The Great Mouse Detection

Prologue

Cam Cosgrove checked his watch to find it was set to military time.

Appropriate.

As he paced across the dank cold docks of the harbour, looking to his left and right anxiously for signs of life from the murky bleak London fog that surrounded his whereabouts, he gazed anxiously at the ticking seconds and minutes accompanying his hour of destiny, and realized all too quickly that the appointed hour had crept up on him.

And that chilled him to the bone.

A cold wisp of air danced across the edge of his neck, and an even colder sweat began to trickle down his brow.

Too much was riding on his appointment, and far too much was at stake.

He did his best to prepare by fiddling through his coat and producing a pocket watch.

He opened the watch, revealing it had a compass, embedded at the centre was a glittering bright and beautiful miniature crystalline rugby ball.

He closed the lid of the fob watch and clutched it tight in his hand.

"Where are you blast it?" he said, the wind picking up, a cold snap made him turn.

Cam was feeling slightly embarrassed.

He was a mouse of the military, he served overseas in wars too terrible to bring up at peak time CBBC hours

He had been fortune to have been given a brief mention in a recent edition of Newsround.

He'd seen things that had broken many minds. So why couldn't his own mind be put to ease now?

Especially when this was a simple, if illegal, business transaction?

In the city of London, day to day business went hand in hand with day to day chaos.

He cursed the air around him, for the chill was doing nothing to quell his anxiety.

He had a good mind to tighten the scarf around his neck.

The odd thing was he had tried to mere minutes before. He simply couldn't move his hands. And now he suddenly realized he couldn't move his legs.

When he tried, he felt another cold snap.

He pushed harder. He felt it this time, ever so nippy.

He pushed his legs forward again, hoping to gain motion, another snap and a crackle.

And following that, came more pain.

He caught a glimpse of his arms, they looked frigid.

He tried flexing a muscle; it yielded the same results as the legs. A snap, a crackle, then pain.

He realized the weather was becoming too treacherous, and yet he couldn't dismiss himself, for he was being held prisoner.

And then, from half-way out of the dark, the Snowman cometh.

He gazed upon the mouse's frozen grip, clasped the icy palm with his own, and with a further snap and a crackle, came a painful and precise pop.

The hand gave way, and was crushed completely in the Snowman's grip.

He took the Fob watch from what remained and looked at the hapless militant mind.

"Wha-what have you done?" he said, "I did everything you asked"

"In all your months and preparations made in acquiring this trinket, you made one monumental misfire" said The Snowman, as he blew an icy breeze into the features of the soldier.

"You only came through in the winter" he said.

He then proceeded to glue the soldier's hand back together a special tube of instant glue, before fastening in back in place with a mechanical screw attached to the wrist area.

"What was that for?" Cam asked.

"Standards and practices won't let me exit the scene with a mutilated limb" the Snowman admitted.

"That kind of takes the bite out of this scene" Cam argued, stating his case for some sort of dramatic climax.

"Then you'll just have to settle for a snap" The Snowman said, and fastened the soldier's lips shut with an icy bridge across them.

The Snowman dug deep into his frigid belly and produced a cell phone

"Inform the others that I have the diamond and that the auction can begin as scheduled on New Year's Day"

The Snowman switched off the phone and smiled as he compared his reliability to that of Cam Cosgrove.

Through winter he had come, and through winter he would always come through.

Everything was in place now.

The feast, and the bidding, was soon to begin.