Under Suspicion

One

It was 10th November night, around 10:15PM, Bradly Cooper was sitting in his lonely bed room with an unhealthy burger and a glass of cola on the table. The tv was on, it is now almost eleven o'clock late in the night, the first breaking news in CNN late night world news came up on the screen ... a big blast in a military installation. Bradly looked towards the screen, munching the burger with extra mayonnaise sauce but his right eye starts vibrating involuntarily.

***

Almost three months earlier one nice Tuesday, 14th of August, Bradly was playing solitaire in a windows pc in his Scotland Yard office as the clock touches almost 12 noon, the phone rang. Bradly talked for ten minutes, then got up, put his coat on, locked his room and went out to the parking lot.

His junior officer Patrick was already there ... they jumped into a police car and started driving towards Trafalgar square. Their destination is hotel Radisson Blu Edwardian near Leicester square, something bad happened there. Local police officer Stuart informed that the dead body of a rich French lady has been found today morning, though the death occurred probably a few hours before that. The lady was influential and there was pressure from the French embassy of London for a speedy investigation.

***

When they reached the hotel Radisson Blu, the lobby is full of police personnel and quite a few journalists were roaming around with camera. It was a five storey building and the incident happened in the third floor. Without wasting time Bradly and Patrick took the lift to the third floor, room no. 305.

***

It was a luxury double bed suit, not less than 100 square meter floor area, edge to edge carpeted. The suit has two attached toilets and a small self cooking facility. Bradly initially got so surprised that he did not even see the body which was still lying on the bed under a white bed sheet. He was never privy to such high luxury and just watching the degree of opulence around and then with a jerk came down into the reality with a pat in his back – "Bradly, let's go to the corridor and talk peacefully, here forensic team is busy ...".

Bradly immediately realized it is better to let the forensic team work without disturbance and he went out with Stuart and Patrick in the corridor. There were at least ten rooms on both sides of the corridor, at the end of it was an automatic coffee machine and an automatic cheeps and chocolate bar kiosk. Bradly was hungry, he grabbed a sandwich and coffee and all three stood near a staircase started talking.

Bradly took a bite and said – "How did you know about the murder, Stuart? Who is she above all?"

Two

Stuart took a sip from his coffee and said – "Look, her name is lady Maria Binoche, she is really a hot shot. She used to live in Paris but had a very long hand. Her husband was a well known businessman who died couple of years ago. She checked in on 12th, actually today morning she did not take breakfast. By around eleven the staffs here thought to have a knock because there was a British security guy wanted to see her, also she needs cappuccino occasionally in the day time besides breakfast. A service girl knocked and did not get any reply, so the room was opened using a duplicate key and her body was found".

- "What actually she was doing here?"

- "Yes, yes. As I said she had a long contact in both UK and in France. Her husband, Ahmad Noor started his business more than three decades ago in Jordan. He was initially stationed in Jordan but almost twenty five years ago he shifted to Paris".

- "What sort of business?"

- "Spices. He was a big whole sale supplier of spices to all over Europe and Turkey".