Cloned

Chapter 15

Detective Michaels POV

The interrogation room is not like you see in movies. In the movies they are massive empty rooms with one sided glass windows and it all looks ver intimidating. In actual fact, our interrogation room is more like somebody’s sparsely decorated study. It had a table, two chairs and an ancient old cassette recorder which looks like something out off the antiques road show.

I was sitting in one chair and a very nervous looking scientist was sitting in the other. His name was Dr Jandford and he was the one who tipped us off. He was wearing a leather jacket with peculiar stain on it. He also wore a pair of faded jeans and was trying to pull of the effortlessly cool look but the Gok Wan glasses were rather hindering it slightly. His palms were sweaty and he kept looking at his watch as if he had somewhere to go.

“So Dr Jandford, What exactly are you accusing Dr Olivia Longbridge of?” I asked him in what I hoped sounded like a cool controlled tone. I had to look good in front of my new partner. He seemed distinctly unimpressed when I told him that we were taking the case.

“well you see: a complete cloning of another human being is illegal. We are allowed to do stem cell research which is what Dr Longbridge was doing but whilst doing a routine screening of the files, I found that a case had a complete cloning of a niece of her assistant. The niece had died about 2 weeks before the case started. I think you have a motive and evidence there. “ He finished. It sounded exactly as if he had written the entire speech before coming in. The voice was monotone and the way he said “Longbridge” was riddled with hatred.

“It says here that the case itself took place nine years. Do you regularly look through cases that are almost a decade old on a “routine check”?” I asked him. It looked quite odd that it should take so long.

“The scientific research that we do is not exactly a week long job. Most projects take at least 6 months or more. Some of the work that Longbridge does takes up to five years to monitor. Most of the scientists whose work I check I do annually but because of the extent of Longbridge's task, I check hers every few years. She had made a breakthrough a few years ago involving a treatment for Dementia so I did not check hers as thoroughly as I should have done. I was catching up on her past ten years worth of work when I discovered the illegal cloning project.” He spoke quickly and sounded like a nervous child before the nativity play. I listened intently through this. It all appeared to coincide with the dates in the folder.

“Are you sure, that this was not a theoretical case instead of a tested one?” I heard Detective Arnold clip in. He sounded like he was desperate to get out. It was Friday but did he really need to act like a teenager on the last lesson on a Friday?

“Quite sure. It had dates and recorded evidence of the birth of the child and tests scores of the child in comparison to the same test scores of the original child.” He reassured Arnold.

“Thank you Dr Jandford.” I said concluding the interview. I pressed stop on the antiques road show cassette recorder. I showed him to the door. I then spun around to face Arnold. He looked at me with a face that clearly thought that Dr Jandford had a bone to pick with Longbridge and was making stuff up about her that was so much in science speak that we couldn't hope to interpret it so would have to rely on his word.

“One interview with Dr Longbridge then we will know.” I told him. “Now piss off and enjoy your weekend getting off your face.” I added under my breath. I spun around and walked over to my desk. I could understand half of what was written in the file so was getting in an expert to help me. No way was I going to get this one wrong. Not like last time.

“Hi, we need an expert on... hang on... cloning? No, this is not a science fiction prank call. We seriously do have a case... yes... okay... I know how it sounds.... tomorrow?... next week?... Okay Thanks! Bye” I hung up. I then dropped my head on the desk. Why would nobody take me seriously?