The Good Job: A Crime Short Story

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I had to challenge myself, otherwise it wouldn't be any fun at all. I placed the embroidered cushion back in the crib and crawled back to my bedroom. The next morning my parents had worried why the door was ajar and the light was on; they thought perhaps there had been a burglar break in during the night, but their worries quickly subsided when they realised there wasn't so much as a cushion out of place.

Eventually, my parents stopped taking me to see Dr Holtzmann.

I rarely said anything during the sessions, and when I did, it was only to ask my mother when we could go home. During those sessions, the only thing I could think of was my baby sister lying in the nursery, growing bigger and stronger while I wasted my time sitting on the squeaky leather armchair.

We'd gone home early from the park on one very rainy Sunday afternoon a few weeks later.

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We came flooding through the front door with our raincoats wet and shiny, and our Wellington boots squelching with mud on the beige jute carpet. The baby had been screaming non-stop ever since the rain had started. I didn't see what she was complaining about; her pram had a see-through rain cover that kept her snug and dry while the rest of us wallowed in the weather. My mother took her up to the nursery whilst my father cleaned the boots in the kitchen sink.

The screaming didn't stop. It continued and continued; I could hear mother singing lullaby after lullaby, hushing and shushing, comforting and cuddling, but simply nothing worked.

After a while, mother ventured downstairs to sterilise a bottle, leaving the Bavarian sausage-baby screaming in her crib. I tip-toed upstairs to the nursery, seizing my opportunity.

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I picked her up; she was heavier than I remembered, but looked a bit more like salami than a Bavarian sausage because she was so red-faced. She was screaming so hard I could actually feel her vibrating in my hands, like a bomb. Just stop it, stop it, stop it! Suddenly, the screaming stopped, and I couldn't help but wonder why. Without realising it, I had been shaking her up and down like a Magic-8 ball.

A smile as wide as the Danube crept onto my face. Everything was calm, everything was peaceful. I finally knew what it meant to be happy. I placed the silent cadaver back in the crib with the embroidered cushion under her head She looked well rested. And you know the best part?

I knew this, this alone, would upset my mother more than I could've dreamed. The challenge is to write a crime story up to a maximum of words. Entries are initially judged at local level and the winners of these regional heats go forward to the national shortlist, from which the national winner is selected. The final stage of the competition was judged by Tom Harper, the chair of the CWA, and multi-award winning crime writer Martin Edwards. His throat had been slashed.

In this insightful reconstruction which reads like a crime novel, Summerscale turns the spotlight on the moral hypocrisy surrounding the case. Buy Get Shorty from the Telegraph Bookshop. Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Read the winning story in the Young Crime Writers' competition | Children's books | The Guardian

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Thursday 13 September The 20 best crime novels of all time Are any crime books better than these? Strangers on a Train Patricia Highsmith The perfect murder is surely the one a sane person has no motive to commit. Buy The Nine Tailors from the Telegraph Bookshop Rebecca Daphne du Maurier A childlike young woman with lank hair marries a mysterious and dominating older man and becomes dangerously obsessed with his charismatic — but deceased — first wife.

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