An hour or so later, Edmund was sitting cross-legged on a chair in the middle of Hawes' s empty office, with the bin bag on his lap and totally surrounded by big, free-standing whiteboards. Half of the polaroid collection was firmly blue-tacked to said whiteboards, while Edmund spun in constant circles with pictures in his hands, trying to see where each one of them fitted into the huge, circular timeline he had created for himself.
He had found, to his intense delight, that two particular guests in the polaroid pictures had worn watches on their night out, so there were two thick, black straight lines running down the lengths of the boards from these two pictures, with the times written below in big, bold lettering. Edmund had arranged some more of the pictures around him in what he supposed could be chronological order, going from levels of drinks in glasses, light colours (well, mainly light colours. Bumble had sent him the light playlist from the night in question, and it was easy to pick out which bits came from where) and how pissed the people in the photos looked. He had also scanned very carefully the backgrounds of each one before he stuck them on, and so far had found one photo he thought might have caught Yuki Chauika in the background, sitting at one of the back tables. He had put a big red ring multiple times around that particular photo, and although it had no specific time it was standing to have been taken about roughly twenty past eleven.
Edmund spun on the chair once again, sticking a photo of two rather hot girls both in very short dresses pouting and opening their eyes widely at the camera into a space symbolising about quarter past nine. He spun again, looking at the next picture, then very nearly fell off his chair. It was a picture from the bar, and he could even see Tink's back as she whipped up some sort of concoction on the back bench. What had made him jump was the fact that Yuki could be clearly seen pouting and holding two fingers up to the camera in a peace sign, and the fact that there was a shadow of a figure behind her that seemed to be about to pull her away. By the look of the lighting, it was about ten past ten, but...Edmund squinted. He could just about make out the clock Tink kept under her bar, and it looked more like quarter past ten than ten past. It didn't look like Yuki knew the people taking the photo, but Edmund had seen enough people drunk on Tink's cocktails to know that people tended to go a little overboard on them, and it tended to make them a little on the random side.
Edmund squinted at the dark figure in the background, trying to make some sort of features out of it. He couldn't see much, but there were two little green specks of reflected light that implied the figure might have been wearing sunglasses.
Well, Edmund decided, sticking the paper up at where he had reckoned quarter past ten was, and he drew a big black line once again down from it, and writing the time before circling the picture multiple times with a red pen and moving on.
He heard the door open behind him.
"What in the name of all that's holy are you doing, Detective Sargeant?"
"I'm looking at polaroids, ma'am" Edmund replied, a little flippantly, as he found another picture he could stick in the right place.
"I can see that" Hawes sighed. "But what are you doing it for?"
"The case" Edmund told her, spinning again on the chair, looking at the pattern of lights Bumble had sent him to try and work out where it had come from.
Hawes sighed.
"Are you deliberately being difficult this afternoon?" she snapped, crossing to the gap between two of the whiteboards and leaning menacingly between them.
"No, ma'am, I'm looking at polaroids" Edmund told her, with a wicked smile. Hawes cracked completely, walking away very fast to stop Edmund seeing that she was laughing.
"These polaroids are from the Andromeda Club, all taken on the night Yuki was there, before she died" Edmund explained, to Hawes's back. "I reckoned we would be able to get some sort of idea about when she arrived or left if we could spot her in the background of any of the pictures. I spoke to all my friends, and the bartender said she remembers Yuki getting drunk at the bar, and I've also got a picture of her at the bar, with someone trying to pull her out of the picture. The timings are a little off from everything, but I'm trying to get it all in chronological order..."
"That could be helpful" Hawes cut in, seemingly recovered from her laughter. "Keep going. We'll see what we've got when you're done."
"Did you find anything interesting at the University?" Edmund asked curiously. Hawes snorted a little.
"It depends on what you find interesting" she replied. "I spoke a little to Yuki's flatmates and close friends, all of whom were in varying degrees of upset, and gathered a little bit of basic background information on all of them. Yuki also kept a diary, which I'll leave for you to read."
"So, who do we think it could be?" Edmund asked again. Hawes shrugged.
"I haven't the faintest idea."
"I might be able to help you with that" Edmund told her, still spinning on the chair. "My friend the bartender said that there was a man buying all of Yuki's drinks for her. I think he's in the back of one of my polaroids. Apparently he spoke with a foreign accent, but my friend couldn't place it."
"Which picture?" Hawes asked, and Edmund pointed. She whipped it from the whiteboard cleanly, inspecting it under the strong lamplight next to her desk.
"A little help, perhaps" she mused. "I assume that there's no way of increasing the exposure on this?"
"I wouldn't know, ma'am" Edmund said promptly, as he stuck another couple of photos onto his timeline.
"Look at this."
Hawes shoved the photo into Edmund's face, her finger positioned over the hand holding Yuki's shoulder.
"It's a ring?" Edmund said questioningly, looking up at his boss from his chair.
"It seems so" Hawes agreed. "I don't see how we can enlarge it, but it's a little clue."
"Mmm" Edmund hummed flatly, taking the picture back and sticking it into its place.
"Ma'am?" he asked.
"Sargeant?"
"Would you be able to help me out, a bit? I've got a whole list of names but not any faces to them. We know one of Yuki's companions has to be a member of the club, so if you could find the Facebook profiles..."
"Of everyone on the list, so you can get some names to some of those pictures of yours" Hawes finished. "I daresay I might as well. There's not much else to do today. Hand me the names."
"They're on my desk" Edmund retorted, a little sourly. Hawes's nostril flickered angrily, but she stamped over to Edmund's desk and picked up the booklet of names, crossing to her own huge desk and booting up her computer.
Edmund smirked to himself. That had gone rather well.
YOU ARE READING
Two Heads.
Mystery / Thriller-The first extract from the casefiles of D.I.Hawes & D.S.Gray- Edmund Gray is already under pressure. He's just been promoted to the rank of Detective Sargeant at his job in the Oxfordshire Police, and his new boss, the infamously irritating Detecti...
