Death on the Campsies (updated)

Death on the Campsies and otherInspector McTaggart stories

Paul Cockshott

April 1, 2012

Contents

1 Jake 3

2 Death on the Campsies 14

3 The Lost Children 34

1

CONTENTS 2

This is a book of bedtime stories, I recorded them as Itold them to Daniel and later typed them up.

Chapter 1

Jake1

Inspector McTaggart was an angry man, very angry. It hadhappened again.

He had been served with cold tea.What was life worth in the Strathclyde Police Force if you

couldn’t get a cup of hot tea in the morning?Not much he felt. Not much.

Why do I take the risk, why do I take the riskof facing wild baboons, racing rocs, facing thewrath of the Duke of Argyle, all for a cup of coldtea in the morning?

Constable Wolf come here, come here.

“Yes Sir”, said constable Wolf.

What do you call this?

Cup of tea Sir.

That’s not a cup of tea. That’s a cup of cold tea.

Why?

Whats the reason for that?1Recorded 6/02/2009, duration 15 minutes 39 seconds.

3

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 4

Oh, very preoccupied Sir, very preoccupied.

What are you preoccupied by?

I can guess, go off to the toilet.

Footsteps, flushing noise, footsteps again.

Now make the tea.

Boiling noises... glug glug glug, cling

Ah, thats better.

McTaggart sat back and took a sip of tea.

Ah, almost finished it, finished that case,

the case of Jake and the three headed fish mon-ster.

Thank goodness I don’t have to think about thatany more.

And he closed the book with a slam.Daniel : are you telling me the story on his mind?Then in came Constable Johnston.

“D’ye mind the case of the three headed fishmonster”, said Constable Johnston.

“Of course I do”, said Inspector McTaggart.

“I’ve forgotten all about it”, said Constable John-ston.

Don’t be ridiculous Son, we only solved it yester-day!

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 5

“I seem to have forgotten it, its very strange”,said Constable Johnston.

“Well here’s the report”, said McTaggart, “read itfor yourself.”

Constable Johnston opened the book and started to read. Itsaid:

Inspector McTaggart was a worried man. He’d just solvedthe case of the deserted villages of Argyle and now there wasthis phone call from Aberdeen.

The trawlermen were reporting that their catches werefalling.

“Och don’t worry about that” he said, “don’t worryabout that.”

Thats the new European Union regulations.

Haven’t you noticed the new nets your using?

Of course we’ve noticed the new nets were us-ing! We’re trawlermen, we use nets every day.

“We know more about nets than you’ve eatenhot dinners”, he said.

Our catches are still falling.

OK, I’ll come up and see. OK.

He took the train up to Aberdeen. Got off at the Docks Sta-tion adjacent to the harbour. Went to the Fish Market. Andthere, were groups of trawlermen standing around and look-ing disconsolate, with small piles of fish in front of them.

Daniel : no big ones?

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 6

“Not much, not much here”, he said, “not muchhere”.

Well, you have been warned, you have been warned,you know!

You take no notice of warnings.

You were warned if you went on like this there’dbe overfishing.

You were warned that the fish stocks were run-ning down prettty fast.

And you’ve still been doing it!

Thats foolish actions if I’ve ever heard of them.

“Yes but not this fast”, said the trawlermen,“not this fast”.

We didn’t expect the fish to stop overnight likethis, and then there’s the other problem.

“Other problem”, said McTaggart.

What are the other problems?

Daniel : our net’s been bitten.

Our nets have been bitten through, yes.

OK, show me one of the nets.

“There I told you so”, said McTaggart.

Look at that, look at that, that’s a wide mesh net,it meets with European Union regulations.

If it didn’t you’d be in Peterhead Prison before themorning.

Now, look at those holes, look at those holes there.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 7

They’re designed to let the small cod through.

We’ve had too much of you trawlermen catchingthe baby cod.

No wonder there’s no fish left in the sea.

You’ve been trawling the baby cod up,

and they’re never getting a chance to grow up.

“Yes, yes we know about that”, said a trawler-man.

You forced us to use these big nets, but weshould at least have got some big cod. What didwe get?

Half a dozen octopuses and a squid!Where have all the big cod gone?

“I’ll tell you where”, said another trawlerman,“through that hole there. Look at that hole there.”

He saw a huge hole at the end of the net, just where the codshould have collected.

You can see what is happening. The cod aregetting caught in the net, swimming to the endand breaking free.

And he looked, sure enough, the end of the net was dam-aged. It had three big holes in it. Enough to let the wholelot of the cod out. Every single trawlernet that he inspectedhad the same three holes in it. He went to the trawlermenand said:

I know what your problem is.

There are holes in your net.

There’s a hole in every one of yair nets.

Repair yair nets and put out to sea.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 8

So they repaired their nets and put out to sea.Daniel : but they still came back damaged.Came back the next day. Very few fish. Very few fish.All but three of the trawlermen had had their nets de-

stroyed or damaged.

Something is getting into these nets and biting itsway through.

God knows what it is.

OK, we’ll go to the Fishery Protection Office in Ab-erdeen Harbour,

and hire some underwater TV cameras,

put them on the nets.

So, put one on the net, got the trawlerman to repair his netand set off again. He said:

Go off to the East of the Faroes and try fishingthere in the deep water.

Off the trawler Lucky Jim went. Two days it was sailing. Twodays of sailing to the Faroes. The gulls swooped down on it.The waves were rough.

Daniel : was McTaggart on the trawler?And McTaggart was seasick. He was not a sailor. He was

a policeman.Over the edge went the net. Into the water went the net.

Splashing.From the end of the trawler went the net. Deep it went.

Down into the water.They rushed to the cabin and looked on the TV.All they could see was darkness. Every now and then

there was a flash of silver as the cod went past.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 9

Then all of a sudden there was a wee judder, and theylooked to the back of the boat to see some bubbles comingup.

A moment later all the strain went off the rope.

“Its happened again”, said the skipper, “the net’sgone”.

They pulled it in. The end was missing again.

“Ah but we’ve still got the camera”, said McTag-gart.

We’ll take this back to the lab and have it devel-oped.

We’ll have it processed with image enhancementtechniques.

Police laboratories are good at that.

So he travelled down to Glasgow. Put the video tape in thepolice enhancement laboratory and out it came.

First thing they saw was a great big flipper.Next thing they saw was a great big tail.Then it had gone past.Suddenly all the cod seemed to disappear.Then what did they see coming back but a great long

neck.

“Its Nessie”, said McTaggart

That damned Nessie, she’s got out of Loch Nessand she’s prowling the North Sea.

Daniel : how’s it got out of Loch Ness?

“My goodness! The tourist trade will be ruined”,he said.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 10

He phoned up Loch Ness Tourist Board. He said:

Have you had any sightings this week?

“None! None!”, said the Tourist Board, “Thetrade’s gone through the floor.”

We haven’t had one in six days.Why would anyone come to Scotland if there’s

no monster to watch?

My Goodness, thought McTaggart, this is getting worse.

This is not a matter just of the Aberdeen fish tradebeing lost.

It’s the whole tourist trade.

So he phoned up the Navy at Rosythe and said“You’ve got to do something”.

You’ve got to catch her!

“OK”, they said, “”if it’s an emergency we will lendyou a submarine.”

With a big net.

Made of thick steel this time.

Daniel : A military submarine?

We’ll creep along behind a decoy trawler with a bignet.

As soon as we see anything we will take the trawlernet into our big net.

And then we’ll have it caught!

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 11

Off they went. The trawler set sail from Aberdeen. Creepingup behind it was the submarine where nobody could see it.

Daniel : was it a military submarine?The trawler net was put out, and sure enough, moments

later the net started to shuggle and juggle about. There wassomething in there!

They put the huge net, the steel net, the anti-torpedoenet, round it and closed it, towed it back into Aberdeen har-bour. In the harbour you could see the thrashing aroundand a strange shape was moving around in the net.

“Haul it out” says McTaggart.

And out it came. Pulled it out.

My God!

That’s not Nessie thats Jake!

Thats Jake the three headed Fish Monster.

Daniel : what is Jake? who is Jake?

Thank God we’ve got him!

He’s far fiercer than Nessie.

Daniel : but where are we going to send him?

We’ll have to first question him.

Jake. What were you doing out in the North Sea?

WELL I JUST WENT FOR A SWIM DOWN THE CALE-DONIAN CANAL, AND FOUND MYSELF IN THE SEA.

Ye know fine well that’s out of bounds for a lochmonster.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 12

OH WELL, YOU GET SO BORED IN THESE LOCHS!I WANTED TO SEE THE OPEN SEA.I WANTED TO SEE THE WAVES.AND THEN I KEPT GETTING CAUGHT IN NETS,

AND WHAT’S A MONSTER TO DO BUT BITE HIS WAY

THROUGH?

Well let that be a lesson to ye, ye’re caught now.

If we find you going out again we’ll chain you tothe floor of Loch Ness.

Daniel : with what?

Now I’m taking ye back to Loch Ness, and I dontwant you putting more than one of your headsabove the water at a time, or you’ll scare thevisitors off.

“OK” said Jake

Daniel : what about Nessie? what about Nessie?

“What about Nessie?” said McTaggart

“OH NESSIE CAME OUT AS WELL” said Jake.

Daniel : where’s Nessie?

“Where’s Nessie?” asked McTaggart.

SHE SAID SHE WANTED TO GO OFF TO THE CARIBEAN

AND I HAVE’NT SEEN HER SINCE.

“Never mind”, said Inspector McTaggart, “they’llnever notice.”

Jake you can go back to Loch Ness and at mostput only one head above water.

And then no-one will know the difference.

CHAPTER 1. JAKE 13

So, onto the tanker she was raised, through the CaledonianCanal, come midnight they dumped him in the loch whenno-one was looking.

“Well that’s the tourist trade and the fishing in-dustry saved, not bad for a week’s work.” saidMcTaggart.

Chapter 2

Death on the Campsies

First Night’s story1

Constable William Williamson came in and said:

“Inspector McTaggart I have got bad news foryou. There’s been another one of them.”

Another one of the What?

You don’t mean another of those beggars on ArgyleStreet do you?

Don’t bother me with that again!

“Not another beggar on Argyle Street. Anotherof those bodies on the Campsies”

Ah Well. I suppose me and Fiona ought to go andcheck it out.

So they took the tram to Kirkintilloch and climbed up theCampsies heading to where they could see the red flag had

1Duration 9min 17 sec, story told at bedtime 16/02/2009

14

CHAPTER 2. DEATH ON THE CAMPSIES 15

been stuck in the ground showing where the body was found.It was a long long climb up the hill.

Up on the brow, they could look out over Glasgow. Seethe ships moving in and out the Clyde. Trails of aircraftcoming into the airport.

“Beautiful view, isn’t it.” said Fiona, “It’s a pitywe’re up here for such a sad purpose.”

“’Tis that. A real pity”, he said.

A little further on they came to the body.It looked so sad: someone lying there dead in their nylon

cagoul and green wellies.

At least this body’s still got more of it here. It’s notlike the last one.

Last one the foxes had done a lot of damage.

We couldn’t get much information about why theydied.

“It’ll be the usual thing”, said Fiona. “Someonecame up onto the hills and died of cold.

Not putting on enough coats before they wentup. Or else someone went up on the hills and wasso sad they took too many tablets.

Happens every year.”

Aye it does that. Well, when we get the body backwe’ll find the cause of it was.

Let’s just look around the neighbourhood and seeif there’s any clues here.

But there was nothing there. Just the body in its boots,clothes, nothing lying around.


He died very suddenly by the look of it.

No evidence that he sat down and took any poisonanyway.

Nor can they have died of cold, because its beenwarm these last three days.

Nice warm summer evenings. No one would havedied of cold on these evenings.

Och well.

Daniel : so it was the evening?Dad: a body had been found in the morning Daniel. Warm

days, warm evenings people wouldn’t , its not been cold enoughto have been a real hazard to climbers.

“A nasty bruise on their face though, isn’t it?”

Yes a nasty mark that.

Well we’ll get it down to pathology and see whatthe cause was.

Well they went back to police headquarters, and McTaggartsaid: "Williamson, can ye go into the files and see how manyother cases there have been this year?"

Couple of hours later Williamson came back with a pileof files.

“That’s a lot” he said. “Are they all our area?”

“No. Some of them are from Aberdeenshire andsome are from the Northern Constabulary.”

How many all told?

“Well, at twelve so far this year, and its, its onlyMay.”


That’s a bit odd. Last year we only had eight inthe whole year.

That’s twelve by May even. And how many havebeen in the last two months?

“Ten of them have been in the last two months.”

Well that’s most unusual.

You’d expect to get more cases in the winter.

So that means that in April and May we’ve had tenfatalities on the hillsalready.

How many of them were avalanches?

"There was one man carried away by an avalancheon Cairngorm, but that was,... that was in March."

Ok. How many were taken by wolves?

“It’s a bit hard to tell of course. But I don’tthink, on the outside, it can be more than one ortwo that are cases of wolf attacks. You’ve got toremember wolves have been largely driven Northof the Great Glen by now.”

“Yes, and a good thing too” said McTaggart.

I hear that King Olaf has raised the bounty on awolf pelt to a thousand Krona.

The old one hundred krona fee had been in placefor a couple of hundred years and it was use-less.

It wasn’t worth risking your life against wolves fora hundred krona.

No wonder they were raiding everywhere.


Lets hope we get rid of them for good soon!

So its not wolves and its not avalanches. What’sit been put down to?

“Hard to say. Often the bodies aren’t found fortwo or three weeks after the person died. So wecan’t really say.”

Well this one’s been found pretty promptly.

Have you been able to trace who it is?

“Yes we have had a look at their wallet. It’s aMr Johnston from Paisley, we’ve got his address.”

Well, we’ll have to go and tell his family what’shappened to him.

They went along, found the house in Paisley, knocked onthe door, and of course his wife and family were devastatedto hear the news.

“He’d just gone out climbing on Saturday after-noon.

And that, that was the last we ever saw of him.He said he’d be back by the evening.”

AH... its Monday now so he must have died onSaturday evening.

Oh.., I’m, I’m very sorry, I don’t know what I cansay to you.

Its a real tragedy, but we’ll do our best to find thecause.

“I really don’t know whats causing this” said Mc-Taggart,


“I think he just fell, fell and hit his head. Thatmust be it.”, said Fiona,

“Its a sad case but there is nothing we can doabout it. Write it down as accidental death.”

A couple of weeks later Williamson came through and said,

“I know we haven,t had any more problemson the Campsies, but I have been speaking tomy cousin on the Northern, and he says they’vehad another eight on the Cairngorms. He saidclimbers are scared to go up there now.

Its going to hit the ski trade. No doubt, it willhit the ski trade in the winter. There’s too manycases.”

And what do the Northern put it down to?

“It’s always the same: someone appears to havedied suddenly, stuck on the hill with a terriblebruise on their face, sometimes on their hands.There’s something stalking them out there, peopleare saying there is beast on the hills. There’s ru-mours, rumours I tell ye, that there’s some kind ofmonster out there. People are scared to go up be-yond 500 feet, because 500 feet is the lowest thatit has happened so far.”

Ok, Ok, when was the last report we had of Abom-inable Snowmen on the Cairngorms?

“Oh well we haven’t had any Abominable Snow-men on the Cairngorms for the last three or fouryears. We think they have all been driven north toNorway and accross the ice-packs.”


Daniel : maybe they’ve come back?

Maybe the Abominable Snowmen may have comeback?

"No, No, I am sure its not that. The AbominableSnowmen usually eat their victims, these haven’tbeen eaten".

"Mmm, its very strange, but unless we get a callfrom the Northern, we can’t intervene", saidMcTaggart.

The Second Night2

“So they’ve seen sense at last” said Fiona.

“Aye they have” said Inspector McTaggart

“The Northern have phoned us up and said theyneed our help.

Not for nothing is Glasgow the Murder Capital ofEurope!

They need a murder case solved, its the Strath-clyde Police they call.

Well lets review the situation.

There have been an unusual number of climbersfound dead on the hills.

Four times as many as you would normally get ina year.

Daniel : in the last two months.2Duration 13 minutes 19 seconds, recorded 17/02/2009


And that happened in the last two months.

The tourist trade is suffering badly.

No one dares go up a hill.

There are rumours of monsters.

There are rumours of all sorts of horrid things liv-ing on the hills.

Now we know that only one of the climbers hasbeen killed by a wolf.

And we also know that the ice bears don’t go upthe hills very much.

And that leaves the yetis, I still think it could bethe yetis.

Lets go up and find somone who knows about it.

So they went up to Glen Lyon and spoke to Farquhar thehead of the Glen Lyon Yeti Hunt.

Aye we do get a few yetis raiding this far South.The Hunt can normally drive them North, and ifwe get all the hunts together we can usually drivethem off the hills and onto the pack ice before itthaws. An then were free of them for the summer.

Now are you sure you were able to do that lastspring?

Oh aye, we did that.

I’m not convinced.

I think we need to do a sweep.

A sweep of the hilltops.


So can you call the hounds and call the huntsmentogether?

An we’ll do a sweep.

“OK” says Farquhar and went and got his horn. He blew hishorn both loud and clear: toot-toot toot-toot toot toot-toot.

Half an hour later both Inspector McTaggart and Fionawere in the saddle, and besides them were twelve hunts-men in their lovatt jackets, their loden capes and their deer-stalker hats riding the finest group of Irish elks that youcould see. They were well trained hunting elks. They couldmount the steepest slopes and gallop along the tops of thehills. Beside them they had twenty four Irish wolfhounds allbaying and snarling.

“OK, lets go!” said Farquhar, “ Up into the hillswe go!”

So off they went galloping into the hills. At one stage thehounds seemed to have got a scent. They started dashingoff ahead.

“Aha, they have found a yeti” said McTaggart. They racedoff, but in the end it was only a grizzly bear who snarled atthe hounds and they backed off.

Ah, its off, the bears are protected we can’t touchthem.

Come on, lets keep on looking for the yetis

Well, they rode accross the hilltops for three days, and neverpicked a trace of a yeti. So back they came.

Well thank you very much Farquhar for your help,

but there don’t seem to be any yetis in the neigh-bourhood.

So that’s ruled out


So they went back to their hotel and wondered what to donext. Jus then the phone rang.

“What terrible news” said Fiona, “It happened in the City,we’ve got to get back quick!”

They headed back and over to a building site on theSouthside. It was where the Co-op were putting up theirnew forty story office block.

There was a crowd gathered round. At the foot of theforty story block, five workmen who had fallen off, they hadobviously died on the way down when they hit the ground.

Now where’d these men been working?

They’ve been working on the top floor.

Five of them died in one go.

How’d they all fall at the same time?

Health and Safety were called.

“There’s goina be hell to pay for this.” they said,“These men had no safety harnesses on. Theyshould have had safety harnesses and retainingwires. No wonder they fell.”

“Well its not a murder case, just a Health andSafety case” said Fiona, “lets go away. So its a sadcase, but none of our business.”

Next, there were a series of mysterious deaths. Of windmillrepair men who were found to be falling from the windmillsas they repaired them.

“Do you see a connection here?” Fiona said.

Yes I do.


The heights coming down, isn’t it?

Yes it is.

The last of those windmills was only three hun-dred feet.

Aye, but it was on a hundred foot hill.

OK, four hundred feet or so. I think we shouldgive a warning that Tomintoul ought to be evacu-ated.

OK, and Leadhills as well.

All villages higher up the hills than the safety linehave got to be evacuated.

But what’s doing it, whats doing it?

It has to be something that flies.

Daniel : I told you it was that.

It cant be the yetis.

Its years since they last had an airforce.

What can it be?

Lets go to the Met Office and see if they have anynews of anything unusual detected by the weatherradar.

So they went to the Met Office in Ayr and said:

Has your weather radar picked up anything un-usual.

Well, yes. We had a very interesting snowstormyesterday. |It was over to the Westside. And then,there were a couple of tornadoes.


Yes but that is not so unusual, I want anythingreally unusual.

We’ve had a few of those ghosts and a couple ofUFOs.

OK, OK, so its UFOs we’re after,

Lets go to the Airforce and see if we can spot any.

Along they went to Prestwick Airport to see if they could hirea plane.

Its not that easy at the moment, the flights arevery busy. But there is a Birmingham Butterflyover there that’s free. We could hire it to the policeif you want.

Do you have a pilot available?

No we dont have a pilot.

Ok the Airport will supply a pilot. The wholething will only cost you £3000.

£3000, that’s ridiculous!

We don’t have any pounds any more, we will haveto pay in Krona.

Ok we will do it for 200 Krona.

Fair enough.

So they got onto the Birmingham Butterfly. Fiona said “Ifeel much safer in these five engined planes. You know theycan still fly with two of the engines switched off”.


“That’s, that’s very reassuring” said Inspector Mc-Taggart.

And off they took, he said:

I want you to circle round Goatsfell on Arran

and see if you see anything unusual there.

Mmm...

They flew over

Just the usual pile of dead climbers, not muchelse.

“What are those red things over there?” saidFiona.

They saw some red dots coming out of the cloud.

“We’ll fly over and check them” said the pilot.

And what did they see?A whole bunch of red balloons. There was in fact a stream

of these red balloons. They were very very pale red, difficultto see. Almost as if they were just slightly pink.

From a distance the sun would glint off them.If you could see them against the clouds, you could see

them. They when you got close it was difficult to keep youreyes on them. But of course the plane was going fast.

“OK, OK, I think this is suspicious” said McTag-gart.

Fly me quickly to Aberdeen.

So, half an hour later they were in Aberdeen, and he said:

I am just going to make a call.


And he called to the United Society of Trawlermen in Ab-erdeen and said:

Could ye get us a lightweight net?

A really lightweight net?

Well they brought him a net. They fixed it to the back of theBirmingham Butterfly. They had two experienced trawler-men to handle the net and took off again.

Lets head down towards the SouthWest,

that’s where we saw them before.

When they saw the red dots they put the net out. Swept itthrough the air. An soon they’d collected several of them.And brought them back and landed and went carefully to-wards it.

The most horrible thing you could imagine.Great big red balloons with a crest along the top.Tentacles hanging down.

“I’ve never seen those before”, said McTaggart.

“Well I’ve seen them before.”, said the Trawler-man, “You ususally see them floating on the sea.They don’t usually get up to that altitude.

Those are Peruvian men of war: the most deadlyjellyfish known to man.

When it gets really hot off Peru, the sea warms,and the hydrogen in the jellyfish expands, andthey take off into the air.

Then they get blown by the trade winds.It’s just the freak weather conditions we’ve been

having this last summer. They’ve been blowingthem in from Peru. They wouldn’t normally comethis way.”


“What can we do about it”, said McTaggart.

Oh I don’t know, I’m just a trawlerman.

“We’ll have to see what we can do about it”, saidMcTaggart.

Third Night’s tale3

“So”, said McTaggart, “it looks like we’ve got aproblem with these Peruvian men of war jell-fish.”

I think we’d better check it out.

We’ll go along to the Lochaber Institute of MarineBiology to find out what they think of it.

Lets put one of these in a plastic bag and makesure we wear a rubber suit and rubber glovesas we handle it, so we dont get stung.

So he went and got a rubber suit and rubber gloves from achemical factory and loaded the jellyfish into a plastic bag,and sealed it. And they drove off to the Lochaber Institute ofMarine Biology.

At the Institute, they asked if they could see the Insti-tute’s expert on jellyfish who was very please to see the spec-imen.

Oh we haven’t had a specimen of those for years,and that’s a very big and fine one.

Big and fine one it may be, but they’re a hazard!

Do you know how many hikers they’ve killed thisyear?

3Duration 9 minutes 11 seconds, recorded 18/02/2009


No I don’t.

Well, we reckon it is at least 18 now, and that’snot counting the building workers.

Ooh, they must be coming down low!You ought to watch out actually, I have heard

from the weather forecasters that there is a de-pression on the way. When there is a depression,the low pressure brings them down lower. Theymay even get down to the level of cities.

“Oh my goodness”, said McTaggart,

If that happens they could wipe out Ayr.

They could, yes.

We’ll have to do something about it.

What can we do about it?

Well you could wait till the wind shifts. Nor-mally what happens is that the wind never bringsthem this far. They normally fall back down to seasomewhere in the mid Atlantic, but the wind mustbe exceptionally strong at the moment.

If the strong wind continues,

and then there is a depression,

we will get them dumped on our heads where everwe are.

Daniel : won’t it send them to Russia

They might get blown to Russia, but that’s no con-solation to us.

Ah, what can we do?


We don’t normally have problems with this. Weare only concerned with Marine Biology.

I suggest you go and visit the Institute of PestControl in Berwick.

OK. We’ll go off to Berwick to visit the Institute ofPest Control.

They drove along to Berwick and arrived at a large buildingwhich had a huge statute of a mosquito and a huge andequally ugly statue of a bedbug on either side of the door.

“Ugh! Those are horrid”, said Fiona, “God knowswhat they’ve got in here.”

They went through a hall lined with models of all sorts ofhorrid insects, including some particularly nasty lookingwasps, and explained their problem to one of the chief pestcontrol officers.

Mmm, jellyfish you say, well we normally con-centrate on insects. But these are flying jellyfishso they would probably be our department, oth-erwise they would be the Ministry of Fishery Con-trol.

Have you phoned the Ministry of Fishery Con-trol?

Fiona said:

I phoned them up but they said jellyfish aren’tfish so its not their responsibility. They’re medu-soids.

Ok we will take over. I think we will use ourstandard techniques.

You say you’ve got a plane available?


Yes, we’ve hired a plane from Prestwick Airport.

We hired it for a couple of months so it should beavailable.

Mmm, OK, I’ll just wistle up some help frommy, my staff here.

He picked up a wistle and blew hard. A moment later a manrushed in, carrying a box.

Will this do?

He opened the box and said:

Yup, mm, get me 54 million of them please.

OK, we’ll bring you 54 million.

“54 million what?” said Fiona.

Well there’s only one million in that box, butwe’ll get another 54 boxes and you will have 54million.

But 54 million what?

54 million parasitic wasps of course. You canlet them off from your plane accross the path ofthe medusoids and they’ll soon deal with them.

We wont be able to give you all 54 million inone day. You’ll get a million a day and that shouldkeep you going.

McTaggart said:

Can you deliver them to Prestwick Airport.


Of course, of course, we can deliver parasiticwasps anywhere in the country.

So they went of to Prestwick Airport the next day and spoketo the pilot.

I know you had an unsual job yesterday,

you had to pull a trawler-net through the sky.

Today it is a lot easier, you just have to take thislarge box of wasps..

I’m not having wasps in my plane. Its a hazard.How would you like to fly a plane with wasps in it?

Well its ok, these are very tiny wasps.

And they dont sting people.

Well ok, ok, so long as they’re not let into thecockpit. You can have them in the passenger com-partment and I will lock the door.

Fair enough. You lock the door.

And its not going to me that does it.

Fiona will have to throw them out the window.

I didn’t know that! I thought you were going todo it Inspector.

Oh Inspectors dont do that.

That’s a job for constables.


Well they were strapped in.Daniel : Fiona was strapped in.Fiona was strapped in, with long straps that were fixed

to the side opposite the door, and they took off. Flew out tosea until they saw the first of a cloud of medusoids comingtowards them. Then the door was opened, and with thestraps stopping her falling out, Fiona leaned out and pickedout one packet of wasps after another, tore of the lid andshook them out. Of course the air was rushing past so theydidnt have a chance to sting. Packet after packet of waspswas released into the air.

Then they flew back.That day, no medusoids arrived over the country.They did that every day for 54 days.Daniel : 5555 days, and at the end, no medusoids had arrived. And

the winds had anyway shifted, so none seemed to be cominganyway. None to be seen.

Daniel : but where’s the medusoids above BritainSo what had happened?The parasitic wasps had homed in on them, and laid their

eggs in them, and of course to lay their eggs they have tosting them first. As soon as they stung them, the hydrogenleaked out of their balloons.

Daniel : and they fell downAnd they fell to the sea, and then the wasp larvae multi-

plied in in the floating piles of jelly. Two or three days lattermillions and millions of more wasps took off. So soon therewas an inpenetrable cloud of wasps floating over the EasternAtlantic.

Daniel : wouldn’t the wasps kill peopleLuckily the wasps were only about two millimeters ac-

cross and were not interested in people.

Chapter 3

The Lost Children1

Inspector McTaggart was having his coffee when Fiona camein and said:

Got another case sent to us by the Northern.There’s two children they want us to interview,were found wandering by the side of the road.

Why do they need to get us to deal with that?

Surely that’s just a matter for the local constablesto take them back to their parents.

“They say its a complicated story Sir”, said Fiona.

OK, lets take the train up to Fort William then.

And they took the train up. Left Glasgow Queen Street. Ar-rived in Fort William three hours later and went to the FortWilliam Police Headquarters and spoke to Inspector Dewar.

Hello Inspector McTaggart, we’d like you to lookinto this case, it smacks of underhand dealing.Horrible crimes I am afraid.

1Recorded 19/04/2009, duration 9 minutes 12 seconds.

34

CHAPTER 3. THE LOST CHILDREN 35

OK let’s interview these children.

So they went into an interview room which had some teddiesand toys and there were two children. One was about sevenand the other one was about nine. The older one was a girland the younger one a boy and they were called Katie andIan.

Well tell us your story.

Well, we didn’t mean to hurt her. We reallydidn’t but she was a nasty woman.

Who was this nasty woman?

She wanted to eat us. She said she was goingto eat us. So we had to hurt her.

Had to hurt her.

Who was this woman?

Well she was nasty. She was going to eat us allup.

“Can you take us to where this all happened?”,said Fiona.

It was in the woods. It was in the woods, wecouldn’t find our way. We were lost.

“OK, hold on a moment” said McTaggart, pickedup the phone,

Yes,... Yes,... Can I speak to the dog handlersplease

Is that the dog handlers?


Yes

Can we have three german shepherds and theirhandlers,

outside this building in five minutes?

Yes.. Certainly

And a van.

|And can I speak to the constable who found thechildren.

Yes..

Constable Jameson came in. He was the one that had foundthe children. McTaggart said:

I want you to take us, and the children, in the vanto where you found them.

Along with the dogs and the handlers.

Daniel : then why are the dogs practising?So they drove off to the edge of the Caledonian Forest,

where deep dark pine trees hung over the road. You couldscarcely see more than a few feet into the dark forest. Thedogs, “ these are nice dogs” they told the children, “just letthem have a wee sniff of you”, the dogs came up and sniffedthem. Then the handlers led them off and soon the dogsfound the scent and started howling and barking and yap-ping, and off they went.

Daniel : they would walk slowly wouldn’t they so the po-lice could follow them?

They were going quite fast and in order to get the childrengoing along fast enough they put the children on horseback,


with a policeman behind each one of them. They rode offafter the dogs.

The hadn’t been going long before they came to a tumbledown old cottage. In the cottage what did they find but anold woman half unconscious with her head in a gas oven.Well they quickly pulled her out into the fresh air and man-aged to bring her round.

Is that the horrid woman?

Yes that’s the horrid woman. She was going toeat us.

Lets put her under arrest and take her to the po-lice station.

I don’t know whether we are going to have to chargethese children with assult on an old age pen-sioner?

But they took the woman in.

Is it true that you locked Ian up in a cupboard fortwo days,

and that you threatened to eat him?

Aye it is, but I haven’t had anything to eat forthree weeks myself, I am half starved. No pensionhas come through, what else could I do with thesechildren?

Thats no excuse!

You can’t eat children even if your pension doesn’tcome through.

You should have gone to the Social Work.

They would have sorted it out for you.

Ah, we will have to follow this through.


So he went to the Social Work Department and said:

Why have you allowed this old woman to be sostarving that she was resorting to cannibalism?

Surely her pension should have been coming through?

The social worker said : “Ah well its that Dukeof Argyle he has been docking the old woman’spensions every third week.”

Daniel : I thought he was burned at the stake!Dad : Ah, but there is always a new Duke, the old Duke

was burnt at the stake but his son is just as bad.

And he says that every third pension belongsto him as the landlord and his Factor goes roundto all the Post Offices and takes the pensioner’spensions.

Oh well that’s one more blot against his copybook.

Lets follow this story back a bit more.

Kids, how come you were in this old lady’s housein the first place?

Oh that’s because our parents tried to leave usin the woods to starve to death.

Another case for the Social Work, that’s child abuseif I’ve ever heard it.

Take us to your family home.

They got to the family home and what should they find?They found the children’s father just fresh from burying

their step-mother who had died of starvation the night be-fore. And the father looked half starved.


Why is he starved?

Its the Duke of Argyle again, he has stolen allour land and we have no food. I tried to make a bitof money by wood chopping. But he said the woodbelonged to him and I wasn’t allowed to chop thewood any more.

I couldn’t support my children so I left them inthe woods.

Ok we will have to send them both to the poor-house.

But there’s no poor-house here.

Send them to the Glasgow poor-house then.

Why is there no poor house here?

Because the Duke’s been taking the poor-lawmoney.

Goodness, here its no wonder people are reducedto starvation and sending their children outinto the woods.

Well, let’s see if we can pursue a case against himin the High Court next week.

Documents

Death on the Campsies (updated)