Paint the town red

Chapter XLII

On Thursday, I came to work on time, but I felt as if I hadn't slept at night, but was doing some terribly exhausting physical work. Although I took a sleeping pill at night, apparently my worries and anxiety were stronger and the sleep came out extremely restless. I think I even woke up a couple of times, but then I quickly fell asleep again.

Of course, Max immediately noticed my condition and at first he thought that I was ill, but still came to work. I had to tell him that I had ordinary insomnia, and not "I couldn't sleep because I was constantly thinking about you and not at all in the way I'd like to think about at night." Talking to Liam made me think seriously about my relationship with Max, and even worse, I began to consider him as a suspect in the case. I don't know why: did Liam brainwash me well, or am I really a blind idiot in love who doesn't see anything in front of his nose?

For the most part, I spent the second half of the working day alone in the office, since Frederick asked one of us to deal with a small case and I sent Max to do it. When he left, I tried to look for information about my partner in the police archives, but found nothing. Maybe it's because he's been with our police for less than a year and it'd be better to send a request to the police department where he was working before? But if I do, then he'll definitely find out about it and I'll not be able to avoid questions. Therefore, I decided to first find out about Frederick whether any requests were sent from the Netherlands about Max's work, and if the answer is no, then I will ask Logan for help - he'll definitely be able to help me dig something up.

I left my office and went directly to Frederick. As expected, he was in his office talking to someone on the phone. He motioned for me to be quiet, which I did without any question. I didn't listen to what he was saying, because my mind was completely occupied with something else. When Fred finished talking, he turned his attention to me.

"What, Charles? Did something happen?"

"No, I was just wondering: have you received any inquiries from the Netherlands about Max's work with us?"

"You mean the evaluation requests?"

I nodded, and Frederick said that two requests had come in all the time: the first one was three months after Max was transferred to us, the second one was three months after the first one. To say that I was surprised is to say nothing. But along with the surprise, I also felt relief. Although I didn't ask, Frederick even showed me these reports, because it'd be useful for me, as his partner, to know what his superiors think about his work.

The boss got up from his seat and went to the shelf with maps, from where he took out a folder with Max's personal file. He flipped through a few pages, took out the requests from the folder and handed them to me. After taking the papers from Frederick, I read each of them, but I don't know why, but something in them seemed suspicious to me. I double-checked the name of the city, the street, and even remembered the symbols of Max's dept in the Netherlands, but everything seemed to match. But the feeling that something was wrong here stubbornly refused to leave me. I returned the papers to Frederick, and he put them back in the folder and returned it to its place on the shelf.

"Why are you even asking about this?"

"I just started thinking about how Sebastian talked about those papers when I first joined your precinct. So I wondered if there were the same ones addressed to Max."

"And that's all?"

"Yeap."

"And this has nothing to do with your case?"

"Exactly."

"And you didn't reopen your parallel investigation?"

"Nope. I gave you my word."