Inspector O 02 - Hidden Moon by James Church

Author:James Church [Church, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Retail, Mblsm
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2010-03-31T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

The next morning, Min came up the stairs at seven o’clock. He walked by my office without looking in. I heard him open the file cabinets at the end of the hall and then the sound of him humming. A few minutes later, he walked back. This time he stopped at my door. “Good morning, Inspector.” He smiled and pointed out the window. “Beautiful spring day, fresh air, not a cloud on the horizon.” He smiled again. “Makes you glad to be alive. Had a good night?” There was no touch of irony in his voice. He sounded completely free of worry.

“Yes, great night.” I raised my head and searched his face with bleary eyes.

“Good. Let’s go over the bank robbery in about an hour, sort of put it in order. Then we can work on the security detail, nothing elaborate. Fine by you?” Min was practically bouncing on his toes, he was so full of good cheer.

“What do you know that you aren’t sharing?”

“I know, Inspector, that gloom only leads to more of the same. This morning I got up, put my feet down on the floor, and told myself that nothing can be as bad as it looks. We have troubles? Other people have more. This summer it may flood, the rivers may overflow their banks, and the glorious dams we read about every day in the newspapers may burst. But not today, and this is the day we are going to live in.”

I groaned. “On second thought, don’t share it with me. Just leave me alone for another hour.”

Min shook his head. “Your problem is, you don’t get enough exercise.” He grinned and walked back to his office, humming.

A moment later the phone rang. “O, get in here.” There was no lilt in his voice, just naked urgency. “Now.”

Min was staring openmouthed at a single piece of pale blue paper when I walked in. Actually, not very blue, but very lightweight, the paper that the Ministry uses for Most Sensitive information. Sometimes it is even on regular white paper, because the blue stuff runs out. But we still call it a Blue Paper. If we need to see one of those reports, we go to the Ministry to read it. They never get out of a special area in the Ministry, and certainly never make it to our office. Never, except of course for the one that was in plain sight. Min looked up. “Shut the door.”

“There’s no one else here.”

“Shut the fucking door, Inspector!”

I swung it shut. “You want it locked?”

Min rubbed his face with both hands. “Sit down. This”—he picked up the single sheet of paper between his thumb and forefinger and waved it limply like a flag of surrender—“this was in the daily mail I picked up before coming here. It isn’t supposed to be in our mail. I think we aren’t even supposed to know it exists.”

“Bad?”

“Bad? Oh, no, not bad. Terrible, appalling, horrifying.” He didn’t even have to pause to find the triplet; I mentally braced myself.

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