Just to show that I am trying to write something, here's a first draft of one scene from the story.
Detective Inspector Brandt and his sidekick, the young Indian policewoman Nisha Singh, are investigating the murder of a student at the university. Brandt likes to tell stories - probably entirely made up - about his early cases. They've just found that the murdered student had also taken an overdose of sleeping pills on the night of his death.
"It doesn't make any sense. No one would want to kill him, everyone's got an alibi, and now it looks like he'd done the job for them anyway."
"Mmm", Brandt grunted in agreement, still reading the forensic report.
Nisha looked at him, annoyed. "I don't suppose this reminds you of another old case?"
Brandt looked up, feigning surprise. "Would you like it to?"
"Well it might help. You never seem to run out of them."
"Hm. Well let me see."
Brandt thought for a moment.
"There was a married couple in their sixties. No children, no relatives, no close friends. They were in debt to a loan shark and the husband was about to lose his job. One afternoon the wife called the police - her husband had cut his wrists in the bath. By the time anyone arrived, he was dead.
Three days later he was cremated, and the day after she disappeared. All her clothes and belongings were still in the house, the car was in the drive, and there was a scribbled note on the kitchen table about how she couldn't go on. Everyone assumed she'd done away with herself, though there was no body anywhere.
I found them living in a little village in Scotland, as Mr and Mrs Smith. They'd suffocated the loan shark and put him in their bath, cutting his wrists to make it look like suicide. The husband hid in the basement for a week, and the wife identified the body as him. They made sure it was cremated quickly before anyone could say it wasn't him, then took the first train to anywhere - using money from the shark's wallet."
"So...how did you know they weren't dead?"
"I didn't. The clues were there, but we weren't looking for them so we didn't see them. The cuts on the shark's wrists weren't quite right, and hadn't bled enough to kill him. Plus the wife was in just too much of a hurry to cremate her husband, and the suicide note was like something out of a bad movie. Oh, and she had to buy a suit from Oxfam to cremate him in - all the husband's clothes were too small for the body, you see.
"No. We got lucky. They'd hired a prostitute to pick up the shark and take him back to her flat. The three of them suffocated him and bundled him into the couple's car. They'd told the prostitute he was a rapist and wife beater. It turned out he did like to beat up women, but they didn't know that.
The couple drove him back to their home, dragged the corpse through the back gate to avoid anyone seeing them, stripped him while running a bath, hacked away at his wrists with a carving knife, and put him in the water.
About two years later we brought in the prostitute for doing what prostitutes do, and found a little pack of heroin stuffed in her handbag. Seems she was a smalltime drug dealer too. So she did a deal with us. We let her off with a warning, and she spilled the beans about the murdering couple - being careful not to mention the part about helping to suffocate the client. In her version they just wanted to rough him up a bit and it went too far.
It wasn't difficult to find them. They weren't exactly master criminals. But there wasn't much point in prosecuting - they were sixty five and the wife had cancer."
Nisha blinked. "You mean you let them all off?! You had a drugpusher and two murderers and you let them go?"
"Well. You know. The loan shark was a complete shit. He probably deserved everything he got."
"But...did all this really happen? Did you really let them off?"
"If it had happened, do you think I'd be telling you about it?"
Nisha just stared at Brandt for long seconds. "Um. So how is that case like ours then?"
"The clues were all there, but they didn't fit the crime scene we thought we were investigating."
"So what crime are we investigating?"
Brandt sighed. "I have absolutely no idea."
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