One Way Ticket

by Evie Evans

  “I thought you wanted to leave.”

  “Leave? In the middle of a fight? You are silly sometimes.”

  Stupid me. I went to get another round whilst my aunt discussed the benefits of boxing left handed with her friends.

  After two more drinks, I had to persuade my aunt it was time to go home.

  “But another match’s starting,” she protested.

  “I’ve got to wash my hair,” I lied.

  “Oh, alright.”

  She said goodbye to her friends and reluctantly followed me out. “You can be a spoilsport sometimes.”

  “You didn’t want to come earlier.”

  “I didn’t know Ted and Stig were going to be here. Did you find anything out?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your questions. About Tina. I’m not an idiot, Jennifer.”

  “No. Well, I just wanted to check a couple of things.” A couple of things that had just proved the case against Roger further.

  “Did Addi know you were coming here tonight?”

  “No.”

  “I think you should be careful, interfering with his case.”

  “He asked for my help.”

  “Did he give permission for you to go off questioning people on your own?”

  I didn’t answer. She was starting to sound like my mother again.

  There was no need for Addi to even know we’d been there. That’s what I was hoping anyway. Unfortunately, real life always seems to turn out a little differently.

  “You look like you’ve lost a pound and found a penny,” I commented when Addi appeared in my office the next morning.

  “What?” he asked, sucking in his stomach. “You think I’ve lost weight?”

  “It’s a saying,” I tried to explain. “Yes,” I lied, when he looked disappointed.

  He lost the frown he’d been wearing and almost smiled. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Roger Bale’s alibi checked out after all. He was in a staff meeting at the animal sanctuary the afternoon Tina was killed. I’ve had to let him go.”

  “You never said anything about an alibi! I bought four rounds too,” I blurted out.

  “What?”

  I recovered quickly. “Nothing. That’s good news really, isn’t it?”

  “Good? How?”

  “I knew it wasn’t him.”

  “But now I don’t have a suspect. The chief was really impressed last night when I told him I had someone under arrest.”

  “We’ll find another one. You’re still looking for Louise Allen, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t even gotten the form to request the phone number yet.”

  “We’ll have to think of something else.”

  “I have. I’ve got the barman from the White Hart coming in. It seems to be somewhere Tina hung out a lot, thought it would be worth having a word with him.”

  I had a feeling this wasn’t going to go well.

  14 All Falls Down

  Of course, it was Stig that arrived. I tried to hide in my office but Addi called me in to ‘translate’. I took my place at the desk without looking at either of them but I knew it couldn’t last long.

  “Hello,” Stig said. “Didn’t know you worked here.”

  Addi looked between the two of us. “You know each other?”

  “I’ve had a drink in the White Hart,” I said.

  “Last night, it was good to see June again. Did you find Roger in the end?”

  Addi looked at me and I wished they had invented an invisible switch I could use right now.

  “You were there with your aunt last night?” he asked me. There was a tone in his voice that made me uneasy.

  “Yes?” I squeaked.

  “Excuse us a moment please,” he said to Stig. “I need to speak to you outside,” he told me.

  We exited the room and I followed Addi down the corridor. Instead of stopping he continued round the corner, out the back door, and onto the path to the sea.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Freezing to death.”

  “This isn’t funny, Jennifer. You went out to that bar with your aunt last night.”

  “She fancied a drink. There was a match on.”

  “And you just happened to speak to the barman about someone called Roger?”

  For someone who came across as not too bright, he could be pretty sharp.

  “Look, I was worried that Roger was innocent. We just went to check if he’d been there with Tina.”

  “You took your aunt to talk to potential witnesses. Without me.”

  “I just asked a couple of questions. Aunt June watched the match.” As I said it, it didn’t sound quite so reasonable anymore.

  “This is too much. I know I asked for help but that didn’t mean you could take over the questioning and bring your aunt along.”

  “Alright−”

  “No. That’s it. Thank you for your help but I won’t be needing you any more. I’m sorry, you’re off the case.”

  He walked back into the building before I could form my response. I had to make do with a hand gesture instead.

  Going back to my normal work was a let down after my couple of days on a murder investigation. Vara thought I must be homesick.

  “I wish I had some news that will cheer you up, but I don’t think this will,” she told me.

  “Not a public holiday coming up? I could do with a day off.”

  “We have to redo the filing system.”

  “What?” And I’d been worried it was going to be a crap day.

  “It’s a new system the sergeant has come up with. I have the instructions here. Sexual deviants or insurance fraud?” she asked. (Worryingly this isn’t the strangest question I’ve been asked since starting work in the police station.) She was indicating the filing cabinets that lined one side of our office.

  “I’ll take insurance fraud,” I replied, too frightened I might find Aunt June in the other files.

  It’s astonishing how many tourists carry not only cameras and expensive phones around with them on holiday, but also iPods and iPads too, all at the same time. Amazing! And you lost them all along with your antique diamond watch and platinum ring? Incredible! No wonder the price of insurance had gone up.

  It was an exciting day going through those files, trying to put them in a new order according to a system Sergeant H. had devised. I can only assume it makes more sense in the native language because it was all Greek to…, no let’s not go there. Let’s just say, the new filing system was very creative.

  And we got to do it all over again the next day, and the next, until we’d gone through all the filing cabinets. How lucky were we? All the time Addi was out there no doubt screwing up the murder investigation.

  “Are these distraction thefts meant to be here?” Vara asked on the third day. “I think something’s gone wrong somewhere.”

  As we stepped through the instructions again we both began to realise we’d missed a step. “We’ll have to go through the lot again,” Vara wailed.

  We were on the last filing cabinet and today was meant to be our last day of ‘fun’. No way was I going through this again. I grabbed some of the remaining files and dumped them back in the cabinet drawer, repeating this action until they were all back inside. Vara watched, hopping lightly from one foot to the other.

  “What’s the sergeant going to say when he finds out?” she asked when I’d finished.

  “He isn’t going to find out. You can’t tell me he’s going to go through all these cabinets. It’ll be our little secret.”

  I took the instructions from her, put them in the middle drawer of my desk and closed it firmly. Giving her a smile, I pulled the next set of investigation notes from my in tray, and started to type them up. Vara smiled back and returned to her own desk. I hadn’t been an administrator for nothing, you know.

  Just as Vara had settled behind her desk, Addi came into the office. I perked up a li
ttle, wondering if I had been given a reprieve. He ignored me and sauntered over to Vara.

  “Some notes for you,” he said, plonking them down in her in-tray.

  Vara looked at him in surprise then at me. Addi turned round and left without another word.

  So it was going to be like that, was it?

  Naturally, I was facing defeat on the home front as well.

  “How’s the case going?” Aunt June asked when I got in from work.

  “Oh, you know,” I said, joining her on the couch and flicking through the tv channels.

  “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking. Hey, I was watching that.”

  “What? The bear cartoon? Look, that cookery programme’s on,” I said.

  “I don’t know why you watch it, you can’t understand what half the ingredients are. You thought he was making pastry with grated soap the other day.”

  “I’ve never seen lard like that before, that’s all.”

  “What is happening with Tina’s murder?”

  I tried to concentrate on the rather bizarre looking dish the chef was making. “I’m not really allowed to talk about it. Does that look like aubergine to you?”

  Aunt June put her glasses on. “Why would he be spreading jam on it? You were happy to talk about the case before.”

  “That was then. It’s not jam, that’s some kind of olive tapenade. Why do you bother with your glasses?”

  “You’re in a good mood, I see.”

  “I’ve just spent all day re-filing a whole cabinet of case notes. It’s not been a good day.”

  “Filing? I thought you were helping Addi track down this murderer?”

  “No. I’m not exactly working with him at the moment.”

  “Messed it up, have you?”

  “No,” I told her, outraged. “Well, yes, sort of. He found out about us going to the White Hart without him. He wasn’t very happy.”

  “I told you so. You are an idiot sometimes.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know if anyone’s ever said this before but ‘I told you so’ isn’t a great comfort.”

  “He’s slicing banana on top of your aubergine and olives.”

  I hate it when my aunt is right.

  “I suppose the murderer won’t be found now,” she went on.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it, no.”

  “This is serious, Jennifer.” She took off her glasses to emphasise her point. “Tina’s death will be hanging over this community forever. These rumours and whispers will go on, blaming people like Roger, yes I heard about that. Everyone knows he was brought in. He’ll never be treated the same now, not till someone’s convicted.”

  “I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Addi doesn’t want my help and that’s it.”

  The dish on the television was being served up with scoops of ice-cream. “I guess that wasn’t moussaka, then?” I said.

  My aunt crossed her arms and looked unhappy.

  “Okay,” I said, “what are these rumours and whispers you’ve heard?”

  Aunt June was right of course (not that I’d admit it to her). Chances were that Addi wouldn’t be able to solve the case. Every day that he wasted was another day that the case got colder. It’d already been through two other detectives, if it wasn’t solved soon it was likely to be closed unsolved.

  Even if Addi had relegated me back to the admin office, that didn’t mean I couldn’t still take part. What was to stop me going through the file and reviewing the evidence? I didn’t have access to all the online case notes, but the paper version was sitting in a filing cabinet in my office. He’d already interviewed half the population, he may well have spoken to the murderer already and not realised it. It needed someone to go through the notes with the proverbial fine-toothed comb to find the obvious information that so far had been missed. Alright, I wouldn’t be able to interview anyone, officially, but I bet I could find a few important details. That would show him.

  My new plan came into action the next day when Vara went out for lunch, she often did a little shopping in her lunch break. I gave her enough time to leave the building before jumping up and retrieving the case file from its home.

  I’d noticed when I went through the file before that the notes were a bit random. Each detective seemed to have approached the investigation in a different way and the result was a haphazard mess of partially progressed leads and half completed notes. It was an affront to my sense of organisation to see it in such a state. Before I knew it, I was re-organising it.

  To start with, I took the witness statements out and divided them into neighbours, associates and those from out of town. Then I pulled all the forensic data together before starting to read through it again.

  The file now contained the forensic reports. They seemed to be fairly comprehensive - autopsy report, analysis of stomach contents, murder scene findings. Tina Lloyd’s cause of death had been cerebral hypoxia as Addi had said. Murder weapon was yet to be determined but was thought to be a type of thin cord or belt. The report stated her weight at death had been nearly 81 kilos (roughly 178 pounds in old money). At 5 foot 4 inches, she’d been classed as obese but the pathologist didn’t feel unusual strength would have been needed to kill her.

  I put down the sandwich I’d been in the middle of eating when I saw the photo of her dead body. It was awful, her skin all pale apart from the livid marks around her neck. It made me feel sick to see what had happened to her. There were also photos of her apartment. It looked expensive, cream walls and faux suede upholstery, tasteful art on the walls. She had obviously been a good housekeeper, everything seemed clean and tidy.

  Tina had been murdered in her apartment sometime after 2.10pm (the last sighting of her by two women in her local corner shop). Her body had been found about 5.30pm on the same afternoon. There were no signs of forced entry and little sign of violence in her home. There was also no sign of robbery, as Addi had said, her purse, tv and dvd player were still present. The stomach contents indicated she had eaten a lunch of ham, bread and tomatoes not long beforehand, the remains of which were still in the kitchen. One plate and one cup had been used.

  Did this really mean anything? As Addi had pointed out, her door was unlocked so there was nothing to force. And couldn’t someone have washed and replaced a cup to make it look like Tina was alone?

  I quickly turned to the next report. Sickening as it was, at the same time, I couldn’t deny there was something pretty compelling about trying to solve a murder. If only I could forget this involved a real person and pretend it was a game.

  I read on. For a retirement community, her neighbours were really unobservant. No one had seen anything. How was it possible? My aunt knew the comings and goings of all her neighbours and she couldn’t even see the front door of most of them.

  There also wasn’t much about the woman herself. The case file contained only a sketchy biography – 65 years old, moved to Cyprus from Essex five years ago, volunteered for a few local charities, widowed some years ago in England, no children, no boyfriend and, according to the report, no enemies. But that couldn’t be true. Someone, somewhere, hadn’t told the truth.

  “What are you doing?”

  I looked up to see Sergeant H standing over me. Where had he sprung from?

  “Sorting case notes,” I told him. “They’ve gotten mixed up.”

  He looked like he was considering me for a minute, perhaps he had seen a guilty look on my face. I brazenly held his gaze. “You’d better have these as well,” he told me and handed over a bunch of reports. He left, after I thanked him, and I had a look at what he’d just given me.

  The top few sheets were notes for an altercation in the supermarket but underneath it were, and my heart quickened when I saw this, Addi’s recent notes on Tina’s murder.

  Thank you, sergeant.

  15 Friend Is A Four Letter Word

  In the end, the notes weren’t much to write home about (not that I do that anyway). Addi still hadn’t located Louise A
llen or even gotten the phone number she’d used to call her mother. For someone who’d gone missing and could be a possible second victim, finding her didn’t seem to be a huge priority. I tried not to worry. Instead of instigating a major search for Louise Allen, Addi had interviewed the secretary of a charity Tina Lloyd had done some voluntary work for a couple of years ago. Apparently Tina had been in a running dispute with one woman over the choice of biscuits for the refreshments table. Not exactly something anyone would commit murder over.

  It was just as I’d feared. The investigation was foundering without me. I checked my watch and saw our lunch break was almost over already, Vara could be back any moment, and I was only halfway through the file. Tearing myself away, I placed the new case notes in Vara’s in tray and put the improved (I like to think) file back in the filing cabinet.

  Not a moment too soon as Vara came back just minutes later. I wasn’t sure if Addi had actually told her not to give me his notes but I decided not to risk it. I gave her my best innocent smile as I started entering the other notes Sergeant H had given me onto the system.

  All afternoon, whilst typing up details of noise complaints and a stolen parrot (the two were not necessarily connected), I considered what I’d read in that case file. I positively racked my brains for a cunning detail Addi had missed. And what did I come up with? Nothing. A big, fat zero. I hadn’t had time to read through all the interviews so I didn’t have enough information to identify who should be top of the suspect list. My eureka moment would have to wait until I could read the rest of the file. But when would that be? I was itching to get back at the filing cabinet (and I never thought I’d say those words) but Vara settled in for the afternoon with a large stack of files and showed no signs of budging.

  I did consider staying behind after hours but without a decent excuse - impending earthquake/major court case/royal visit – I wouldn’t be able to justify being there one minute after 5 o’clock. It wasn’t fair, Sherlock Holmes didn’t have to wait for people’s lunch breaks to do his investigations.