One Way Ticket (17 page)

“Can we just go home?”

We had another wait whilst various monks
kindly tried to ascertain whether the road was now open, making me feel a heel
for thinking the worst of them the night before. I put a donation in a nearby collection
box to ease my conscience before we finally drove off.

21 Papercut

Addi dropped me off at home so I
could shower and change, and answer Aunt June’s one hundred questions.

“I thought you’re just an admin
assistant?” was one of them.

“Thanks for the ‘just’ part of that, it
made we feel valued.”

She put a mug of tea down next to me. “You
know what I meant, why have you been swanning round all over the place?”

“One, I haven’t been ‘swanning’ anywhere,
I don’t even know what that means. Two, I’m helping Addi with a case.”

“You’ve made up, then?”

“What can I say? He can’t cope without
me.”

“And is this Tina Lloyd’s murder you’re
helping with?”

“Yep.”

“Are we likely to see anyone arrested
anytime soon?”

“I’ll be doing my best.”

“You two remind me of the Keystone Cops.”

“It’s not easy, everyone we speak to lies
about everything, even the small stuff. They’re all covering something up.”

“Well, you’re just right for the job.”

“What do you mean? I haven’t lied about
anything.”

“You won’t tell me the truth though, about
what happened back home.”

“Oh…” We looked at each other for a
moment. “I’ve got to go have a shower,” I announced and escaped.

When I finally strolled into the
police station after lunch, I was disappointed to see Addi had gotten there
before me. I’d hoped he would have taken the morning off as well.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, dumping
some pages of print offs on my desk. “I got here ages ago.”

“Good for you, I needed a nap. We didn’t
all get a good seven hours sleep last night.”

“Ssh. Be careful what you say around here.
People might get funny ideas if they knew we spent the night together.”

This seemed to be the wrong way round, I
was pretty sure I should be the one concerned for my honour. “What did your
mother say?”

“She thinks I was there on my own. I
thought it best that way.”

“I think it best that way too. What’s
this?”

“Print outs of Tina’s phone records for
the last few months before she died. I thought we could look for phone calls to
Louise Allen? Just in case there was something going on with the two of them.”

I didn’t know what had come over Addi all
of a sudden, being all detective-like. “Let me get my coat off, at least.”

“That’s Louise Allen’s number. You start
on them, I’ve got to go ring someone else,” he said, walking out of the room.
Great, I get stuck with the donkey work again. By the time he got back, I’d had
a good look at all the records.

“Anything?”

“One phone call, 15
^th
August.”

“That’s not good.”

“Face it, it’s not her. I feel sorry for
her anyway, not being able to come out. Must be terrible.”

“Come out of where?”

“Never mind.”

“Do you have any more ideas about Tina’s
murderer?” he asked.

“We do seem to be out of suspects.”

“We haven’t even found a real motive for
anyone.”

“Or any evidence.”

“Oh yes, evidence,” Addi echoed, spitting
the word out as if it were profanity. It struck me that maybe Addi wasn’t cut
out for this police investigating lark.

“Yeah, I’m pretty certain we need some of
that before you can convict anybody.”

“I know.” Addi sighed in a way that made
it clear he hadn’t picked up the sarcasm in my tone.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You missed your update for the mayor’s
office last night.”

“No I rang and gave the same update as the
night before, they didn’t notice.”

We stared at the wall for a bit.

“You know, in this light, that stain on
the wall looks a bit like a machine gun,” I commented.

“A machine gun? I think it looks like an
elephant.”

A psychiatrist would probably say that
summed up the difference between Addi and me.

I slapped the desk hard to wake both of us
up. “Right. Basically, we’ve been through the file, reviewed the evidence,
spoken to all known associates of Tina and we haven’t come up with anything.
So…”

“So?”

“So…I have no idea. I think we need to
consider looking to see if there’s a book on investigating murders because I
really don’t know what to do next. Is there someone you could ask?”

 “I could check the manual.”

“What manual?”

“The Homicide Procedure Manual.”

I sat up slightly. “There’s a manual for
this?”

“Of course, there’s a police manual for
pretty much everything.”

“You’re kidding me? You mean there’s a
manual we should have been following all along?”

“Yes.”

“Then why haven’t we been using it?”

“I wanted to see if I could do it by
myself.”

I sighed. “Well I think you’ve answered
that one. We’ve been running around like headless chickens.”

“Talking of chicken, my mother says do you
want to come to dinner tonight?”

Alarm bells went off in my head. “Your
mother?”

“Yes.”

“Wants me to come to dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think she wants to meet you.”

I was pretty certain I didn’t want to meet
her. “And you say she doesn’t know we were out together last night?”

“No.”

“Good.” How could I get out of this? “It’s
not much notice. Aunt June’s probably cooking something as we speak.”

“You don’t want to come?”

Does the Pope wear a dress? “It’s not
that, it’s just I don’t want to upset my aunt by ruining two meals in a row.
And I’d like to get an early night after last night.”

“Okay, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Your mother’s that keen, is she?”

“Yes.”

“Uh…” Could I think of another excuse in
time? Suddenly invent a hobby or a friend? “Well… um… no, I don’t think I’m
doing anything tomorrow.” Damn.

“Great. You’ll come over then. Do you want
me to get this manual? It won’t tell you who the killer is, you know.”

“The manual we should have been following
all along with the correct procedures in it? Yes I want you to get it!”

Addi left.

When he returned, he thumped a large
folder down on my desk, making me choke on my last crumb of coconut cake I’d
had the foresight to stop off and buy at the bakery on my way in.

“That’s the murder manual,” he announced.

I flicked through the 250-odd pages of
close packed, small print instructions in the folder with little enthusiasm.

“Well, we were looking for something to do
this afternoon, weren’t we?”

The more I read, the more
depressed I started to feel. We hadn’t followed a single procedure. We’d failed
to identify all the appropriate lines of enquiry, no geographical parameters
had been set for the house-to-house enquiries, nor any logical parameters for
tracing known associates of the victim. And don’t get me started on the record
keeping. It looked like any one of these issues could result in a collapse of
the police case if we ever got to trial. Fortunate that the chances of a trial
happening right now were remote.

“Right,” I began, once I’d read enough, the
ex-administrator in me kicking in, “time to get a bit more organised. First
off, we need a map of the area where Tina lived.”

“Here,” Addi said and pulled one out of
the back of the case notes.

“Take a photocopy, I want to write on it.”

That done, I marked in Tina’s apartment,
then the locations of all the other people in the neighbourhood who’d been
questioned.

“You keep filling this in,” I told Addi,
“I’ll read the next chapter.”

The next part was forensic exhibits. Not
only had I broken the chain of evidence by taking Tina’s photo and birthday
cards home, I’d potentially incriminated Aunt June by letting her handle them -
now they’d have her fingerprints all over them. Oops. I skipped over to the
next section.

“Do we even have an interview strategy?” I
asked.

Addi looked about eight years old with his
tongue poking out, marking locations on the map. “A what?”

“I thought so.”

It was official - this investigation was a
shambles. The only bit we’d done right was when I’d made the list of people
already interviewed. We should have used a standard questionnaire to interview
Tina’s neighbours, ensuring we asked the same questions each time instead of
randomly thinking of things to ask. All the interviews we’d done and the dozens
Addi had conducted previously were technically invalid. I thought of all the
notes I’d typed up and could have cried. It wasn’t like this on Columbo.

Addi showed me the map once he’d finished
putting little crosses on it.

“Right that represents the house-to-house
enquiry that’s been conducted,” I told him.

“It’s much easier to see where we’ve been
like this.”

“Yes, and there are quite a few blanks on
the map, aren’t there?

“Some of them are holiday homes, they’re
not occupied,” Addi told me.

“What about the rest?”

“There are a couple of apartments here I
didn’t speak to,” he admitted, pointing to an area round the corner from the
murder scene. “I remember one of them was out. I meant to go back.”

“We need to work out a set of questions to
ask before we go interview anyone else, no more doing it off the top of our
heads.”

“I don’t see how it’s going to work if I
can only ask these questions?” Addi said after I’d written down some of the
examples from the manual.

“You can ask other stuff, this is just to
make sure we cover the basics. Did you know we’re meant to record a rough
description of everyone?”

I finished typing the list and printed off
a few copies. “We’ll use this as a form. I’ve added a large box at the bottom
for extra stuff.”

When I was done, I sat back with a feeling
of satisfaction. This was a bit like being back in my old job in England, following procedures, typing up forms. I felt much more confident now we were more
organised.

Addi had been wriggling around in his seat
for much of it. “We still don’t know who the killer is, we’re just wasting
time,” he moaned.

“This is not a waste of time. It’s showing
where the gaps in your investigation are. Look, there’re at least half a dozen
people in her neighbourhood you haven’t spoken to yet. And the ones you have
interviewed, you haven’t got all the basic information from.”

“But, do we need all this paperwork?”

“Yes, there’s no point going off
half-cocked.”

Addi looked at me and I realised I
couldn’t explain that phrase.

It was already four o’clock, so I
suggested calling it a day (Addi: what else would you call it?) and starting on
the house-to-house interviews in the morning.

After a decent nights sleep, I
felt a little more optimistic starting on the list of Tina’s neighbours previously
missed. The sun was even shining this morning.

“You haven’t forgotten you’re coming to
dinner tonight?” Addi asked as we set off.

It was like a black cloud had suddenly
hovered overhead. “No.” Aunt June had laughed her head off when I’d told her.
She was convinced Addi’s mother wanted to scare me off. “Is your mum mad at
me?”

“No, she just wants to meet you. I guess
I’ve mentioned you a few times.”

“Hmm.” I carried on sorting the list of
neighbours into a running order I thought would be the most speedy and
propitious, and tried not to think about why his mother really wanted to see me.
“Right, we’re not messing about anymore, we are following a Plan today.” When
we arrived, I led Addi to the first house on my list. The man was out, and so
were the next two.

“This is why police work takes so long,” Addi
told me as we went back to one house for the third time, to see if the occupant
had returned, “human beings’ lives don’t follow plans.”

Mine certainly didn’t. It took nearly four
hours to track down and interview all but one of the neighbours. And in that
time we didn’t learn anything new. It wasn’t our best morning.

“How long do you want to wait around for?”
I asked, conscious my stomach was signalling we were well into lunchtime. We’d
been sitting in Addi’s car outside the house of our last neighbour for half an
hour, waiting for him to turn up.

Addi glanced at his watch. “I guess we may
as well go, we could be sat here all day.” He reached into his pocket for
something. “I’ll just push a note through his door before we go.” I watched him
start scribbling on one of his business cards.

At the same time, an elderly man came
round the corner and made his way slowly up the slight incline where we were
waiting. Just under six foot tall, black glasses, stringy grey hair, bit of a
stoop, he matched the description a neighbour had given us of the man we were
waiting for. Typical of him to turn up as we were about to leave for lunch.

“Here, look at this guy coming along,” I
told Addi. “D’you reckon that’s him?”

Addi stopped writing and watched him for a
few moments. “Only one way to find out,” he told me and opened the car door.

“Mr Harris?” he called, sticking his head
out.

The man took in the car and the two of us,
eyes widening. Before Addi had the chance to say anything else, the man turned
tail and loped off back down the road (I would say ran but that would be a bit
ambitious), throwing down his carrier bag in the process.

Before I knew it, I had the car door open
and was in hot pursuit with Addi, who’d gotten tangled in his seat belt in his
haste to give chase. Even at his pedestrian pace, the old man had cleared the
corner and was trying to negotiate a low fence when we caught up with him.

“Police, stop!” Addi shouted at him.

The old guy ignored him and carried on
trying to get his leg over (the fence). We each took an arm and pulled him
back.