PART TWO - CAMBRIDGE
- 8 -
Gabe sat at a desk in a police interrogation room, feeling truly dreadful. He felt tired and confused and the pain in his head just would not go away. The way the police had treated his rambling account of the day's events hadn't especially helped his mood. Unsurprisingly, they had reacted just as Saphy had predicted to the suggestion that anybody was killed because a four hundred year old painting of a woman was maybe a man. They were equally easy to convince of the idea that Gabe had been assaulted, kidnapped and locked in a basement for the past couple of hours, a basement he could not properly describe nor locate. He had to admit that the whole thing sounded pretty far fetched even to him, and he had lived it.
The door of the interrogation room opened and two police officers entered. One was the one that had already interviewed Gabe for an hour, seeming not to believe a single word of his story. He was a tough looking, broad shouldered man with a military haircut and a condescending attitude. The other man was obviously the first policeman's superior. He was of a slighter build, while still being bigger and stronger than Gabe, but carried himself with an air of efficient command.
"I'm Detective Inspector Gilbert," he introduced himself, "And you've already met Detective Sergeant Godfrey. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"I've already told him everything that's happened," Gabe said, sounding frustrated and petulant but mostly exhausted after the day he had had.
"Now then, there's no need for you to take that tone with us, Mr. Herrison," DI Gilbert went on, "We're just trying to establish exactly what happened this afternoon. Can you tell us again where you were between the hours of five and seven?"
"I was locked in a basement somewhere in town," Gabe said, "I was attacked, assaulted in the street by a couple of robed assassins and when I woke up I was in this cellar."
"Locked in a basement by a sinister cult? That's your story, Mr. Herrison?" DI Gilbert seemed disbelieving, "A locked basement that you just walked out of when the time came for you to leave. A locked basement that you can't tell us even roughly the whereabouts of. I'm sorry, Mr. Herrison, but I'm having a little trouble believing this story. I think you have a very fertile imagination, right Godfrey?"
"Right, sir. Very fertile," DS Godfrey agreed, eyeing Gabe up in a threatening fashion.
"What about before that then, Mr. Herrison," DI Gilbert continued, "You gave us a London address, so what are you doing here in Cambridge?"
"I came to the university, to see a professor," Gabe explained, "Jane Cavendish. I needed her help with something."
"Needed her help?" Gilbert repeated, giving his colleague a significant glance as he said this, "Was it perhaps in connection with this?"
He opened the file that he was carrying and placed a glossy A4 size photograph on the table between Gabe and the two detectives. Gabe recognised it instantly. It showed the victim of the National Gallery murder, the middle aged woman in a white smock, stretched out on the floor, blood leaking from her neck, the now familiar symbol drawn onto the wall. It was an image that Gabe needed no photo to remember, it was embedded in his mind for good.
"Recognise that?" Gilbert went on.
"I took it," Gabe agreed, "On the day of the murder in the National Gallery. I turned all my photos over to the Metropolitan Police."
"So, you were there with the victim on the day of that murder," Gilbert responded, flashing another significant glance at Godfrey, "None of your photos give any indication of the perpetrator of this heinous crime," the tone he used as he said this had a whiff of sarcasm that Gabe could not quite follow, "Just gruesome images of the victim, right, Godfrey?"
