The Devil Among Us

by Ramsay Sinclair

  Life changes and seasons come and go whilst people change and people betray us, but the one constant in our lives is the moon. Maybe one too many brandy alexanders had put me in a physiological state, but the moon never left.

  It was smaller some nights than others, but it remained a constant. Hope was much the same, especially at CID. It ebbed and flowed, but we always had the tiniest glimmer of hope that we’d solve a case. I wasn’t giving up on this one. I don’t think my conscience would allow it.

  The park was free of hoodlum teens tonight and I could see the ghostly whispers of Abbey in her red dress, walking arm in arm with me. The dress floating on the coastline breeze, the floral undertones of her perfume. Though I wasn’t religious, I found myself praying we’d remain as constant as the moonlight. I couldn’t imagine a life without her anymore.

  Nor McCall, come to think of it. We were partners until the end and I could promise that much. We were too accustomed to each other's methods, each other's thoughts. We were family, more than anything else.

  Seeing our house looming in the distance, a light was still on in the living room. Either the girls were still awake, or they’d forgotten to turn them off. As much as they both held a place in my heart, I wouldn’t hesitate to chastise them about how much the electricity bill would cost if it was the latter.

  Fumbling to fit the keys into the lock, I finally tumbled indoors and into the billows of warmth. McCall jumped at my arrival, jolting awake. She’d seemingly fallen asleep at the dining table, resting her elbows on the wood and head in her palms.

  “Sorry for waking you,” I whispered, wondering if she’d be moody.

  Surprisingly, she seemed alright. “Don’t apologize, Finlay,” she groaned. “It’s your home. I just feel bad that I’m still here.” She moved a bunch of papers from underneath her elbows.

  “We’ve spoken about this before. We really don’t mind,” I insisted. “Why are you sleeping there, though?” I quizzically frowned. She looked like the Mad Hatter with those shockingly vivid and frizzy curls. “And drinking that much coffee will make you jittery.” There were about five empty mugs nearby.

  “I’ve been on the phone to John for a while, trying to make a relationship work even though we’ve had to keep a million secrets from him. I know it’s for his own good, so please don’t say it. Then I was just looking over everything we’ve compiled so far. Seeing if there’s something we’ve missed. Map routes, the stations they’ve hit. That kind of thing.”

  “You can take the detective from the station,” I goofed around. “Anything?”

  “Nope.” She popped the P. “Please tell me tonight paid off.” I could sense the desperation there.

  “It did.” I pulled up a seat and she would’ve jumped in excitement if it wasn’t so late at night. “Their handshakes.”

  McCall visibly deflated and slumped into her seat at the anticlimax. “A handshake?” She checked she hadn’t misheard and even pinched her skin to ensure this wasn’t a kind of lucid dream.

  “Not any old handshake. Thumb tucked in and firm. A weird sort of eye contact. Exactly like the on the tape. It’s from that club, I’m certain of it.”

  “You think the criminals we’re searching for, are a part of their weird secret society?” she reiterated.

  “I think so. There was a judge there, called Judge Ramsey. He thought I was someone else.” I turned around to see if my hunch was correct. “Do I look like any of the guys on our tape, from the CCTV footage? Don’t ask questions,” I begged, expecting McCall to say something sarcastic, “but pretend we’ve never met before.”

  She surveyed and scanned the behind view of me, tutting every now and again. “You know, I’ve never really paid any mind to this view of you. But I suppose you’re quite stocky and have the same sort of hair as the guy that--”

  “Gave DCI Reid the handshake,” I completed, already knowing what she’d say.

  “Oh,” she gasped in surprise.

  “The judge called me Roy,” I shared, confident that this was our lead. “Something Roy. No titles, so their jobs aren’t prestigious as the rest of ours were.”

  McCall exhaled in relief, moving the papers by the air that came from her mouth alone. “That’s something to go off of, at least. Judge Ramsey and someone Roy,” she mumbled what she wrote down. “I’ll see what I can do from here tomorrow.” She meticulously wrote out her initial ideas.

  “And I’ll search our databases, files, that sort of thing,” I confirmed, loving how we melded together as work partners. “See what we can dig up.” As I fiddled with the wallet that stayed in my grasp, McCall noticed the beautifully crafted item.

  “What’s that?”

  Placing it upon the table with a muffled bang, I stroked the soft leather. To afford such things was a luxury, one I’d wouldn’t get to experience. We did our job because it helped people and ourselves in a weird way, not the pay packet. At least, us non-corrupted officers did.

  “It’s DCI Reid’s. He dropped it.”

  McCall marvelled at the finishings “Anything--?”

  “No, before you ask,” I interrupted kindly. “I checked it. Just all the normal stuff you’d expect.”

  “Shame.” She yawned loudly and unexpectedly.

  “You need some sleep and less coffee,” I instructed and picked up her spotted mug to rinse. “Go.” I practically to push her upstairs. “We can’t do anything dog tired.”

  She padded towards the spare room that was now full of her clothes, papers and random accumulation of things. “Abbey’s asleep,” she whispered now that we were closer to our rooms. “She went up early. I’d suggest you don’t wake her up.” McCall silently laughed.

  “Thanks for the tip. We’ve all had too many late nights, so I’ll be falling asleep before my head hits the pillow. Goodnight, McCall.” I headed into our master bedroom, which was nothing in comparison to the grandeur of DCI Reid’s. But it suited us just fine.

  “Goodnight, Finlay.”

  Abbey’s snores were a mixture of soft and delicate to loud and obnoxious. I knew she couldn’t help it, being knocked out from the gala and all the frantic buildup that surrounded it.

  Her red tresses were spread over my pillow and she’d made the most of having an empty bed whilst I was out playing cards by lying in a starfish position. Her eyelids were squeezed firmly closed with remnants of eye makeup that she’d missed from taking it off in a state of exhaustion.

  Planting a delicate kiss on her warm cheek and hoping I didn’t wake her, my heart skipped the smallest beat. She groaned deeply, having succumbed to her dreams.

  26

  As I entered the CID hub, the main thing I needed was tea. And lots of it too. Our team looked up at my languid pace and drooping figure, as well as my gaunt face and the hint of a five o’clock shadow that I’d ran out of time to shave. Due to mistakenly missing my alarm this morning, I’d rolled into the office about an hour late whilst my clothes were crumpled and I was worse for wear.

  “Sir,” DC Taylor acknowledged, taken aback by the sight of the dead-man-walking appearance I had today. “How are you feeling?” The sprightly constable was keen to find out.

  “Er, fine?” I questioned. The way in which DC Taylor asked made me think I should be anything but.

  “Right.” His eyes flickered towards my neck. “It’s just that--”

  “They told you about the gala,” I groaned and had hoped to keep my pride intact. The rest of the team were sneakily watching us from behind their desks. “It’s fine. Nothing more than a cut.”

  Rebecca overheard and decided to get involved, though not unkindly. “It wasn’t fine,” she tutted which reminded me of the way Abbey would do. She handed over a waiting mug. “I thought you might need this.”

  Although the station’s tea had a tendency to be watery, I was grateful nonetheless.

  “The guy was off his head on alcohol. Apparently, the superintendent isn’t at all happy with the way he treated you,” she shared as sh
e secured some brunette hair tightly in her ponytail.

  Tony passed by with his head buried in a folder of sorts. “Let’s hope he gets fired or something like that,” he commented dryly.

  It was nice to hear they’d rallied around and were trying to protect my honour. I had half expected them to be making jokes at my expense by now. Cillian was too busy nodding along with whatever Rebecca was saying to truly understand what we were talking about.

  “I’d offer to punch him but you guys have already revolted against that idea.”

  “Yes,” I quickly interjected before he showed us any more fighting demonstrations of the sort.

  DC Taylor shook his head at our interaction. “Whilst you were all at the gala, I had another look over the neighbours’ statements. They reported someone lurking around outside sarge’s house for a while. They said the lurking person was a Caucasian male, roughly five foot seven. From what they could see, he had brunette hair and was wearing all black clothing.”

  “You found out some valuable information,” I said. The leeway he’d made was quite impressive.

  “That’s not all.” He held a pointer finger up to silence us. “I’ve checked that with the people entering and exiting in the hospital, round about the time of Flynn’s death. I had a look back at the footage of that very week too and, as you can guess, there are quite a few brunette males walking around the hospital.”

  Tony peered over to the photographs DC Taylor was pulling from his briefcase. “And?”

  “And,” DC Taylor showed us the shiny, coloured pictures, “I zoomed in on the faces of the visitors that recurred all week and whittled them down to four.”

  The photographs were all roughly the size of our palms and showcased some very similar-looking men. Some of them were pictured staring down, whilst two were shown staring directly ahead.

  “What’s his name?” I nonchalantly pointed to the specific picture of a man I recognised from the CCTV tape I’d already destroyed.

  DC Taylor shrugged, as did the rest of the team. “I don’t know, but I’ll look into it and see what we can find out about them. They’d have to sign in as visitors so I’m sure I could grab a hold of the hospital log book somehow,” he muttered and continued to analyse the photos.

  “I’ll get in touch with the hospital now,” Rebecca suggested and had already stalked off to dial their number. “I need to speak with the Guv too.” She tapped upon the phone. “Did you see him on your way in, sir?”

  “No, why?” I finished the final dreg of tea, feeling re-energised and revitalised all at once. I couldn’t survive without a caffeine kick. If the world ran out of tea and coffee, our department would be the first to fall apart without it.

  Tony slammed closed the files with a snap. “He hasn’t shown up today. We were worried when neither of you showed up, we thought something was going on,” he explained and scratched his beard.

  I still had DCI Reid’s wallet to hand over to him. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t shown up yet? Perhaps he’d gone in search of it and was worried that his bank cards had been stolen.

  “Ah. I found his wallet on the floor, so I’m going to put it in his office for when he finally gets here. Anyone else need anything running over whilst I'm on my way over there?” I offered politely.

  Tony apologetically grimaced and handed over a whole new stack of paper. “Sorry. They’ve accumulated over the weekend.”

  “It’s fine,” I said through my teeth, struggling to hold them without dropping the papers everywhere. “Is that it?” I inwardly crossed my fingers, seeing as I could barely move my hands.

  Cillian rummaged in his desk drawers in search of another object to add to the ever-growing pile. He placed an old sandwich on top. “I owed the Guv lunch from a while ago. I forgot I’d bought it.”

  “No,” I refused to take it much to his disbelief. “That’s disgusting. Throw it away before we get rats and mould growing in here. I bet your desk is congealed on the inside, and for the sake of my health, I'm going now.” I scoffed fondly at the boyish constable who seemed mildly upset by my accusations.

  Rebecca took pity on Cillian, much to our mutual surprise. “I’ll help you clear your desk out if you’d like? In case the health authorities give us a surprise visit and decide to shut us down.” She grinned whilst holding the phone to her ear and awaiting a reply from the hospital.

  I left them to it but grinned secretively to myself. Could this be the beginnings of young love? It certainly was in Cillian’s wildest fantasies but I wasn’t necessarily sure about Rebecca’s. She was an unreadable woman, which could be a bit frightening in this profession.

  Following the corridor around to DCI Reid’s office, I thanked a few officers who had kindly let me squeeze past with the files stacked high in my arms. The wooden door to his office hung ajar and DCI Reid can’t have arrived, as the belongings inside appeared untouched. His coat didn’t hung on its hook as it normally would, and there weren't any discarded food wrappers in the bin either; the cleaners had blitzed the station since we’d last been in our offices.

  Grunting from effort, I smacked Tony’s paper files onto the desktop where a couple of glasses were waiting for DCI Reid to pour. To think I’d sat opposite him in this very room and discussed everything from our love lives to this case filled my veins with hot blood.

  Dragging out his wallet from my back pocket, I placed it next to an opened diary. From afar, DCI Reid’s scrawled handwriting was visible. Noticing the page was still open on last week's date, I cast an inquisitive eye over the entry and hoped it would give us some indication of where the missing DCI had gone this morning.

  There were a few notes jotted between the lines that were reminding himself to return files to other officers or meet Iona for lunch in the week just gone by. Flicking over to today’s date, there wasn’t anything written there yet.

  “Hmph,” I exhaled disappointedly and stood up properly from my hunched-over position.

  In the industrial office light, the shadows revealed an abnormality on the page. Standing up properly, I examined a variety of grooves that were covering the empty entry. Running my forefinger over the page to double-check, there were indeed indentations and scratches from the tip of a sharp pen. But there was no visible writing, nor had it scratched through from another page altogether.

  These were indications of fully fledged sentences, yet nothing was visible to the naked eye. It was a long shot, but I wondered if DCI Reid had used a method of writing that wasn’t supposed to be detected or noticed easily.

  After all, he had an affiliation with sneaking around and hiding things from us. DCI Reid had secrets that nobody was supposed to find and that would likely extend to his daily routines too.

  Was there some sort of code inscribed between the diary?

  I searched as far back in the diary as possible but couldn’t spot any telltale numbers nor words correlating between the pages or dates that DCI Reid had written on. I tried a few separate methods of folding back some of the pages to see if they matched up with writing on another. None of them revealed anything entirely legible. Flummoxed, I groaned and returned to the scratches on today’s date. If I was DCI Reid, how would I hide secret notes that people wouldn’t easily find?

  Wracking my brains, I remembered a conversation our team had had a couple of months ago. There had been a news segment playing in the canteen, one which was intended for the children staying at home on the bank holiday. The news anchors had shown a fun challenge for kids to create their own invisible ink and use it to write notes for each other.

  Cillian had immediately taken to the idea and had proceeded to write a bunch of rude letters to us, displaying the method they’d shown on the television. DCI Reid had found it all hilarious and started to reminisce about all the spy movies he’d seen. He’d watched a lot of them as a teenager at the cinema near his childhood home and said that’s part of what attracted him to the CID department. To find out people’s secrets.

  If I w
as right and these pen scratches were from some sort of invisible ink, then I’d need a UV light to reveal whatever was inscribed there. Rummaging around in DCI Reid’s pen stash, I couldn’t find anything that would let off such a specialised light source. But what I did find was some sellotape and a bunch of coloured markers.

  Working quickly in case DCI Reid suddenly returned, I grabbed my smartphone and placed it facing down on the tabletop. Then, I covered the flashlight with a layer of tape and coloured a swab of blue over the protected area. Repeating the same process again, I finished with a third and final layer of tape. Instead of using the blue marker this time, I coloured with the purple one to create a makeshift and slightly rickety UV light.

  Though it wasn’t of a professional standard, I was confident the makeshift torch could do the job just as well. Holding my phone above the scratched page and switching the flashlight on, a couple of new scribbles were revealed.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered in victory and studied the hidden writing. “Eleven am, meet with David Roy.” The man I was mistaken for at the gentleman’s club the night prior. I knew my hunch was leading somewhere. “Finish job at Seafield House.”

  Seafield House wasn’t a million miles away. I’d still be able to make it if I hurried up. Certain that finishing this job had negative connotations, I didn’t want to waste even a single second. Dashing from DCI Reid’s office as fast as possible, DC Taylor nearly bumped into me as we paced along the corridor.

  “Sir?” he called out quizzically and instinctively tried to match my fast pace. Lean, he may be but he wasn’t a match for my will power. “Where are you going?” He trailed off upon realising I wasn’t going to stop running.

  “I’ll explain later,” I yelled over my shoulder and weaved between a few unsuspecting uniformed officers. Keeping it brief was for the best, in case they had a stupid idea to follow me into a potentially dangerous situation they were clueless about.

  Jogging downstairs wasn’t as easy as it sounded, for someone had mopped the floor and had left it slippery. I tried hard to stay upright without losing momentum by gripping on the bannister for dear life. There were only ten minutes until the meeting was due, and I still had to drive there yet.