Edward Smith had seen a lot of strange things in his twenty years as a policeman, but this, he thought as he spoke to the woman with the arrow protruding from her bottom, might be the strangest yet. He was glad she’d agreed to be questioned in the ambulance. People often forgot details if you questioned them later. The paramedics had injected her with local painkillers, so it should be all right.

        “Could you recognize this person if you saw them again?”

        “No, she was wearing a mask.” The victim was a matronly lady, fiftyish, not the kind to get into a violent confrontation. A schoolteacher or a housewife.

        “A woman, then.”

        “Oh, yes. I saw that clearly.”

        “Didn’t you realize something was wrong when she approached with a mask and a bow?”

        “She rode up from behind on a bicycle. I never saw her or the bow. The first thing I knew was the sharp pain in my–”

        “Yes, yes.”

        “And then she rode off. That’s it.”

        “I’ll be honest with you,” Edward said. “Nothing fits here. People don’t ride up on bicycles and shoot strangers with arrows. Can you think of anyone who might have done this? Someone at work, maybe?”

        “I work from home.”

        “And what do you do?”

        “I write the daily horoscope for the Mercury.”

        He wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe they’d have some ideas down at headquarters.  His sixth sense told him he’d never know the link between this innocuous woman and the violent criminal who’d assaulted her.

        Edward sighed and closed his notebook.