It’s a really thick accent. I hate talking on the phone, especially to people who have very thick accents. There is only so many times you can ask people to repeat themselves before it seems rude and you just have to start calling them Selma even though there name is probably Thelma. This guy sounds Eastern European; probably Polish given the amount of Polish people in Southampton. I’m assuming the call is from somebody local. Either way he is definitely telling me somebody has died.
‘Who?’ I’m asking, trying to clarify whether this is actually someone I know or just an unfortunate wrong number. After some back and forth I think I piece it together. It’s the instructor. The Clay Pigeon Instructor, the guy who showed us how to use the gun. He’s been shot. In the throat with a 12 gauge, his 12 gauge it turns out. That doesn’t sound pleasant. At first I can’t see how this relates to me, I only met the guy once after all, but it transpires that he was shot on the same day we were there, probably not so long after our session. Of course my fingerprints are on the gun because I used it to shoot clays.
‘So I’m a suspect?’ They want to see our whole group for questioning. I guess I can see the sense in that. I’m trying to remember now whether anyone disappeared for a bit. Which is weird; it’s not like I think one of my mates killed the guy. Even if one of them was that way inclined, why would they want to kill a guy they’d just met?
Later on I’m sat answering questions for a police officer. Not the same one as before, this one’s English. I’d had a mental picture of what this might be like, probably based on a thousand and one Hollywood movies. Actually it is nothing like that. There isn’t any one-way glass, there is no ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine; the desk I’m sat at could be any desk in any office and the guy I’m talking to could be someone you’d see down the local pub. Minus the uniform of course. I’m being asked to give a breakdown of exactly what happened on the morning of the murder, which is quite surreal. They are trying to ascertain where I was at what time and who I was with. It transpires that I have an alibi at the time of the murder, which comes as relief even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill the guy. I was with my brother at the time; we’d gone to find somewhere that sold bottled drinks. It was a hot day after all and everyone was parched from standing out in the sun hefting a shotgun for the previous two hours. I got the feeling that the lady we’d bought the drinks from had confirmed we were there, so we were in the clear. The other feeling I got, one that made me feel less than comfortable, was that they were convinced it was someone in our group that committed the crime. I provided character references for them all, telling the officer that I’ve known them for ages and each one was a stand up guy. He didn’t look entirely convinced.
At home that evening I had a strange sense of being disconnected from reality. This isn’t the kind of thing that normally happens to me. I’m sure everyone thinks that, until something like this does happen to them. It doesn’t seem real. My wife isn’t sure how to react either. The elephant in the room here is the notion that someone we know, one of our friends, could actually be a cold blooded killer. I think that made us both feel slightly sick. We snuggled up on the sofa and watched a movie, as we do most nights, but I couldn’t concentrate at all and I was glad when it finished and I was able to take my thoughts to bed. Physically I felt exhausted but my mind was racing. I began to mentally paint a picture of each of the friends I went Clay Pigeon Shooting with to decide if I thought any were capable of the crime that had been committed.
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