There were only two people
who might have cleaned up the Jones files and left it sitting on a clean part
of the desk.
Either Corinne or more
than likely, Felicity.
As for the other files,
some were still on the desk, but the rest were in the filing cabinet, some
looking as though they’d been thrown there. An indication either or both
had left in a hurry?
Stop analysing, Harry
told himself.
Of course, there
was no doubt both of them had a tidy streak in them and had rearranged the
file in a different order than he had left it. That, he guessed, had more to do with the fact
it had probably been scattered amongst the other paper still on the floor, and
she had assembled in much the same methodical way in which her mind worked.
Whoever it had been,
they were far more organised, and more importantly intuitive than he had ever
been, one only had to look at the way Corinne, it had been her, filed her
schoolwork.
He could also see that they
had attempted to put other files back together but clearly, for them, it was a
lost cause. Looking at the mess now, he agreed and simply shrugged.
It was a moot point
whether he’d clean the office up properly before his father arrived. His
father was the one person Harry knew who would look very disdainfully at the
office, and more likely than not to blame him for the mess rather than the true
culprits.
Somehow his father
always managed to turn an argument around and dump the blame on his son. Perhaps he should not have tried to strike
out on his own, and, in his father’s eyes, fail. And that in itself was an interesting
question. When the going got tough, did Harry get going, or stall?
Would he be any further
with the Jones case if he had not been attacked? It seemed from what
Corinne said after her meeting with Sykes, that even the detective was no
further advanced.
Had Sykes interviewed
Angela yet?
It was a mistake on her
part to come and pick him up from the hospital, and a worse mistake on his part
to agree to be taken to her place. Harry was not sure if she felt sorry
for him, or it was a case of keeping an enemy close. At this point, he was more inclined to believe
the latter.
Corinne was right, and
he should start talking to Sykes, and even more so now that he had a lot more
information. For one thing, Sykes needed
to know that Angela was in the building the same time as he was, and she had
seen the body. Sykes had been sceptical at the time, but Al had not shown
up and was still listed officially as a missing person.
But, as a little voice
in the back of the head kept telling him, Angela was not going to tell the
truth unless it suited whatever game she was playing.
Harry went through the
reconstructed file, and as he was reading it, he saw different possibilities
and conclusions, including one noted at the bottom of the last page, left by
Corinne.
“Al is still
alive?????”
It was a reasonable
assumption.
An impatient rapping on
the outside door interrupted that thought.
Harry put the file
away, stacking several others on top of it, and went out to the front door.
No mistaking the figure
outlined through the window.
His father.
© Charles Heath 2016-2019
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