9
The impractical evening lengthened to midnight, and farther. The police, I suppose, remained resolute, efficient, and polite, but once they found out my identity, became unsympathetic.
This left me with a distinct impression that their job involved catching criminals, not making the witnesses or victims any better. I sensed in many of their queries, a nebulous hovering ambiguity, working on the pretext, the killer ought to be the individual who discovered the body.
I took no interest in answering, maintaining long pauses between question and reply.
At the start of the session, DI Fitzgerald's gaze wandered over my jeans, waterproof jacket, navy polo-neck, and walking boots, reverting to my face unimpressed.
"Name?"
I told him.
"Age?"
I told him.
"Occupation?"
I answered with a no comment, which prompted a raised eyebrow from the policeman sitting in the corner. Until later, uninterrupted, penning my scintillating details without attitude in his pocket-sized notebook.
"Movements today, sir?"
I repeated what I told him earlier, and the DI sighed without commitment throughout. The careful probing questions went on and on, and as far as I perceived, achieved not a significant amount aside from growing hungrier by the hour.
In the early hours of the morning, Fitzgerald stopped the interview, seeing I wanted some refreshment.
He gestured with his head at Smee, who escorted me out and along the hallway into an office, where a female policewoman chatted non-stop on a mobile phone. Smee and offered me a choice of hot beverages. I said no, afterwards changing my opinion. I needed something to put into my body, like a car taking on fuel. I attempted to think which might be more effective, more like a drug.
"Coffee, please."
A coffee-maker sat in the office's corner, so my drink came right away. I added milk from the plastic tub, broke a habit of a lifetime, and tore open two packets of sugar and emptied them into the cup. Smee said she would join me again and left. A young, uniformed constable standing in the room's peripheral to monitor me.
I gulped the coffee, which seared my mouth. Grateful for the jolt the pain gave me, my mind cleared.
I tried to think of what I might do, while thinking about the dead men, their sombre faces, and sightless open eyes. I remembered how Smee whispered something into Fitzgerald's ear as she came from the boat where the slain bodies rested.
I didn't understand what she said, and the only way I would find out would be to ask, but I believed they wouldn't give me an answer.
I spied a stub of a pencil lay on the floor in the corner. I picked up the remnant, pulled a tissue out of a box beside the percolator, and in bulky, clumsy scribblings, trying not to shred the fine, soft paper, I made a list:
Russian men, who?
Nuclear Submarine. Why?
Dead Fishermen, where?
Trawler. Location?
I stared at the words, deciding, steadying myself, and shoved the piece into my pocket. I swilled back the last of the coffee and crossed to the window. Locked. I thought of the young copper standing outside the room, and Smee returning any moment. I pulled the door open.
"Can I help?"
"The toilets?"
"Down the corridor, on the left."
"Thanks."
I went inside for a pee, threw chilly water over my face, and wiped myself dry with paper towels. I walked beyond the desk, trying to appear relaxed and purposeful. No sign of Smee. I nodded and smiled at the officer on duty, who remained on the phone.
"Back soon."
I mouthed at him, and tapped meaninglessly at my wrist, where my timepiece should be. He gazed at me, and away again. I walked out into the street, into the cold dusk, almost tripping over a cat, shooting under my feet in an eerie black streak.
I didn't run until I rounded the corner, clear of the station. I took a deep breath and sprinted past the school, the church, into Edgecombe Road, and took a left and right.
I turned and walked along the seafront, passing a restaurant and the boatyard, where the massed shapes of boats drawn up for the winter stood. The rainfall drummed against doorways and windowsills, water rushed and gurgled in sewers, and the skies black, apart from for the occasional flash of lightning. In those moments, the narrow lanes and bowed, crooked buildings would come alive, flashing like a strobe, before retreating into blackness again.
I kept going, the rain unable to breach the part of the village with such a telling effect. The cramped Elizabethan structures on either side feet from one another, and across a small passageway between a sweet shop and a café, a void filled only with darkness.
No billboard on the primary thoroughfare. No advertisement led to an estate agent, but as I took a few steps in, under an archway, I found myself in a courtyard, beneath an overhanging second floor, and located the label out front.
Pale blue and white lettering.
Mill-House Properties.
Despite the archaic building, the door appeared modern: hefty oak, a silver knob and letterbox. I tried to peek through the window, but I only glimpsed the vague shape of a long desk and the curve of a sofa on the left. My wallet shifted against my leg when i stepped back and recalled inside one of the zip pockets hid my picks.
I glanced again at the door. Heavy, impossible to crack open with physical force. The deadlock, however, persists a different matter. A pin tumbler.
Easy.
I dropped to my haunches at the door and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The wind died, the place becoming quiet again, besides for the perpetual lap of water in the drains and babble of the gutters.
Thirty seconds later, something clicked, and the door came away from its frame.
Straight away, the security system chirped.
As fast as possible, I moved inside the building -- leaving the door open if I needed a rapid escape -- and searched for the alert box.
Five feet from me, on a wall next to the front desk, its fascia blinking with blue lights. Near black in the office, the bulbs produced an intermittent wash, enough for me to note the notification box contained a small, flip-down section housing the number pad. I opened the part and examined the prosodic pattern for any evidence.
Nothing happened: the LEDs still winking. The sound echoed.
I turned to the door, ready to run, before everything snapped to silence.
With progress barred by a bolted door, an unlocking mechanism controlled all access. With 10 numerals (0-9) plus a button for ENTER and another one for CANCEL.
The data input device combination latch uses 4-digit designation, only 4 numbers, no less. If I entered the incorrect code 3 times in a row, the warning rang and froze everything down. With no timeout on wrong tries, the bolt featured a tamper-proof design. Any attempt to disassemble or break open the shuttling would set the alarm off and shut everything down.
A thin film of dust and grime covered the entire surface, save 4 keys:
4, 7, 9 and afterwards the entrance release.
The fingerboard included digits and letters, chipped, with the faint outline of fingerprints. I pressed one number, accompanied by a short, high-pitched chime sound. In response to this noise, a raucous sneeze sounded behind me. I turned and spotted a man sleeping in an alcove near the door.
Homeless and living on the streets.
I struck up a conversation with the man, named Alex, and he explained he stayed here for a few nights and listened when staff operated the door.
"What is the pass-key?"
The man shrugged his shoulders
"No idea, but I think I can hint at a clue: the differential algorithm remains also the algorithmic factorial of the fifth prime."
"I don't understand?"
The old man laughed.
"How might I grasp some tangential mathematical trivia of the password without knowing the secret? Nah, I overheard the beeps."
I curbed the interface. All the controls resounded with the same tone, except for from the check-in key, which makes a deep pitched BWRRRT.
"Yeah, but only the rate when pushed; Beep-beep-beep ... then a BWRRT."
I knew the likelihood of entering the correct formula by a single guess stands one in ten thousand. Not willing to take the risk of prospects so slim... how may I gain better odds, say, fifty percent chance of opening the door?
Which number or figures should I try to burst in?
How can I be sure of the probabilities?
The old man talked again, and I asked him to keep silent for a minute. Disgusted with my reaction, he sat up, gathered up his belongings and kept on walking.
I dealt with keypads like this before, and they took analysis and logic, something I didn't possess the patience for.
I worked on instinct and gut feeling.
With both gloved hands flat against the wall on either side of the electronic lock, I stared at the ground and tried to think, as the downpour continued to fall with incessant regularity.
I don't remember how long I stood getting soaked, but i required time to help me work out the reasoning of the puzzle.
The decimal 5th factorial 11! = 9, not 36, must subsequently add 3+6.
The only workable combinations to achieve 9 as a digital sum equated to 4,7,7,9. Therefore, 7 must be the numerical repeating, leading to only two viable solutions. I checked both, and the door opened with a loud click.