I Love Matt Fishwick! Fiction and fun with Matt Fishwick

The War Room 1945

Amid the crumbling building stood a secure war room inside a bunker. On the table in the war room stood a solitary goldfish bowl, nervous eyes watched it.

“It is no good trying to pretend zat you don’t know vhat is going on.” The Interrogator said in a menacing tone. The Interrogator was holding a riding crop in his hand. It wasn’t for effect. He had a riding lesson booked for after the war and he didn’t want to be on the horse without getting a feel for the equipment first.

The Fish blew a bubble in the bowl.

The Interrogator snapped the rising crop on the table and the resulting motion threw the Goldfish up into the air (far up in the air for a goldfish, anyhow) and due to some nifty physics, the goldfish ended up landing besides the bowl.

The fish gasped for its watery breath.

The Interrogator placed a wet sponge on the forehead (or the fish equivalent of a forehead), seemingly giving the offender a brief respite.

The fish blew another bubble.

In a flash (quite literally) the Interrogator held an electrical cable held over the little fish and soon it was smoking and fried.

“Ve eat tonight boys,” the Interrogator declared.

The crowd of assembled soldiers laughed, though secretly they knew their place in the organization and given the size of the fish and the overall number of soldiers, it was pretty obvious to all but the most stupid of the soldiers that they weren’t about to get any sustenance that night.

The Interrogator coughed. “Sorry. We eat tonight boys,” he offered. “I think I had a frog in my throat or something. Won’t happen again.”

The Soldiers knew their place. And so they laughed again, but with less enthusiasm this time. It wasn’t that they were used to the electrocution of fish, in fact it was a rare occurrence and had only happened on three separate occasions, it was just that the soldiers knew if they stepped out of line a similar fate would befall them.

Just then the door opened and in stepped the long trench coated figure carrying a rather battered medical bag leading a small goat on a pet leash.

The crowd of soldiers turned at the sound of the door. In the back somewhere, someone’s stomach growled.

“Looks like we definitely eat tonight,” The Interrogator shouted at the sight that greeted them.

The troops erupted in genuine laughter as the goat looked disturbed. Though it wasn’t in a psychotic disturbed kind of way, more like that he could sense the mood in the room had shifted.

“Calm down, Wolfgang,” the trench coated stranger told his four legged companion. The goat wore an eye patch. Not because of physical deformity, or because he was under orders from his optometrist, but simply because the trench coated stranger thought that it added an air of mystery to his overall character. “This will all be over soon.”

The eye patched goat seemed to take solace in the words of the man at the other end of his leash.

The trench coated man made his way to the centre of room, near to the bench as the soldiers stood around him in a circle.

“Are you the chef?” One of the soldiers called out.

Everyone laughed, including the goat. He might have been forced into wearing an eye patch in order to look menacing, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t appreciate a good joke or two.

“No.” The stranger replied. “I’m the Doctor. Doctor Otto von Topsy.”

“That seems a rather weird name.”

“It didn’t leave me with many career options.” The Doctor cleared his throat and got down to business. “We’ve had some reports of theft.”

“This is Nazi Germany,” the Interrogator shouted followed by peals of laughter from the group of soldiers.

“Not just petty theft,” the Doctor said as he slowly turned a full 360 degrees, looking each soldier in the eye as he did so, “but the theft of Hitler’s gold. And from this very room.”

“That’s why we killed the fish.” The Interrogator said. “He was solely responsible.”

“That’s hardly likely. It’s just a fish in a bowl. What can it do?”

“That’s what we’ve yet to establish.”

“And that’s what I’m here to find out.” The Doctor reached into his bag and pulled out a scalpel that gleamed in the light. Without a further word, the Doctor set to his task of dissecting the fish and within seconds, because the goldfish in question wasn’t that big, he had completed his task and, at much faster rate than Bono, had found what he was looking for. “Aha, the gold in question.” The Doctor held up a tiny nugget for all to see.

The soldiers gasped and began to eye each other with suspicion and eye Wolfgang the goat with hunger. However the goat, in all his eye patched badassery, stood his ground and remained unfazed.

The Interrogator was the first to recover from the shock “How much gold are we talking about here?”

“Much more than this piece here and much more than can be contained in the belly of a single fish.” The Doctor took a breath before unleashing his theory, if not his goat on the room, “My theory is that whomever the accomplice was he was feeding the tiny pieces of gold to the fish. Just before the fish would expire, the accomplice would switch out the gold fish with a near identical replacement from a local funfair and take the gold filled goldfish home to retrieve his gold. And all this to ensure his retirement in the post war glory years.”

“That seems spookily detailed for a theory. How do we know that you aren’t the accomplice? Or that he wasn’t acting alone?”

The Doctor began walking around the troups inspecting them. “We know he had an accomplice.” The Doctor said after a few passes of the troops.

The Interrogator stared at him wide-eyed. “How do you know?”

“Because of this!” The Doctor whirled around and within a split second was holding a tub of half empty fish food under the Interrogator’s nose.

Instinctively at the sudden movement, the Interrogator had taken a step back, bumped in to the wall, which was only an inch or so away, and returned to his original position. The return momentum carried him forward a touch and he had to put one foot in a lunge like manor to stop himself falling face first on to the ground.

“Ah,” the Doctor said. “A lunge of guilt. You’ll pay for that.” The Doctor placed the tub of fish food on the table next to the cut open corpse of the goldfish. “Guards.”

Two soldiers stepped forward.

“Seize him.”

“Under whose authority?”

“I need no one’s authority.” The Doctor countered. Colonel No One had given Topsy whatever the German equivalent to carte blanch was, to do with whatever it took to bring the gold thief and goldfish accomplice to justice, including finding out whatever the German equivalent to carte blanche was.

The Doctor clicked his fingers while still wearing his leather gloves. The lack of sound didn’t prompt the soldiers to take the Interrogator away as he had intended. Instead, the Doctor had to nod suggestively and point his eyes to the new prisoner.

“That’s preposterous,” the Interrogator retorted. “Why would I have the fish killed if we were in cahoots?”

“Were you not listening to my theory? To cover your tracks. You were never in cahoots and were working entirely on your own.” The Doctor took his left glove off and checked his nails. “So you could have all the gold to yourself.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I don’t think so.” The Doctor dropped the leash and clapped his hands together. “Get him!”

The Goat began to run at the Interrogator. Seeing the goat bearing down on him, caused the Interrogator to recoil in horror.

“Alright, alright.” He managed to shriek with panic in his voice. “It was me. I admit it.”

The Doctor nodded his head at this confession. He clapped his hands and the goat ceased his advancement.

“And I would have got away with it too,” the Interrogator said, breaking rather too easily, “if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid.”