The Heart-taker. Prologue It was 4 am in the morning. It was frosty and cold in Limerick City. " My name is Percy Mc Guire. I am twenty-seven years old. I work in Limerick City. My job is to solve crimes and to catch criminals..."

Chapter I

It was early one morning in the month of November; the phone started ringing and woke up everyone in the house. When I turned and looked at the clock it was only 4 am. I knew it must be trouble. I jumped out of bed and answered the phone; it was the chief superintendent at the police station in Limerick City.

He said, "Is this you Percy?"

I replied " it is sir"and he went on to say

"Percy the news have come in that there was a body found in a park in Limerick and I need my best man on the job and that's why I rang you so early."

I replied,"Ok Chief I will be down straight away."

So I went back into my bedroom and told my wife I had to go.

She replied " O Percy please be careful"

So I got dressed and headed out to my car. It was very cold and quiet and everyone was fast asleep in their beds.

Chapter II

I arrived at the station and rushed inside. I went straight into Chief O Brien's office

"O God you're here Percy. It's terrible, I want you to go down to the park straight away."

So I hopped into my car and drove as fast as I could towards the park. When I arrived at the scene I was met by a guard and he took me over to the body. I had never seen anything like this before. The body was all cut up, it looked liked it was attacked by a pack of dogs. I immediately phoned the stated pathologist Dr. Willie Ryan in Dublin and he told me to seal off the scene and not to let anyone touch anything and that he was on his way to Limerick. I surrounded red and white tape around the murder scene and cleared all the winos out of the park and I shut the gates. I told the other guard to ring an ambulance. I then put a blanket over the body. As I was doing so I looked at the face and I discovered it was my next-door neighbour Mr Butlie. I phoned his wife and I told her the bad news. She could not believe what I told her. I had to ask her to come down to the park to identify the body.

She said, "I will be down as soon as possible."

So in the meantime I was looking around for some clues as to who carried out this terrible crime and I wondered what the motive was for killing this man. I know Mr Butlie and I don't think he was a bad person and could not understand why anyone would want to kill him. I saw a car coming up the roadway of the park. It was Dr. Willie Ryan the state pathologist and his team of forensic experts. They immediately got to work and Dr. Ryan went over to the body to examine it. He said it was one of the worst murders he had ever seen and whoever committed this crime must be a very dangerous person and must be caught. The forensic team took samples of the ground around the body to bring them to the lab to see if they could find any clues. Dr Ryan said he had been stabbed twelve times and his heart was removed from his body. The Dr could not understand why somebody would cut out his heart. In the meantime Mrs Butlie arrived and I went over to meet her, she was in a terrible state. I took her over to the body for her to identify him.

She said, "O my God it's my husband"

and she broke out in tears. The body was taken to the hospital in Limerick for Dr Ryan to carry out the post-mortem. I continued to look for some more clues at the scene. I was hoping to find the murder weapon which I suspected was a knife. The daylight was beginning to appear and I was feeling tired. I looked at my watch and it was 7.00am so I decided to go home for a few hours sleep and I put a guard on duty at the scene. I arrived home and went in side and my wife woke up. She asked me what's the matter and I told her about the murder and that the victim was next door neighbour Mr Butlie. She was shocked with the news.

Chapter III

I woke up looked at the clock it was 9.30am. so I got out of bed got dressed and went down for breakfast I could hardly eat with the thought of what I had seen earlier. After breakfast I phoned Chief O'Brien at the station and he asked me to come down and discuss the case. So I got into my car and drove down to the station. I went into Chief O' Brien's office and we sat down and discussed the case. We talked about the murder and how we could catch this murderer. We were there for many hours. We could not guess how to catch this criminal. Chapter IV We decided to call to all the hospitals around the border of Limerick and ask did they get in any hearts for transplants. We drove arounds Limerick's hospital and I asked did they do any transplants lately, or in the last day or two.

The doctor said, "Yes".

I asked him to give me the names of the people who had brought in the hearts. Mark, John, Peter, Andrew, Mary, Una, Jennifer, Eva, Niall, ALEX were on the list. I went back to the station I typed in the names to the computer. The computer recognised an Alex Burgess, criminal who had broken out of jail recently. I rushed back to the hospital. I asked for the second name and address. Last Name: Burgess. First Name: Alex. Address: NONE. I drove back to the station. I typed in Alex Burgess' name to the computer again. A blue screen came up with all the details. He broke out of jail last week. I knew it was him. It gave the address: 18 Springtown, Limerick.

Chapter V

I and my team arrived at Alex' house. We got out of the cars and I shouted,

"Run around the back and knock in the door. I'll knock in the front door."

We went in with guns in our hands and brought Alex out of the house from the back door. We brought him to a special kind of prison in Limerick and he was chained up. That was the end of him. Everything was back to normal except for poor Mr Butlie, because he was dead.

THE END