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  Paws of the Yeti

  Blue Moon Investigations

  Book 7

  Steve Higgs

  Text Copyright © 2019 Steven J Higgs

  Publisher: Steve Higgs

  The right of Steve Higgs to be identified as author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved.

  The book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ‘Paws of the Yeti’ is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to several fans that have helped bring it into being.

  My thanks go to Mike Woods, Robin Hansen, Sherril Beaston, and Joann K for coming up with the name for this book. I asked the question and had many hundreds of suggestions, but these four all came up with Paws of the Yeti and it was my favourite by far since it captures the fun nature of the story.

  Also in need of a very special mention, are some super fans that helped me to create the characters.

  Hotel owner and Tempest's client - Hubert Caron suggested by Karen Bennett

  Central female - Priscille Peran suggested by Liz Jennings

  Rival Hotel owner - Gerard Chevalier suggested by June Brewer

  Rival Hotel owner's son - Gils Chevalier suggested by June Brewer

  Police chief - Francois Delacroix suggested by Nancy Buntrock

  The level of detail provided for some of the characters even went as far as favourite foods and sporting achievements at school. Honestly, I think some of the people that read my books should be writing themselves.

  If you want to know how to join in the fun and get your name on the dedication page of a future publication, please see the next page where you will find a link to my newsletter service.

  Note from the Author:

  Hi there,

  Firstly, thank you for purchasing this book. I hope that you enjoy reading it anywhere near as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you do, then I have a growing library of other books to make you laugh and keep you turning pages when you really ought to be going to sleep.

  If you would like to keep up with what I am up to and get a FREE copy of Zombie Granny from the Blue Moon series, then you can sign up to my newsletter service where I will email you a couple of times a month. No spam, I promise, just bargains, discounts and fun.

  Here’s the link: http://eepurl.com/dnm8Dj

  Books by Steve Higgs

  Click the links to find the books in your local Amazon store.

  Blue Moon Investigations

  A Typo, a Werewolf, and Two Dopey Dachshunds

  Paranormal Nonsense

  The Phantom of Barker Mill

  Zombie Granny – a Short Story

  The Klowns of Kent

  Dead Pirates of Cawsand

  The Witches of East Malling

  Whispers in the Rigging

  Bloodlust Blonde

  Paws of the Yeti – Book Moon Book 7

  The Harper Files

  Can I Kick a Ghost in the Nuts?

  In the Doodoo With Voodoo with short story Guys and Dolls

  Crop Circles, Cows and Crazy Aliens

  Coming soon

  Lord Hale’s Monster – The Harper Files Case 4

  Table of Contents

  The Fiddler. Tuesday, November 29th 1712hrs

  Phone Calls. Tuesday, November 29th 1917hrs

  Meeting One’s Quota. Tuesday, November 29th 2313hrs

  The Resort. Wednesday, November 30th 0545hrs

  Breakfast. Wednesday, November 30th 0920hrs

  Priscille Peran. Wednesday, November 30th 1017hrs

  A Call to Amanda. Wednesday, November 30th 1143hrs

  The Mountain. Wednesday, November 30th 1413hrs

  The Yeti. Wednesday, November 30th 1502hrs

  Disappointment and Dachshunds. Wednesday, November 30th 1615hrs

  Monster Hunter. Wednesday, November 30th 1957hrs

  The Search. Thursday, December 1st 0530hrs

  Yeti Attack. Thursday, December 1st 1155hrs

  Jane. Thursday, December 1st 1400hrs

  Weapons and Theories. Thursday, December 1st 1453hrs

  The Power of Jane. Thursday, December 1st 1712hrs

  Autopsy. Thursday, December 1st 2021hrs

  A Plan. Thursday, December 1st 2103hrs

  Realisation. Friday, December 2nd 0700hrs

  How to Tranquilise a One Ton Carnivore AKA I like Bruises. Friday, December 2nd 0742hrs

  The Man that Caught a Yeti. Friday, December 2nd 1105hrs.

  The Funeral. Friday December 2nd 1300hrs

  The Chase. Friday, December 2nd 1421hrs

  Amanda Harper. Friday, December 2nd 1800hrs

  The Fiddler. Tuesday, November 29th 1712hrs

  I had been hiding in the bushes for almost an hour already. It wasn’t the first time in my life I had set an ambush, previously though I had always been armed, and my military career had occurred at a time when Iraq and Afghanistan were centre stage so I had generally not had to combat the cold as well. Today though, it was hovering around zero. Cold enough to be cold but not so cold that one had to be wary of exposure. There were children playing in the play park in front of me as a demonstration that any acknowledgement of the cold was more an acknowledgement of weakness on my part.

  I was watching the play park, the cold getting to me only because I was doing my best to remain motionless. I was at the end of a case, or at least I hoped I was. A group of mums had hired me after their children reported being scared by a creature when they were out playing.

  The first part of my investigation had been to interview some of the children. Naturally, I had wondered if the creature would prove to be a clever story dreamt up by the children, but I found them to be quite traumatised by their experience. It made me angry to see such innocent faces so confused about what they had seen. Unanimously, they described the creature they had seen as a hairy, brown monster. It had glowing red eyes and horns and big tusks that jutted from its bottom jaw. Some of the kids had drawn the creature, the childish scrawls sufficiently similar for me to believe this was not made up.

  I had seen people traumatised by their experiences before. Men and women who had volunteered to go to awful places and see awful things. They were always quiet, withdrawn, struggling to process the information indelibly ingrained in their heads and the kids were the same.

  So, here I was, hiding under a bush, watching children play and feeling guilty that I was using them as bait. I had been trying to catch this guy for two weeks although I had put the case on hold when my father had been injured. His case had been a higher priority for a few days but I had gone back to this as soon as I had been able. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to go on. The creature, whatever it was, had targeted six different play grounds starting just over two months ago. It might have gone back further than that, but I was dealing with the reports that I had, not those I could imagine. He usually arrived without warning, leaping out to scare the children senseless and then disappearing again before the adults could catch up with him/it.

  My assumption was that
it was a man in a costume. It always was. Vampires, ghosts, zombies; none of it was real. I had never believed it was, however, there were a lot of people that did, and they hired me when they heard a bump in the night and needed someone to explain what it was. In this case, it wasn’t a bump in the night, it was a creep in a costume and I was going to tear him a new one when I caught him.

  I couldn’t keep the children out much longer and it had taken a considerable amount of convincing to have the parents send their children out here tonight. Short on clues, it was my most proactive move to set the creep a trap and let him walk into it. I just hoped he would turn up because I wasn’t sure the parents would agree to it twice. Time was ticking on though and I would soon have to accept that he wasn’t coming. Then I saw movement to my right.

  I watched, squinting to see if the dark shape I had seen moving through the shadows was really there. My eyes hadn’t been deceived though, there was something in the trees on the other side of the field. Was it watching the kids? That would be typical creep behaviour. I wriggled my fingers and toes, needing to make sure that my body was still operational and not asleep. The spot I was squinting at was less than fifty feet from the kids in the playground. I did not want them to see it, but I did want to be able to honestly report that I had intercepted the creep on his way to scare the children. I was closer to it than it was to the children. I could beat it to them if I moved fast enough but I waited for it to emerge from the shadows before showing myself. The last thing I wanted was to tip it off to my presence, send it scurrying away and lose it. If I waited just a little bit longer, it would be in the open where there was no hope of escape.

  A few more seconds elapsed. Then it happened. The creature emerged into the moonlight, exposing itself. It was exactly as the children had drawn, a shaggy brown coat of fur with an ugly head topped with horns and glowing eyes. Its focus was firmly on the playpark ahead of it and whatever it had planned would not be conducive to the children there sleeping soundly tonight.

  Show time.

  As the creature took its first step toward the children, I burst from the bushes, accelerating into a sprint as I crossed the short space between us. Tempted to roar a battle cry, I kept silent lest I draw the children’s attention to the creature now advancing upon them. However, I was about to start a fight with what looked a monster/alien from an old episode of Dr Who and the occasion deserved a token attempt at a cool one-liner.

  As I came in front of it, I raised my hands and said, ‘You shall not pass.’

  Whether the idiot in the costume even got the reference I would never find out, but the head of the beast turned toward me, its expression unchanged of course because a fake face cannot show surprise, but I was willing to bet the face inside the mask was shocked as I dropped my shoulder, caught it just above the hips and lifted it clean off the ground.

  I drove it back a dozen feet, taking it off the path and back into the shadows. I couldn’t tell if the kids had seen anything, or their parents for that matter but I had to focus on the task at hand right now. I could worry about the kids in a minute.

  The person inside the costume was a lot lighter than me, I registered this as the darkness away from the path enveloped us once more. I wasn’t expecting there to be much of a fight, but one never could tell. However, as we hit the ground, the creature was beneath me, so my shoulder slammed into its gut and I heard its breath shoot out. It was instantly winded, but I didn’t leave it at that; I rolled over forwards, letting my momentum carry me until I was back on my feet. Bouncing onto the balls of my feet, I was just beyond the head piece which I had grabbed as I turned. The fur was so obviously artificial under my fingers that I felt no hesitation as I twisted it first one way and then the other and then ripped it clean off.

  Then, I was standing over the man inside the suit, looking down at him as I judged whether he was going to fight or surrender. He was a balding man in his early twenties with a sheen of sweat on his scalp. His face was contorted in utter panic. Any thoughts he might have had of fleeing, and any concern I had that he might try to fight, were instantly dispelled by some of the children’s parents arriving next to me. They had seen the brief scuffle I guess and had started running at that point.

  The man on the ground said nothing. He knew he was beaten.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to call the police, please?’ I asked the man nearest me. I wanted my hands free just in case the man did try anything. While the dad made a phone call, I knelt next to the Fiddler. It was the nickname I had given him at the start of the case because he was targeting kiddies. Thankfully, all the moron had ever done was leap out and scare the children but who knew what he might advance to if he hadn’t been caught. ‘Do you want to give me your name?’ I asked.

  He shook his head and remained tight-lipped. However, he placed his right hand against the grass to push himself upright. I placed a hand on his shoulder as I said, ‘Stay there, please. The police will be here soon.’ It had been the wrong thing to say as the Fiddler decided he wanted to be gone by the time the police arrived. Instantly thrashing about to escape me, he was able to throw my hand off as he rolled onto his front to get up.

  The circle of parents, who had now been joined by some of their braver children, all took a pace back but any worry they might have felt vanished as soon as I could have arisen when I sat on his back. ‘It’s a good costume,’ I acknowledged. ‘Where did you get it?’ He didn’t answer, just thrashed his head around trying to look at me. ‘Come on. What harm can it do?’ I encouraged. It really was a well-conceived costume, the horns and tusks on the head quite real-looking.

  ‘eBay,’ he mumbled quietly. ‘It’s an old prop from Dr Who.’

  I laughed at my earlier observation about the same show. ‘What episode?’

  ‘The Horror of Milton Hall.’ He twisted his head to look at me as best he could. ‘Who are you, man?’

  I opened my mouth to say something cool, but I was beaten to it by one of the mums, ‘He’s Tempest Michaels. A hero that battles creatures in the dark.’ It sounded way better coming from her. I grinned at her, it seemed like the thing to do, but she winked at me and I remembered that she had been to every meeting I had with the client group and unlike the other parents, she had always been alone.

  Single mum.

  I stayed on top of the man for another ten minutes, his protests falling on deaf ears though I was glad when the flashing blue and red lights could be seen bouncing off the houses and low clouds. A pair of squad cars reached the end of the street nearest the play park then mounted the curb and drove across the grass toward us, a parent guiding them.

  Only as the uniformed officers approached did I clamber off the man in the costume. Then began the process of giving statements and wrapping up which always takes longer than I think it should. Most of the parents drifted away but oddly the single mum hung around and didn’t even have a child with her.

  It was after six when the police left with the man in cuffs on the back seat. He was still in his costume, it was evidence, though they may have left it on because he was naked beneath it; I hadn’t thought to ask him. Heading back to my car, it was impossible to avoid the single mum that had been waiting for me for more than an hour.

  She was smiling at me, positioned so that I had to pass her to get to my car. ‘All done then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Well done,’ she remarked. ‘I don’t suppose we will see him again.’ Then she bit her lip, thinking about what she wanted to say next. Her intention was obvious, and my response was already worked out, but I couldn’t think how to say, “No, thank you.” before she asked me a question. ‘Are you… would you like to come for a drink?’ she asked. She was smiling shyly at me in a cute and quite endearing way, but even if I hadn’t already been dating the world’s most attractive woman, I would have turned her down.

  Gently, I said, ‘Sorry, I’m already with someone.’

  She nodded, disappointed but maybe not surprised as if she had been expecting
the answer I gave. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thank you for tonight.’

  ‘Thank you for hiring me.’

  The lady walked away, back to one of the houses on the estate that bordered the play park and I got into my car. I was cold, the layers of my clothing only doing so much to keep the cold at bay. It had long since penetrated deep into my hands and feet and ears. As the engine roared to life and I waited for the heat to start thawing me out, I checked my phone.

  I had a stack of missed calls. All from Jagjit. As I moved my finger toward the green button to call him back, the phone jumped to life in my hand. I had an incoming call. This one from Hilary. Hilary never called me.

  I answered, ‘Good evening, buddy. What’s up?’

  ‘Hi, Tempest.’ Hilary spoke rapidly as if the message was important. ‘Jagjit called me. He’s been trying to get hold of you for hours,’ he explained.

  ‘I’ve been on a bust, dealing with the police and stuff. I was just about to call him. Did he say why he was calling?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes! He has a case for you in France. Or rather he has a client with a case. There’s a yeti on the loose!’

  Phone Calls. Tuesday, November 29th 1917hrs

  In the car on the way back to my house, I thumbed the button to connect the phone and said the name of the person I wanted to speak to. I got no answer from Jagjit though, so I tried the next person I wanted.

  Moments later, Big Ben’s voice burst over the speaker. ‘Hey, butt muppet, what are you up to?’

  ‘Good evening, Ben,’ I replied. ‘How do you fancy a few days skiing?’

  ‘Skiing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as you can pack.’

  ‘Sounds groovy, but why the rush?’

  ‘I got a message from Jagjit. There is a Yeti in Tignes. There is a client there who wants to hire me to investigate it, it would seem.’

  At the other end, I could hear Big Ben laughing. ‘A Yeti? Some moron in a costume then. Solve the case, spread some seed around the lovely snow bunnies hanging out at the slopes and get some ski time in. Sounds like a party.’