A Weird One

This was definitely a weird one, thought Jim. Annoying, too. He’d been on the force for over half his life, and he hated these weird jobs.

He stared at the two detectives sat on the other side of his desk. This kind of thing, they weren’t going to solve. Much better to just end the enquiry without wasting too much effort and time, then they could concentrate on crimes they could actually close. But this one, some woman fucking herself in the window of an empty retail unit on a busy street? Bollocks.

The trouble was, this was all very salacious and it had already gone crazy on the internet and the press were already calling for a statement, so he was stuck with it. Which meant these two were stuck with it.

He glanced down at the notes again. Jim couldn’t rule out the possibility that it might be some sort of exhibitionist jolly for this bird, but even if it was, she didn’t strap herself into that machine without help. So they were after at least one other person. The retail unit hadn’t been rented out to anybody, which was a shame and it looked like there weren’t even any fingerprints to work with. The thing with criminals, thought Jim, is that most of them are fucking stupid. The clever ones are a real pain in the arse.

Or this woman, Sarah, she was a victim. Which was even worse, because that meant they were looking for somebody smart, and with resources. This had taken some time, a lot of cash, and a great deal of planning.

Jim looked up at his detectives again and leaned back in his chair causing the backrest to creak under his weight.

‘She didn’t give you anything useful?’ he asked both of them.

It was Jennings who replied. Jim liked her, she was a good copper. Very sharp, maybe a little too tightly wound for this job, but reliable and smart. Also she was hot as fuck. She was short, quite curvy with big tits and she always wore tight white shirts. Strong, though. Jim had seen her reports, and from when she had been a beat copper she had been fearless when it came to restraining people much bigger than herself. He watched her breathe in, her tits stretching the buttons of her shirt before she spoke, then watched her full lips move as she spoke.

‘She still seems a bit out of it,’ Jennings stated. ‘I’ll talk to her again in case she remembers anything, but I don’t think she has any idea why this happened.’

‘Was it random, do you think?’ Jim asked both of them, but continued looking at Jennings. Her face reddened a little as he stared at her. Her auburn hair was tied back into a pony tail but she brushed a couple of loose strands away from her eyes.

‘I don’t think so, boss.’ Campbell spoke now and Jim looked over at him. Campbell was tall and bird like, with long thin limbs and a prominent adam’s apple in his scrawny throat. Very smart though. Not somebody you’d want next to you in a fight, but he was probably the best analyst in the department. If there was a pattern in the data, or an irregularity in the numbers, he’d spot it. ‘This was all too complicated to be random. Too much effort, I think. Whoever it was knew the victim. I think this was a revenge thing, or a punishment.’

Jim sighed and ran thick fingers over his bald head. Fucking weird jobs, he hated them.

‘And nothing from the equipment? The camera? Was it streaming the footage?

Jennings again: ‘We are checking all of that now. The footage was transmitted by mobile phone, so it might be that we can find something. But with all the effort and planning in this, it’s probably unlikely to be that easy.’

Jim sighed again. ‘Okay. Look, stick with this, I need a result quickly. This is all over the fucking internet already. Stick with this Sarah woman, see if she can think who might have a grudge. Talk to her friends and people from her work, somebody might let something slip. And check CCTV, that gear didn’t get into that unit without somebody noticing.’ He drew a photograph of the workout bench with the straps and wires still attached to the top of the notes. ‘Try to find out where this shit came from. It used to be easy in my day, when some cunt would buy shit from the local hardware store and use it to rob a post office, but some of this stuff might be pretty specialist, you never know.’

Jim folded the notes and photos into a brown cardboard folder and held it across the desk to Jennings. He did this on purpose so she had to lean forward to take it from his hand and he could look down the V of her blouse.

‘Report back tomorrow morning, let’s see what you can shake out.’

Jennings and Campbell stood, her holding the file across her chest, him straightening his black tie. ‘Thanks sir,’ Campbell said as they turned and left Jim’s office.