The Six Nails

[balador]

Detective chief inspector James Fowler hung up the phone. "Great timing as usual!" he exclaimed to himself. It was 3am and he had just got into bed after a night out with some old friends.

Normally one of his sergeants would have handled the scene at this time in the morning, but there was nothing normal about the incident he had just been called about.

Reluctantly, he climbed back out of bed and got ready to drive halfway across town in the rain!

[q]

The 911 was in a tree. A large tree. And it was not at the bottom.
Somehow someone had managed to park a classic racing lightweight Porsche 911 25 feet up an oak tree, and it was locked.
"Thatt'le be to stop someone stealing it, sir" suggested the young copper with just a hint of a smirk.
"Very wise, around here" replied Fowler, deadpan.
At that point somthing dripped on his torch. In the dark he couldn't see eaxctly what it was but he could smell it. Blood. Warm blood.

Q

[q]

"Have you searched it for people?"
"Yes sir. The fire rescue team were up there when we got here. There's no one in it."
"So how do youe explain this?" He held his blood covered torch in the headlights of the police car.
"er..."
"Precisely".

[telesilla]

"Nothing for it, someone'll have to take another look," Chief Inspector Fowler grunted. "I suppose you don't have a ladder in your car."

"Er..."

"Right, then," the Chief sighed. "Up we go."

After much pushing, pulling, and precarious sliding, Fowler and his rather disgruntled junior - whose name, if he recalled rightly, was Adrian Moss - were balanced together on the thickest branch beneath the oddly positioned Porsche. Fowler spoke through the torch wedged between his teeth, but Moss couldn't understand him. Carefully getting a better grip on a branch with one hand, Fowler removed the torch and said, "Did the fire brigade check the boot?"

"Er, I presume they did, sir," said Moss.

"Did you see them do it?"

"Well, no, but -"

Fowler looked down. They seemed an awful lot higher than 25 feet, and a crowd was gathering. Several more policemen and women had now arrived, but most weren't bothering to try to hold back the gawkers - several appeared to be smirking, as if watching two men up a tree was one of the funniest things they'd ever witnessed on the job. They might not be laughing in a minute, he thought darkly.

Climbing up the trunk further by hugging it tight, like a monkey, the detective reached for the catch that would open the boot of the car...

[yewtree]

Hanging grimly on to the branch, he carefully opened the boot and shone his torch in. There was a big glass box filled with blood, which was leaking out of the top due to the crazy angle that the car was positioned in the tree.

"Er... we appear to have some sort of practical joke here, Sir," he said. He moved the beam of light from the torch along the side of the box. There was a label. It read "Damien Hirst - Big Box of Blood".

"Oh. What we actually have here is an art theft - if you can call it art," he said quietly. But he still didn't understand why the Porsche was lodged in the tree.