Chapter 1: Detective Donnally’s Dilemma
Detective Sergeant Donnally, Joe to his friends, sat at his desk in the station house staring at the screen in front of him. Not that there was anything to see. He hadn't switched on the computer yet. He knew he'd have to, soon, but just for now he was giving his eyes a break. They were red, sore and tired. What he really needed was a good night's sleep. What with the baby waking a couple of times a night to be fed, the plumbing playing a solo Gene Krupa would have been proud of, and a light show outside his bedroom window to rival anything Las Vegas had to offer, sleep was a thing of the past.
However, as he leaned forwards to press the "on" switch, something happened which made him forget all about crying babies and everything else. The screen lit up. On its own. No Windows, no familiar icons, just a face. Odd sort of face it was too. Kind of - unformed. Like it was melting. And somewhat wrinkled in appearance. Joe, being a cop, noticed things like that.
"What the...?" he exclaimed, frowning. "Where'd that come from?"
Joe looked cautiously around, wondering if one of the guys was playing tricks on him and was lurking somewhere to see his reactions. But no. No-one anywhere. He gave his full attention to the monitor once more. The face was still there, and staring at him with a kind of expectant smile. He checked the various controls and switches. No! Definitely not switched on.
This was baffling. Completely outside of his admittedly limited experience of computers. But in spite of his lack of knowledge and training, he knew this shouldn't be happening.
Joe Donnally was a simple man. Pointed in the right direction he could follow a trail of clues and come to a conclusion, but he wasn’t the most imaginative of people. He lived a fairly simple life and that’s how he liked it. Not too many complications to worry his grey matter. His work, his family, his home, and a few beers occasionally. What more could a man want?
"Wonder what would happen if I turn it on anyway," he thought as he reached forward again. As he did so the screen started to flash and a voice shouted from the speakers:
"DON'T BE TOUCHIN' THAT! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, do you want to electrocute me?"
Startled, Joe froze. Slowly he sank back into his chair, while making a mental note that the voice had a distinctly Irish accent. Cop training again, you see. He peered around the room, just to be doubly sure there was no one around, before he did anything else. Then, feeling extremely foolish, he addressed the computer.
"Uh. Hi. Can I help you? Whaddya want?"
"What do Oi want? What do Oi want?" came the reply as the face continued to undulate alarmingly. "The question is, me boyo, what do you want?"
Joe looked even more perplexed, if that's possible. "What do I want? I want a good night's sleep buddy, that's what I want. Sheesh, I'm hallucinating from lack of it!"
"Ah, to be sure, you're doin' nothing of the sort. Aren't I every bit as real as you are yourself?"
" Hmmm. That remains to be seen, I guess. At this moment I'm not even sure if I'm real."
"Well, whoile you're making up you're moind about that perhaps you could also be thinkin' of somethin' else you moight be wantin'. Try thinkin' a bit bigger."
"Ok" Joe responded, " a whole lotta nights' sleep."
"No! That won't do at all. Something worth me whoile doin' for you."
Joe blinked. "Doing for me?" he repeated, stupidly.
"Of course. It's your turn you see. It's a long story, so unless you really have the toime to sit and listen..."
"My turn." Joe was becoming more monosyllabic by the minute.
"Yes. Don't be tellin' me you don't know who Oi am?"
"Uh, well, " Joe began.
The face and the voice broke into laughter.
"Ah, Oi see it all now. You didn't get the email, didja? That's explains everythin'. Bejaysus, do I have to do everythin' meself? You just can't get the staff you know!"
"Email. No. I guess not."
"Oim a leprechaun! One of the little people! You must have heard of us!"
"A - a leprechaun. Right."
"Of course, and Oi'm here to grant you a wish."
"A wish. I thought leprechauns made shoes."
"Ah well, yes, traditionally, but these days, well, with all the foreign competition we've had to doiversifoy."
Joe struggled with this for a few moments. "Let me get this straight, I have a leprechaun on my computer wanting to grant me a wish, right? Jeez, what did I drink last night?"
"Ah, well now, I don't know about that, but here Oi am, and here Oi'll stay until me work's done."
"I see," said Joe, not seeing at all. "And just where is here?"
"In Oireland, o' course, Eire, the land o' your forefathers."
"But also in my computer?"
"Ah well now, it's all this modern technology you see. We have to keep up with the toimes. And it's a soight easier than some of the ways we had to foind people in the past, I don't moind tellin' you."
"Uhuh. OK. I'll tell you what. If you can move my apartment somewhere quieter, where a guy can get a good night's sleep, then I'll believe all this crap."
"No sooner said than done!" The leprechaun grinned from ear to ear and vanished.
Joe sat for a while, determined to get more sleep somehow or other. Hallucinating now! What next. Sheesh! He thought about seeing a shrink. This was just not normal, even from lack of sleep, surely? But in the meantime he had work to do and the computer appeared to behave perfectly normally for the rest of the day.
When his shift ended Joe drove home and climbed the stairs to his apartment rehearsing in his head what he would tell Katie about this afternoon's events, as a way of explaining his need for more sleep. He got to his floor and realised that he'd gone up one flight too many, this was the apartment above his. He laughed at himself and went back down one flight. But now he was one floor below his!
Joe scratched his head and went up and down another couple of times, he even went outside to make sure he was in the right building, but no matter how many times he did it, the awful truth remained. His apartment simply wasn't there. It had vanished.
***
Det Sgt Joe Donnally was once again sitting before a computer terminal in the station house. He hadn't quite got over the shock of losing his apartment yet, nor his wife and baby. He'd spent some considerable time trying to track them down of course. In his job you have the contacts all right but it still takes time. At the end of his search though he was no nearer to knowing where they had vanished to than when he started.
There are some things you can tell your friends and your boss about, Joe mused, but disappearing apartments and little people just weren’t among them.
He sat now, in the closet they optimistically called his office, as he had been doing every spare minute of every day, watching the blank screen and hoping against hope that the leprechaun who had spirited his life away would appear once more; if not to apologise then at least to gloat. But day after day, the same thing; just a blank empty screen. Until he turned the computer on, of course.
Just then the telephone sprang to life, startling him out of his reverie. He leaned across and picked up the receiver.
"Hello, yes, Donnally speaking" he grunted into it.
"Ah, wouldja look at that now? It's himself speakin', as Oi live and breathe."
Joe almost dropped the handset in shock. All this time he'd been expecting the strange little man to appear on the computer again and here he was using the phone!
"Hello!" he almost shouted, "Is that you? I mean is it really you?"
"Well of course, me boyo. Who else would it be but meself?"
"Errr, yeah right. Listen here, what have you done with my family? And the goddam apartment?"
"Please, please, calm yourself now. No need to be gettin' all aeriated that way," said the leprechaun. "Oi only did whatcha wanted me to do. One wish you were entoitled to and one wish Oi granted you and that was it. Move the apartment somewhere else, somewhere you could get some sleep, you said."
"Hey! I didn't know you was serious," Donnally raged, "I thought, well, I thought I was hallucinatin' or somethin'."
"Ah, well, yes. That's one of the hazards of this loine of work, especially in today's cloimate of suspicion and economic downturn."
"Economic d...What's economics got to do with anything?"
"Never moind. Don't be frettin' yourself. Oi'm here to help."
"Help! Help is it?" ranted the detective, rapidly becoming apoplectic. "And just how do you intend to do that? Huh?"
"Well now, if you'll just calm down an' listen a whoile, Oi'll tell you."
This had better be good, thought Joe. All the skills he had learned as a hostage negotiator had abandoned him and he was wound up like line on a fishing reel.
"Roight. Are you ready to listen now?" enquired his tormentor. "Ok. It's loike this. Oi was goin' through me doiary yesterday and you'll never guess what today is. "
"That's one thing you've got right," admitted Joe grumpily.
"I knew you'd see it loike that. Well it just so happens that this is the start of Elf Awareness week."
Donnally's jaw dropped. Elf Awareness? What the hell was Elf Awareness? And what did it have to do with him getting his family back? He cleared his throat, noisily. "I beg your pardon," he began, "but..."
"Oh no need for that. Really."
Joe had just opened his mouth to burst forth again when the little man continued.
"Roight, as Oi was sayin. It's the start of Elf Awareness week and me seein' that, I decoided to call the National Elf Service."
At this point Joe's jaw, already slack, began to sink towards his chest. His eyes glazed over and his breathing slowed to become almost imperceptible. In all his years as a cop nothing had prepared him for this. This was beyond all human understanding.
"Now then," the leprechaun went on, "Oim aware thatcha may not know about the Elf Service but believe you me, it's a very good thing."
Donnelly dragged his beleaguered brain back into focus long enough to mutter "Elf Service?" before the leprechaun continued.
"Ah you see now? It's beginning to come clear to you already."
Joe blinked. Not once, but repeatedly. He shook his head from side to side in the hope that something like that might return him to normality, then slapped the side of it as one might slap a recalcitrant television. It was in vain however. As if talking to a leprechaun wasn't bizarre enough, now he was being asked to believe in elves! This was becoming decidedly surreal, though those weren't exactly the words Joe would have used. He was interrupted once again by the little voice in his ear.
"Hello? Are you there Joe? Hello? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, where's he got to now?"
Suddenly the detective's cop training kick-started him into something approaching rational thought. Of course! Some mean bastard was playing a trick on him. He should have noticed the play on words sooner. Elf awareness, huh? Elf Service! He shook his head again, this time in disbelief at his own foolishness. "Ok," he said into the phone, "who is this? Give a man a break, will ya?"
"Ah, Joe, Joe, " the little Irish voice continued, " please, don't be loik that."
"Ah, jeez! How long are you going to keep this up? My sanity's at stake here! Either say something useful or get off the damn phone!"
"Ah, Oi see we have a problem," the leprechaun said sadly. "Oi was hoping you'd want to get some help to foind the things you lost, but Oi can see you're a man of independent spirit. Not that that's a bad thing, no indeed, but..."
"Lost!" interrupted Joe. "Lost?! I had them snatched away! By you!"
"Hmmm. Well, there's something in whatcha say of course..."
Joe could take no more. He slammed down the receiver in disgust. Elf Service! Elf awareness! What would it have been next, he wondered. Elf improvement? He turned back to face the computer screen. Might as well get some work done instead of wasting time on a stupid prank-playing - whatever.
At that moment the screen sprang to life of it own accord, just as it had on a previous occasion.
Joe watched in some trepidation as the now familiar face flickered before him, even more green and wrinkled and undulating than he remembered it. It was actually making him feel quite queasy.
"Oh my god," he said. "Oh - my - god! He's back. It is him, the pesky little ..." He was interrupted yet again by the thick brogue emanating from the computer.
"Hello again. We got cut off. Anyway this is better 'cause you can see me this way."
Joe almost cried. Had he been a weaker man, a man of lesser fortitude, he almost certainly would have. Damn and blast him to hell and back, he thought. Why can't a man get some peace? Was it really too much to ask?
The fact that this was what he had been hoping to see, for some considerable time, was neither here nor there. Now that it had happened, it was more than flesh and blood could stand. He just wanted the obnoxious little creature before him to disappear. Preferably for ever, but certainly for a good while. However, it was not to be.
"Now then, where were we? Ah yes! the Elf Service. Well now, they have a missing persons bureau you know. No, Oi don't suppose you would know that, but no matter. They do. And Oi was thinking they moight have some news on your family."
The detective pondered this for a moment then said, "How is it you need help? Don't you know where they are? After all it was you that spirited them away." Got him this time, thought Joe. Answer that if you can. Cops can be tricky too, you know.
"Ah well, you'd think so, wouldn'tcha?" came the reply, "But in fact Oi have no oidea, no oidea at all. Ya see, Oi just make it happen. I don't do it meself. Ah no, that wouldn't do at all, at all. Oi'd have the trade unions breathin' down me neck in no toime. Work to rule, you see. Can't go upsettin' the system, can Oi now. "
For the umpteenth time that day Joe took a deep breath and then sighed a deeply unhappy and remarkably patient sigh. "Couldn't you find out though? From whichever branch of Spells R Us did do it?" he asked.
"Ah now, that's where the problem loies you see. All the records have been pretty much lost Oi'm afraid. Otherwise d'you think Oi'd have left it this long without lettin' you know where they are? No indeed, the elves that held the ledgers just collapsed one day and we've had the very divil of a toime ever since, sorting it all out."
"Elves that held the...ledgers?" enquired the detective. "I thought you people were keeping up with the times. Why ledgers? Why not discs?"
"Oh, we are, Joe, we are. Us leprechauns anyhow. But those elves - what can I tell you? There's a lot of room for..."
"Don't say it, please. Just - don't, ok?"
Slowly but surely, the bottom was dropping out of Joe Donnally's world for the second time.