The Hole in The Wall - Season 1 - Episode 2

4 years ago

The Hole in The Wall - Season 1 - Episode 2

°•°•°•°•°
Andy
He stood looking at the calendar for a long while. On this date 19 months ago(14th) he had lost his wife and unborn child. He didn’t feel the pain as he used to, it was now more like a dull pang.

The shaving foam he had applied on his jaw had almost dried off and he tore open the pack of the stick and finally tore his eyes from the calendar. He moved to the mirror and while he shaved he studied the scar on his lower abdomen just above the towel tied round his waist. He didn’t want to remember the night he had been shot by that bleeping shadow maniac. He was deeply worried about Rex and the recent threat from the last shadow whom they had been obsessed with catching for over a year. But the bastard was invisible until few days ago he sent the cryptic mail to Rex and all hell had broken lose.

He nicked himself twice on the jaw and gave up. He had shaved, even if it couldn’t be referred to as clean shaving.

He was in the shower when his phone rang, the special tune that he had set for anyone from the agency. He dried off quickly but missed the call as he was drying his hands.
The phone rang again immediately and he grabbed it.

“Hello”
He listened intently with a shocked look staring back at him as he looked at the mirror.
“I’m on my way” he said and cut the call.
20 minutes later, he put his private investigator’s licence in his wallet and hooked the special badge on his belt.
B.R.O.T.A was inscribed on the brass and the badge was a license to anywhere and any information, nothing was classified. At least in Lagos anyway.

Bami, Rex, Olivia, Tonye and he Andy were the core members of the agency and although they had half a dozen other agents under their employ, only the five of them had the special badge. And lately only he, Bami and Tonye really used theirs.

°•

Serenity suites was a classy enough hotel along the road. The building was a tall modest one which was quite plain to the eyes. The only appealing thing in the appearance was the square shaped air conditioners hanging beside each window.

There was ample space for parking and he chose one nearest to the entrance.
Inside the hotel reception, a uniformed officer glanced at the badge on his belt, unhooked the velvet rope without a word and stepped aside to let him pass.

He used the stairs, there was no elevator in sight. He met another uniform patrolling the hallway and got the direction to the room the murder had occurred.

There were two people in the room, one was a crime scene technician, he had on a lab coat, a pair of goggles and was currently bent over the bed with a plastic bag and what looked like twizzers in his hands.

The second person was a woman. She was obviously a detective and she glanced at him as he entered. Then she glanced at his badge and nodded at him politely but stiffly.

He stretched out his hands. “I’m Andy…I’m with BROTA…what do we have”
“This one’s gruesome…someone drilled a perfect hole in the wall and shot the victim probably when he was sleeping”
“Where’s the body?”
“Its at the coroner’s” she replied glancing at his belt badge once more.
“I’ve found hair…I cant really tell yet but this one looks feminine” the crime scene tech who had been totally immersed in his work to acknowledge Andy held up a strand of air with the tweezers.

“Bag it” the detective instructed.
“Errrm excuse me I need to make a call” Andy said bringing out his phone and dialling Rex’s number.Rex
After Andy’s call I reversed, thankful there was a short cut from my house to the vicinity the hotel was.

I drove to the hotel with the same feelings I had become used to in the last 72 hours, namely: worry, fear, anger, confusion. Andy had refused to tell me whatever it was about the murder that I needed to rush down there immediately but I guessed it must be important because he was aware of the latest threat.
The hotel looked like one I had used before when I was with my family and on the run, jumping from hotel to hotel.

I noticed the strong police presence immediately I entered the hotel lobby. I headed for the stairs thinking if I should call Andy or not, he had given me the room number so I decided not to.

Room 38 was on the third floor and as I rounded the steps I was face to face with a uniformed officer. His Job was to make sure no one got on the floor.
“This floor is closed, go back”
“That’s why I’m here”
“Are you a reporter? He looked at me suspiciously.

“I’m here for the murder investigation, my frie- partner called me”
“This is a crime scene, lemme see some ID”
I tapped my flat pockets already knowing my badge wasn’t with me. Even my PI licence card was in my wallet and my wallet was…..somewhere.
“No ID I can’t let you through sorry”
“Come on don’t give me a tough time” I pleaded.

“I’d have to ask you to leave”
He then proceeded to escort me to the edge of the stairs. I hung back immediately after the curve and called Andy.
“Oba-”
“I’m outside but a seven foot bag of beans in a uniform won’t let me in”
“Your ID?”
“I don’t have it here”
“Okay, stay put I’m coming”
Five minutes later I followed Andy as he led the way. I was caught up in what he was saying “the maid came in to clean the room as usual, then she saw the body through a hole in a wall.”
“So she didn’t exactly stumble on the body?”

“No the main crime scene was undisturbed”
“This hole, what kind of hole are we talking about?”
“See for yourself” he opened the door and I entered the room.
“The maid glanced at the body from here…the killer drilled a hole and used the pillow to silence the shot…it was nasty”
I made a face “the body is still next door?”
“No…the coroner has taken it”
“Whew…I can do without seeing a dead body right now”
“I didn’t even see it…I just studied the photographs” Andy informed me.
I studied the wall “Amazing….what could perforate the wall perfectly?”
“That is the big question no one knows..” Andy folded his hands and watched as I studied the wall. I didn’t know why but I suspected there was something Andy was not telling me.
I almost touched the inside of the hole but I stopped.

Now Andy had been into machines advanced tech classes when we were in school and I knew his physics classes entailed a lot of practical work.

“I don’t know about the smoothness of inner curve but I just thought of something that could do that!” He said
I perked up “what?”
“There’s a kind of small hand drill..the one I remember was even pocket size..we called it a hole saw”
“Hole saw?”
“Yes….although we used ours to cut a hole in plywood.” He frowned at the wall as he thought back.

I straightened up finally and tapped the wall. It sounded hollow “I’d say this is the next thing to plywood.”

I moved round the room to the other side of the bed, Andy remained rooted to the spot. I brought out my handkerchief from my back pocket and opened the drawer. There was a laminated piece of A4 paper listing the hotel’s prices from basically everything…rooms, food,drinks”

I closed it without touching anything. I opened the second and the last drawer. My eyes grew wide, I could literally feel it swell up in my eye socket and Andy looked at me “what…what is it”

He hurried to my side and saw it too.
The gun had to be a…I didn’t really know. I’m not sure I knew it. Andy apparently did because he said “Its a desert eagle”
“This has to be the murder weapon…so the killer stayed in this room, waited till he could probably hear the snore from the next room, then he drills a hole expertly without waking up the deceased and shoots him point black in the head through the hole in the wall?”
Andy nodded in agreement “then I’m guessing he took off from the hotel immediately he was done.” He turned one of the pillows over and I saw it had been used to smother the shot.
” The killer has excellent aim sha”
“Yea…we should check the registry at the reception get the description of this psycho and hopefully clips from the security camera and put a Nation wide APB on him”
I agreed “that’s one way to go” but I didn’t move even when he turned towards the door I remained still. He turned back and looked at me
“Andy what’s going on? What’s so special that you dragged me here?”
“Errrm….”
“Where’s Bami?”

His phone rang in response and he picked it up.
He listened for a second with a intense look on his face, then he seemed to relax. “Yea…he’s here with me….I’d tell him”
By this time I was almost going red with frustration at whatever coded game they were playing. However Andy’s next words was like a bucket of ice thrown at my face.
“That was Bami…he went to the lab, the body has been identified…Its Mr Kehinde….the last shadow… the real shadow was killed sometime after midnight…they just id’d the Vic and its a confirm match…he’s dead Rex….gone”
I blinked and suddenly wanted to sit down. “Who killed him?”
“That’s the mystery but the important thing is he’s no more…you’re free from the threats…your family is safe.”

I let out the breath I had been holding for the past three days.

°•°•°•

Detective M. Dagnet
Sgt Mabel Dagnet watched Terry bag what had to be brain matter stuck on the wall.
“This is one nasty bastard” Terry said. This was definitely the most gruesome case he had worked.

Dagnet didn’t reply she wandered to the closet at the other end and poked inside for the umpteenth time, there was nothing of intrest inside. She was in her late forties and had fifteen years service under her belt and she hadn’t come this far by chance. She was a determined lady or according to one drunkard she had arrested once; ‘a helluva lady’.
She closed her cases. She had a 95% success rate (she had calculated it her self) and in all her cases she always made an arrest and this wasn’t going to be an exception. She’d be paying the receptionist a visit very soon.
“Bullet fragments?” She asked the young man in a polo shirt. Terry worked crime scenes, ran forensics and was always the first to sweep a scene during any investigation.

“I haven’t gotten to it yet, it lodged deep in the mattress…the hole is high so the angle of the gun was such that the bullet went through the top of the head and exited above his left cheek.”

“That has to be a powerful hand gun…even with the pillow” Officer Dagnet observed “I need you to work on those bullet fragments and let me know what kind of weapon we’re dealing with here”
“There’s so much to bag…I can’t rush it” the young man protested in a whiny voice.
Dagnet rolled her eyes “I’d give you space” she decided to go and check on the receptionist downstairs. The agent was definitely not coming back and she didn’t care, she didn’t need any help and certainly not from them.

She opened the door and almost ran into the agent. He had his hand out like he had been about to open the door. There was a second man with him, she couldn’t see any badge but she knew him. It was Rex Obasi. She had followed the story two years ago. She didn’t like him. The golden detective, he had been branded by the papers with his little group like they were better than the rest. Like they were better than her. In her opinion he wasn’t worth poo as a detective and his little group were just a bunch of attention seeking individuals who seemed to have a special magnet to attract the media.

She was still thinking whether their presence was a positive or a minus, a pro or con when the agent spoke up.
“We found the gun”