“So, what do you think?” Asked Harper, as he pulled the car over to the side of the road, parking as near as to the crossroads they’d been directed to by Transport for London as he could manage.

  One of Harper’s contacts within the department had been surprisingly helpful with narrowing down the likely candidates for crossroads on the old bus route they were looking for, having put them into contact with a historian who worked for the London Transport Museum, whom had happily assisted them with their query. The only issue they’d encountered was that the historian had been rather… enthusiastic in explaining what was clearly his favourite subject. It had been a bit of a struggle to get him to stop gushing about the fascinatingly complex history of London’s bus network and finally hang up the phone.

  “I think that John Doe was either very unlucky or into something exceedingly fishy.” answered Elvira, blowing a lock of damp brown hair out of her eyes as she fiddled with her notes, her whirring thoughts spurred on by the intermittent thuds of the car’s windscreen wipers flicking back and forth.

  “Yeah, I know we’re not supposed to jump to conclusions, but this all sounds a bit too James Bond to be a coincidence, right?”

  “I agree, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this could still be nothing. Hell, even if it is something, it could be completely unrelated to whatever set Mr Doe off last night.” Pointed out Elvira, pausing when her phone began to vibrate in her pocket.

  Pulling out the device, Elvira quickly answered the call, her expression turning serious as she spoke to their superior.

  “What’s up?” Asked Harper, looking apprehensive after having watched Elvira’s facial journey from tired to fully alert over the course of the phone call. The singular curse Elvira breathed out after the line disconnected and she’d slumped back in her seat likely not making him feel any better.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” Grunted Elvira, suddenly scanning their surroundings with greater intensity.

  “Good first.”

  “Well, the boss says CCTV caught sight of Mr Doe here about thirty minutes ago, heading south down the street,” said Elvira, turning around in her seat to sweep her gaze down the street behind them, “so, I think we’re on the right track.”

  “Ok, score one for team conspiracy, I guess.” Snorted Harper, joining Elvira in her visual sweep of the street. “What about the bad news?”

  Grimacing as she settled fully back in her seat, Elvira gestured towards a nearby lamppost, indicating towards the camara affixed to its top. “CCTV loses him pretty much straight away after that, so we have no idea where he went from here.”

  “Ok, so we get some bodies down here, AFO’s with their shooters for back up just in case, and we start searching,” shrugged Harper, clearly not understanding why Elvira seemed so gloomy about their prospects. “He’s eighty years old; he can’t have gone far. Someone will have seen him.”

  “Yeah, there’s more bad news,” sighed Elvira, rubbing the bridge of her nose irritably. “There’s a major incident on the other side of the city, possibly terrorism. The Boss thinks it’s a false alarm but the higher-ups aren’t taking any chances, so half the Met’s headed in the other direction. So, no back up, at least until that incident resolves itself.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yup.”

  “Alright, then we may as well make a start, we won’t be able to cover as much ground but we might get lucky-.”

  “Nope, we’ve been ordered to stay put and wait,” denied Elvira through gritted teeth, disliking the idea of sitting still when the trail was still fresh, “with the gun in play, the boss doesn’t want to take any chances. We’re to wait for the AFO’s to arrive.”

  “…We’re not actually going to sit on our arses and do nothing, are we?”

  “No, of course not.” Smirked Elvira, with a roll of her eyes, her hand already on the car’s passenger side door handle. “I think we can get away with checking those shops over there. Maybe they’ve picked him up on their own CCTV camera’s.”

  “Well, I’d much rather do that than sit on my arse and wait for the calvary,” snorted Harper, already opening his door.

  *

  It turned out that they didn’t need to wait long for their cursory search to turn something up, the owner of a camping goods store, about three or four shops down from the crossroad’s where Mr Doe had lost his battle between the himself, the bus, and the tarmac, turned out to be surprisingly helpful. He rather cheerfully admitted, after recognising the elderly man in the photo Harper had shown him, to selling Mr Doe a collection of camping supplies. These items included: a head torch, with a packet of batteries to power it, a small camping stove with matching cookware, a water canteen, a thick winter sleeping bag with an extra inner liner, a lightweight rain coat, along with a small first aid kit and a large hiking bag to carry it all in. The only thing Mr Doe hadn’t seemed to need was a pair of hiking boots, which the shop owner had noted he was already wearing when he entered the store.

  “Ok, so after getting enough survival gear to make Bear Grylls jealous, the old geezer apparently continued on down the street, heading south,” Recapped Harper, after about an hour of dipping in and out of different stores dotted up and down the street, his face scrunched up in confusion as he needlessly indicated the direction in question with his pen, his eyes glued to his notes. “He didn’t visit any other equipment stores, though he did stop off at Tesco’s for some tinned food and dried foodstuffs. Best guess, he’s going camping to get away from the wife for a few days?”

  Elvira threw Harper an unimpressed look over her own notebook, not in the mood for his brand of funny adjacent humour. “If he’s going camping, why would he need a gun?”

  “Hunting?”

  “You don’t go hunting with a handgun, Harper.” Explained Elvira, shortly, even though she knew Harper was perfectly aware of this fact; he was just being irritating for the sake of riling her up, one of his favourite pastimes. “Besides, if he was heading out of the city, he would’ve gone that way,” she continued, jerking a thumb northward over her shoulder, back towards the crossroads, “nearest tube stations a street over. Which, since he doesn’t have a car, would be the quickest way to get to a mainline station and out of the city.”

  “He could’ve taken a cab?”

  “Possibly, but in that case why come here at all if he was just going to purchase some stuff and then leave?” Questioned Elvira, chewing her lip in thought as she pondered their options.

  “Good question.” Nodded Harper, clicking his tongue before musing aloud. “He and Mrs Doe live practically on the other side of the city, there’s got to have been closer places to get all that kit rather than here. Not to mention, it took him fifty years to come back. Fifty years after taking a double decker bus to the face and he suddenly gets up in the middle of the night to arm himself and come straight here? That’s not a coincidence.”

  Elvira was mid-way through humming her agreement when she suddenly froze, something suddenly dawning on her as brain suddenly kicked into a higher gear. “Wait… Doe can’t have come straight here!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He absconded from the care home four hours ago,” Elvira reasoned, glancing at her watch to make sure she got the time right.

  “Probably closer to five since we’ve been here a while,” added Harper, crossing his arms as he turned to give Elvira his full attention.

  “Right. So even if he’d taken public transport, he should’ve been here hours ago, not only just beating us by thirty minutes – actually, less considering all the time he spent in the camping store. We probably only missed him by about ten minutes!”

  “So what? He’s old, he could’ve gotten stuck in a revolving door or something, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “He’s a pensioner, not a toddler, Harper,” snapped Elvira, giving her partner a sharp look. “He looked pretty mobile in the CCTV footage, so I don’t think he’s spent all this time shuffling his way across the city like some kind of decrepit snail.”

  “Alright, so he stopped somewhere along the way,” Harper acquiesced, raising his hands in surrender, “do we have any idea where?”

  “No, but we should probably get those voyeurs in CCTV operations to backtrace his journey, if they can peal themselves away from the incident that’s got everyone’s so flustered,” replied Elvira, with a shake of her head. Pausing beside a bus stop, the flickering of its attached automated advertisement billboard briefly drew her attention. She frowned at the sharply dressed uniformed soldier that appeared on the screen, doing an homage to the famous World War One propaganda poster, finger pointed directly at the audience with the words “We need you!” stencilled out in bold letters beneath.

  “Mrs Doe said she found him in an army uniform, the day of the accident.” She mused out loud, eyes tracing the soldiers almost ludicrously sharp jaw line. “What if he was coming from, or going to, a military installation of some kind?”

  “Possibly, though she did also say they checked with the army to see if they could identify him.” Countered Harper, rapping a knuckle against the poster for emphasis after following Elvira’s eyeline. “The fact that they couldn’t, kinda makes the whole ‘spy’ theory seem a little bit more likely.”

  “No, actually. The fact that they checked pretty much rules that out.”

  That caused Harper to pause and blink down at Elvira in confusion. “Huh? How’d you figure that?”

  “Don’t you think that would’ve been the first thing the army checked?” Asked Elvira rhetorically, tearing her gaze away from the poster and shoving her hands into the pockets of her overcoat with an irritated huff. “A man without any identifying documents or history suddenly appears out of nowhere in the middle of London, in a full army uniform, with no memories, smack bang in the middle of the Cold War. MI5 would have to have been wilfully blind for ‘John Doe’ not to ping on their radar.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a spy; just that they couldn’t prove that he was one.”

  “True, though that still means could’ve been leaving or headed towards a military site of some kind. Are there any in the area?”

  “Not to my knowledge, though even if there was surely that’d have been the first place the Doe’s would’ve looked?”

  Elvira paused at this, her frown turning contemplative. “Not necessarily….”

  Harper raised an encouraging eyebrow, waiting for Elvira to elaborate.

  “What if wherever he’d run from was a secret, of the kind that an amnesiac and his wife weren’t ever going to be told about?” She said, suddenly studying the street around them more carefully.

  “Like a secret base of some kind?” Responded Harper, his eyebrows now creeping towards his hairline. “Now whose been watching too many James Bond movies?”

  “It would explain a lot though, wouldn’t it?” Pressed Elvira, feeling more confident about her theory by the second. “Even if he wasn’t a spy, it would explain how he’d materialised from nowhere, and why no one came looking. Telling Mr and Mrs Doe anything would have been a breach security. If he doesn’t remember anything, why would they risk exposure by interacting with them at all?”

  “And if he was a spy, it gives him somewhere to be running from,” agreed Harper, looking a shade more convinced. “It’s still a stretch, but it’s worth checking. I’ll make a call to my contact in the army to see if there’s anything in the area. I wouldn’t hold your breath though, if it’s still a secret, they won’t tell me anything, and if it isn’t, that just as likely means there won’t be anything left there to see even if there was something there sixty years ago.”

  “Alright, let’s go back to the car whilst you do that,” concurred Elvira, gesturing back towards their vehicle. “I think we’ve pushed the boss’s ‘stay put’ order as far as we can go if we only want a minimal bollocking if and when he finds out.”

  “He shouldn’t complain, though if he asks just say we stepped out the car for a piss!” Harper smirked as he pulled out his phone and pressed it to his ear, earning himself another roll of Elvira’s eyes.

  “We’ve been out of the car for the better part of an hour. If he even bothers to check that lie, he’ll think we’ve both got a bad case of the shits,” sniped Elvira.

  She was saved from further banter when Harper’s phone suddenly connected him with his contact, the detective stepping around to the driver’s side of the car as he began rattling off his requests for information. Elvira moved to follow him into the car; however, she paused when her own phone began to vibrate in her pocket. After a brief flash of panic assuming that their boss, DCI Nichols, had somehow psychically sensed that his detectives weren’t doing exactly what they were told, Elvira only marginally relaxed when she read her sisters name blinking up at her on her phone screen.

  Being a devoutly surly and highly moody teenager in her middle years of hormonal hell, Elvira’s sister Cassie rarely called, preferring to text via imaging apps or send memes and videos in place of real communication wherever possible. Seeing that her sister was instead calling her, Elvira suddenly felt a rush of real worry. Cassie only ever did that when something was wrong, usually in relation to the antics of their father.

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  Catching Elvira’s suddenly shift in demeanour over the roof of their car, Harper paused mid-way through clambering in to mouth “are you ok?” with his phone still pressed against his ear.

  Forcing a strained smile onto her face, Elvira waved him off, quickly answering her own phone call with an immediate, “Cass, are you alright?”

  “Y-yeah, I’m fine,” came the slightly shaken reply that did nothing to ease her sisters worries. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you only ever call me if somethings on fire, Cass,” said Elvira gently, leaning against the roof as she willed her mind not to jump to the worst-case scenario. “Actually, no; you’d still text me if the house was on fire rather than call. You only call if you’ve been hurt or if dad’s been a raging prick again,” She continued, wincing as she heard her sister’s breath hitch slightly at the last option. Already half guessing what had happened, Elvira tried to lighten the mood with humour. “Though I’m sure if Taylor Swift died in a plane crash, you’d probably call too.”

  Elvira sagged with relief when Cassie let out a breathy, if a little wet sounding, chuckle. If she was laughing it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

  “Hey, I’m not that obsessed with her!” She protested; Elvira able to hear the slight flush that was likely adorning her face. “She’s just an icon, you know-.”

  “Yeah, yeah, no need to start another ‘ode to Taylor’, Cass,” teased Elvira, earning an indignant squawk from down the phone line as she finally climbed into the passenger seat to get out of the rain. “All I ask is that you at least try to mix up your music taste a little, I can only hear ‘Style’ so many times before I’m gonna have a mental breakdown.”

  “Elllllll!” Whined Cassie, stretching out her nickname for Elvira to an almost comical degree.

  “Get some real music is all I’m saying! Like, some ACDC or something!”

  “Ugh, you have the music taste of a hundred-year-old man. It’s embarrassing!” Scoffed Cassie, slipping easily into their usual sibling banter, making Elvira’s shoulders relax even further.

  “Excuse you, I have the refined taste of a sixty-year-old man, thank you very much!” Huffed Elvira playfully, practically being able to hear the likely truly titanic eyeroll her sister was probably sending her down the phone line.

  “Nuh uh, that’s just what you want everybody to think your music taste is like,” jabbed Cassie, with a triumphant note in her voice, “I found all your boyband CD’s the other day, along with all those posters stuffed under your bed, which was gross by the way, not one of those ‘boys’ was wearing a shirt! Also, what was up with all their hair? They all looked like porcupines with blonde tips! And why did they all look like they’ve been dunked in baby oil?!”

  Now it was Elvira’s turn to scoff. “Firstly, I’m not responsible for late 2000’s/early 2010’s boy band fashion. I can’t explain it, but it was all really cool at the time. Secondly, what were you doing in my room in the first place, huh? Snooping is next to snitching at the top of the list of crimes in the Sister’s Code.”

  The rather awkward silence that followed quickly punctured whatever cheerful bubble they’d managed to build up since the start of the phone call. “I… err- D-Dad made me clear out your room the last week. He said you didn’t come round anymore so clearly you didn’t need it.” Said Cassie, guilt seeping into her tone.

  “Oh.”

  “I- I tried to save as much as I could, but he caught me hiding some of it earlier and… well, he didn’t take it well.”

  Elvira hated how small Cassie sounded upon this admission, how easily she was able to vividly visualise her sister curling further and further in on herself with every stilted word.

  “You didn’t have to do that Cass, I- they were just things. Nothing worth getting bent out of shape over.” Elvira said gently, her words truthful even though, despite losing nothing of actual value, she still felt a pang of loss.

  She’d taken her most important belongings the night she’d stormed out of her father’s house six years ago and pretended not to look back. But even so, there had only been so much she’d been able to fit inside the duffle bag she’d taken with her during her escape to Hendon Police College; much had needed to be left behind, items taken or discarded in a frenzied rush to reach the front door before her father had calmed down enough from their most recent shouting match to try and talk her out of her decision.

  “I know, dad says that a lot too,” whispered Cassie glumly, her breath hitching slightly, though thankfully oblivious to the grimace that swept over Elvira’s face at being caught accidently parroting their father’s rather brutal attitude to personal objects and space. “Stuff’s just stuff, but I know some of it still meant something to you and I- I wanted to save it for you.”

  Elvira understood the desire to avoid being wasteful or frivolous, agreeing with her father that one’s living space didn’t require needless clutter. However, Elvira would never go so far as to declare her the six-year-old sister’s favourite teddy bear a ‘needless distraction’, before quite literally throwing it into the fireplace right in front of said six-year-olds face. That particular incident still ranked highly on the unfortunately long list of incidents Elvira will never forgive her father for.

  Not for the first time Elvira’s heart ached to get her sister out from their father’s clutches. The thought of her alone in that big empty house with no one but her father for company kept Elvira awake through more restless nights than she cared to admit.

  “Thank you for trying, Cass,” breathed Elvira quietly, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the frame of the car’s passenger side door tight enough to hurt. “But please, please don’t push him. I’d much rather you keep your head down than defend me-.”

  “But he’s so mean about you!” Exclaimed Cassie angrily, her teenage temper on a short fuse at the best of times when she had the freedom to actually express herself rather than tiptoe around the house like an intruder in her own home. “He won’t let me see you, he doesn’t like it even when I call you and-.”

  “I know Cass, I know,” interjected Elvira, silently despairing that her sister had to endure this basically alone. “We still see each other sometimes, I know it’s not as much as either of us like, but it’s better than-.”

  Elvira’s hollow – even to her own ears – reassurance was quickly cut off by her sister. “He’s threatening to send me to boarding school!”

  Elvira almost choked on her own spit when she heard that.

  “What?!”

  “He said it after he caught me. Along with something about needing to distance myself to you or some other bullshit-!”

  “Language!” Elvira interrupted instinctively, earning herself an exasperated groan from her sister.

  “Oh, come on! It is bull-.”

  “Cassandra, so help me god, I will drive over there and wash your mouth out with soap!”

  “Ugh, I hate it when you mother me!”

  “I don’t ‘mother’ you, Cassandra.”

  “Full-naming me like your about to send me to my room, isn’t helping your case.” Snickered Cassie, clearly eager to use the distraction from the harder topics of their conversation; Elvira was happy to let her.

  “…Well, I do it because I care. You know that, right?” Elvira asked softly, glancing over to the driver’s side of the car to check that Harper was still busy on his phone. He threw her a mock salute as he continued to press his mobile to his ear, shifting lightly in his seat as if dancing to an unheard tune; probably cheesy on-hold music, if she’d had to guess.

  “Yes, mum, I know,” sighed Cassie fondly.

  “Good. Though cut the crap with this ‘mum’ shit,” threatened Elvira, narrowing her eyes playfully even though her sister couldn’t see her, “or else I will be forced to break back into dad’s house just so I can sit on your head, like any respectable big sister worth her salt would.”

  “Nooo, don’t do that! You’re so fat, I’d die!”

  Elvira spluttered out an affronted gasp, suddenly wondering when her sweet, beautiful little sister had become so overconfident in her ability to avoid a sisterly arse kicking. Lovingly doled out, of course. “Ok, I’m definitely sitting on your head for that one,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes, though she was more than happy to let themselves act like true siblings for a minute longer. “Also, I am not fat!”

  They bickered back and forth for a few more seconds, before Elvira finally closed her eyes and ended their playful argument with a huff, her mood quickly souring as she readied herself for her next question. “So… boarding school, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Cassie, glumly.

  “I- I know my opinion on the matter, but… what do you actually think?” Elvira said carefully, though quickly adding afterwards, “or, better yet, what do you want?”

  “I’m not sure, if I’m honest. On one hand, it gets me away from Dad. On the other… I’d have to leave a lot behind. My stuff, my friends, and, well, you.”

  Elvira had the sneaking suspicion that the latter was the main reason their father ‘suggested’ this sudden decision at all. The last time they’d talked, Elvira’s father had made it no secret that he thought she was negatively influencing his youngest daughter. Probably because she was; though only Thomas Knight – former army colonel, current ‘security’ company CEO, and the living embodiment of cold and distant – would ever interpret her actions as anything remotely ‘negative’. With him, every action was only ever thought of in terms of military strategy and tactics, or cut-throat business deals. Whereas all Elvira was doing was trying hard as she could to make sure Cassie knew something about how a real family should treat each other. Elvira made sure to offer her love unconditionally, which seemed to irk her father no end. Then again, he always did hate it when the competition tried to undercut him.

  “Also, the place he wants to send me to sounds kinda like prison?” Continued Cassie, her worry clear, despite the tinny distortion of the phone speaker. “He said the word ‘discipline’, like, a lot.”

  That didn’t surprise Elvira nearly as much as it probably should have. Oh, what she would give for a normal father. “Did he tell you where it was?”

  “No, but I overheard him on the phone talking about somewhere called St Braddock’s?”

  Elvira made a mental note to look the place up later, already dreading what she was going to find. “Alright, I’ll do some investigating and make sure he isn’t sending you to Vietnam or something,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. The name ‘St Braddock’s’ didn’t jump out to her as a foreign school, but Thomas Knight was absolutely petty enough to send Cassie to the other side of the world just to spite her, so Elvira didn’t want to take the chance.

  Elvira winced at the sharpness of Cassie’s next breath after she’d said that, causing Elvira to curse internally at her own thoughtlessness. If Cassie hadn’t been worried about being sent abroad before, she definitely was now.

  “You don’t think he actually would-.” Cassie abruptly cut herself off, the line falling deafeningly silent. Elvira waited with baited breath for an interminably long moment before Cassie’s hushed voice returned. “Dad’s home, I’ve got to go. Love you!”

  Elvira’s face fell, though she didn’t resist the end of the call, knowing that their father wouldn’t be pleased to find them speaking. “Love you too!” She rushed out as quickly as she could, though the blunt buzz of the dial tone drowned her out before she could finish the second word.

  “Are you alright?” Asked Harper suddenly, sending Elvira a worried look from his side of the car, his call apparently having finished as well.

  Elvira took a calming breath, resisting the urge to kick Harper out of the driving seat and drive across London to ram the car through her father’s front door and rescue her sister, consequences be damned.

  “I’m fine.” She stated, after a few moments, flashing him a fixed smile that she hoped he would be gracious enough to pretend to believe.

  He nodded, scratching his nose. “How’s Cassie?”

  “What makes you think I was talking to her?” She responded harshly, throwing him a sharp look, disliking the idea that Harper had been listening in at any point during what was supposed to be a private conversation.

  “The only two people who can rile you up this much are your father or your sister,” shrugged Harper, ignoring Elvira’s sudden hostility. “If it had been your asshat of father on the phone, you’d be angry; spitting bullets and getting ready to brood like batman for the rest of the day.”

  Elvira opened her mouth to protest the comparison, finding the idea of being compared to an orphan with severe anger issues and a furry fetish hardly flattering. Her father was unfortunately very much still alive for one thing, so it was hardly accurate to call her an orphan. However, Harper continued before she could cut in.

  “But you don’t look angry, you look worried. Ergo, it must be your sister. She’s the only one who you care enough about to fret over,” finished Harper, his brow furrowed as he continued to study Elvira’s face.

  Elvira did her best to hide her surprise at Harper’s highly accurate insight and remain impassive. But she had been taken off guard by Harper’s sudden display of hitherto unseen emotional intelligence, so she was less than successful.

  After letting the rather pregnant silence between them stretch long enough for her to realise she wasn’t going to be able to outlast Harper’s concerned puppy eyes – damn him – Elvira let out an irritated huff. “She’s fine,” she gritted out, before quickly amending after Harper’s concerned gaze somehow intensified, “-at least, as fine as she can be, considering.”

  “I’m guessing your father is being an arsehole again?”

  That descriptor startled a surprised snort out of Elvira, who is then unable to prevent the grateful look that briefly slips onto her face at his support. She snuffed it out as quickly as it came, turning away to stare out of the passenger door window to hide her expression as she willed herself under control. She didn’t want Harper to see the fondness in her eyes; God forbid. His ego is already far too large as it was. If she allowed it to inflate his head any more, he’d struggle to fit through doorways.

  “Something like that,” she says eventually, before quickly changing the conversation before he started asking something awful, like what her feelings were on the subject. “What did your contact say?”

  Thankfully, Harper allowed the diversion; though somehow this only irritated Elvira more. How considerate. “Well, it’s a bit of a head scratcher actually,” he hummed, his lips thinning as he turned his gaze away from Elvira’s rapidly heating cheeks to graciously stare forwards through the rain slicked windscreen. “Apparently the army has a property listed just down the street-.”

  “Wait, really?” Interrupted Elvira, half ready to leap out the car to investigate.

  “-hold your horses, let me finish!” Waved off Harper, amused by Elvira’s clear desire for a distraction. When Elvira settled back down, he continued, “turns out the place had been a secret, though the official secrets act has long since expired on it since apparently it was some kind of research facility during the war. Though my contact said he couldn’t find out what they were researching.”

  “When you say, ‘the war’, do you mean-.”

  “World War Two, yeah.”

  “But… Mr Doe didn’t appear until 1968. Even if his reissued birth certificate had been inaccurate, at best he’d have been a baby or a toddler during the war, so how does it match up?” Asked Elvira, wracking her brain for a connection.

  Harper Shook his head. “In short, it doesn’t. The site hasn’t been recorded as active since it was bombed in 1944; got a direct hit by a V2 rocket apparently. Flattened the place,” he said, shrugging helplessly.

  “So, it’s a dead end then?”

  “Not exactly, because it gets stranger. Apparently, the site in question was labelled as a suspected chemical attack. The whole plot being labelled as contaminated until further investigation. Curiouser still, no investigation was apparently recorded when I enquired about it.”

  “How is that strange? It was the war; didn’t they use a lot of chemical weapons?” Elvira questioned, crossing her arms.

  Harper shook his head. “No, you’re thinking of World War One, not two. Hitler didn’t like chemical weapons after his experience during the First World War, so he vetoed against them being used by the German military- against enemy soldiers at least,” he explained, though at Elvira’s questioning look he rolled his eyes good naturedly. “What? I like history; sue me.”

  “It’s not that. You just… never struck me as a ‘reader’ is all,” teased Elvira, smirking over at her colleague.

  “Oh, I’m definitely not. I just listen to a lot of podcasts.”

  “That makes much more sense.”

  “You know, you can only insult my intelligence so much before I start taking you seriously, El,” he snorted, with a shake of his head.

  Ignoring the faux look of hurt plastered across Harper’s face, Elvira pulled the conversation back on track. “So, a chemical attack that probably wasn’t actually a chemical attack?” She mused, drumming her fingers on the back of her note book. “Another layer of security, perhaps?”

  “How’d you figure?”

  “Well, what would you do if your super-secret research base got hit by a missile and you didn’t want anybody to go running in and investigate?”

  Understanding dawned across Harper’s face. “I’d tell everyone it was covered in mustard gas or something similarly terrifying,” Harper chuckled, shaking his head in wonder as he thought it over. “It’d guarantee most people would walk the other way rather than risk getting contaminated, let alone ask any uncomfortable questions!”

  “Yup, so it’s possible that the site continued to operate afterwards. Assuming that rocket didn’t actually flatten the place.”

  “And therefore, it’s possible that Mr Doe still worked there before his accident twenty years later.”

  “Exactly, did you get an address?”

  “Uhuh, he said it was… 11 Sidhe Court, it’s down an alley a hundred yards or so that way,” Harper responded quickly, his excitement building.

  “Ok, let’s move the car a bit closer so we can watch the alley entrance whilst we wait for the AFO’s to turn up,” suggested Elvira, indicating towards the alley. “That way, if the boss asks, we can say we stayed with car like he told us to.”

  “Good idea,” agreed Harper, his excitement dimming to frustration. “I hope those AFO jocks don’t take too long, we’ve already wasted enough time as it is.”