Greetings, readers!
It's been over a year since
I last blogged. Interesting.
Last year I found myself in
a university classroom in a tutorial on teaching literacy to primary school
students. The tutor was great but the unit overall was terrible, and if you
ever catch me in person I've got a whole rant about it that I'm happy to share
if you remind me. In the tutorials, our excellent tutor taught us a range of
activities for teaching literacy and also demonstrated many of them by getting
the class to participate in the activities.
One of the activities is a
writing activity where the teacher brings in a bunch of random objects and the
students have to use the objects (all of them) as inspiration for a piece of
writing. Our tutor brought in a range of random objects and gave us a short
time to write about them. We didn't have to share our work and we only had
about 10 minutes to write, anyway. But of course, I then zoned out for the rest
of the session and completed my story, which I will now share here for you. If
you're wondering why the first paragraphs features a number of random objects,
including a specific brand of biscuits, it's because that was the exercise.
♥Nancy♬
Case
Closed
A pen in a bottle. A pink
plate covered in chocolate crumbs. A discarded biscuit box. A knife, gleaming
red with blood. A dead body.
“It’s not much to go on.”
Rubber rustled as the
detective, Kevin, took off his gloves. He brushed a lock of hair out of his
eyes.
“And what’s with the pen?
In the bottle?” said the detective’s partner, Sarah.
“We’ll get the lab to check
it out. It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s just so odd. She
seems like a kindly old lady. I mean, look at the biscuit box.”
The box was a grim sight.
Perhaps it had once been a cheerful covering for Lebkuchen Hearts, Stars &
Pretzels. Today, it was a lump of soggy cardboard, red and sticky with
congealing blood, pierced by a knife.
“Come on,” said Sarah,
“let’s go speak to the grandson.”
“They’re my favourite
biscuits!” wailed the 20-year-old grandson. “Gran buys them every Thursday and
we have tea together. But when I got here today… she was dead!”
“This has been a terrible
trauma for you,” Sarah said. She put a comforting hand on the grandson’s
shoulder. “Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt your Gran?”
“Nooooooo!”
Kevin winced. It was too
early in the day to deal with this high-pitched whine, especially on top of his
customary Thursday-morning hangover.
“Everyone loved Gran,” said
the grandson. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his faded sweater. “Except Mrs
Rupi, next door.”
“What?” said Kevin.
“Can you tell us a bit
about Mrs Rupi?” said Sarah, who was much kinder and better with people, and
much less hungover than Kevin.
“Gran bought some plates
out from under her. Mrs Rupi wanted the pink plates from Mr Bumble’s retro
store, but Gran bought them first. Did you see her pink plates? She loved them.
There was one on… there was one on the floor where she was…” the grandson broke
into wailing sobs again.
Kevin wrote Mrs
Rupi, next door in his notebook.
“It’s not just a pen,” said
the white-lab-coat-wearing forensic scientist, Lucy. She was wearing
a floral dress under her lab coat and shoes that were much higher than should
have been worn in a laboratory environment. “And I think it’s in the bottle to
keep it dry.”
“Yes, but what is it?
If it’s not a pen?”
“It’s a covert recording
device.”
“A bug?”
“Yes, a bug. It’s covered
with Mrs Smyth’s fingerprints so I think it’s safe to say that it’s hers and
she put it in the bottle.”
Sarah spoke up, “can you
give us any idea of the timeline?”
Kevin asked, “what’s on the
recording?”
“Yes to the timeline,
absolutely,” said Lucy, “there’s blood on the pen and the bottle. She was
stabbed, she got out the pen and put it safely in the bottle. And then she
died.”
“Right, and the recording?”
Lucy waggled the mouse on
her computer, revealing a desktop picture of herself surrounded by three hunky
fellows drinking tropical cocktails. She navigated to the sound file. A deep
voice boomed out of the speakers, in conversation with an old woman – clearly
the victim.
“So, it’s Mrs Smyth now? An
interesting choice. After you killed Mr Smyth in the Ukraine back in ’72.”
“Oh, go away. I’m done with
all that. I don’t have anything for you. Fancy a biscuit?”
“I’m chasing intel about
the Nepal mission of ’83.”
“My last case. Well,
there’s nothing. I deleted all the files. I burned all the papers. I’m done
with that life.”
“What did you find in
Nepal, Sharon?”
“I won’t talk about it. Get
out of my house!”
There was a loud crack and
then a crackle in the audio.
“You bitch!”
The sounds of violence
played out of the computer speakers. There was a guttural cry, furniture
banging, and the clatter of the plate dropping to the floor. The male voice
cursed, loudly, then footsteps ran away into the distance. A moment later,
silence, as the pen was sealed into the bottle.
“Detective? Kevin?”
“Mm?” Kevin started awake
and wiped a string of drool from the side of his mouth. He blinked against the
bright fluoro lights of the precinct.
“You’re on the Sharon Smyth
case?”
The speaker was the
precinct receptionist, in a red sweater and sensible flats, with a voice like a
mouse and hair to match.
“Mm,” grunted the
detective.
“Meeting in the conference
room.”
Kevin stood. He swayed on
his feet.
“Sarah’s already there,”
said the receptionist, unhelpfully.
Kevin went to join his
partner.
Kevin slunk into the
conference room and sat down next to Sarah.
“There’s drool on your
tie,” she said, exactly as unhelpfully as the receptionist had been.
At the front of the room
stood a man in a suit. He wore dark glasses and an earpiece. The chief, in
uniform, stood next to him.
“We’re all here,” said the
chief, “let’s begin.”
“I am Agent Matthews,” said
the man in the suit, “from the City Intelligence Organisation. You are here
because you are involved in the investigation of the murder of Sharon Smyth.
Let me be clear: you are no longer involved in this investigation. It is now
under the exclusive jurisdiction of the CIO.”
The chief took over, “on
your desk, you will find a non-disclosure agreement. You will read it. You will
sign it. You will return it to Agent Matthews before you leave this room.”
“Any questions?” said Agent
Matthews, in a voice that implied there would be no questions, let alone
answers.
Sarah, because of course it
would be Sarah, called out, “what will happen to the grandson?”
“CIO counselling will be
offered.”
Sarah settled back into her
chair.
Detective Kevin signed his
NDA with a pen from his pocket.
“Case closed,” he said.
“Coming for a drink, Sarah?”
“Sure,” said Sarah, also
signing her form.
They went to the pub.
