Eliot puzzled over the question all day. On his way to work, standing on the crowded tube platform, crushed between the sleepy commuters, ascending the elevator and finally pushing out into the London wintry sunshine to hurry to the tall glass building and snatch a desk where he could.
It ran round and round his brain like an out-of-control toy racing car. And with just as much resolution.
His schedule had been hectic, one call after another, even an actual face-to-face which was, he decided with a humph, why he came in at all. Keep the social networks going, where he could. He’d glanced around the empty office. Takes two to tango. Still the question buzzed quietly at the back of his mind, insistent as a five-year-old demanding ‘one more chapter’.
Now, buttoning his coat against an icy wind channeling its way through the City streets, the question took over the front of his brain, hammering away in time with the workers jackhammering the footpath to lay their new cables which would connect the world in a physically disconnected spider web.
Eliot squashed his way into the Tube, strap-hanging, swaying with the curves. He looked at the wall as if expecting to find an answer there. Why not? All those advertisements for the impossible – the too-expensive holidays, the designer attire no one can afford, the alcoholic beverage that makes you more attractive – they must hold the clues to the big question the kid asked as Eliot rushed out the door at 7 am:
Daddy! When will my fairy take me to fairyland?
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All day long it had been bugging him. He even looked at the office wall as if expecting to find an answer there.
No such luck. The face was agonisingly familiar but for the life of him he could not remember who it was or where he had seen him.
Inspector Lewis’s reputation at Scotland Yard for solving murder cases was second to none – aided by a photographic memory where no detail, however small, ever escaped him.
This face haunted him, just beyond the reach of conscious thought, and Lewis knew for certain was somehow connected to the case of a young woman attacked and left for dead on the local village green.
A nearby CCTV camera had captured the male figure leaving the scene – his face briefly caught as he inadvertently looked kin the direction of the lens.
Where had he seen this visage, thought Lewis. Somewhere – and only recently at that.
And then it hit him, a bolt of lightning from the blue.
The village pastor to whom he had been talking only several hours before. It was his face – so what was he doing in the vicinity. Perhaps just going for a walk with absolutely nothing to do with the young woman’s plight.
Trouble was, thought Lewis, the victim was in intensive care and unable to talk, let alone identify her attacker – and the prognosis for recovery was not looking too good.
In the meantime, a visit to the church would not go astray.
Lewis found the pastor in the office and immediately confronted him.
“We’ve got you on CCTV footage at the village green at the time of this young woman’s attack,” he said. Perfunctory, no beating about the bush for Lewis.
The pastor couldn’t help but blush and stammered his reply.
I…I….I…was just getting some exercise before dinner,” he offered by way of explanation.
“Did you see anybody?” barked the inspector.
“N..N..o,” the pastor muttered, still unsettled.
Lewis didn’t know whether to believe him or not – until he noticed the scratch marks on the back of the pastor’s hands.
“What are those?” he inquired, pointing accusingly.
The pastor’s complexion turned a whiter shade of pale as he sunk to the floor.
Tut Tut!
So nice to live in a child’s world when you are a child. Tricky question for an adult to answer (LOL!)
Yep!