The Case Of The Punt Gunner's Bollards: Daveshorts

By David Pearce

The recoil of a mighty punt gun reveals a muddy corpse, a heaven sent (literally and metaphorically) opportunity for Detective Inspector Clout to fit the crime to a local mafia boss.

 This is a daveshortstory time to intrigue and entertain the commuter between stations. Timed with precision to ease the pain of your commute "The Case of the Punt Gunner's Bollards" is a short story set in the wild sea coast of eastern England.

Prepare to be spell-bound. Your journey will evaporate as the tide comes in.

The punt gunner focuses on a flock of ducks. He fires his mighty cannon. The ducks and undergraduates in distant Cambridge panic - could this be World War lll?

But what has the recoil exposed? What has the gunner used to anchor his punt? What will his canny wife advise and how will Detective Inspector Clout exploit the situation?

Questions questions - the answers are to be found in this daveshortstory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Pearce
• Release date: Sep 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393020769

David Pearce

Well past his sell-by date, Dave Pearce does what he can to keep fit walking and cycling in the Ardeche region of southern France where he lives. 

Book preview

The case of the punter gunner’s bollards is a Daveshort written specially to divert commuters from the awful fact of their daily lives. It may be read in the course of one average rail journey. It is not rude and it contains a bare minimum of strong language. It may be read in perfect safety by ladies, servants and infants but not ducks, geese or any other species of wildfowl.

chapter 1 - mud

chapter 2 – the punt gunner’s pursuit

chapter 3 – brave gesture

chapter 4 – executive decisions

chapter 5 – what to do?

chapter 6 – confrontation 1

chapter 7 - deduction

chapter 8 – confrontation 2

chapter 9 – cuddles and confusions

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chapter 1 – mud

It is difficult to know exactly where and when to begin. Here is a mud bank that is exposed for much of the time but the soaking it receives at high tide keeps the mud soft and receptive. It was soft and receptive enough one afternoon in May to receive a body that had fallen from on high headfirst and bury it so that only the legs from just below the knee were exposed, the feet pointing in opposite directions. There can be few places in England more remote than this fenland channel, a fact that made it an attractive choice as a place to dispose of an unwanted body.

But why should such a journey have been made, for the log of the helicopter indicates that it had taken off from a location in Exeter, a round trip of four hundred miles or so? The answer to this question has to do with that most capricious of industries – tin mining. The moment the extraction of tin from beneath Cornwall resumes, as it does from time to time, a valuable resource is lost for nothing is as capable of swallowing objects, materials and employees who have become surplus to requirements than a disused tin mine. This happy state of affairs had existed for some years until recently the price of tin rocketed and a Canadian entrepreneur arrived to open up the mines and clear a whole army of literal skeletons out of the metaphorical cupboard.

For many enterprises based in the west this brought about a crisis and within a short time many of them groaned under the burden of redundant employees. How Celtic Literary Enterprises solved the problem is told in more detail in another place; in essence, all that the reader of this account needs to know is that it involved a fortuitous coming together of Frank Prettyman, the owner and CEO of the firm and a helicopter pilot whose main object in life was to drop things – from the higher the better, as he