The Word Cloud

With Police assistance this blog may now be added, and be read in conjunction with my earlier blog called 'The Research'.

 

It was three years after the storm that had demolished part of Mike’s house when the police were able to close their investigations. The blood-stained knife that had been found hidden under the staircase did yield a critical clue. Several visits had been made to the house and the time capsule cardboard boxes that were originally hidden with the knife had also been studied in fine detail.

 

The Detective Inspector leading the investigation was on good terms with Mike after chatting and discovering that he was a retired Inspector.

 

The story as relayed to Mike started with the traces of human blood detected on the blade of the knife. Forensic testing and a DNA analysis showed that the blood belonged to a group concentrated in the Australian Pacific region, and was most probably aborigine. Parallel investigations into the various owners of Mike’s house revealed that when Mr. & Mrs. Robbins had purchased the house at auction the understairs area was already screened by a wall. Therefore, the wall must have been erected by Alice Wagstaff sometime after the original construction of the house. The boxes and knife must have been secreted away at the same time.

 

Initially, it was felt most unlikely that the police would be able to find a link between Alice and aborigine blood. That was until Alice’s cousin who had acted as her executrix was questioned. As a niece to Alice’s parents she knew quite a lot about that family and under several sessions of close questioning it emerged that her uncle had worked in New South Wales as a mining engineer with Rio Tinto Zinc and taken his family with him. Alice’s cousin had also mentioned how much that family had enjoyed their time in Australia and how they had been made so welcome by the Aborigine people. RTZ company files had disclosed that the family had rented a property situated on a drovers’ road two hundred miles north west of Sydney. Further research into the RTZ files by the NSW Police Force showed that Alice’s family had lived there for a couple of years. Armed with that information the police then searched their local files to see if any reference to the family had been registered.

 

It transpired that two aborigine brothers engaged by the family to look after the garden and to help generally on the property had been involved in a minor dispute and nobody else had been involved. One of the brothers needed hospital attention in Merriwa for a cut he had received, but no criminal charges were ever lodged. The police had easily traced the brothers in that thinly populated community and DNA tests established the link to Alice’s knife.

 

It was assumed that Alice’s father had found the knife and got it out of the way to reduce the amount of trouble that the two brothers might have faced. It was further assumed that as time went by rather than throw the knife away he had held on to it to ensure it couldn’t be used as evidence by the people to whom he had become attached.

 

Thanking the Detective Inspector for letting him in on the case, Mike scribbled some notes, just out of interest. One day, he thought, other people might wonder about that walled up cavity under the stairs, and just perhaps he would let them in on its secrets.

This blog is the final part of the story that started with 'The Storm" followed by 'The Build" , 'The Artists" , "The Surveyor" and "The Wall".

 

Mike purposefully made himself a good breakfast. It felt the right thing to do. He knew it would calm him and he definitely wanted to be in full control of his senses now that the three boxes were indoors and on the lounge floor. The boxes looked identical but didn’t all weigh the same. There was nothing to indicate that one should be opened before another so he simply picked up the top box, put it on the table and removed the lid.

 

It seemed to be mainly full of papers. Before going through them he looked into each of the other boxes, and established that most of the contents were papers of one sort or another but there were some small tins and other odds and ends. He didn’t know what to expect but what he saw disappointed him, nothing really interesting caught his eye. He went into the kitchen, poured another coffee and went back to the lounge to start going through the boxes in detail.

 

It was nearly time for lunch by the time he had finished. He was totally puzzled by the contents, couldn’t see much point to any of them. It was interesting to glance at the headlines on some of the newspapers and to find some coins, but baby photographs left him bemused. What was going on here? Why hide all this stuff away in a walled up cavity?

 

Losing a certain amount of interest, Mike put everything back into the boxes and decided he would look at them again over the weekend when he had two completely free days. He then remembered the kitchen knife that he had wrapped in a tea towel and placed on the sideboard.

 

He unwrapped the knife and held it in the cloth, he somehow felt he shouldn’t get his fingerprints on it. It seemed to have been well used. The handle was scratched, the blade was showing signs of rust and the tip of the blade was rather stained. Wrapping up the knife once more, Mike put it to one side. Not much of interest there, but why was it hidden under the stairs?

 

Having seen the old floor plans in the solicitor’s office, he was able to link the area under the stairs, that had been pencilled as cloaks, with the hooks that he had seen screwed into the board at the top of cavity, so no mystery attached to that. It was just the boxes and the knife that weren’t making any sense.

 

On Saturday morning armed once more with his torch, Mike re-examined the space under the stairs just to ensure that he hadn’t missed anything. Builders were due on the Monday to carry out repairs on the house and this would be his last opportunity to check.

 

Back in the lounge he started on the photographs. Sepia coloured faces stared back at him, some looking stern, others with a hint of a smile but all rather formal. They were mainly family groups, or at least he assumed they were families, and several were pictures of a baby. As so often happens with photographs, when they are current there doesn’t seem to be any need to write explanations, only in later years does it become important and that was the problem with most of the photographs that Mike was studying. Only the pictures showing a baby carried any information and those were said to be of a baby Alice aged at various times, from three weeks to three months old. The only date shown was nineteen twenty-two.

 

Turning next to the pile of newspapers, Mike quickly became distracted. The headlines and some of the articles were of historical interest, referring to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun on the fourth of November nineteen twenty-two. There was also reference to the general election held on the fifteenth of November in that same year that was won by Andrew Bonar Law. Several hours were spent looking at these news items and at one point Mike had almost forgotten that he was actually trying to solve a mystery.

The papers in the boxes seemed to relate to the same year, nineteen twenty-two, but why? The name Alice then began to register. Wasn’t that the name of one of the parties on his house deeds? Yes, of course it was, Mike almost shouted to himself. He recalled that that was the name of the first owner of this property, but was it the same Alice? He felt he was perhaps getting somewhere at last. Now armed with that possible lead, he looked again at the other contents of the boxes. Yes, he was right, the coins, including George V pennies, were dated in that same year.

 

It slowly dawned on him that he had discovered a time capsule. True, it was only in cardboard boxes but nevertheless that is what he had unearthed. That would account for it being sealed up as well, although it did seem to be rather an elaborate way to hide things. Mike realised that he was now confronted with a dilemma. What should he do with all this stuff? He had no real interest in keeping it available, after all he didn’t know these people and there wasn’t anything of any significant intrinsic value.

 

He was about to put the boxes back under the stairs when, once again, he thought of the knife. His feelings about the knife made him uneasy, somehow it seemed so strange for it to have been hidden away. So many questions still remained, in fact there were more loose ends now than when he had started poking about at the hole in the wall.

 

With the builders coming in a couple of day’s time he felt under a certain amount of pressure. He was tempted to put everything back as he had found it, let the builders mend the wall and then get on with his life, on the other hand he knew that he would always be teased by the mystery surrounding the cavity and its contents. He decided there and then to let the builders go ahead with the repairs. He would keep the boxes available for a while and go through them one more time over the next few days. As for the knife he wanted to think about that for a while longer, so he put it in his bureau drawer, still wrapped in the cloth.

 

As a former police officer, although now retired, Mike had a strongly developed sense of civic duty and something about the knife kept nagging at him. He had never worked as a detective, his years were spent in keeping law and order and his diligence had resulted in him being promoted to the level of Superintendent. Naturally, during his career he had developed a network of useful contacts and he still kept in touch with many of his former colleagues at social occasions.

 

Regarding the knife, he had very little information to go on but it occurred to him that the staining on the blade could perhaps be human blood. He had always been very cautious about leaping to conclusions and now that he was not in the force anymore the last thing he wanted to do was to let his pals think that he was over-reacting in a trivial matter. The issue was, as he saw it, that he might be withholding information that linked to a criminal activity. There was one friend, a fellow Superintendent, with whom he decided to share his dilemma and arrive at a course of action. Mike slept on his decision and on the Monday morning before the workmen arrived he phoned his friend.

 

Several months had passed after that phone call when one morning Mike received a call from a Detective Police Inspector confirming that traces of human blood had been detected on the blade of the knife. Mike’s initial phone call to his police friend had eventually led to the knife being handed over to the authorities, and now here was news that Mike was hoping he would never receive. It was completely out of his hands by now but in a way he felt satisfied that his hunch about the knife was well founded.

 

He heard no more about this incident except an unofficial remark passed by his Superintendent friend. Apparently, enquiries were being made about the successive owners of Mike’s house and also in connection with the deeds of the property and any planning applications that might have been submitted.

 

Conjecture about the knife was all that he had available to him now.  Was Alice who appeared in the photographs the same Alice who was named years ago in the deeds of the property? Although he was a sole owner of a house now, he had always wondered about such a large house as his not being registered in joint ownership when it was originally built. He was curious too about the circumstances that had enabled Alice to build such a large property. Was it possible that she had benefited from a large inheritance? Had she built the wall under the staircase or had the Robbins? Mr. & Mrs. Robbins had only been names on legal documents when Mike purchased the house from them, they had never met.

 

Wanting closure on the whole affair, Mike had put the time capsule boxes up in the loft. Maybe one day they would once more see the light of day. Maybe one day he’d receive a follow-up call from the police.

 

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Yesterday, I was stopped by the police again.

Last week they fined me for my passenger not wearing a seat belt.

Last month, it was for not having a reflector strip on my car boot.

This time it was for not having my ownership details displayed on the windscreen. I wouldn’t mind, but whilst I am pulled over, a dozen or so vehicles drive past, held together by bits of string, spewing out black exhaust fumes and overloaded with passengers who are literally hanging out the backs.

They want me to park at the side of the road and walk through the crowded bus depot to pay my fine of six pounds equivalent. It is almost dark, I am late for my daughter’s piano lesson and have left my other children at home alone. I don’t have time for this nonsense.

Can’t I just write my name and address on a piece of paper and stick it in the window?

Yes, madam, but first you must pay the fine.

All my other discs are displayed and are in date… insurance, tax, MOT. I show the officer my driving licence, and tell him that my husband has just built the police a new victim support unit (after an employee was raped and there was no support available for her). He takes my licence and tells me to come back tomorrow with the fine.

Fine!

This morning I drive through the bus depot, where most of the petty crime happens, and into the traffic police station. It’s a dump. I politely pay my fine and ask for my licence back.

Ah – ah!

A maize sack is produced and hundreds of driving licences are tipped out onto the desk.

Surely they didn’t confiscate all those yesterday?

No, these belong to the drivers who can’t afford to pay the fines.

Now I know why I keep being stopped.

I rummage through the piles of grubby white Malawian driving licences. Mine is pink. A UK one. It’s not there. The police officer who took it must have it still.

Do you have airtime on your phone?

No, my credit ran out last night. I meant to buy some from the lady at the end of my road on the way to school this morning.

So, how can we contact the officer?

Err… don’t you have a phone here? A radio?

No land line, no radio, no credit.

Eventually, I spot it lying on a desk. It’s examined and handed over.

I’m out of here…

( I don't know if this is true - received it as an email - funny if it's true or not)

Only an Aussie could pull this one off!

A true story from the Mount Isa in Queensland.
Recently a routine Police patrol car parked outside a local neighbourhood pub.
Late in the evening the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk.

The man stumbled around the car park for a few minutes, with the officer quietly observing. After what seemed an eternity and trying his keys on five vehicles. The man managed to find his car, which he fell into.
He was there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off. Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on and off (it was a fine dry night). Then flicked the indicators on, then off, tooted the horn and then switched on the lights.

He moved the vehicle forward a few cm, reversed a little and then remained stationary for a few more minutes as some more vehicles left. At last he pulled out of the car park and started to drive slowly down the road.
The Police officer, having patiently waited all this time, now started up the patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man over and carried out a random breathalyser test.

To his amazement the breathalyser indicated no evidence of the man's intoxication.

The Police officer said 'I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the Police station - this breathalyser equipment must be broken.'

'I doubt it,' said the man, 'tonight I'm the designated decoy'.