, it might be best if he found a place to hide and lie low. Other than finding a body, he’d been very lucky up till now. Better keep it that way.

  Ricky started walking again, his backpack a burden that he’d rather lose, but obviously he wasn’t going to ditch it. His footsteps echoed from the buildings. Fingers crossed that no one would wake up.

  The sirens were now definitely closing in. Ricky looked about him. What if they caught him? One glance in his backpack and the cops would know what he’d been up to. Maybe he should hide it. It would definitely make his escape easier.

  He neared the end of the row of shops. The straps of the backpack dug painfully into his shoulders. He needed to get rid of it, before they caught up with him. He looked around for a safe place to hide it. Some place where it wouldn’t be easily spotted by strangers, but easy for him to get it back from. His eyes fell on a manhole cover in the middle of Woolaston Road. He could dump his loot down into the sewers and retrieve it at some later date.

  In five hasty steps, he stood in the middle of the road and looked down at the manhole cover. Opening it was going to be simple. He shrugged off the backpack and pulled out his crowbar.

  Careful not to make too much noise, Ricky inserted the crowbar along the edge and cranked the cover up about half an inch. He put his fingers under the cover, lifted it up a bit more and slid it onto the tarmac. It made a loud scraping noise. Crap. Too much racket!

  He looked over his shoulder at the dark shops, and hoped no one actually lived above them.

  The police sirens now sounded eerily close. Without much ceremony, he dumped his backpack into the manhole. It seemed to fall forever, before landing at the bottom with a soft thud. This frigging hole was deeper than he thought!

  He slid the cover back and set off running again, crowbar in hand.

  * * *

  Paddy

  Well I never! Here we were just minding our own business, when some two-legged dumped a heavy backpack down the manhole. Totally irresponsible if you asked me, as Vinnie’s cousin Leo was just walking under it as it fell. If he hadn’t jumped aside, he would’ve been crushed! Tsss… those two-leggeds. They were as crazy here as they were on Milbury Hill.

  As the dust settled, the four of us stood around the backpack as it lay in a heap on the sewer floor. The whole situation gave me a negative sort of déjà vu. We didn’t want to deal with aggressive two-leggeds again. That was exactly the reason why Vinnie and I’d moved away from Milbury Hill for a quiet holiday with Vinnie’s cousin in the sewers under Woolaston Road.

  ‘Isn’t it strange, Vinnie, that wherever we go the two-leggeds give us trouble?’ I said.

  Vinnie, always the more philosophical of the two of us, looked up into the manhole above our heads, as if to check if more was coming down. ‘That does seem to be our lot, Paddy. I wonder if it’s our personal lot or rather a rat’s lot in general.’

  ‘Still, it would have been nice to find out that the two-leggeds up here are more sensible than the ones on Milbury Hill.’

  Gus, Vinnie’s other cousin, fidgeted a bit. He glanced from Vinnie to me.

  ‘The two-leggeds on Woolaston Road have never behaved like this before,’ he said. ‘This is a first. They’re usually a quiet lot, just bent on going foraging for food in the shops.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Gus,’ I said. ‘In our experience it only takes one crazy two-legged to disturb the peace.’

  Gus’ ears twitched. ‘That’s not very reassuring at all.’

  ‘Who cares,’ Leo said. He sniffed the air and walked up to the backpack. ‘Smells like there’s a cheese sandwich inside.’

  Gus rolled his eyes. ‘You’re always thinking about food.’ He pointed at the manhole. ‘What about the two-legged who did this?’

  Leo ignored his brother and started gnawing at the backpack.

  ‘What if more st
uff is chucked down? It could kill you.’

  ‘Relax,’ Leo said. ‘I’m hungry.’ He reminded me of my second-cousin Pete, who also always thought with his stomach.

  We drew a bit closer and watched as Leo gnawed like a mad rat. The smell of cheese became stronger. It made my stomach rumble and I realised I hadn’t eaten for a while. Then, when the hole got bigger, something fell out with a clunk. Not a sandwich, but a large gold bracelet studded with diamonds.

  ‘Crikey…’ Gus said.

  We stared at the bracelet in silence. Then Leo shrugged and resumed gnawing. More jewellery fell out. Gold rings, watches and a necklace fell down on to the sewer floor.

  The fur on my back tingled. I looked at Vinnie. ‘This is not an ordinary backpack.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, grabbing one of the rings and studying it up close. ‘No two-legged would walk around with a backpack full of such fine jewellery, unless they were moving house.’ He turned the ring in his paws. The diamond in it glittered.

  ‘This stone is cut in a cushion pattern,’ he said. ‘Quite a rarity!’

  I stared a Vinnie. ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’ He threw the ring back on the growing pile of bling.

  Then I noticed that Gus had gone a bit weird, all stiff with his mouth open and jaw trembling.

  ‘We’re rich!’ he said, eyes glittering as he watched another ring fall out.

  ‘Who cares?’ Leo said. ‘I want the sandwich!’

  Vinnie and I looked on as Leo and Gus started gnawing frantically to open the backpack up some more. It didn’t take long before they both disappeared inside, causing another waterfall of jewellery to fall out into the sewer.

  ‘Is it possible your cousins have gone mad?’ I said to Vinnie. He avoided my eyes and studied his paws.

  ‘I didn’t tell you this yet, Paddy,’ he said, ‘but the Italian side of my family has always been a bit weird.’

  ‘And on which side of the family do you reckon yourself to be.’

  Vinnie glared at me.

  Gus’ head popped out through the hole. His whiskers quivered. ‘You won’t believe the things I’ve found in here!’ He held up a ruby stone set in an intricate silver necklace. ‘Look at this!’

  Leaving it behind on the sewer floor, he ducked back inside the backpack and said, ‘We always dreamt of getting rich when we lived in Hull and now we are!’

  Vinnie shrugged his shoulders at me. ‘Their mother always had the desire to “strike it rich”. She was a hoarder of everything shiny. I guess that has rubbed off on Gus a bit.’

  I could see Gus’ shape wiggling about under the material of the backpack. I had always thought my family was a bit weird, but clearly every family had their own level of strangeness. Maybe living in the sewers under Woolaston Road, wasn’t going to be as peaceful as we had envisioned.

  Leo reappeared, dragging the cheese sandwich behind him.

  I watched as he put his teeth into it.

  ‘Isn’t it strange that a backpack full of jewellery also contains something as boring as a cheese sandwich?’ I said.

  ‘You’re right, Paddy,’ Vinnie said. ‘A strange combination, sandwich and jewellery. Where has it all come from?’

  ‘A two-legged lost it,’ Leo said through a mouthful of cheese. ‘He was foraging for food, like two-leggeds do, and in case he got hungry, he took a sandwich with him.’

  ‘Ha!’ I said. ‘That’s just silly. Everyone knows that two-leggeds don’t do their foraging in the middle of the night like we do. They prefer daylight.’

  ‘Do they?’ Leo said.

  ‘Cleary you haven’t got much experience with the silly creatures,’ I said. ‘The shops are closed.’ I looked up. ‘And besides, the manhole is not open at the top, the sky’s not visible. A two-legged would never just lose something down a manhole.’

  ‘Well, whatever happened,’ Vinnie said, ‘no two-legged is going to leave this amount of jewellery down here. It’s bound to be worth something to them.’

  ‘It’s worth a lot!’ Gus shrieked from inside the backpack. ‘Owning this amount of jewellery means you’re in!’ He kept pushing the stuff out with his feet and there was now a considerable pile of it on the sewer floor.

  ‘What do you mean, in?’ I said.

  Gus crawled out of the hole with a rather insane look in his eyes that scared me a bit. ‘You know. The boss, the big guy.’

  He started pawing through the jewellery. ‘I’m gonna keep this treasure. That’ll show them.’

  ‘Who?’ I said, now thoroughly confused.

  ‘It might be better if we did nothing,’ Vinnie said. ‘Maybe some two-legged will come to pick it up and then we can go on with our lives as before.’

  ‘No,’ Gus yelled. He took a bracelet and ring with him and moved into the direction of the digs that he shared with his brother.

  ‘What… You’re really going to take it?’ I yelled after him. ‘Seriously?’

  Next to me, Vinnie sighed deeply. ‘I think there’s trouble on the horizon. Why can’t we have a quiet life?’

  ‘It’s Gus’ fault,’ I said. ‘He’s gone mad.’

  ‘No stopping him now,’ Leo said. He had abandoned his half-eaten sandwich. ‘I’ve seen this before. We’d better give him a hand, otherwise he’ll never go back to normal.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve seen this before?’ I said. ‘Two-leggeds throw backpacks full of jewellery at you all the time, do they?’ My sarcasm was lost on Leo as he focussed on pulling two gold earrings out of the pile and walked away with them.

  ‘Just leave it,’ Vinnie said. He started dragging a diamond necklace down the sewer. ‘The sooner it’s all hidden away, the quicker we’ll have peace again.’

  I was a bit flabbergasted at his attitude. Was this my dependable and philosophical pal Vinnie? Maybe he had more of those weird Italian genes than he let on. I watched them move off along the main sewer and into the side-pipe where Gus and Leo’s digs were.

  ‘Are you going to help take the treasure away or not?’ Gus said as he returned for a new load. His fur was all standing on end as he excitedly rooted through the pile of jewellery. ‘Otherwise it might be best if you went someplace else.’ He gave me that insane look again. It made my skin crawl. Maybe I shouldn’t resist him too much.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but under protest.’

  ‘No problem…’ He walked away laden with stuff.

  I took up a ring with a large blue stone and dragged it away. No problem? No doubt there were problems ahead.

  * * *

  ‘There, that’s the last one,’ I said and dumped the bracelet on the large pile of treasure in Gus and Leo’s digs. I was thoroughly sick of it already.

  ‘Thanks,’ Gus said, stroking a fine silver necklace.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Vinnie said.

  Gus turned to him. ‘We need to make a rota.’

  ‘A rota?’ Leo stared at his brother. ‘Why?’

  ‘To guard the treasure, of course.’ Gus picked up a diamond studded ring and put it on his arm.

  ‘No!’ Leo said. He tore the ring from Gus’ arm and threw it back on the pile. ‘This is your treasure, if you want it guarded, you do it yourself.’

  Gus glared at him. ‘Fine.’ He walked to the entrance of the digs and stood guard, puffing out his dark fur, ears pricked to pick up any sound of someone bent on stealing his treasure.

  ‘We’re gonna eat the rest of the sandwich,’ Leo said. ‘You’re welcome to come with us.’ Gus ignored him and looked the other way as we filed past into the main sewer.

  ‘Is he going to be alright?’ I said, once we were out of earshot. ‘He seems totally obsessed.’

  ‘Of course,’ Leo said. ‘This won’t last long.’

  Back at the bottom of the manhole, we saw that the now empty backpack had drifted off out of sight with some sewage. The only thing that remained was Leo’s half-eaten sandwich.

  As I looked up the sewer, I notic
ed something strange clinging to the roof of the sewer tunnel – a whitish blob of goo. Was it my imagination or was it moving?

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ Leo said, his mouth now full of cheese. ‘That’s the egg of the giant alligator.’

  Vinnie snorted. ‘The what?’

  ‘Giant alligator.’ Leo looked up the sewer at the egg. ‘Rumour has it that there’s a giant alligator living in these sewers.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Vinnie said, ears wide open. ‘That can’t be true. How would it ever fit in?’

  Leo glared at him. ‘It’s true, I tell you. Johnny, a pal of mine, actually saw it go down the sewer under Milbury Road. If he hadn’t remained absolutely still, it would have eaten him.’

  ‘Sounds like ratlore to me,’ Vinnie said. ‘It seems that we are doomed to be followed by it wherever we go.’ He looked at me. The mention of the alligator and ratlore had set my nerves on edge a bit. Even though I now knew that ratlore wasn’t real, hearing about mythical creatures still made my whiskers prickle.

  Vinnie clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Paddy’s freaked out by ratlore.’

  ‘No I’m not.’ I glared at him. Then my whispers drooped a bit. ‘Well, not any more.’

  ‘Anyway, ratlore or not, it must be true,’ Leo said. ‘Where else would the egg have come from if it wasn’t laid by the alligator? It has grown over the past few weeks.’

  ‘There must be another explanation,’ Vinnie said. He also started munching away on the sandwich.

  I studied the egg some more, feeling a bit calmer again.

  ‘Aren’t you scared moving around the sewers?’ I said to Leo. ‘You know, in case the alligator is real. What if it sneaks up on you?’

  ‘It’s gigantic,’ Leo said. ‘Some of the scales on his back always stick out of the water.’

  ‘Well, there you are!’ Vinnie said. ‘Nothing to worry about. You can see it coming!’ He handed me some of the sandwich. ‘Perhaps the alligator will eat Gus’ treasure and choke on it. Then we’re rid of two problems at once.’