I am not lonely [Mystrade] - BOOK 2

CHAPTER 203 : FBI, SPVN, MI5

"Oh come on Jesus, take those handcuff off him ! Seriously ..." a middle-aged man cursed the two young constables as he entered the interrogation room number three of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport of New-York. "Excuse my colleagues, they are sometime a bit zealous ..."

Greg nodded even so slightly as he rubbed his bruised wrists, knowing exactly what the other man meant. He had been detained in this room for at leat two hours even if it was hard to say as his watch and phones had been taken away from him.

"Have you been allowed a phone call to a lawyer ?" the American detective asked as he sent out the two guards with a single look.

"Yes." the DCI nodded."But no need to wait for him."

"Alright. I am going to ask you questions if that is OK with you, you've got the right not to answer and to ask for a talk with your lawyer at any moment but of course I don't need to explain that to you, do I ?" the policeman explained with a smile. "One last thing, you are not interviewed as a suspect but as a witness."

"I've got a question before we begin." Greg requested seeing no reason not to comply to the police rules that have just been enunciated. "To which agency do you belong to ?"

"Yes of course sorry, Special Agent Frank Carradine, FBI. This is a joint investigation between Montreal Police and the FBI." the American replied, feeling obligated. "Are you OK to consent to us taking all your personal belongings and especially your phones and electronic devices to search for anything that could help us in our investigation."

"Anything that can help, sure." the yarder agreed, taking a sip of the water bottle the man had brought for him.

"One of the flight attendants, mister Jason Fawcett, has provided us with a first account. He is the one who was by your sides when you discovered the bomber ?" Carradine questioned, opening his notepad.

"Correct." the British nodded.

"Fawcett told us that you and Mister Holmes have interrupted conversation between the flight's crew, asking them if they needed any kind of help. How did you know they were looking for someone ?" the special agent wondered, taking notes.

"As a detective I am trained to spot when people behave strangely. It is not difficult to guess that stewards looking at the faces of every passenger in the middle of the night are looking for something." Greg retorted with a small smile. "When you see something like this, it is your duty as a police officer to ask if you can be of any use, isn't it ?"

"I guess yes. Did you suspect they could be looking for a terrorist ?" Carradine asked, reading from the notes he had taken during the steward's interview.

In interview room two, the atmosphere was far less cordial. If Greg was well-informed about how policing method could sometime be unneedingly harsh and accepted it, Mycroft on the other hand, intended to be treated way better than what he had been so far. He was interviewed by a member of the SPVN, the Montreal police forces but despite all the attempt of the two policewomen to make him collaborate more willingly, the elder Holmes' temper still prevented them from getting the most out of the interview.

"Mister Holmes, I reaffirm that granting us access to your electronic devices would help us greatly with the investigation." the younger of the two inspectors requested for the third time in just under an hour.

"And I reaffirm that you won't find anything useful in those. I also ought to remind you that there is no law under which you can force a simple witness to grant access to his belongings without his consent, even more when the said witness is a foreign government official with a diplomatic passport." the politician refused, once more, making the two women curse under their breath. "And it is Lord Holmes to you."