The weather had changed overnight. It was still cloudy and wet, as usual, but a polar wind was strafing the country from the north. It pelted the façade of the police station with heavy flakes of snow—the first snow of the season. A layer of slush covered the path leading up to the building's entrance.
Art shivered as he approached, but his resolve to retrieve his digital belongings was burning hot.
The upper-floor geraniums had disappeared, and a man was lifting one of the last flower crates from its brackets at a ground-floor window.
The defloration of the police station—its de-flowering, in the original sense, fair punishment for seizing my computer.
Grinning with this thought, Art pulled open the large, wood-glass-and-iron front door and entered. The lobby was dry and heated, a perfect contrast to the world outside.
A uniformed, grim-faced monument of a receptionist had caught him in her sights, watching his every move with no outward sign of emotion.
Art approached her, fished Bossi's form from his coat, unfolded it, and placed it on her counter. "Hello, I'm here to retrieve my stuff."
"Hmm..." She studied the form. "Will you please have a seat." Her question-command was underlined by her hand gesturing towards a wooden bench at the wall opposite.
Without waiting for him to comply, she grabbed the form and vanished down a corridor.
Art shrugged and sat down as ordered.
The wall behind the receptionist's deserted counter held a no-nonsense clock. Its stolid, black arms left no doubt that it was 15:33, while the stepwise progress of their thin, restless sibling told a tale of seconds of precious life wasted while idling at a police station.
A poster to the right of the timepiece advertised another fact:
IN EMERGENCIES
DIAL 112
AND KEEP CALM
The uppercase, blue, sans-serif writing oozed authority. He made a mental note to take the advice, at least if he would ever get his phone back.
Heavy footsteps approached from the corridor. The receptionist reappeared. "Mr. Sharpe."
Art got up and suppressed the urge to salute her. She stood aside and extended her arm into the doorway she just had emerged from. He passed her looming frame with inches to spare. She followed him.
The hallway seemed to intersect the whole building, with doors on both sides and with a window at its end displaying a wintery courtyard.
"Next right."
The door stood open and admitted him to an office—Mrs. Bossi's office, Art concluded from the ponytail topping a head ducked halfway behind a desk.
The door banged shut behind him.
"Hello, Mrs. Bossi," Art said.
She sat up and placed a bag on her desk, obviously the prize she had been digging for. It was white with blue writing and extolled the virtues of the 112 number and of staying calm.
"Hello, Mr. Sharpe." She smiled.
The size of the bag made Art hope that his digital equipment was within reach.
"Please take a seat." She nodded at a chair opposite her desk. "Inspector Savage has asked me to go through some... points with you. Then you can grab your stuff and go."
YOU ARE READING
The Egg at Dumstreet
Mystery / Thriller[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has fo...
