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Date: January 20th, 2001
Status: Private (Dick, Katie, Complete)
Setting: Selfridges
Summary: Dick investigates an unexpected discovery.


Dick had meant to get up early and be at Selfridges the moment the shop opened, but he'd viewed security videos of the place for most of the night and to his horror overslept. He hadn't even heard his alarm clock go off! How embarrassing!

Then again today was a Saturday and he hadn't been supposed to work at all. The surprising new developments in the monstrous cat murder were too important to ignore over the weekend, though, so at ten am Dick walked into Selfridges looking for the salesgirl he'd seen serving none other than the missing witness of the first murder on the video.

He could hardly believe that after several months trying to pick up her long cold trail Leandra Stravrou would show up again by pure coincidence. It looked almost as if the superintendent could have been right about her involvement in the case. This time her presence clearly wasn't a coincidence. The security camera clearly showed her leaving shortly after the new victim, then returning a while later.

Dick still wasn't willing to consider the poor woman a murderer, though. The victims had been torn up with huge claws and torn apart, for heaven's sake! That was neither a woman's style, nor would she have had the strength. No, as far as Dick was concerned it was obvious that Miss Stravou somehow knew or suspected the killer's motive and had expected him to attack the second victim. He wasn't quite sure whether she'd arranged to meet him or had only been here by coincidence, but most likely she'd intended to warn him.

Or she might be working with the murderer. If not she'd witnessed him kill twice now and knew or suspected his identity. The woman was either in grave danger, or a dangerous criminal. In either case Dick needed to find her as soon as possible, but unfortunately the security camera didn't cover the parking lot outside. If only it had caught the licence plate of her car! It was so much easier to find a car than a person.

Ah well, perhaps the salesgirl could help him. By now she should have been informed that the police wanted to talk to her.

Comments

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Katie didn't have the faintest idea anyone was looking for her.

She was actually in the sales assistant's loo applying makeup to the dark circles under her eyes. The reoccurring nightmare where the luscious Mr. Crowley turns into that nasty bitch hooker with the miniskirts who then devours her had left her a damp puddle of conflicting desires again that morning. Her dream dictionary indicated that meant she was vulnerable, uncertain, and wanted more out of life. Like that was something new. With a sigh, Katie packed up her handbag and headed for the floor.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Ah, there she was! Dick wasn't entirely comfortable in the women's clothing section. Nevertheless, he was a police officer on duty, so he approached her with dignity.

"Miss Mercer?" Yes, she reacted to the name. "Good Morning. I'm Inspector Watson of the Metropolitan Police. I'd like to ask you a few questions about the murder."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Her eyes went round after being addressed by the handsome Inspector Watson. This was the best thing to happen to her in weeks.

"Murder?" asked Katie. "What murder?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

She hadn't heard! Oh dear, what a blunder. Luckily she didn't seem too frightened, but maybe she was in shock. Women were fragile creatures after all.

On the other hand this one seemed to be a bit slow. Maybe she hadn't fully processed his words, yet.

"Yes, but it might not be a good idea to discuss this out here in front of your customers. We wouldn't want to start any unfounded rumours. Is there somewhere we could talk in private?"

He'd better leave out the gory details. The fact that one of the shop's customers had been killed just a few blocks away would be bad enough for a simple salesgirl.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

No one would claim Katie was particularly bright, but in some specialized circumstances, she could be rather sly.

"Oh, Mr. Detective, sir, I can't leave the sales floor. But if you want privacy, we could go in the fitting room..." A cozy tete-a-tete with a cute guy who had a good job and wanted to ask her about a murder would make her whole wretched month.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Dick hesitated. Was this appropriate?

Oh, but he mustn't damage the shop's business. After all he was a responsible police officer.

"I suppose it will have to do. Please lead the way." Now how much did the girl need to know? How should he phrase this?

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Leading the detective into the smallest fitting room, Katie sat on the hard, narrow bench and patted the seat beside her. The bench was so small they'd be thigh to thigh if he sat down and if he stood, he'd get a good view down her cleavage, where a coy piece of lace from her bra was just showing.

"Now what did you need to ask me, sir? I'm always glad to be of assistance to our brave police force."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Oh dear! This was even smaller than he thought. Dick had expected women's fitting rooms to be a little bigger than this considering how much time women spent in them and the amount of clothes they usually brought in with them.

Sitting down was out of the question of course no matter that the woman didn't seem to mind the contact. He leaned against the wall.

"Well, as I already mentioned, I'm investigating a murder," Dick explained. "The man was killed yesterday shortly after leaving your shop. We believe that another customer was the last person to see him alive. I am here to try and track her down." He paused to judge Katie's reaction hoping that she wasn't about to have a nervous breakdown. She still seemed quite calm and he'd managed to avoid any mention of blood, gore or names,but he worried that it all might get too real for her once she began to associate the story with individual customers.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Katie's eyes were wide and her painted mouth formed a little o of surprise. She wasn't horrified but rather disturbingly pleased by the idea. Of course, everyone fantasized about their customers getting killed - often plastic clothes hangers featured in her daydreams - but it never actually happened.

"Who died? What happened? Who are you looking for? How can I help?" she questioned quickly, before remembering herself and adding, "sir." It was too bad that a man had been the victim, Katie thought. She dealt with mostly women since being posted in the women's department and believed that a good 90% of her customers deserved to be randomly murdered.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Dick would have been very disturbed had he known about the plastic clothes hangers. Not that those were known to be very frequent murder weapons.

Luckily he had no idea what Katie was thinking and mistook her rapid questions for a sign of hysteria setting in. He ignored the question after the murder victim. He needed Katie to help him find the witness, which also seemed like a slightly less troubling subject.

"We are looking for this woman," he said holding a picture out to Katie. It didn't entirely match the woman he'd seen on the security camera as it showed her the way she'd looked on stage with a different hair colour and professional makeup. Still he thought she should be recognisable. "Her name is Leandra Stavrou - or something like that. I'm not sure of the proper pronunciation." Dick had never learned any Greek, but he suspected that that was what the name was. At least the woman herself was Greek. "You might have seen her on TV a while ago. She was the quizmaster in a second rate quiz show called Short Circuit." Maybe these details would distract the poor girl a little. "Anyway, her contract with the BBC has run out and she moved without leaving a forwarding address, so we were hoping that you might know where she lives now. Remember her?"

He really hoped that Katie did as he didn't have a picture of he other woman Miss Stavrou had been here with and wasn't entirely sure he could describe her without drooling.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Katie gazed at the picture a long time. The woman did look vaguely familiar. With a different hair colour and less makeup, she could be...

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's that sl... um, professional woman who was in here yesterday with her friend. The one who wanted a red dress. You think she murdered a John? Or, er, a man named John?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, this witness clearly wasn't very reliable. Overactive imagination and bad listening skills, Dick assumed. Well, you had to take what you could get in his profession. Any clue that might lead to the murderer would be helpful at the moment.

"Oh, no no," he assured Katie. "I didn't say she murdered anyone and we haven't identified the victim, yet, so we don't know whether his name was John. We only think she might have seen something."

He should have checked in with the office before coming here this morning. There might have been some progress on identifying the victim overnight. Then again the less this poor salesgirl knew the better for her anyway. Unless ...

"What led you to assume his name was John?" Maybe she'd overheard something? Or had had a customer named John? Surely she couldn't mean professional woman the way it sounded. The woman was a TV presenter!

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I see," said Katie, vaguely disappointed. "I was just guessing," she tried to cover. "It's such a common name, you know."

Trying to throw suspicion off her comment, Katie volunteered what little information she could recall after wracking her brains. Then he'd see she was cooperative and attractive. "But yes, sir, she was in here with her friend. They were attempting to engage in an expedited assisted exchange and her friend - the darker one with the short skirt - asked her something about how they would remove their multiple purchases back to the manor." She threw the word down like a winning poker hand, proud of having remembered. Not that she could recall just how those 'purchases' had been made...

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"A manor," Dick repeated wondering whether he should take this bit of information seriously or not. A manor did fit much better into his picture of the life of a TV presenter, though from what he'd learned about her the woman wasn't supposed to be rich enough to afford a manor. Her shabby little quiz show hadn't paid that much. It was quite likely that she knew the kind of people that owned manors, though.

Yes, she was probably a guest somewhere, or perhaps she had a rich boyfriend she'd moved in with.

"Did they mention anything about where that manor might be?"

It couldn't be too far from here, if they'd come for a simple shopping trip, but manors tended to be in small country villages that didn't offer many opportunities for shopping, so they'd probably driven quite a way. In any direction. He attempted to estimate how long a trip a pair of spoiled rich women would put up with for a clothes shopping spree so he could calculate a reasonable search radius.

Women loved clothes shopping, though. Who knew to what lengths they'd go for it.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Katie's brow furrowed as she tried to think, then she panicked and went expressionless, afraid of causing wrinkles. Eventually she said, "All I remember is something about how they were going to impress the, um, enlisted soldiery at the air force base with their new sartorial choices." Looking up with big, hopeful, overly lined eyes, Katie asked, "Does that help, Detective? Will you track down this awful woman and take her into custody now?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

An air force base? Well, there were at least fewer of those than manors.

"It might help us find that manor, yes," Dick agreed. "Why are you so convinced that she is the murderer, though? That murder does not look like a woman's work. I doubt she could be strong enough to ... overpower a man like that."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"Woman's intuition?" Katie tried. Mostly she just hated the smarmy cow.

"And how was he overpowered, sir?" she asked, 'accidentally' showing just a bit more cleavage and leg as she shifted in her seat.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

One shouldn't discount woman's intuition. Dick decided to give the idea of the woman working with the murderer a little more consideration. She might not be able to actually kill like that, but perhaps she led the murderer to his targets or distracted them for him?

This was getting more and more indecent. Dick was no longer sure where to look. It was impolite not to look at the person one was talking to, but damn it those clothes were so revealing!

"By brute force," he explained still trying to avoid the gory details. "Miss Stravou isn't a muscle packed superwoman, so I don't see how she could have had the strength to do it to an adult man."

"Is there anything else you remember about her or her companion, though? Anything that was unusual or could help us find them?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Katie wasn't sure what Dick was talking about, but she didn't mind if her new boyfriend was smarter than she was. He was cute and had a good job. As long as he was good in bed, she'd be happy.

She pursed her painted lips. "Well, Miss Stravou only wanted to experience red dresses and cream or gold coloured jackets. She wouldn't try on the ones I brought her but made me take her to the racks so she could pick out some for herself. She seemed awfully suspicious, accusing me of fooling her and things." Katie tried to look innocent.

"And her friend wanted to look at miniskirts. I think she might have been a prostitute," she added with a fake horrified look at the good detective.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Dick had no idea how women normally behaved when buying clothes, but it was serious business to them, so trusting in somebody else's choice might not be popular. Most likely, he thought, the woman had been looking for something specific.

"Fooling her about what? The clothes' quality?" Was it customary to haggle in shops in Greece? Dick had never been there, but it was almost in Asia after all.

A TV-presenter and a prostitute seemed like an unusual combination especially considering the mention of a manor earlier. Perhaps the second woman was the mistress of the lord of the manor, though, desperately trying to hold his attention?

"Did they mention any names of people or places?" Maybe they'd talked about their boyfriends. That was a favourite topic among women after all.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"I don't know!" Katie protested. "I brought her what she wanted, but that wasn't good enough." The shop girl sulked slightly, lips pursed in a petulant pout. She crossed her arms over her chest, bringing more of her bosom into view.

Katie shook her head. "No, they didn't talk about anything interesting at all." She sounded disappointed. "Will you be able to find her?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Dick suppressed a sigh. He hated interrogating children, but then he was almost done with this immature young woman anyway.

"I'm sure you did your best," he offered. "And I'm very confident that we can find the manor they spoke of. If she is still staying there, we will find Miss Stravou. You have been very helpful, Miss Mercer, thank you."

He had to deliberately slow his pace as he fled from the tiny fitting room. Now back to the office to check what the lab had found out about the victim and set his team to find him a list of all army bases within a reasonable distance from London.

If they had established the victim's identity, he'd probably be spending the rest of the day informing and questioning the grieving family. Not something he looked forward to, but it wouldn't be proper to force such a delicate duty on a less experienced man. Perhaps there'd be time to go over the list afterwards.

Yes, it'd be a very busy day, Dick thought, Katie already forgotten.