Detective Inspector Maxwell looked slowly around the living
room. It was a in a small one bedroomed
flat on the fifth floor of one of the last remaining 1960's block of flats on
the outskirts of Edinburgh.
His
attention was drawn across the meagre furniture to the walls of the flat on which were a collection
of photographs, family photographs so it seemed. In one of them were two men in
British army uniform with new brides by their sides. Each of the men were
sergeants and wore berets on their heads, standing casually to attention but
smiling, their arms linked with their new brides. One of the women was smiling
but the other had a dour look on her face. The two women were in their late teens whilst
both men appeared some years older. A handwritten inscription at the bottom
read 'Dortmund 1949'. Maxwell walked slowly around the room looking at each of
the photos displayed, it seemed to be an almost chronological display of the lives of
the two men. First the men appeared singly with their wives and a new born
child, next came a photo of one of the men with wife, and a small child
standing and a second child in the woman's arms. Then a photograph of another
child, and then one of a woman. Strikingly good looking with blond hair, though
the photo was in black and white. It was almost a professional photo of her
upper torso. She was wearing a thin transparent blouse pulled right off her
shoulders displaying the rounded outline of her firm breasts. She was looking
away from the camera to the right of the person holding the camera. Another
photograph, this one of a baby, about a year old in a flouncy dress, sat on the
floor looking over the shoulder of the photographer, a strangely disturbed and frightened
look on her face. More photos, the same combination of women and men, children
and women, children and men. Men and women. One photo showed the two men with
one of the women between them, not the blond woman, they were all older than in
the wedding photo, but obviously the same people, but just three of them.
All the photos bore a place name and date. The places were in England or Scotland and all
the dates were after 1949. As his eyes took in the images and his brain
registered them, it struck him that at least two people had been responsible
for taking them. The group ones, and he could recognise the background in a
couple of them, Arthurs Seat and the Castle in Edinburgh, were taken with an
ordinary cheap camera, probably a Kodak Brownie, but the others were taken with
a larger format camera. 'Probably a 35 mm' Maxwell said to himself. Not only a
different camera but by someone who had a knowledge of photography. The
lighting and the posing of the subjects
were different and they were all either close ups or singly posed. Two
cameramen, two cameras. Maxwell took them all in, silently filing the
information. He called to one of the scientists in the bedroom, 'Gary. Can you
come here a minute?' The taller of two white clothed figures emerged from the
bedroom and carefully walked across the room, making sure, by habit, that he
did not touch or disturb any of the furniture. Maxwell pointed to first the
beautiful woman and then the baby on the floor and then others taken in
Edinburgh. Gary looked carefully at them for a few moments. 'Different cameras' he said, 'I reckon a 35 mm
for these two.' Gary looked carefully at the beautiful woman then bent lower to
get closer to the baby before finally saying. 'No. I would say it was a
Hasselblad or a Mamiya large format.' The two men exchanged glances until
Maxwell finally said, 'You're talking a language I haven't heard before. Spell
it out in English.'
'Expensive
cameras, Hasselblad and Mamiya, 'cos they were good. You can still buy them
today in digital format, but these were taken on film, and I would think they
were either done professionally or else by a very keen amateur who had a bit of
money to be able to buy the right equipment. Back in the day it wasn't a cheap hobby.' He
pointed to the upper edge of the woman's photo. 'See that, that's Vaseline.
Done to make the image a bit more sexy looking by making the background of the
photo less focussed. I would imagine he also developed the prints as well.
There's a lot of care been taken in them.' He stepped back from the wall. 'God knows she
didn't need enhancing though. A beauty.'
He made to
move back into the bedroom but Maxwell held out his hand onto his arm. 'Wait a
minute Gary. I saw a couple of albums on the sideboard, let's have a look at
them with your eyes.' He stepped to the old dark wooden sideboard against the
back wall and took a thick padded photo album off the top. He knelt down to
open one of the two doors of the sideboard and rummaged through the untidy mess
of objects before finally pulling out two more albums. 'Let's have a look shall
we, see what's been going on.'
'What about
the body boss?' Gary asked nodding towards the open bedroom door and his
colleague who was now standing there.
"Fuck
him, the old bastard. He's going nowhere is he? He can wait. I want to find out
more about him before this lot gets taken into some property store somewhere.'
Maxwell walked across to a square wooden table set under the window and opened
the first of the albums. The photographs
inside were a similar combination of men women and children taken over several
years, mainly in Edinburgh but one or two in locations neither Maxwell nor Gary
could fathom. Many of the earlier ones were annotated with the names of various
places in Germany. In one of them, the
glamorous woman holding a baby in her arms. Handwritten on the bottom was ' BMH
Iserlohn 1950'. Gary pointed to the title on the photo. 'Where's that one
boss?'
'Germany.
BAOR.' Maxwell replied.
'Sorry boss,
you've got me.' Gary said.
'British
Army of the Rhine. After the war we had a lot of servicemen, mainly army,
stationed in what was then West Germany. Army of Occupation it was called. BMH
stands for British Military Hospital. Sounds
like our beauty here had a child at the British military hospital, which means
her husband was a serving army bloke. Going off the wedding photo on the wall I
would think the two of them were National Servicemen doing their stint near
Dortmund, got themselves a couple of frauleins as wives, and pretty soon one of
them was in the club.' He continued
to silently turn page after page noting,
as the children in the photos grew older, and from time to time a younger child
would be added to the group. The glamorous woman stopped appearing in the
photos after 1954 and all the locations now became Scotland.
Gary
wandered away from the table and back to the wall to look more closely at one
of the images on the wall. He called to Maxwell. 'Boss. Can you come and have a
look at this one again?' he said.
Maxwell joined him and stood by his side as Gary pointed to the young girl
sitting on the floor looking up towards and yet beyond the camera. 'See this
one? Look closely at the bairn's eyes. She's not only looking away from the
camera and at somebody standing behind the camera and to one side, but she's
frightened.' He paused for a moment and
then said, 'Such a wee beauty isn't she. Who would make a sweet little thing
like that scared?' Maxwell lifted the
photo from the wall and walked to the window, holding the photo to the light.
For a moment he said nothing whilst he examined it.
'Fucking
evil bastard. Fucking dirty rotten evil bastard.' He finally said in a level
tone. On hearing the words the other
scientist came out of the bedroom and stood in the doorway to find out what had
prompted the words.
'You know
him boss?' Gary asked. Maxwell said nothing but placed the photo on the table
alongside the album and turned to the bedroom.
'You
finished in there?' he asked of the
young woman, Gary's partner. She flushed red and stuttered, turning to go back
into the room. 'Not yet sir,' she said.
'Leave him
for a minute will you? I want him by myself.' He half smiled at her and turned
to Gary. 'Won't touch him, promise. Give me some gloves.' he said. Gary reached
into the pocket of his coverall and took out a spare pair of white thin rubber
gloves and handed them over. Maxwell put them on and walked into the bedroom.
Maxwell walked
over to the single bed and the dead body lying on it. There was a small table
with a bedside light on it by the side of the bed, and a can of Irn-Bru,
Scotland's second national drink as A G Barr used to boast. A pair of half moon reading glasses rested
close to the lamp, but no reading material was in evidence. The bedside light
was switched on, although it was only mid afternoon on a cool September
day. On the floor was a worn woven rug
with a dull pattern which was pulled up close to the edge of the bed. The only
other furniture in the room was a single solid wooden wardrobe, a well used hard
backed cream painted dining chair and a small cream painted dressing table with
a mirror set on it. On the walls were hung three small cheap prints of highland
scenes, and a dressing grown hung on a small white hook behind the door. The owner of the flat, Jimmy Quinn, would
have allowed a wry smile to crease his face at the sight of the dead man lying
on the bed. He would have smiled if he could. If the dead body had not been
his.
'Give me a
couple of minutes will you lads,' Maxwell said as he stood by the bed. Gary's
colleague turned to him and stood erect.
It was a young woman. Maxwell grimaced then grinned shamefaced at her.' Sorry. Old
age love,' he said, 'Can't tell the difference these days, not when you're wearing those damn things.' The two forensic
officers moved back to the living room leaving him by himself in the bedroom
whilst they went to look more carefully at the collection of photographs.
Maxwell
stood silently by the bed with both hands in his trouser pockets. Close to
thirty years experience had told him the best place for his hands at the scene
of a crime was out of reach and temptation of anything. His eyes ran slowly over what he saw in front
of him. By the side of the can of soft drink was a strip of pills in a pop out strip
pack. Two rows of seven pills, five of them were missing. He could make out the
figures 200 mg on the silver foil but nothing else. He bent closer but could
not make out the small writing on the pack, repeated several times along the
length of the package. He called out to the living room. 'Can you come here a
second Gary?' Gary came through and
stood by his side and looked down at the pills in Maxwell's hand. 'What's it
say on the package Gary? My eyes can't make it out,' he asked. The young man
bent down and shone a small torch onto the pack. 'Quinine Sulphate boss,' he
said. Maxwell stood upright.
'What the
hell is he taking Quinine for do you think? Not like we get a lot of mosquitoes and
malaria in Scotland do we? Not for the midges are they?' he said. Gary laughed.
'No boss. Useless on the Scottish midges, only thing to kill them is two house
bricks or a mallet. These are probably for cramps, night cramps. They are
sometimes prescribed for night cramps in old people.'
'Well this
old sod is certainly old enough to qualify. Hope they gave him hell.' Maxwell put the
pills down on the table and turned to the body in the bed, then something
struck him and he turned back to at look at the pills. 'Where's the package they came in Gary? Have a look around for the package will you? See if we can find out the chemist he got them
from, and see if there are any other medications he was taking.' Gary nodded
his head and went back into the living room.
Jimmy Quinn
was lying, apparently in sweet repose on his back, his head on the pillow which
showed just one neat indentation made by one head. The outline of his dead body
was almost invisible under a white sheet folded neatly over a heavy duvet. The
sheet was neatly tucked in under the sides of the bed. His hands were folded
across his chest on top of the bedclothes in classic undertakers pose. He was
clean shaven and his thin white hair was
combed neatly across his forehead, a thin lick of white soap was visible under
his left ear. His eyes were closed. Maxwell
looked along the length of the body from head to toe and then back again.
The sound of
the front door of the flat closing sounded and footsteps came through the
living room and stopped in the doorway. Maxwell turned and looked at the
newcomer. It was his Detective Sergeant, Alexandra McNeil. Mid thirties, five feet six inches tall, slim
with an explosion of shoulder length copper coloured curly hair. She was stunningly beautiful, by anyone's
standards. 'What have we got boss?' she asked. Maxwell smiled at her as he stood
up and turned to face her.
'What we
have, at last, Alex is Jimmy Quinn. Not before time, but looks like he cheated
a lot of people.' Alex moved closer and ran her eyes from head to toe of the
body under the bed clothes. 'You know
him boss?' she asked quietly.
'Oh aye.
I've known this bastard for years. Never trapped him though. Looks like mother
nature has beaten us to him.' He turned back to the body and quietly addressed
it slowly saying, 'You dirty rotten evil bastard,' Each word carefully
enunciated. Then to Alex, 'Let's see what we have then shall we?' He took a
hold of the sheet tucked neatly under the dead body's chin. Pulling gently at the sheet from the top and
holding the duvet in his other hand he pulled back the covers until the body of
Quinn was revealed in front of them. Alex gasped quietly, Maxwell smiled in quiet satisfaction. Quinn
was wearing the jacket of a pair of cheap blue and white striped cotton
pyjamas. The jacket was buttoned up, leaving the top button unfastened showing
a few tufts of wiry white hair. The pyjama bottoms were pulled down around his
ankles. Extending from his groin to half way between his knees and ankles and
spreading out to cover the bed on either side of his legs was a pool of blood,
still slightly fluid and sticky. The blood was smeared across the tops of his
legs. On his thigh was a blue mark about four inches long and a cut in the line
about one inch long. Lying in the pool of blood, and pointing to his tiny flaccid
penis and scrotum sac was a thin wooden handled kitchen knife. Expensive and
new. The knife was almost completely covered in blood.
'Now that's
something you don't see every day is it?' Maxwell said quietly. Alex stood by
his side and silently shook her head, the curls moving gently from side to side
across her face. 'Gary!' he called. 'Get yourself in here with your camera my
boy.' Gary hurried through carrying his Nikon digital camera. He stopped and
gasped at the sight before him. 'Bloody hell.' He muttered quietly and started
to take a further series of photographs of the dead body. Maxwell and Alex
moved out into the living room to allow Gary and his colleague to carry on with
their detailed examination of the room and the body.
When the two
scientists had finished the detectives returned to the room to examine the body.
Quinn was undernourished, was the first
thought which entered Maxwell's head. 75 to 80 years old. His body was coldly
white, the skin stretched over the ends of bones trying to protrude from it. His
closed eyes were sunk into his face. His
hips were tinged with blue as were his knees. The area of his body in touch
with the bed was a livid purple red colour where the blood which had not
drained from his body onto the sheets had come to rest in a thin line. Maxwell bent closer to look at the knife. It
was almost completely covered in the blood in which it lay, but there was a
thin line of steel of the blade and wood of the handle which had been untouched
by the blood. Maxwell examined the thigh of the almost emaciated body. 'Take a
look at this for yourself Alex' he said. Alex moved into a position to see the
area more closely and examined the same area which her boss had indicated.
'A small cut
on the thigh' she said. 'I wouldn't have thought it deep enough to cause all
this bleeding though.'
'Look
closer. See where it is?' She moved the cut open a little with her gloved hand.
'Is that the main artery from the heart, the femoral artery?' She asked. Maxwell
nodded his head.
'Dead right
it is. Bled to death in a few minutes.' The two of them stood up and moved back
from the body.
'But if he
had been stabbed then surely he would have struggled? He wouldn't have been as calm and composed as
this would he?' Maxwell thought for a moment then said,
'What if he
was unconscious, or asleep? He said. 'It
isn't much of a stab wound is it? More of a small deliberate incision. Sort a
surgeon would make. If he was
unconscious then it would have been fairly easy to mark him with the blue
marker, cut him , then pull the covers over so the blood didn't splatter all
over the place. When he had finished bleeding the killer pulled the covers
back, placed the knife in the blood and then replaced the sheet and duvet. The he put his hands together and tucked him
in.' Maxwell stood back and placed his
hands on his hips.
'It's fairly
conclusive isn't it then? Alex asked. Maxwell paused for a moment then replied
slowly. ' Not so much conclusive Alex , more terminal. And I don't just mean as
in dead. This is the end of something else as far as the killer is concerned.
The end of the line, the conclusion of the story.' The two of them stood
silently thinking to themselves.
The female
scientist came into the doorway of the bedroom. 'You need to look at the albums
sir,' she said to Maxwell. 'They're on the table.' She remained in the bedroom to examine the
body once more. Maxwell and Alex stepped through to the living room table and
started to leaf through three photograph albums which lay there. They were the same familiar subjects as the
ones on the wall which they had looked at earlier. Men and women, men and
children, women and children, children growing up and looking older, men and
women growing older, young boys, young girls. More young boys, more young
girls. Many of them were taken in and around Edinburgh judging from the
familiar backgrounds. One of them showed one of the couples from the wedding
photo with three children. A girl and two boys. All were in their teens. The
boys had about five years between them and the girl appeared to be in between
them in age. Another showed the two men and one woman with
two girls, neither of the girls being the one in the other photo. One was in
her late teens, the other younger one had spindly legs and was thin with short
fair hair. She was standing almost
sideways onto the camera as though reluctant to have her photo taken, her head
was cast half down to the ground, her eyes dark and serious. The eyes could have been an older version of the eyes
of the baby which was seated on the floor in the photo on the wall.
'I've never
heard of this chap Quinn, boss. What's the story?' Alex asked after they had
been looking through the albums for several minutes. 'Just a minute Alex.' Maxwell turned to call through to the bedroom.
'Gary, tell your mate to come here a minute will you?' A young woman appeared in the doorway. 'It's
Molly sir,' the young woman scientist said. 'Here Molly,' Maxwell said to her
softly, beckoning for her to stand closer to the table. 'You said to look at
these albums, well we are looking and I think I must be missing something. Care
to tell me what?' Molly stepped forward to the table and nodded her head down
towards the album they were looking at. 'Kids
sir. Too many different kids for the one family. I heard you say there were two
people taking the photos, one with a professional set up, probably did his own
developing and stuff, and the other with a cheapo camera which he took to the
local chemists. The cheap one took lots of piccies of kids. Not all his own. Not
unless he was adopting them regularly.' Maxwell and Alex turned to look again at the
album, flipping page after page. Eventually Maxwell turned and looked at the
young scientist. 'You're right young Molly. Well spotted. You're dead right.'
He turned to talk to Alex as Molly moved silently back into the bedroom.
'So, the
story of Jimmy Quinn. ' He stopped and turned to indicate the small sofa and
armchair in the flat. 'Let's take the weight off.' He lowered himself into the
single armchair by the table whilst Alex sat down on the sofa, pulling a
cushion from under her and placing it at the far end of the sofa. From the bedroom came the continuing sounds
of the two forensic scientists bagging items from the room and photographing
the mortal remains of Jimmy Quinn.
'I never managed
to get him, Quinn. For many years he was a prime kiddy fiddler, a paedophile.
Nobody would ever come forward to complain. There were stories of him doing
things with his own kids, the two boys and the girl in the photo I think, but
others as well. They said he took photos. I had him in a couple of times and
gave him a hard word or two, but the bastard never coughed and we never really
had any real evidence. He started at it
when he was still in his teens. It's reckoned that his father started on him
when he was a wee one, and then Quinn went in the army, looks like he met up
with someone else with the same sort of likes. Anyway, looks like him and his mate found
themselves a couple of young German women whilst they were on National Service there
and brought them back here at the end of their service. Looks as if they were
married over there and Jimmy's mate had a kid over there, probably the one in
the British Military Hospital photo. When their three years were up they came
back here and Jimmy and his wife came to Edinburgh, don't know where the other
went to, but it seems they kept in touch for many years.' Maxwell paused to
gather the threads of his story together then carried on. 'Story goes that the
other bloke's wife died and left him with two daughters, and he would come up
here from England on holiday with the girls to see Quinn and his wife. I had it
from Quinn's neighbour once that sometimes a younger daughter made an
appearance by herself from time to time.
She would stay in Quinn's flat and the other feller would have it away with his
wife whilst Quinn would start on with the daughter. They didn't live here then,
they had a place off the Canongate in the centre of the city, not far from
Canongate Kirk if I remember. Well, tempus fugit, of course and the girl got
older and Jimmy lost interest in her. Turned his attention to other young kids
from the area. He liked them young, soon as they were ten or eleven he left
them alone. Went on for years from what I could find out. Kids would never
complain, too scared to even tell their parents, as usual. He would get them,
boys and girls, when they were perhaps four or five years old and then move on
to other kids of an age to suit him when they grew older.' Maxwell fumbled in
his jacket pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes. 'Don't suppose we can
in here can we?' he asked. Alex grinned at him, 'Not really sir, place of work
and all that.'
'Well, I
need one. Coming out for a breath of fresh air then?' he said rising from his
chair. Alex followed him out of the flat
and down to the small garden in front of the block. Muddy pools of water lay on
what had once been a lawn in front of the decaying flats. Maxwell drew heavily
on his cigarette. 'Eventually the
stories all dried up. No more tales from
neighbours. He'd moved see, and the new neighbours on this scheme liked the
Police even less than the ones on the Royal Mile.' He paused to look up at the
clouds overhead threatening rain. 'Bastard. It's their silence which stopped us
getting the shite.' He flicked ash onto the lawn. 'Now it's too late. Someone
else has done it for us. Wonder who did it.'
Alex pulled
her jacket to her against the cool afternoon air. 'We've got a bit to go on
though haven't we?' she said. 'Must have been someone he knew as there was no
apparent break in. Looks like he'd been ill and been prescribed the Quinine, so
there's a doctor somewhere. Then the photos. It's a long one, but it could be
one of those kids who will be grown up by now, or maybe their kid if they told
the story to their family. And the knife. It looked new to me, so there must be
some shop or other where it was bought. Judging from Quinn's age he might have
had a social worker or a care worker. Somebody will have seen something. Maybe one of the neighbours?' Maxwell looked
sideways at her. 'Oh aye. Going to get a lot from this neighbourhood. Even when
they find out what he was like they won't say anything. Good riddance they'll
probably say.' He dropped the cigarette
and ground it into the mud. 'If they had known about him then someone would
have stuck that knife in his gut and left him for dead on this lawn here for
everyone to see.' He turned back to go upstairs to Jimmy Quinn.
They walked
into the living room just as Gary and Molly were coming through from the
bedroom.' Finished here sir,' Gary said. 'Need to get the undertakers. Want me
to sort that?' Maxwell nodded his head thoughtfully. 'What about this quinine
Gary, is it fairly common or what?'
'I was having
a think about that sir. It's been banned in America for some years now even for
night cramps, so it might be the same here. Seems quite a few people died from
taking it for cramps. Not sure a doctor would have prescribed it.' Maxwell
nodded his head and turned to Alex. 'Need to find out where it came from.' He
said.
'Sir. One
more thing. There's no trace of any other medications in the flat and there's
no sign of the package for the quinine.'
Maxwell nodded his head thoughtfully. 'So where did he buy it from then,
or who gave it to him. If we find that, then we find out who did this fair city
a service.'
The forensic
scientists left and the undertaker took the body to the city mortuary on High
School Wynd in the city centre. Which left the two detectives alone in the
cooling flat with the dark of early evening coming in. When eventually they
could find nothing more of any significance they left to return to their
station on Gayfield Square.
Three days
later the post mortem report arrived on Maxwell's desk in his glass sided
office at the rear of the CID office. He
called Alex in and she settled down on a chair close to his side at the edge of
the desk.
'So, let's
see what we've got then shall we?' Maxwell said as he opened the A4 envelope.
The pages were stapled together with a covering letter from the pathologist
clipped to the top corner. He took the letter off and placed it to one side on
his desk, Alex glanced at it. For a few seconds Maxwell read in silence then
said, 'Seems our friend Quinn is dead' he quipped with a straight face. He carried on reading parts from the report.
'Stomach contents were mainly Irn-Bru and quinine. Nothing substantially solid.
The usual slurry in other words. The examination of his internal organs showed
that he had been affected by the quinine which would have made him drowsy or
comatose.' He read further and continued,
'The pathologist reckons that the area of his thigh where the cut was made had
been cleaned with either surgical spirit or household bleach before being
marked with a board marker. Probably spirit was used to clean it. Apparently there was a patch on the thigh
which had none of the normal dirt or dead skin on it. Cleaned so we couldn't
get fingerprints or DNA off it. Clever.' His eyes continued to skim over the report and
then stopped again, and again looked sideways at Alex. 'Time of death
approximated, the bugger, why can he never give us a definite time? Time of
death approximated about 9 pm two days before we saw him.' He paused again then
asked Alex,' What time did we get the call to his flat then?' Alex flipped
through her notes on the desk in front of her.
'Control room got a call one and a half hours before we got there. The uniforms had to
go first and then we were notified afterwards. Call came from an unidentified
female on a throw away mobile. Number untraceable to anyone. Could have been
bought anywhere. The accent was English, I've listened to the recording and think it was a woman of about 60 from
either Lancashire or Yorkshire. Sorry boss, but I can never tell the difference
between the two.' Alex put her notes
down on the table and sat back.
Maxwell
looked at her and smiled. 'Sounds like you have been doing some homework though
Alex. Got the sex, age and possible location of the offender, if she was the
offender. What did the woman say?'
Alex turned
a page and read from her notes. 'There's
a dead body in a flat, then she gives Quinn's address, looks like he's been
dead for some time. ' Then the caller rang off.
Maxwell thought
quietly for a moment then said, 'Why Irn-Bru? I don't remember seeing any other
cans in the flat, do you?'
'No. Just the one. Half empty, nothing else in
the can apart from the soft drink.' Alex stopped for a moment reading something
from her notes then carried on. 'Boss, did you know that Irn-Bru contains
quinine?' Maxwell's head shot up and he looked across at her.
'What? You
are kidding me aren't you? Who the hell
knew that? Are we looking for an employee of A G Barr then?' He sat shaking his
head in disbelief for a second or two. 'So.' He said. 'We are looking for a
woman who, judging from the caller on the mobile, could have been one of the
kids Quinn molested, going off her age. She's from Lancashire or Yorkshire,
again, going off what you think of the accent of the caller. Which could again
point to one of the kids in the photos if the other man in the wedding photo
came from that area. She could be one of the two girls in the photo with Quinn
and the second man. So, now we need to find out who he was, don't we? Find him
and no doubt we can find his daughter. Army
records might help find out who he was, where he lived. Did he have any kids,
how old, what they did. Shouldn't be too hard to track her down, if it is a
her.' He looked Alex in the eye for a
moment then quietly picked up the sheets of the pathologist's report, knocking
them together into a neat pile. He placed the report on top of his own notes on
the case and reached over to take Alex's notes from her hand, and knocked the whole file together, lining
up the edges so that they made a neat pile.
Looking down at the file in front of him he slowly pushed the file away
from him until it was in the centre of his desk, and sat looking at it for
several seconds.
Maxwell
leaned back in his chair and stared hard at the ceiling of his office. 'We
could find her quite easily,' he said quietly. 'She's done the world a favour
in many ways though hasn't she?' He glanced sideways at Alex who nodded her
head silently. 'Cost a lot of money to pursue this case wouldn't it? Could
easily send us over our budget couldn't it? Trips to Lancashire or Yorkshire
and all the rest. To what end? She must have been through hell and back over
her growing up years and since then. Living with it, keeping quiet, living with
her father and knowing what he was like.' He nudged the file a little further to the end
of the desk with the index finger of his right hand and sniffed. 'If we were to
review the file every couple of weeks, well, in three months we could see what
we came up with, couldn't we? Then maybe
just let it settle back under the dust.'
For a whole minute neither of them spoke, the noises from outside in the
main CID office sounding only mutely through the double glazed windows of his
office.
Alex rose
quietly from her chair and placed it back against the office wall from where
she had brought it. She looked down at
her boss seated in front of her and let out a long sigh then smiled gently at
him. 'Do you fancy a coffee boss? I could make it whilst you try and find a
secure place for that file.' Maxwell
looked at her and smiled a thin smile, then nodded his head silently. Without
waiting for a reply Alex turned and left the office.
Maxwell slid
the file towards him and placed it into the bottom of three drawers on the
right of his desk, and then covered it with a pile of other papers, closing the
drawer and locking it.
