*
… Sergeant Thomas Patrick was perplexed.
He was a simple man at heart, yet today, he sat at the desk in his office and the gathering gloom of perplexity festered around him.
Those that had the misfortune to work in proximity to him and were accustomed to his ways had long since given up the ghost of prediction and concentrated on the day’s work in hand, all the while knowing it was futile, and having that knowledge confirmed as the gathering gloom of perplexity seeped out from under the door of Patrick’s office and slowly enveloped the whole station…
His was decidedly not to reason the why and the wherefores, Patrick had always known that.
Nor was his task to formulate the laws of the land. No! His duty lay in the implementation of those laws and this, to his mind at least, was a decidedly black and white scenario.
Not for nothing, then, the traditional uniform of the law, though some he knew might argue about very dark blue.
The missing persons, Sams and Weston, were wanted for questioning by the law, and he, Sergeant Thomas Patrick had facilitated their detention.
Particularly brilliantly he had thought.
Suspecting a double-back he had laid meticulous plans and those plans had come to glorious fruition.
Now, the source of perplexity.
How, then, had he gone wrong?
His official superiors had been pleased not to say, ‘cock a hoop’, initially.
The note to Monsieur Phillipe Montgomery had in many ways been no more than a courtesy yet deep down Patrick had been expecting a glowing commendation from this quarter also.
How could it be otherwise?
By mid-morning when no salutary word had been forthcoming, Sergeant Patrick had begun to grow concerned.
That concern had evolved into deep unease when at Noon, Patrick was summoned.
He returned from the encounter to his desk, from which he had not moved since, with one impossible phrase emblazoned across his mind-scape…
‘We let ‘em go!’
Excerpt from ‘Kith ‘n’ Kin…
***
Lands of Exile:
KITH ‘N’ KIN
Stuart France & Sue Vincent
The Beeley Stone, ‘liberated’ from the churchyard at Bakewell, stands proudly in the centre of its village green once more. While the locals enjoy the fruits of its restoration, Ben, who had led the daring raid against authority, still languishes in jail.
Don and Wen, arrested and released without explanation in Ireland, now plot an erratic course through the wild places of Wales, while Jaw-Dark and Kraas, seeking the legendary stone of Fergus Mac Roy, have been separated in the most uncanny of circumstances…
As the darkness closes around them, the Black Shade haunts the moors above Beeley and, in the shadowy rooms of the old tower, an ancient and even stranger story begins to unfold…
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France & Vincent 
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