lalalala I can't hear you!
8
“Molly, you look exhausted, it’s a good thing you have a holiday coming up!”
Molly blinked. After losing the notebook, she had returned back to the police station, and she was now sat in the canteen sipping on a bitter cup of coffee. The person who had just spoken was P.C. Lois Mimsy, her friend and colleague. With her braided black hair, oversized glittering earrings and dark, catlike eyes, Molly theorised that she must have been some kind of Vodou priestess in a previous life. Maybe she was in this life as well, for all she knew. Lois was notoriously secretive about her private life.
“Do I? Oh, right, of course, of course.”
“A week of relaxation beside the sea, man I could do with that right about now. You hadn’t forgotten, had you?”
“No, no. I’ve just been so involved with the Louverture case that my mind can’t seem to focus on anything else at the moment.”
“Boy, sounds like you
really need a holiday! If I could go anywhere, I think I’d go somewhere cold. Somewhere like the Sahara desert. You planning on going anywhere nice?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Damn, Molly, if I had a holiday coming up I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else!”
Lois let out a deep laugh, and Molly smiled slightly and glanced up at the clock. Sergeant Leon Bandersnatch had called for a briefing at half past three, and it was now going a quarter to four. The junior officers had assembled at the Conference Room at the right time, but had found it strangely locked. Molly thought she could hear voices from within the room but they were muffled and incoherent, and she had been unable to resist as Lois and Maurice Molyneux, another colleague, had grabbed her hand and dragged her to the canteen.
“Maybe we should head over there and wait outside,” said Anney Burleigh, who spoke French with a distinctive Carolina drawl which never ceased to sound strange to Molly’s ears. The general consensus was agreement, and once they had gulped down the remainder of their coffee the four officers discarded of the empty cups and made their way through the station towards the Conference Room. It was a quiet day; not many inhabitants went outside when it was so scorching, preferring to remain inside in the comfort of their air conditioned homes, and so crime was generally scarce on these types of days.
The Conference Room door was still shut when they arrived, and Molly could hear raised voices coming from within. One was certainly that of Bandersnatch, and there was something faintly familiar about the other, but she could not work out where she had heard it before. A couple of minutes later the door swung open with a crash, and a man wearing a jet black tailored suit and dark sunglasses stalked past silently. Molly gaped, and suddenly realised where she knew the voice from.
“It was him! The midnight man!”
Lois screwed her brow. “What are you talking about, girl? Come on, Sarge is waiting for us.”
They entered the room, which had dark blue walls and chairs laid out in neat rows. On the wall at the front was a large picture of Albert Louverture, and with his glasses, wild eyes and messy grey hair could not have been anything other than an academic, except possibly a hobo. Molly hurried up to Bandersnatch. His face was red and flustered, and he was taking deep, soothing breaths.
“Who was that man?” she said, insistently. Bandersnatch shook his head.
“No one.” He sighed and fidgeted with his neatly groomed moustache. “Come on, it’s already late. Let’s get this over with.”
The officers took their seats, and Bandersnatch paced a couple of times to and fro before speaking. “Three days ago, a routine reconnaissance flight drew our attention to an empty rowboat, adrift in the Sargasso Sea. We initially believed it to have been rowed there by an individual called Albert Louverture.”
“Initially?” Molly murmured inaudibly.
“Unfortunately, we have no leads. There is no evidence.”
Molly raised her hand. “Sarge, that’s not true. I found a notebook, clearly labelled as belonging to Albert Louverture.”
Bandersnatch regarded her coolly. “I see. My notes indicate no such notebook was submitted as evidence.”
Molly frowned. “I told you about it on the boat, but you ignored me! You weren’t interested at all, so I investigated it by myself. You just blanked me when I mentioned it to you, sir.”
“Did I? Well, it’s not too late to submit it, if you can…?” He looked at her questioningly. Molly thought she saw a slight smile on his lips, but it was gone as soon as it appeared, if it was ever there at all.
“I…can’t,” she said, feeling herself turning red.
“Oh really? Why is that?”
“It was…stolen. That man! The man in black with the sunglasses who was here, it was him! He stole it!”
Bandersnatch shook his head. “P.C. Nemoy, you look really tired, and I hear you haven’t been sleeping well recently. When I’m tired, I find my imagination runs away with me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“My imagination?? I am not delusional! No, I had the notebook! There was stuff about heady Elysium, and something about not underestimating Circe, and black stones…” She looked around wildly and thought she heard someone snigger. She realised that she wasn’t doing herself any favours with this kind of talk, and so sat back down, fuming quietly.
Bandersnatch laughed, not unkindly but rather pityingly. “I believe you have a holiday coming up. Enjoy it, get some rest. I think you need it.” He turned to the wall behind him, and tore down the picture of Louverture. “This case is closed,” he said as he screwed it up into a little ball and dropped it in the bin. “As far as any of you are concerned, Albert Louverture never existed. He is a figment of your imaginations. There is no notebook. There was no rowboat. The case is closed.”
“Was there ever even a case?” Lois said, with a disbelieving, sarcastic laugh.
“No. Molly, your shift is due to end at five, but I’m going to let you clock off early and begin your holiday a little bit early. Feel free to leave immediately. The rest of you, we have a case of a missing dog that needs some serious attention…
Molly left the Conference Room in a daze, feeling a great confused rage swelling within her like a tropical storm. It was obvious that she had no other choice, and would have to take matters into her own hands. She would not be getting much rest during this holiday, it seemed.