Snippet #1482816

So it turned out that finding a single guitar in a city was exceptionally hard work. I tried asking around the Gardens to begin with – I figured that buskers would know if someone had turned up with a new guitar, and that they were the most likely to have found it. Apparently not, either that or nothing of the sort had happened.

Damien had, after some deliberation and a brief consultation of an old photo with a group of guitarist friends, identified the guitar as a ... shit. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and checked the note. There we go. He identified the guitar as a Yamaha F370, which meant absolutely nothing to me, but I assumed meant something to other people. The most I could tell from the photo was that it was black.

I was currently waiting in the reception area of the Metropolitan Police Station. Apparently Brian was expecting me – at least, that’s what the Administrator had said when he responded to my lacklustre report about a guitar, but hey, I had something!

“Mr. Walker?” Fake name. You couldn’t introduce yourself to everyone as ‘Debonaire’ after all. “The Detective Inspector will see you now.”

Finally. It had only been ten minutes, but I was impatient. I guess it came with the whole teenager thing.

Inside Brian’s office, I got the feeling that he felt slightly put out to be having a serious interview with a sixteen year old about a murder case.

“A guitar?”

“Yep.”

“And where did you find out about this?”

“One of the girl’s friends. Damien Scot. Said he’d talked to you, but he hadn’t mentioned the guitar ‘cause he didn’t think it was important.”

“I’ll take a look at the system and see if anyone’s handed a guitar in. You never know, in Covent Gardens it’s as likely to have been picked up by an over-eager tourist as by someone who’d just nab it for themselves.” Brian turned in his chair and started tapping away on the keyboard.

There was an awkward pause while I stared around the room. Lots of medals and certificates. I think I have a few certificates at home myself. GCSEs, mostly, though, so nothing quite as admirable as a veteran policeman’s various honours.

Still, I got quite a few A*s.

“You’re in luck.” My attention went back to the older man as he swivelled his monitor around. “Yamaha black guitar was handed into Agar Street police station three days ago by one of the RNLI folks from the Tower Lifeboat Station. Apparently they found it in the river while they were out on the water.”

I blinked. “That seems unlikely.”

Brian shrugged, “I’ll have it sent to the lab to see if they can find anything. Don’t hold your breath, mind. Forensics isn’t as flash as CSI would have you think.”

Nodding, I tapped my fingers awkwardly on the arms of the chair. “Right. So...”

“So at this point, you can leave it to the police.”

“No, see, that’s not-“

“I’ll report to the Administrator if we find anything. If he tells you, that’s his business.” Okay, so it was really obvious now that Brian didn’t like working with a kid. Just because he was actually a police officer.

“...’kay.”