detectIve portero

Part III of Muhammad Manji and Martha O’Neil’s detective thriller

“Do you remember that time we were called to Neville’s court to rescue a student from a swan on the roof?”

She smiled more genuinely at him and chuckled reminiscently. “That was a strange night,” she said while stifling laughter. “I’m not sure how or why he was on the roof naked on the first place”. Silence one more. “And that time we stopped that student stealing 35 plates from Christmas formal.”

He laughed, a deep and hoarse laugh, and added “Of course I do, not entirely sure how none of the waiters spotted that one. Still not as good as the time we had to pursue those disobedient tourists on our bicycles.”

He looked up towards her and suddenly time froze as memories rose and surrounded them. “It’s been two months you know”. He gazed into her electric blue eyes which were staring straight back into his own.

“I know,” she whispered softly. He moved his hand closer to hers and she took a deep breath, ready to reveal a truth not-so universally acknowledged...

CRASH. Footsteps echoed around the cellar. “Someone’s been here,” a voice boomed. “Search the chamber!”

Portero and the Head Porter got up with a start and took cover. He peered around the stack of crates and saw a group of what appeared to be students armed with baseball bats, who were patrolling the cellar, some walking in his direction. They were unmasked and he could swear he recognised one of them, a short and thin boy with very distinctive salmon pink chinos.

Colin? No. Cameron? No. Caesar! Yes! It was that kid Caesar from John’s whom he had bumped into just the day before. “Bloody John’s, of course,” he thought to himself.

He waited for them to move nearer before coordinating with the Head Porter on the other side of the block of crates; he sprung out from his hiding place and confronted the students.

“Only Trinity members are allowed in college outside of visiting hours” he bellowed, punctuating each syllable with a blow as he weaved in between the wild swings of the students’ baseball bats.

Within 30 seconds they were all on the floor, baseball bats kicked aside, and he checked across the aisle to see the Head Porter had managed to do the same a few seconds quicker.“Right, you lot have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Not so fast,” a voice behind him said defiantly. He heard a gun cock behind him and turned around slowly to see a masked figure in pink chinos pointing a gun at his head. The other students took the opportunity to fetch some rope that happened to be lying around and tied up the two Porters on interrogation chairs. Both chairs were placed in front of a large steel vault door. Odd, Portero thought, that they had never seen this giant door before.

“Do you know what this is, Mr Porter?” Caesar addressed to the incapacitated detective, boasting a sickeningly smug look that only a John’s student could pull off.

“Umm, it’s Portero actually,” the Detective said.

Caesar ignored him. “This is a vault,” the boy continued.

“Yes, I can see that.” Portero replied curtly. He was not in a good mood.

“Ah, but do you realise what lies behind the door? This is the key to everything. This chamber leads directly beneath the portrait of Henry VIII in your dining hall. Do you know how valuable that is?” All eyes were on the Head Porter who had fallen asleep at some point in the past five minutes, so Detective Portero stepped in. “Yes, but you’ll never be able to tunnel underneath hall or carry it out without being noticed. Seems like you haven’t thought this through.”

“Oh but, old fool, do you not understand? Do you really think such an expensive painting would be kept in public to slowly fade away? That’s a replica painting, and you have three guesses where the real one is kept.”

Detective Portero wasn’t particularly fond of being called old or a fool, so opted to take none of his guesses, which resulted in a rather awkward silence, interrupted midway by the Head Porter’s snoring. He was still confused about the coyotes and the cultlike chanting but he figured Caesar would behave like a predictable wannabe super villain and explain his plan whilst Portero had time to escape from his ties.

“So what does this all have to do with coyotes you may ask? Well since you aren’t going anywhere I might as well explain the brilliance of our plan.”

Portero rolled his eyes and started working at the rope binding his hands with the sharp edge of one of his cufflinks.

“Well, we started off as a lowly drinking society in St John’s, all united by having been pooled from Trinity. We decided that it was time to act and take Trinity off its high horse, paving the way for St John’s to claim the title as Cambridge’s most prestigious college.

“It was by fortune that we met someone within Trinity as fed up with its exceptional reputation as we were. We then hatched a plan to bring the college to its knees. We agreed to communicate via hidden encoded messages hidden in the coyotes—you see, we have a large supply of discarded ones which we’ve been replacing on the Great Court lawn. One of us must have been careless in not replacing them yesterday morning. Said person will, of course, face the consequences in due course...

“We’ve been so close to cracking the code for a few weeks, but have been lacking the final piece of the puzzle. Until now, that is. You may be more important than you realise, Mr Porter.”

“Portero”.

Caesar cackled. In his excitement he completely missed Detective Portero breaking free from his ropes, leaping towards him and cracking his jaw with his torch. In the chaos that followed Portero picked up Caesar’s fallen gun and turned to face down the rest of the students.

“This ends now.” he declared.

To be continued...