The Hidden Eye

by Oliver Davies

  The black and white footage showed the small, dark car park, half-filled with cars at the end of the day. Jacob walked into the frame, bouncing his keys in his hand, but he froze halfway to his car, looking at a shadowy figure leaning against one of the posts. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before the figure stepped forward. The overhead light showed us his face for the briefest of seconds before a car pulled out between them, and then he was gone.

  The man was middle-aged, his hair washed white by the colourless film and his collar flipped up to frame his face. The angle was a little far too make out any real details aside from the long sweep of his nose and the thickness of his eyebrows.

  “Can we keep this?” I asked as Fletcher ejected the disc. Maya nodded and passed us the slim case.

  “Can you tell us anything more about what you’re working on here?” Fletcher said, spinning around in her chair so she faced the rest of us more fully.

  But Maya frowned and shook her head. “I can’t. Sorry. Non-disclosure agreements and all that.”

  My father used to work at a security company, and he’d been under a similar agreement, and he’d taken it very seriously, refusing to break it even for his wife.

  “You got anything else?” I asked Fletcher, trying to think if there was anything we’d missed.

  “Do you usually wipe all your stuff like this?” Fletcher opened up the email tab once again and gestured to the blank inbox.

  “Definitely not. We keep records of everything.” Maya spread her hands wide as if to encompass all the data the company worked with. “You never know when you might need an old piece of code or project record.”

  “Any idea why Jacob would do this then?” I asked.

  Maya shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a major breach of policy.”

  “Who’s the managing director around here?” I said as Fletcher began to gather up the various empty drives and discs and unplug the computer’s hard drive from the wall. “It’s certainly not Flynn.” I glanced at the man in the glass case. Flynn was still fully absorbed in whatever was on his computer screen, paying no attention to what was going on outside his office.

  “That would be Jonas MacDonald. He doesn’t actually come into the office very much.”

  “Do you have his contact information?”

  Maya nodded and went hunting around for her boss’s business card and handed me the slip of paper she found on her desk.

  “Thanks for all your help,” I said as I tucked the card into my pocket. Fletcher had found a plastic shopping bag and had swept everything but the hard drive into it. I picked up the large black block, its cords dangling off the back, and Maya walked us to the lift.

  “I hope you find Jacob’s killer,” she said. She’d manage to hold her tears at bay while she spoke with us, but now that we were leaving, they welled up once again, turning her eyes glossy. She scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand and took a deep, shuddering breath. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  “We’ll find whoever it was,” I told her. Dunnel believed that DIs shouldn’t promise that sort of thing, just in case we couldn’t deliver, but I didn’t agree with him there. I thought that people needed hope, and we were the only ones who could give it out.

  Maya smiled at us and nodded her thanks, and she watched us until the lift doors slid shut on us, and then Fletcher and I were alone again. I adjusted my grip on the hard drive, the plastic edges digging into my fingers.

  “We don’t have much to go on,” Fletcher said. She sounded a little bit despondent.

  “I know. Maybe Martin can find something on this computer.” We had Jacob’s email login as well, so hopefully, he could recover those emails. Between my father’s laptop and this hard drive, we were putting a lot of work on his plate.

  “What’s next?” Fletcher asked.

  “How do you feel about road trips?”

  The doors dinged open, and we stepped out into the lobby. “I love them,” Fletcher said.

  “We need to go see Jacob’s parents,” I said as we started towards the front entrance. “I doubt they’ll know anything, but they need to know what’s happened. We’ll go tomorrow. That will give Martin time with the hard drive.”

  Fletcher perked up at the prospect. She’d transferred up to Inverness from Glasgow and was no doubt excited about the prospects of looking up a few of her old friends when we weren’t working on the case.

  We loaded our goodies into the back of my car and headed back to the station. I still needed to check in with the journalist who’d written the incorrect article on Jacob’s death as I’d promised Alana, not to mention who had leaked the information in the first place, but we needed to drop everything off with Martin first.

  The station car park was in chaos when we arrived, and I pulled into a parking space at the very back, unable to get any closer. Puzzled, Fletcher and I stepped from the car. There was a crowd gathered around the front doors, most of them shouting, and a few even waving signs. The voices layered over each other, so I had a hard time making out exactly what they were saying.

  I glanced at Fletcher, but she shrugged, shaking her head. We pushed our way into the crowd and were immediately swallowed by the seething anger and tension that cloaked the entire scene.

  “No justice, no peace!” a man beside me yelled, shaking his fist.

  “Lock him up!” someone else shouted, and a very sick, worried feeling began to squirm within my stomach when I realized that most of the protestors were black and other minorities. Something terrible had happened while we were gone.

  “Oh no,” Fletcher whispered.

  We needed to get inside and figure out what had happened and what we could do about it. We broke out of the crowd and hurried towards the door. When those at the front realized that we were heading inside, they began to shout at us specifically, demanding to know what we were going to do, how we were going to fix this, and I couldn’t answer them even if I wanted to.

  The doors swung shut behind us, sealing us into a bubble, the glass muting the angered yelling outside. The inside of the station was dead silent. The other officers sat at their desks without speaking, most of them looking absolutely shocked. Fletcher and I dropped our evidence off at my desk and then went to hunt Dunnel down, hungry for answers.

  We found him standing behind the two-way mirror looking in on Sergeant Townsend seated sullenly at the table, arms folded tightly across his chest. His eyebrows carved a thick V in his face, his lips folded so much that the tips almost touched his chin. There was a speckle of blood on the starched white cuff on his shirt, and his hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly on top of the table.

  Dunnel glanced over as the door creaked open, and relief flooded his face when he saw that it was us. I’d never seen him look so stressed or even generally emotional. Worry was written all across his face, caught in the deep wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. He shook his head as we came in and Fletcher shut the door behind us.

  “It’s bad,” was all he said.

  “What happened?” I demanded. Fletcher and I moved to stand beside him, studying Townsend in the interview room. I was pretty sure I already knew what he was going to say, but I needed to know the specifics.

  “Townsend here,” anger snapped within Dunnel’s voice, barely constrained by his forced professionalism, “fatally stabbed an unarmed black man in the back. The man’s name was Cameron Houser.”

  Fletcher began to curse, long and hard and violently.

  Even though I’d known Dunnel was going to say something like that, I was still stunned into silence. I’d heard about horrible things like this happening elsewhere, but I’d never imagined it happening here in Inverness. I thought I’d known everyone in the station, and I hadn’t thought anyone capable of something like this, but that was probably what everyone said.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dunnel sighed. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Dunnel needed to be deci
sive here otherwise we’d been torn apart by the protestors outside, but Dunnel was frozen with uncertainty, having never faced a situation like this before.

  Fletcher finally choked back her violent scream of curse words but was still glaring through the window at Townsend. He couldn’t see her, but it seemed to make her feel better. “Townsend always creeped me out a little bit,” she said. “There’s something off about him.”

  Now that she’d said it, I could see that there was something off-kilter in his eyes, a remorseless curve to his lips. I hadn’t interacted with Townsend all that much. He mostly worked vice crimes and was one of those sergeants who liked to work alone, like I had used to.

  “You have to fire him,” I said, “you have to arrest him.”

  “He’s claiming self-defence. It’s his word against a five-year-old’s. We need something more.”

  “You said he stabbed the man in the back!” Fletcher yelled the first couple of words but quickly and forcefully brought her voice down, realizing that Townsend would be able to hear her through the glass. “How irrefutable is that?”

  Dunnel gave her a sharp look, regaining a little bit of his usual crisp self-assurance. “We need to do this absolutely right so he can’t wriggle his way out of this. That means a full investigation of him, his past, the incident, anything we can think of. Do you understand?”

  Fletcher’s nose twitched angrily, but she nodded, accepting his logic. “Can we be in charge?” she asked.

  “Don’t you have enough on your plate?” Dunnel said, but he didn’t sound like he was going to reject the idea outright.

  “There’s no one else I’d trust to do it exactly right,” Fletcher said, puffing up her chest just a little bit. I was sure another Inspector would do just fine, but sometimes, there were things that you wanted to do yourself to make sure they were done absolutely right.

  Dunnel nodded after he searched Fletcher’s eyes and saw the determination there. “Okay then. It’s all yours.”

  Fletcher took a deep breath, pushing most of her red hot anger away, leaving behind the glowing coals and embers. The two of us left the little back room and paused just outside, swallowed by the silence of the shell-shocked station.

  Fletcher placed her hand on my elbow, and I turned to look at her, her eyes deep and serious. “Can I take the lead on this one?” she asked. “I know you’re the senior officer, but I really want to do this.”

  “Go for it,” I said. “I’m here to help any way you need.”

  She smiled at me, the expression quiet and serious. “Thanks.” She pounded her fist into her other hand and narrowed her eyes. “Let’s do this.”

  Fletcher threw open the door, storming inside, and half the station turned to look, drawn by the sudden movement, and I followed her into the interview room, sealing us inside with Townsend.

  He looked up warily as we entered, eyes dark and guarded, his fingers drumming against the table. He sat rather languidly in his chair as if he wasn’t at all bothered by what was going on, and I wondered why he wasn’t cuffed. Anyone else, and we would have had them triple-locked to the table.

  Lots of us carried little pocketknives. Even I did, they came in handy at times. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Townsend did too, but to actually kill a man with it? Had he wanted to abuse the privilege throughout training, or was this something new that had grown inside of him? I’d always thought the system worked well at weeding out people like Townsend. Maybe I’d put too much faith in it.

  “Townsend,” Fletcher said as she dropped into one of the chairs on the other side of the table. I pulled the second one out and sat just a few inches behind her, giving her full control of the interview. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “It was self-defence,” Townsend said. His face barely twitched. There was certainly no guilt there. He could at least try and fake it.

  “How does stabbing someone in the back constitute self-defence?” Fletcher demanded.

  “He swung at me, overbalanced so much he spun around, and I wounded him before he had a chance to try again.” Townsend shrugged, his words measured and even. He’d been practising this in his head ever since he’d been caught. That didn’t necessarily mean he was lying--my sister had to rehearse a script before every phone call she made, but even then, she usually stumbled through it. Townsend’s delivery was word-perfect.

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. She clearly smelled bullshit, too. “You thought it was necessary to stab an unarmed man?”

  “I didn’t say he was unarmed.”

  “Oh yeah?” Fletcher cocked her head to the side. “Then what did he have on him?”

  It certainly wouldn’t have been a gun.

  Townsend cracked his neck, twisting his head one way and then the other, the ripple of popping joints making me shiver, the casual twist of the gesture making me want to flip the table up into his face. “A knife,” he said.

  “Will we find a knife when we go through Mr Houser’s things?” Fletcher asked.

  “Unless someone nabbed it,” Townsend sneered.

  Of course. It was always someone else’s fault.

  “And why would someone do that?” Fletcher barely won the battle against rolling her eyes at Townsend’s answer.

  The sergeant lifted his hands off the table in a lazy half-shrug. “Who can say?” He cut his eyes towards me, lifting one eyebrow. “You’re very quiet.”

  “Just taking it all in,” I said, my voice cold.

  Townsend snorted. “Don’t act like you’re so much better than me. You shot a couple of guys during your last case.”

  “Yes, but one was armed and actively trying to kill Fletcher and me, and the other had kidnapped and was threatening a little boy, so yes. I shot them nonlethally. You and I are not the same.” Anger made my voice shake. How dare Townsend compare us? I’d made mistakes, yes, maybe even gone a little too far in my anger, but I had never killed anyone, never wounded someone who wasn’t a threat to me or my partner.

  Fletcher held up a hand to tell me to calm down. Her own anger had retreated beneath the surface, leaving her icy cold. “Dunnel told us there was a witness.”

  “Yeah, a five-year-old.” Townsend rolled his eyes and kicked his boots up onto the table. He really thought he was sitting pretty. “Good luck getting that to hold up in court. I did nothing wrong.”

  Fletcher shook her head and stood, the legs of her chair scraping across the floor. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

  Townsend gazed up at her, totally unmoved. “And why’s that.”

  “You’re so blinded by your own superiority that you can’t see anything beyond the tip of your nose. What a way to live. Come on, Callum.”

  I followed her out of the interview room, sparing Townsend one last look before I shut the door. He snorted, wrinkling his nose, and tossed his head, determined to be a rock in the stream even as a tidal wave came crashing down all around him.

  Seven

  Fletcher and I slumped into our desk chairs, and I let out a long, tension-laden sigh. Movement was starting to pick back up within the station as everyone finally forced themselves to return to work while outside, the protest seemed to have swelled. Though the glass muffled their words, many of them shook signs in the air, and someone had found a megaphone to yell into.

  “How did I do?” Fletcher asked. Her confidence in the interview room had mostly been an act, and now that we were alone, it had melted away, leaving her with shaky hands and tired eyes.

  “You did great,” I promised her. “I mean that.”

  She smiled at me wanly. “Thanks. I should speak with the witness next.” She winced and rubbed at her forehead. “He’s only five. Geez, he’s going to be scarred for life.”

  “Are you okay if we split up here?” I asked. “I need to keep my promise to Alana and set the journalist’s story straight before the office closes for the day. Maybe I can get out ahead of this one, too.” I inclined my head towards the closed interview ro
om, Townsend still seated inside until Dunnel could find someone to move him to holding.

  “Good idea,” Fletcher agreed.

  “And tomorrow we’ll go to Glasgow to speak with Jacob’s parents?”

  Fletcher nodded. “Yes. They need to know what’s happened.”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight then.”

  Our plan in place, we parted ways, Fletcher off to hunt down her witness while I went out the back entrance to avoid the crowd of protestors and found my way to my car. Most everyone was focused on the man with the megaphone, and so no one noticed as I reversed out of the parking space and drove off, the tension in my stomach easing somewhat once the station was out of sight.

  The Inverness Courier had been around for about two hundred years, and many people, especially older folks, considered it to be the only reliable source for news in the entire world. Never mind the Guardian or the BBC News or even the entirety of the Internet, for people in Inverness, the Courier’s word was law. A fact that no doubt compounded Alana’s anger at their false representation of Jacob Greene.

  The brick building was small, hardly noticeable amidst the bustle of the rest of the street but for the iron-wrought letters spelling out the paper’s name across the front of the structure. I managed to find a scrap of street parking and climbed from my car with the offending issue in hand, pausing to wait for an opening in the traffic before I crossed the street and let myself in through the main entrance.

  I was almost run over by a man with a cart full of newspapers the second I stepped inside, and I barely managed to dodge out of the way as he continued along his path without even tossing a ‘sorry’ over his shoulder. The clatter of keys filled the large room, and from somewhere deep inside, I could hear the constant whumph of a printing press. I approached a woman seated at what I thought was a receptionist desk and put on a smile.