The sky over Notting Hill was the colour of old dishwater, a proper London grey that couldn’t decide whether to rain or just threaten, and Portobello Road was heaving.
Saturday. Last market day of the week. Vintage dealers, buskers, a man selling dubious paella from a stall that smelled like ambition and regret. A falafel grill, and through its rising smoke, a tray of spoons being passed off as antiques that had clearly never seen polish in their lives. A secondhand wedding dress that had seen things. The narrow one-way street was packed with vendors and tourists buttoned up against an August that felt like March. The usual.
Miss Castling — Detective Inspector, Metropolitan Police — moved through the crowd like a sequinned ocean liner through a sea of anoraks, parting the masses by sheer force of glamour. Full-length coat in blue sequins, edged with purple feather trim that brushed the shoulders of anyone too slow to move. Black satin blazer and matching trousers beneath, threaded with gold paisley embroidery. Black platform ankle boots. Blonde wig, shoulder-length. Faux mink lashes. Three layers of MAC Studio Fix, and the kind of presence that made Portobello Road feel like her personal runway.
In her left hand, she carried a canvas tote bag with Notting Hill printed on it in a tasteful serif font. The kind every tourist buys and every local pretends not to own.
Beside her, and considerably lower, Sergeant Whiskers — officially Serial Unit 09 of the Metropolitan Police Autonomous Investigation Division, an AI-powered robot cat, though Miss Castling just called him Whisky — trotted on his hind legs. A British Shorthair model, ten kilos of dense, blue-grey plush covering a titanium-alloy frame, standing just under two feet tall on his hind legs, drawing stares from half the street. In his right paw, he carried an identical tote.
“Whisky, look at these!” Miss Castling had stopped at a vintage jewellery stall, holding up a pair of rhinestone clip-ons the size of small chandeliers.
Whisky’s ears flattened.
“Miss Castling.”
“Hmm?”
“We are on duty.”
“I know, darling, but look at them—”
“Shopping during active operations is a direct violation of Metropolitan Police Code of Conduct, Section 4.7: Off-Duty Activities During Deployment.” His bright blue eyes fixed on the tote in her hand. “As is the purchase of souvenirs.”
She clutched the Notting Hill tote to her chest. “This is reconnaissance material.”
“It is a tote bag.”
“It’s a tote bag purchased in the field. Completely different.”
Whisky blinked. Once. A long one. Then his ears rotated forward with mechanical precision.
“Miss Castling. Are you aware of today’s operational objective?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then please state it.”
She waved a hand. “Something about… bags.”
“A professional pickpocket ring has been operating in this market for the past six weeks. Over four hundred victims. Estimated losses exceeding forty thousand pounds. Our objective is to identify and apprehend all members of the ring before the Notting Hill Carnival. That is in two weeks.” He paused. “This is not a shopping trip.”
“It can be both.”
“It cannot.”
But Miss Castling was already gone, drawn like a magnet to a vintage clothing stall three doors down, where a rail of leather jackets hung like a chorus line waiting to be cast.
She rifled through them with the focus of a theatre director at auditions.
Black. No. Brown. God, no. Tan? In this economy? No. Black again. Boring. Fringed? Absolutely not, this isn’t Nashville—
And then she saw it.
Pink. Hot pink. Covered, in tiny, hand-stitched sequins that caught the grey London light and threw it back in the sky’s miserable face. A biker jacket. Size sixteen. The kind of jacket that didn’t just make an entrance — it kicked the door down and asked who was in charge.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, hello.”
She reached for the price tag. Her other hand went to her bag.
Her hand stayed in her bag.
Her hand moved around inside her bag.
Her hand moved faster.
“No.”
She upended the entire bag onto the stall counter. Lipstick. Compact. Warrant card. Handcuffs. Emergency lash glue. A leopard-print drawstring pouch. Three sample-size perfumes from a department store she couldn’t remember visiting. No wallet.
“No no no no no—”
She checked her coat pockets. Her inside pockets. The secret pocket she’d sewn in herself, which contained only secrets and therefore could not possibly contain a wallet.
That long wallet. The reassuring weight of it. The presence. Gone.
“NOOOOOOO!”
Her scream cut through the noise of Portobello. A busker stopped mid-chord. A father photographing his posing family dropped his phone.
A handful of pigeons feasting on a slice of pizza someone had dropped took flight.
“Someone stole my wallet!”
“MY WALLET!”
Whisky appeared at her ankle. “Describe it.”
“You know! The Queen À La Mode Peach Martini NA wallet! From North Pineapple Island! Ten thousand in the world! One thousand UK limited edition, sold exclusively at Liberty! It has two numbers on it! Five-thousand-six-hundred-and-ninety-eight worldwide, zero-seven at Liberty!”
A woman nearby gasped. “Not the Peach Martini NA? The limited one?”
Her husband leaned in. “Number seven? The one who was crowned at six—”
“I know,” his wife cut in. “My daughter came all the way down from the Cotswolds to queue at Liberty, and she was number one thousand and one. Liberty gave her a coffee, apparently.”
“I’ll find them. I’ll nick them! With glamour,” Miss Castling announced, her voice carrying across three stalls and into a café where a man choked on his flat white. “This ends today.”
She snatched the leopard-print drawstring pouch from the mess still scattered across the stall counter, pulled it open, and took out two items.
A headband with plush dog ears attached.
And a small, round prosthetic dog nose.
She put on the headband. She attached the nose over her own. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror at the rhinestone stall.
“I look like a Belgian Malinois, don’t I.”
Whisky said nothing.
“…What is that.”
“This,” she said, tapping the nose with one manicured nail, “is the K9-ScentPro Mark III. Developed last month by the Met’s Applied Technology Unit. It replicates canine olfactory and auditory capability at ninety-seven percent accuracy.”
“Why does it have ears.”
“Because it’s a dog, Whisky. Dogs have ears.”
“I am aware that dogs have ears. I am asking why a scent-detection device requires decorative—”
“They’re not decorative. They contain directional audio amplifiers.” She adjusted the headband. “Now. You might be wondering why I’m not using you for this.”
“I was not wondering that.”
“Well I’ll tell you anyway. You’re a cat. And cats,” she held up a finger, “have one critical vulnerability. Catnip. One sprinkle of matatabilactone or nepetalactone and you’re rolling on the floor like a kitten at Christmas. If these pickpockets are carrying any kind of feline countermeasure, you’re compromised. So.” She pointed at the dog nose. “I’m doing this myself.”
Whisky’s ears went flat. Then sideways. Then back to centre. Three distinct emotional states in 1.2 seconds: annoyance, indignation, and the quiet acceptance of someone who has lost an argument on technical grounds.
“…Proceed.”
Miss Castling closed her eyes. Breathed in through the prosthetic nose.
The world exploded.
Paella. Doughnuts. The sweet, chemical burn of EV batteries slowly dying. Half of London ran on electric now, but to the K9-ScentPro, nothing was ever clean. Someone’s cologne, too much of it. Wet dog. Dry dog. Coffee. Coffee with oat milk and anxiety. Old leather. New leather pretending to be old leather. And underneath it all, threading through the chaos like a needle.
Skin oil. Foreign currency. The faint, specific tang of wallets that have been handled by more than one person in the last ten minutes.
Her eyes snapped open.
“Got them.”
She moved fast. Launched off the centre line. Cut across the market. Hit the right pavement at full sprint. The crowd parted, partly because of the coat, partly because of the dog ears, mostly because of the expression on her face.
Three stalls down. Four figures. Two women, two men, working the crowd with the choreographed grace of a West End ensemble. One bumps, one dips, one passes, one walks. Classic four-person lift.
Miss Castling didn’t slow down.
“That’s my wallet! I want it back right now!”
The formation shattered. One of the women, the passer, panicked. She reached into her jacket, pulled out a pink wallet with Queen Peach Martini NA’s portrait smiling serenely from one side and the North Pineapple Island flag on the other (a golden pineapple, naturally), and threw it.
It sailed through the air in a perfect arc. Spinning end over end. Portrait, pineapple, portrait, pineapple. Queen Peach Martini NA’s radiant face catching the grey light for one glorious moment.
And landed somewhere in the crowd.
She tracked where it landed with a single sniff. One second. Then she was on them. Two went left. She cut them off with a sequinned clothesline that would have made a rugby coach weep. One went right. Whisky, who had been trotting behind at a dignified pace, launched himself forward, all ten kilos of titanium and plush, and landed squarely on the runner’s chest, pinning him to the cobblestones with the calm authority of a cat sitting on a laptop.
The fourth tried to vault a stall. Miss Castling grabbed a vintage faux fur stole from a rack, lassoed it around his ankle, and brought him down into a display of artisanal candles.
Four suspects. Four arrests. The market vendors erupted in cheers, applause and whistles. They had probably been plagued by this ring for weeks. “About bloody time” drifted through the crowd from every direction. Two uniformed officers arrived, pushing through the crowd. Just as everyone was already on the ground.
But the wallet.
“Whisky, where did it land?”
They searched. Past the stalls, past the crowds, past a man enthusiastically explaining to no one in particular that his Victorian pocket watch was “definitely not a reproduction.” She sniffed again.
There. On the pavement. The pink wallet, Queen Peach Martini NA’s serene face smiling upward at the dishwater sky.
Miss Castling reached for it.
A dog reached it first.
Not a police dog. Not a trained dog. A small, round, deeply entitled French Bulldog, fitted with a posh pet brand harness and matching lead, out for its Saturday constitutional, who had chosen this exact spot, at this exact moment, to answer nature’s call.
Directly on top of the wallet.
Time stopped.
The French Bulldog had its front legs braced wide, back arched, eyes drifting to some private middle distance. The unmistakable posture of total commitment.
Miss Castling watched in horror as the inevitable unfolded.
“No.”
When it was done, the French Bulldog looked up at Miss Castling with an expression of magnificent self-satisfaction. Not a shred of guilt. Not a flicker of remorse. Just the pure, unbothered confidence of a dog who had never once been told no in its life.
Miss Castling looked down at Queen Peach Martini NA’s face, now partially obscured by what could only be described as a biological deposit.
“No.”
Behind the lead, a young woman in a grey hoodie and jeans was already rushing over, one hand on a pushchair where a baby slept peacefully through the entire catastrophe. She was someone’s nanny, someone’s dog-walker, someone’s everything-at-once, and right now she looked like she wanted the pavement to swallow her whole.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, I’m so sorry, he just — he never does this, I don’t know why he — I’m so sorry—”
She fumbled for a biodegradable bag with her free hand, the pushchair wobbling, the Frenchie sitting next to its achievement like a sculptor admiring a finished work.
Miss Castling looked at the young woman. Looked at the baby. Looked at the dog. The dog looked back with zero percent apology.
She straightened her coat.
“Darling,” she said, with a warmth that surprised even Whisky. “It’s fine. These things happen. You’ve got your hands full — go on, don’t worry about it.”
The nanny looked up. Heels as tall as a step. A coat of blue sequins so bright it hurt to look at. Dog ears and a dog nose like nothing she’d ever seen at Halloween. Behind her, a stocky grey cat stood on its hind legs.
She caught her breath.
“Are… are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Go.” Miss Castling waved her off with a smile. “That baby needs its nap more than I need a clean wallet.”
The nanny mouthed thank you about four times, scooped what she could, and hurried away. Pushchair rattling, Frenchie strutting, baby still miraculously asleep.
The wallet remained.
Queen Peach Martini NA’s smile was still visible. Barely. Through a thin but unmistakable film of organic matter. On the other side, the golden pineapple of the North Pineapple Island flag had acquired a new, unwanted texture.
Whisky tilted his head.
“Miss Castling. While the deposit of canine faeces on your wallet is, on a personal level, unfortunate — a Japanese cultural reference detected. Classification: play on words 78%, good luck charm 20%, saying 2%.
Based on my data, having faeces on one’s wallet does not appear to be entirely negative in Japanese culture.”
“…What.”
“Un ga tsuku. The phrase means ‘luck attaches itself.’
Un denotes both fortune and excrement.
Traditional belief holds that stepping in canine faeces brings good luck.
Your wallet may therefore be considered blessed. Survey data: positive, sixty-eight percent. Negative, thirty percent. No response, two percent.”
“Did you just make a poo joke.”
“I referenced a legitimate cultural tradition.”
“You made a poo joke.”
“Furthermore, the data supports—”
She produced a pair of blue nitrile gloves from her coat pocket. Snapped them on. Picked up the wallet at arm’s length. The K9-ScentPro Mark III was still attached to her face.
The smell hit her like a freight train.
Every molecule. Every compound. Everything that French Bulldog had been eating: unsalted French fries and rib-eye steak, metabolised through the pampered digestive system of Notting Hill’s most indulged canine. The dog’s deliverable. Every unholy chemical signature amplified to ninety-seven percent of canine olfactory capability, fired directly into her nervous system with the precision of a guided missile.
Her eyes watered. Her knees buckled. A sound came out of her mouth that hadn’t been heard since the fall of Constantinople.
But she held on.
Because it was number zero-seven. Limited edition. Queen Peach Martini NA’s face, besmirched but unbowed, smiled up at her through the haze.
She straightened up. Took a breath, through her mouth this time. Squared her shoulders.
“Right,” she said, her voice only slightly strained. “Wallet recovered. Suspects apprehended. Now.” She turned towards the vintage stall, where the pink sequinned biker jacket still hung on the rail, waiting for her like destiny in size sixteen. “Let’s go buy that jacket.”
Whisky’s ears went flat.
“Miss Castling. We are still on duty.”
She was already walking.
“MISS CASTLING!”
TO BE CONTINUED
Next Episode: “Miss Castling descends from the stage of Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, Japan. A three-day fast and an egg sandwich.”
Today’s Miss Castling
- Coat: Full-length blue sequin, purple feather trim
- Blazer & Trousers: Black satin with gold paisley embroidery
- Boots: Black platform ankle boots
- Wig: Blonde, shoulder-length
- Lashes: Faux mink
- Foundation: MAC Studio Fix, three layers
- Accessory: Canvas tote bag (Notting Hill)
- Special Equipment: K9-ScentPro Mark III (dog ears headband + prosthetic dog nose)
Whisky’s Log
- Today’s sacrifice: Queen À La Mode Peach Martini NA limited edition wallet (biological incident, French Bulldog)
“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.”