It was, Malloy discovered, surprisingly easy. As the local intel analyst on the case, his password gave him total access to the need-to-know data base. The cranked up investigation was now running on Holmes, the acronym for the Home Office (Large) Major Enquiry System, which churned out the actions and crunched all the input into something the SIO could get his head around. As any old time detective would bemoan, before computers came along, it was vital to get a job by the scruff of its neck within the first forty-eight hours or drown under an avalanche of paper, as the card index grew like Topsy. It took the debacle of the Yorkshire Ripper to concentrate the minds and come up with something that doyen of Baker Street would have described as elementary.
When he was confident he was unobserved by the incident room support team, Metal Mike pulled up the alibi statements on his terminal, slipped the key into the USB port and in the blink of an eye downloaded the file and exited the system before the gaggle of in-putters could spot an interloper and start asking awkward questions.
The following day he was back at his brother-in-law’s yard sitting across the desk, gnawing his knuckles anxiously as Donnelly read through the statements on his lap top, hoping for a change of expression which would indicate a ray of hope. He had slept badly the night before, plagued by nightmares of vultures circling as he staggered, exhausted, across an endless desert. Donnelly read in silence, absorbing the stilted prose, taking particular interest in the details of the alibi which he re-read several times.
“These people.” He broke the deep silence finally, “they’ve got damned good memories.”
“Unshakable,” the detective replied gloomily, “All day poker at the Showdown, he couldn’t have planned it better if he wanted to. They all tell the same story and if you’re thinking collusion, forget it, they’ve been checked out.”
Donnelly smiled. “But that means if one cracks, they all go out the window?”
“They won’t,” Malloy replied, “There’s enough witnesses there to sink a battleship, people at the tables, people at the bar, statements all tally and the CCTV is time coded. That’s the best alibi I ever saw, it’s fireproof.”
“This one,” Donnelly said, alighting on one of the names, “Oliver Bodkin, what d’you know about him?”
Metal Mike frowned, dredging his memory. “He’s the garage owner with the Bentley, big wheel at the golf club, likes to play a little daytime poker with his cronies.”
“Didn’t know Rikeman from Adam either,” Donnelly mused.
“That’s right,” Malloy agreed, “how’d he put it? Oh yeah – just helping out like the Good Samaritan and doing his public duty assisting the police, that’s what he said.”
Donnelly’s smile widenened. “Nice touch,” he said and to himself the chess master murmured checkmate.