Tapestry of Deception

Chapter Two

Mitchell Pointers

23rd November 2000

Mitchell Pointers drained the last of his small cup of coffee. He cleared a space on the table, piled high with papers and documents, and balanced the day’s newspaper, precariously, somewhere in the middle. Taking a bagel from the tray in front of him, he contemplated how to spend his day off.

 From somewhere on the floor the phone rang and he sighed in annoyance, having to get down on his knees and sift between papers to retrieve it.

“Hullo.” He breathed into the receiver as he squatted underneath the table.

“Mitchell Pointers”. A voice barked, loud and rubbery, into his ear. Mitchell winced and held the receiver slightly away, as if it were a poisonous snake.

“George.” He answered gruffly. There was something austere about the Chief Inspector, despite his brash sounding voice and the general rudeness of his mannerisms.

“Mitchell, I have an assignment for you.”

“George, it’s my day off”. Mitchell carefully unfolded himself from beneath the table and straightened up.

“Mitchell,” George laughed darkly, “Do you think I care about something as menial as that? I’m a busy man you know.”

“Can we deal with this tomorrow?”

“Detective Mitchell Pointers this is your last chance, you hear me? You mess up this one and you’re out of a job. You can come collect your things from Scotland Yard today.”

Mitchell shivered as he thought of the disaster of the last case – the murderer had just done his job too well.

George’s voice was so loud it rebounded off the walls of the room.

“All right, all right.” Mitchell soothed. “Fill me in on the case”.

Mitchell could hear George breathe out deeply. There was no love lost between them, never had been. George couldn’t stand the fact that it was Mitchell whose Dad had run Scotland Yard so successfully for forty years, whilst Mitchell hated being bossed about by someone who had clearly never heard of the word professionalism.

“It’s about a man called Alexander Suvagante, you heard of ‘im?”

“Sure, I went to see him give a talk once, something on marine biology. The man’s a legend.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s him all right. Thirty-eight years old. Six foot two. Young wife. Rich. Content life as far as I can tell.”

“What about him?”

“He’s missing.” George’s voice panted on the phone, it always did when he was forced to utter more than a few syllables in a five-minute interval. “Disappeared last Friday night without a trace.”

Mitchell swallowed, “Any other women you know about?”

“Not as far as his wife is concerned.” George laughed again. Mitchell thought he had an irritating laugh.

“It seems a lost cause, if you don’t mind me saying.” Mitchell stated, “Do we have any evidence to suggest that something actually happened to him? After all, he could have just decided to go off on his own for a few days, maybe he had a disagreement with his wife. Things like that happen every day. This should be an issue for local police, how did we get involved?”

“Yeah well, it’s his brother Paul; very big in the city, came straight to us. No, no evidence yet but there’s definitely something. The whole town the guy came from, Lalington, up in the Midlands, is on alert. Relatively safe place as far as I can tell but the Mayor has tightened down recently: night guards and the sort. Everyone has to be indoors by dusk.”