As promised, now that NaNoWriMo is finished for another year, the adventures of Joseph Makumbo and friends continue…
To catch up on the first five chapters, please go to my website: http://www.colin-z-smith.com/masm.html. For the first two sections of Chapter 6, see the previous posts below.
Chapter 6
Monday 4th November 1985: 15.30 – 16.15
Section (c)
Terrence Dawson opened the third drawer down in DCI Meredith’s filing system, and heaved a huge sigh.
So far, he’d managed to find – and relocate – all the cases from 1970 onwards that had involved any villains having surnames beginning M to T inclusive. Now he was starting on profiles of those officers (initials U to Z) serving from 1376 to the present day; though he suspected that the start date was some secretary’s typo rather than an interest in medieval policing on the DCI’s part.
At the moment, he was rather missing Ernie Bulstrode demanding tea and caramel wafers.
He raked out the contents of the drawer, and began to leaf through them:
– Various murders, most of them of the domestic variety. Including one very interesting case of a woman drowning her husband in a bowl of rice pudding, he noticed;
– The closure of a brothel next door to a retirement home in Dunroamin Street. Oh, that was being run by two of the home’s residents as ‘something to stave off boredom while waiting for the cottage pie to be served at dinner time’;
– A case of shopfitting… He grabbed a pen from the DCI’s desk and amended that typo too;
– And… What was this?
A case of suspected abduction in ’72. Involving…
His eyes widened as he saw the name.
Keeping a wary eye on the door in case the DCI should come back, he seated himself in the inspectorly chair and began to read the file.
It turned out that the ‘abductee’ had actually run away of her own accord. With – hmm. A Nigerian, was that?
Or… No – the Nigerian was proved to have nothing to do with it.
He turned over the final sheet.
And saw the name and rank of the person with whom the woman had actually run away.
There was a photocopier in the office adjoining the DCI’s. It took Terrence less than five minutes to copy the entire document, then re-file it under ‘H’.
Colin Z Smith 