The Silence of the Gnomes

Inspector K was working on a case of missing garden gnomes in Limehouse. She exhausted all of her sources and was stuck. None of the residents of the streets with lost gnomes wanted to speak to her. It was time to go undercover. She hoped to interview Mr P and decided to approach him as a gardener. She put on her clothes for dirty jobs and got a pair of gloves in a Robert Dyas store, then walked to Limehouse.

Mr P, a friendly older man who lived in the area, had broken his knee and couldn't look after his garden anymore, so he was keen to use K's services. She presented herself as a new business in town and offered a free trial session. Mr P was more than happy to leave her in his back garden, unsupervised, to do some weeding. When asked about the work to do, Mr P told K not to bother about the vines surrounding his backyard from all sides. "They will grow back anyway". He pointed at a large tree in his neighbour's garden, all covered in vines. The giant canopy of vines was covering not only his garden but also the neighbouring ones. "Just do the weeds, please", said Mr P. "It's just the kneeling that I cannot do". After ensuring that K really didn't need a cuppa tea or juice, he disappeared inside his house.

K, to avoid raising any suspicion, started on the weeds in the area furthest from the vines, in the corner which Mr P wanted to clear the most. In less than half an hour, she pulled all the weeds growing between the paving stones and on the flower bed. She didn't hear Mr P and felt confident enough to wander to the back of the garden to pull weeds closer towards the vines cascading from the wall. In fact, K hardly could hear anything while in Mr P's backyard. The place was eerily silent. No bird sang, and no dog barked. At some point, K heard a muffled squeal of a small animal. Maybe she just imagined that.

After removing the large weeds from the flower bed on the right side, K faced the raised bed next to the brick wall with the vines. It was full of tall weeds, so she felt obliged to pull them out. The weeds were tangled with vines, so K could not avoid dragging them together with the plants she was removing. To not expose how much of the vines she ripped and not to break the fence they were resting on, K was cutting the vine's ends against sharp bricks and leaving most of the stems hanging off the wall.

Suddenly, when pulling a big bunch of weeds with shallow roots, K discovered she was holding more than just stems: a severed little arm tangled in weeds. A ceramic arm. She looked further into the flower bed and realised she was now looking at small feet sticking out of the soil. It already got dark, so K was peeling her eyes to distinguish what was between the leaves. The next thing she saw was a big nose of a garden gnome. She kept pulling more weeds and more gnomes came into the sight: some still sitting, facing her, some broken with their faces buried in the soil. Behind the gnomes, K uncovered a parking sign and a sign with a street name. The postcode looked local but the name of the road did not exist on the maps. The entire street had been swallowed by the vines, and then forgotten. Its parts had been hauled by the vines into Mr P's garden.

K felt the vines crawling towards her and wrapping around her ankles. She pulled them off her legs, and in the darkness, reached for the waste sack. She touched something soft and slippery and let go of the bag. Apart from the weeds, there was nothing there. K tied two bin bags and left them in the garden as per an earlier request from Mr P. She entered the dim inside of the house and called Mr P. When he did not respond, she proceeded to the front and eventually found Mr P in the living room, watching TV. She said goodbye, and Mr P said thank you for the weeding.