Dé Crozon walked into the LIPD building with a cup of coffee in his hand, taking a sip as he did. He walked through the main floor, greeting and being greeted by the officers he had become familiar with. He walked straight to the office of the Chief of police and was out in ten minutes, from there he made his way to the elevator.
He stopped on the first floor and walked to the office of the detective in charge of the case he had been hired to handle, the man who had the Chinese-sounding name. Tobi, it was. He was writing something, but looked up as Clyde entered.
“Ah, good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, detective, how do you do?”
“Fine, thank you sir. Where are those two guys, Segun ati Chukwudi? You said they were coming with you.”
Clyde had no inkling what “ati” meant, but he assumed the detective wasn’t just saying anything, whether it made sense or not.
“Oh, they called to reschedule. They have something slated for this morning. Something about their range, perhaps. They will be available this afternoon.” He took another sip of his coffee.
“Okay, so, would you like to look at our profile before then? I can ask someone to bring it up if you like.”
“Oh, don’t bother. I prefer relying on my own profiling skills, merci.” He took another sip.
“Okay, if you say so. And you don’t have to bother buying coffee next time. We have a coffee maker down in the main hall.”
“Is that so? I’ll keep that in mind. By the way, can you find someone to give me a lift? I want to head over to the scene of the first murder.”
“Sure, no problem. Let me call someone up.” He spoke to someone over the telephone. “He should be ready in the car park in around ten minutes,” he said after he dropped the call.
Clyde spent the ten minutes reading the news on his Iphone 7S. As soon as the ten minutes were up, he stood up.
“I’ll get downstairs now,” he said, putting his phone back into his pocket.
“Yes, sure.”
Visit www.pobsonline.com for more amazing storiesClyde took the stairs down, and walked out of the department building and into the car park, scanning the rows of cars for the person that would take him to his destination. He spotted a young man beside a squad car nervously swinging the car keys in his fingers who waved to him as soon as their eyes met.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, bowing respectfully.
“Bonjour to you as well. You’re ready to go, yes?”
“Yes sir.” He unlocked the car and hopped in while Clyde got in beside him. He drove between the rows of other parked cars and into the road.
“What is your name, young man?” he asked as soon as they were clear of the LIPD.
“Kunle, sir,” he answered.
“Okay, Kunley. You are a detective, no? You work in the Homicide division, no?” He nodded. “What do you know about this case? The first murder, to be exact.”
Kunley paused, eyes looking through the windshield. Clyde had heard the details from the head of the division. He wanted to hear from someone who worked under him as well.
“Well, I know that the woman was fifty-something, well to do, she had a son, and she was killed by a sniper’s bullet to the head in her bedroom.”
“Okay. What about the place the shot was taken from, the kind of rifle, bullet, you know, secure footage, that sort of thing?”
“The rifle was an M21,” Kunley said with an obvious air of importance. Clyde waited for more details. When none came, he knew his surmise of no one in the Homicide division, perhaps even in the entire police department having any actual idea what a sniper was, was correct.
The young detective shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Clyde wondered what that was about.
“We looked for the place where the shot was fired from, it’s not as if we didn’t try, but it was almost impossible for us to find the particular place. . . ”
Ah, so that was why he looked like he was trying to lay a goose egg.
Clyde stared out the window at the buildings and shops flashing by. There was no way investigation carried into the case could have been so minimal, no way at all. It had to be that Tobi was withholding information from him and had instructed his subordinates to do the same, because he could not understand how a detective he had seen idolized so much could possibly have carried out this mockery of an investigation.
Maybe there was a reason Nigeria was Third World.
They soon pulled up in front of a house with a formidable-looking gate and very high walls with an additional five lines of electric fencing mounted on top. There were large padlocks on the main gate and the smaller one. A one-storey house was visible behind the gate.
“This is the place?”
“Yes sir,” Kunley said as he undid his seatbelt.
