The NamSeok Mysteries

Three

"Fuck on a stick!" she yelled.

Everyone in the office stared at Jacquie, but weren't altogether surprised at her outburst. She was frequently vocal about her frustrations, yet never got reprimanded as she'd earned that right, at least, since she was the most astute and successful current affairs journalist in the place. She had strong intuition and followed up on any lead, no matter how insignificant it seemed. In this small town, her instincts had led her to some incredible scoops, earning her Journalist of the North West several times. She was admired and loathed in equal measure. She didn't give a rat's ass about other people's opinion of her, but she never overstepped the mark on sensitive issues.

"Holy fucking mother of - what is wrong with this stupid laptop?" she burst out again immediately. "Ryan! Ryan! This piece of shit laptop is acting up again, I thought you'd fixed it! Ryan! Where the fuck is he?"

"Ryan's not here Jacks, he's on his day off, remember?" replied Chris, her boss, from his desk. "Can't it wait until tomorrow? Poor sod will be back then."

"How am I supposed to finish this story in an hour if you give me crap equipment to work on?" she complained. Chris rolled his eyes and let her rant until she'd got it out of her system. The story she supposedly needed to finish had been good to go since yesterday, but the perfectionist that she was didn't think so. He suddenly looked at his watch and asked, "Jacks, where's Maggie? She called me last night saying she was meeting her source at around 8 to get an update for her story, but she hasn't been in touch since."

"What?" asked Jacquie, stopping what she was doing, suddenly concerned. "I haven't heard from her either. I thought you'd sent her off on some fool's errand today." As she spoke, from the corner of her eye she saw two figures walking into their offices. She turned to look and saw one person she recognised, and another she didn't. She was curious as to why Father Hoseok was here and who the stranger was with him. This person seemed to be taking in his surroundings with interest. She watched them as they walked towards her.

"Morning Jacquie," said Father Hoseok in a quiet and sombre way when he almost reached where she sat. "Is there somewhere private we can talk?"

She nodded and got up to go to their small meeting room. Her honed instincts were already giving her a bad feeling about the ensuing conversation. The two men followed Jacquie, leaving behind them an ominous silence around the office. Hoseok closed the door behind him and, without missing a beat, Jacquie turned to him and said, "Ok, tell me what's happened. You usually avoid this place like the plague. I've even seen you do the sign of the cross when you walk past. What is it? Is it Maggie?"

Namjoon looked at her and then at Hoseok, wondering what he'd say. He thought they'd come to speak to Maggie's boss, so he wasn't sure why Hoseok had gone to her first. Hoseok then replied to Jacquie, very softly, "I'm so very sorry to bring this news to you, but Maggie has sadly passed on." He waited for the flood of questions and profanity to follow. Neither came and instead there was silence for a long minute. He looked at her, wondering what she was thinking. "Jacquie?"

She sighed deeply and croaked, "How?"

"We're not sure, the autopsy hasn't been released, but looked like she'd been strangled."

Jacquie winced and asked, "Where? When?"

Hoseok replied in a somber tone, "At the mausoleum. We think around 1am."

Jacquie had had a bad feeling about Maggie this morning, but hadn't expected this. "Who found her, was it you?" Hoseok shook his head and looked meaningfully at Namjoon who'd been respectfully silent all this time. "This is Namjoon. He'd been exploring our church grounds and found her. Jacquie, I'm so sorry, I know this was not the news you were expecting to hear about your best friend."

When she spoke, she sounded ready for a fight. "I'm going to find the motherfucker who did this and I'm going to make him choke on his own balls," she spat as she made her way to the door to leave, but Hoseok, who had been standing in front of it ready for this, had his arms stretched out to stop her going anywhere.

"Jacquie, I understand how angry you must be feeling, but wait for a bit before you go looking for, erm, testicles to maim. Let Namjoon and I help you. Let's find the people responsible together. Maggie was a good soul and one of mine, so I will do all I can to help find her killers," he said.

Normally, Jacquie would have yelled and bulldozed her way out, not worrying about the consequences of her actions, but she knew Hoseok was right. Three heads were probably better than one. Speaking of which, she suddenly turned to Namjoon. "I get why Father H wants to help, but what's your deal?" she asked with more than a hint of suspicion.

Namjoon coughed in surprise. "Actually, Father Hoseok asked me. I'm a cryptanalyst and we discovered a coded message when we found Maggie. It's one of the first forms of code and should be fairly straightforward to decipher, but my gut says it can't be that easy. And then there's the question as to why Maggie was holding it at the time of her demise. It's quite a conundrum and when Father Hoseok asked me to help, even though technically I'm on holiday, I realised this could be quite an interesting mystery to solve and use my skills outside the office."

He looked at Hoseok and Jacquie expecting to see looks of awe and admiration.

"Bit of a talker aren't you? Those are now minutes of my life I'll never get back," said Jacquie, clearly irritated. "Father H, thank you for helping. As for you, Namjoon, time will tell how useful you'll be," she said curtly, leaving Namjoon wondering what he'd done to receive such hostility within minutes of meeting this woman. Getting up, she said, "Ok, if you have that code, then I know exactly whom we should see first. We can't do anything else anyway until the autopsy report is released. I'll speak to my mortuary guy about it later."
With that, she got up and left the room, assuming that Hoseok and Namjoon would follow, which they did.