“Only because they didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“And what was that?”
“Some items that were left behind when we moved in.”
“Valuables?”
“Well… no. Not exactly.” I stand up. “But I can show you.”
She holds up a hand. “But this individual ignored the laptop, car keys, and wallet that were in plain view on the kitchen counter?”
I sit slowly back down on the armchair. “They weren’t interested in any of that.”
“And you’ve got no exterior CCTV, none of your neighbors saw anything, and your wife didn’t hear anything either?”
I look from one officer to the other. “Therewassomeone in my house. They kicked me down the cellar stairs. I’ve got nine stitches in the back of my head to prove it.”
“I noticed the bottles by the front door put out for recycling,” she says. “Had you been drinking at all on Saturday night?”
“A few glasses of wine,” I say. “A couple of beers.”
“Anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Spirits?”
“One small whisky before I went to bed.”
She nods slowly. “And anything else that you might have consumed on a… recreational basis?”
“I wasn’t high or hallucinating, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m not interested from an enforcement point of view,” Okoro says. “Just gathering all the facts.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“But you were intoxicated?”
“Not… I mean. Maybe a little, yes. But not falling-down drunk. Maybe a bit disoriented at being woken in the middle of the night.”
“And you’re not able to give us a description of this supposed intruder beyond the fact that you think they had a black balaclava on.”
“It all happened incredibly fast, and the lights were still off. I was dazzled by the torch, and the next thing I knew I was coming around on the floor of the cellar.”
“I see.”
James flips to a fresh page of his pad and continues to write in his tight, neat handwriting. When he’s finished, I show them into the dining room and then the kitchen, where they do a cursory inspection of the doors and windows.
I indicate the door to the cellar. “Aren’t you going to look for fingerprints or something?”
The sergeant gives me a long-suffering smile. “We’d need to bring in our colleagues from scientific support for that. They would tend to look at areas of obvious entry and exit from a scene, specific areas that a suspect is likely to have had contact with in commission of a crime, that kind of thing. As you can imagine they’re very busy boys and girls, and their time tends to be allocated according to the gravity of an offense and whether there is a reasonable prospect of detecting, arresting, and successfully prosecuting an offender.”
“Is that a roundabout way of saying no?”
“It’s just how things are, I’m afraid.” She holds a hand up. “I don’t like it either, but the staffing rotas are already cut to the bone. They do a hell of a job but there’s just not enough resources, not enough staff to go around.”
I blow out a breath. “Sounds familiar.”
