Logic and reason are not always explanation enough.

Logic and reason are not always explanation enough.

Understanding is elusive

He sat looking at the half empty glass but not seeing it, he was cold but not feeling it, he was in pain but not hurting from it. His mind was numb, his memory a jumble of conflicting events, as if from a nightmare but were in fact real. The phone rang for a long time before it gained his attention and then he tried to turn it off, an automatic reaction against coming back to reality. His mind preferred the numbness to anything else that was available. In this distracted state he accidentally accepted the call and put it onto speaker, the voice from the speaker jolted him into giving it his full attention. This was a call from the dead. The voice was full of concern, “where are you John, why haven’t you called, what is going on?” Even to his own ears his tone sounded subdued, defeated, “I am in the cabin, in the woods but I am OK will call you later” and he turned the phone off both ending this call and not accepting any other.

The need to speak had jolted him from his mental stupor and he made a serious mental effort to start thinking logically again. He drained the glass and got up from his chair, looked around almost as if seeing the inside of his cabin for the first time yet he had owned it for many years and spent every possible day there. He walked to the window almost afraid to see what was outside, yet what he saw was the grassy land sloping gently down to the lake, the weather was bright with just a few clouds, all looked so normal. Slowly he cleared the confusion that clouded his memories. He was a cop, a detective inspector with a successful career and a string of solved cases on his records. His ability to analyze evidence and sort the possible from the impossible, to establish facts from other people’s fictions, had given him an enviable reputation; but now he had cause to doubt his very sanity. The week had started normally, a meeting with chief superintendent to go over the current case load, one recent murder, one ongoing unsolved gangland killing and a kidnapping that had been physically resolved but still waited the judicial trial and inevitable sentencing. The recent murder was to take priority over all else since it involved the killing of a police officer. Overtime payments to detective sergeants and constables were authorized and full support from the uniformed branch was confirmed. The picture board and timeline sequencing had been started and was looking promising. The young female officer had been killed late Saturday night just after leaving a well-known night club. She had said goodbye to her two girlfriends and got into a taxi and that taxi driver claimed, supported by the CCTV from his vehicle, that he had dropped her outside her parents’ home in the suburbs at 01.35 on Sunday morning. She had been found dead, stabbed, about half a mile from the dropping point, at 06.45 Sunday morning. No street cameras covered the area, her parents said she had not come into the house, nothing was missing from her room, and she had no steady relationship with anyone. Forensic examination of the area and her body were still going on, but all that had been established so far was that she died from a single stab wound to the heart, a very precise killing by an expert. No sign of sexual attack, nothing seemed to have been stolen, her watch and jewelry all intact. He had visited the area where the body was found, waiting till scene of crime experts had finished then walking the area himself, now the body had been removed it all looked so normal. At least if you could ignore the police tape and chalked outline of a body. The interviewing of her friends and colleagues had begun, the atmosphere in the station was a mixture of anger and sorrow but there was also a collective determination to find and punish the killer. While the residential suburb did not have CCTV the main roads leading to and from the area did, and also many of the homes had their own security which includes cameras, all of these were being checked by a team of officers. The security footage available at the nightclub was being analyzed moment by moment. The taxi had both internal CCTV and both front and rear facing dash cams. By cross checking these various videos and coordinating the time of each frame in those videos, it was established that the victim was followed out of the club by two men and the taxi was followed by a year-old black Mercedes car, which also contained two men. It took time to find and expand a clear shot of the men as they left the club, and the Mercedes had darkened windows which made identification of driver and passenger difficult. The interior security cameras in the club were focused around the bar area, and it soon became clear that the same two men had been talking to the victim. The license plate led to establishing that the car officially belonged to a car hire business, but finding more about this had run into a blind end. The company name and address, shown as owners, did not exist. Checking the insurance for the vehicle indicated that it was insured by a government authority but a very obscure and unrecognized offshoot of the revenue collection department. Unofficial back channels were used to get “off the record” information from MI5 about this collection department. It was a “black opps” attempt to get money from the biggest criminal drug distributing gang in Europe, the very existence of this operation was only known to a very few, so how was the dead police officer involved? And why?

Detective inspector John Aims walked back to the site where the body was found, thinking only that something, some closeness to the killing field may trigger inspirational ideas. He was alone and walked slowly without real purpose, just trying to “feel” the events around the death of the officer. He stopped, closed his eyes trying to imagine that fateful scene. When, just a few seconds later, he opened his eyes again, he almost fell with shock. What he saw was not in any way the same as when he closed them. He turned around, the path he had walked on was gone, he now stood in a vast marshy wasteland. No sign of human activity, no agriculture, no houses, no roads just endless grassy wet land with occasional groups of stunted trees. He looked down at his feet and found he was wearing some sort of animal skins, his modern clothes as changed as the landscape, he instinctively reached for his phone but that to had changed, disappeared and in its place was a bone handled knife. His mind, so steeped in the practice of logic, so trained to rationalise everything, reeled and it took him several minutes to regain control of his senses. He started to study the sky and all the surrounding area, trying to find something, anything that he could use as an anchor for his mind. He knew he was not asleep and dreaming, the cold wind into his face was too tangible for a dream. He thought about where he had walked to, why he had been there, his mind desperate to find a connection and so bring a logical explanation to the situation. He closed his eyes again waited for the count of 20 and opened them again, there was a slight change in the scenery, he was now close to one of the groups of trees. He walked forward and climbed the slight slope up to the nearest tree. At the foot of the tree was the dead police officer. She was dressed in the clothes he had seen in the CCTV footage, she was obviously lifeless and now the knife that killed her was still protruding from her chest exactly over her heart. He clutched the tree for support as his mind reeled in total confusion. He closed his eyes again and willed his breathing to calmness when he opened then he was back in modern clothes clutching his phone and standing over the spot where the officer was found.

He knew he had not been dreaming, he knew he had experienced something far outside of his understanding, but he did not know how or why. His mind was now a turmoil of conflict, with the rational methodical side being opposed by an experience that had no explanation. His phone buzzed and his automated reflexes took over, “Hi John Aims”, he waited a few seconds then a voice he did not recognise spoke,” the girls death was unfortunate, mistaken identity, she was in wrong place at wrong time and was thought to be a major courier for the most unpleasant people on earth, we are sorry for this but the operation has to carry on” the phone went dead. John knew that he would never solve this killing, the whole of the secret side of police and security would make sure of that. That was almost acceptable but the vision of the mash, the dead girl with the knife in her, his change; they haunted him and would for ever. He stumbled back to his car and drove to the cabin, Considering the confused state of mind it was a wonder he made it safely, but he did. He went in and locked the door. He sat looking at the half empty glass but not seeing it, he was cold but not feeling it, he was in pain but not hurting from it. His mind was numb, his memory a jumble of conflicting events, as if from a nightmare but were in fact real.