All The Birds In The Air

Sidey’s Theme for last weekend was “a little bird told me”…

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I walked into the interrogation room, slapped a file down on the table, and stared at the suspect.

“They call you the Sparrow, right?” I said. “How come?”

“Er, it’s on account of me being a sparrow.” he said.

“Makes sense,” I said. “Anyway, I hear that you killed Cock Robin. With a bow and arrow.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “Sez who?”

“Let’s just say a little bird told me,” I said.

“Not the Kite?” he said, “because he just talks a load of -”

“It wasn’t the Kite,” I said. In fact it was the Cormorant, my confidential informorant, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Look,” said the Sparrow, “you ain’t gonna make no stool-pigeon out of me over this. Word in the tree is that it was a hit, ordered by the Parrot.”

“Why would the Parrot want him dead?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Cherchez la femme,” he said.

“Meaning what?” I said, since I don’t speak Spanish.

“Tits,” he said.

“Er, what?”

“The Parrot’s nieces are the Tit sisters,” he said. “Bridget and Ingrid. Cock Robin was moving in on them.”

“And why would they go off with Cock Rob -” I began, then the full impact of his nickname hit me. “Oh,” I said.

“Exactly,” said the Sparrow. “Bridget is with egg now. Weren’t no way the Parrot was gonna take that, so he put a price on his head.”

“A carrot?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” said the Sparrow. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” I said. “Just like I’m guessing there isn’t going to be a ptarmigan in this story, is there?”

“Of course not,” said the Sparrow. “The Ptarmigan’s on holiday. In Lake Michigan.”

I felt myself starting to get a headache.

“Look, you’ve got nothing to hold me on,” he said. “I bet you don’t even have a body.”

“We do, actually,” I said. “We found it in a shallow grave. The Owl dug it, unsurprisingly with his trowel.”

He looked a bit worried at that.

“Listen, we know it wasn’t you,” I said. “It’d be too hard for you to shoot him with a bow and arrow, what with you having no hands or anything.”

The Sparrow snorted, which caused a disgusting worm of snot (probably consisting mostly of worm) to shoot out of his beak. “Too hard? Listen, the guy had a red breast, he might as well have painted a target on his chest. I couldn’t miss.”

There was a brief silence, then the Sparrow uttered one word, which he had probably borrowed from the Rook.

I smiled at him. “You’re Bustard,” I said.