Fireflies by David Menon

fate. Then there was the familiarity he felt about the name of Sophie Cooper. He still hadn’t worked out why that meant something to him and it was still driving him mad.
    ‘Sir?’ said Ollie as Jeff walked through the squad room in the direction of his office. ‘We have the report from June Hawkins’.
    Jeff carried on walking and then realised that Ollie had just spoken to him. ‘Yeah? Sorry Ollie, I’m miles away’.
    ‘Sir, there was enough rohypnol in James Clifton’s blood to have completely knocked him out for hours. It’s likely that he wouldn’t have known anything’.
    ‘Lucky him in that case’ said Jeff. ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Oh yes’ said Ollie’ I’ve got something to show you’.
    ‘Good news or bad news?’
    ‘Oh I think you’ll like it, sir’ said Ollie who was worried about the way the boss looked. ‘Are you okay, sir?’
    Jeff smiled. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, Ollie, I’m fine’ he said as he stood behind his desk. ‘Go on?’
    Ollie then slid a DVD into the computer on Jeff’s desk. ‘Sir, this is the last image of James Clifton we could find on any of the CCTV sources for that area of the city centre. It clearly shows him walking in the direction of Lower Mosley Street and away from the Paradise club where we’d seen him going in an hour earlier with the rest of his party’.
    ‘Yes’ said Jeff as he eyed the images on the screen and suddenly felt excited. ‘And he’s not alone’. 
    ‘Exactly, sir’ said Ollie. ‘And that could be the moment when James Clifton first meets his killer’.
     
    Ollie Wright had no time for people who play the race card to mask their incompetence. He’d seen it happen. He had a cousin who was the laziest bitch in the world but when her boss threatened her with disciplinary action if she didn’t pull her socks up and stop letting everyone else in the office where she worked carry her, she was proud of the fact that she’d replied with ‘I’m black and I’m a woman. That means I’ve two ace cards against a white middle-aged man like you. So who do you think an industrial tribunal would believe if you dared to try and sack me?’ Ollie had been disgusted with her behavior. She made it even more difficult for black people who really were the victims of racism to plead their case.
    He knew that racism existed in the police force but he also tried not to find it hiding under every bush. That’s why he was struggling with Jonathan Freeman. The squad’s new computer geek who hadn’t shaken hands with him or even looked him in the eye on the day he joined the team, didn’t look anything like a geek at all but had been making remarks that had made Ollie stop and wonder if he was being deliberately wound up. Jonathan only made the remarks within Ollie’s hearing and it was making Ollie feel uncomfortable about being with him.
    ‘Tell me’ said Jonathan. ‘How do you feel when you have to investigate your own people?’ He was inputting to the computer some of the findings from the door-to-door enquiries that uniform had started around the Mayfair hotel. He was sitting opposite Ollie with whom he was sharing a desk.
    Ollie looked away from his own computer screen and paused irritably. He never knew where Freeman’s remarks were going to end up.  ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Well with so many crimes committed by your people’ Jonathan went on. ‘Statistically speaking’.
    ‘What do you expect me to say to that?’
    ‘No need to be so sensitive’.
    ‘Who said I was being sensitive?’
    ‘It’s written all over your face, mate’.
    Ollie closed his eyes for a moment. How did we go from zero to a hundred in such little time? ‘Just tell me why you asked me that?’
    ‘Well I just meant that investigating your people might be personally compromising for you’.
    ‘My people?’
    ‘Yeah’.
    ‘You mean black people?’
    ‘Hey, listen mate, don’t try and lay the big discrimination ticket on me because I was only taking a friendly