Maggie and Ray
both jumped when a loud knock on the door interrupted their heated argument. As
always they had accused each other of wrongdoings. This time the argument was
somewhat different. They were fighting over a very heavy subject: The
disappearance of their only daughter. Maggie had accused Ray of being too relaxed
and Ray had argued that Maggie was way too tense.
Another knock, more urgently this time,
brought them out of their trance. With a reproachful look at Ray, Maggie
hurried to the door. With a look of relief she saw inspector Pollard standing
on her doorstep, accompanied by his assistant Ian. Maggie had known Ian since
he was a little baby. He was the first person she thought of when she had discovered
the un-slept bed of her daughter.
“Come in”, she told the two men. They
followed her into the house. Ray still stood on the same spot Maggie had left
him on. He looked from one man to the other and asked brusquely: “Who are you
and what are you doing in my house?”
“Pollard, inspector Pollard”, Tomas
introduced himself shaking Ray’s hand, “and this is my assistant Ian, your wife
told me you know him.”
Ray’s eyes widened and he looked at his
wife. “You told them to come here?”, he said, “What on earth are you thinking?
We can solve this by ourselves. We don’t need this inspector with his
assistant!”
Maggie’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you
care about our daughter?”, she chocked, “She never leaves the house without
notice and this time she didn’t even leave a single note to tell us where she
might be. What if something bad happened to her? I would never forgive
myself…”, her voice trailed off. With a sudden jolt she had realized something.
“I know where she might be, at Luke’s! She spends a lot of time with that
creep. He might look handsome but I have never trusted him. He always gives me
the feeling that he’s hiding something...”
15 minutes later
Tomas an Ian arrived at a cosy looking house at the outskirts of town. Tomas
knocked on the door and a few moments later a handsome man in his early
thirties opened the door. Tomas flashed his badge and asked if he could come
in. With a shocked look on his face the man opened the door for Ian and Tomas.
Ian had asked for the criminal record of
Luke and he was still waiting on it. His phone beeped and he could hardly suppress
his surprise when he looked at the information. Luke had a nasty criminal
record. He had gone to jail for immense cruelties. he had tortured two of his
classmates when he was just 17 years old! He hadn’t shown remorse towards his
fellow students and was sentenced for 10 years in prison. He had never given a
reason for his torturing.
“We want to ask you a few questions Luke”,
Tomas said, “We’ve heard that you have close contact with Noa, is that
correct?”
“Yes”, answered Luke, he shuffled in his
chair.
“When was the last time you saw her?”, Tomas
asked.
Luke looked suspicious. “Why are you asking
me that? Are you accusing me of anything? It is my business what I do and don’t
do!”
“Answer the question!”, Ian interrupted with
a furious look.
Luke hesitated, “I saw her two days ago. I
always see her on Wednesdays because I give her guitar lessons every Wednesday
morning”. Ian noticed that Luke didn’t make any eye contact.
“Do you also meet up with her on other
occasions?”, Tomas asked.
Luke shrugged, “Sometimes, is it a crime to
like someone?”.
“Where were you yesterday night between six
and ten PM?”, Ian asked, ignoring Luke’s question.
Luke fiddled with his shirt, “I –, I –,err, I
was at home. Alone”
“Can anybody confirm that?”, Tomas asked.
Luke looked doubtful, “No, I said I was
alone and I didn’t see anybody”
Ian navigated the
car skilfully through the traffic jam. Tomas was deeply in thought. What was
Luke hiding? Did he do anything to Noa? Did he know anything about her
disappearance?
Ian interrupted his train of thoughts: “I
know he has something to do with it. Did you see how nervous he got when we
asked all those questions? And his criminal record definitely speaks against
him. He could have easily killed her or harmed her, he doesn’t have an alibi!”
“Don’t jump to conclusions this soon in our
investigation”, Tomas said sternly. “You have been wrong before Ian! Luke is
innocent until proven guilty.”
Ian’s cheeks flashed bright red. He didn’t
like to be reminded of his last fiasco. He had believed that a mother murdered
her own daughter because she kept giving different pieces of information. It
had turned out that the mother was in the first stage of Alzheimer’s and the
shock of her daughter’s death had speeded up the process.
Tomas stopped Ian’s flashback by saying:
“But I do agree that it is a bit fishy. I would like to search Luke’s house, we
might find some clues there.”
It took a long
time to get the warrant to search Luke’s house. Two days later Ian and Tomas
walked up to Luke’s house. Their knock on the door was answered reluctantly by
Luke. He didn’t look as handsome as before. His hair looked like it hadn’t been
washed properly and he had dark circles under his eyes. When he saw the warrant
his eyes opened wide and he asked in a panicky voice: “Now?”
Tomas nodded and they entered the house. A
peculiar smell entered their nostrils. Ian looked at Tomas and saw that he had
recognized the smell too. It smelled like a dead body. It seemed to come from
upstairs. Ian followed Tomas hastily up the stairs. The smell seemed to ooze
out of the bathroom. Tomas opened the bathroom door and stepped back in
revulsion at once. It looked like a huge fight had broken out in the bathroom.
The wall of glass that had separated the bathtub from the rest of the room was
broken in a hundred pieces. Blood had filled the bathroom floor and the source
of the blood lay face down in it. A young girl lay sprawled on the floor, her
neck in an unnatural position. The blood seemed to had come from a deep cut in
her head, a huge shred of glass was sticking out of it.
Ian took immediate action. He ran downstairs
and found Luke sobbing in the kitchen. He didn’t object when Ian handcuffed him
and put him in the back of the police car. He looked timid and kept on crying.
Tomas looked into
Luke’s face. Luke’s eyes looked dully into empty space. “Why did you do it?”,
Tomas asked.
Luke’s eyes seemed to wake up and he said:
“I didn’t. This is how I found her when I came home on Friday night.”
“You mean to say that you had nothing to do
with it? How can you prove that?”, Tomas shot back immediately.
Luke looked ashamed. “I didn’t want to tell
you… It’s such a mess… I didn’t know what to do… My past – ”, he broke down in
sobs.
“Tell me the truth Luke. What happened on
Friday night? Start from the beginning, please”, Tomas said.
Luke blew his nose loudly and manned up.
“Ok, but I have to start a bit further back in time to give you a clear
picture. When I was 17, yes I know that you must know that by now, I tortured
two boys. I am gay, you see, and those boys made my life a living hell. I had
the chance to take revenge and I took that chance. I never told anybody why I
did it because I feared the reactions I would get from the people around me if
I would tell them I was gay. I’d rather spend time in prison, I thought. This
is the same reason why I didn’t tell you where I was on Friday night. I had
gone to a gay bar and when I got home I discovered Noa dead on the floor of my
bathroom. She must have tripped, the floor is very slippery. I was so afraid to
get the blame for her death that I didn’t call anybody. I was terrified that my
past would put the blame on me somehow. . I know it sounds stupid now, but…”
“How did Noa get into the house?”, Tomas
asked.
“She had the key to my house. She told me
that she hated it at home and that she would love to move out. I told her that
she could always stay at my place and I gave her the key. Her parents drove her
crazy. They argued all the time and didn’t seem to be interested in Noa. Who's fault is it than that she is dead now?"
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