The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3099 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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Weekends are special when you’re working. They’re the only time you have to spend time with your family or do things you don’t have time to do when you’re in work. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do loads of housework because we had a lady cleaner who came in each day for a couple of hours and did whatever household chores I left her to do.

Essentially, she was a single mum with two kids of school age. David sort of knew her and when it became obvious I couldn’t cope with the house and a career, he asked me if I like him to sus her out and see if she wanted some domestic work—it’s not everybody’s cup of tea—thankfully, she needed the money and as I was offering over the minimum wage, she jumped at it.

I charged David with supervising her but it seemed she was a good worker and didn’t really need much, mind you I did tell her that if she did a good job, I’d also pay a monthly bonus on top of what she earned and that ensured she’d do her best. Apparently, David told her I was a dream to work for so we recruited her quickly.

It was an expensive way of keeping the place clean but she really did work quite hard and within the first week, I could see a difference, it was like when I was home and not working, everything shone and there was very little dust anywhere. One week she even did all the windows inside—it took her all week to do them all—a job I knew all too well. She got a bonus that month, for sure.

Laura, that was her name, came five days a week for a minimum of two hours each day, occasionally more. David, having split up with Amanda, now fancied himself with Laura—sad really because I didn’t think he was her type at all. But I have been wrong before.

Trish brought home a sign she’d seen in a friend’s house. The girl lives down the road from the convent and they’d been going to her house in the lunch hour. Basically, the sign showed a cartoon of a kitchen with the caption, ‘Several people have eaten in this kitchen and gone on to live normal lives.’

When David saw it he roared with laughter, which I expected him to. It was possibly no worse than the one I had on my fridge in Bristol, which declared, ‘I dress to kill and cook the same way.’

Talking of Bristol I had to go up to see someone at Bristol University regarding the mammal survey. It was in its final year and I was trying to encourage all my recorders to get out as much as possible to give everything a final effort as after December 31st this year, the project was over save for the interpretation of the data and subsequent analysis, then we’d publish an atlas and that would be that. I’d miss it but I would certainly not undertake anything like it again. I’d done my bit.

There were rumours that the US might be able to find some money to offer me a position at Yale for a couple of years except I made it known I wasn’t interested, my commitments with the children were too great besides I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in Connecticut or New haven which is where I believe the place is situated—and they don’t have any dormice there either.

Back to the weekend: Sammi had come home for the first time in weeks and brought with her a mass of laundry. She’d been staying at Simon’s flat which has a washing machine but she claimed she was working silly hours to keep the Russian cyber attacks at bay. Typically, they operate through groups of hackers in different countries around the world and are paid by the Kremlin, which of course protests its innocence and because they’re in different places are difficult to track and block, or better still track and raid. They did get one group operating in Ukraine, when the bank, with help from MI6 and the CIA persuaded the Ukraine security services to act. In the ensuing raid, two of the hackers were shot and lots of evidence was found directly linking them to the Kremlin, though the Russian government denied all knowledge of it—as they would. They’d also been hitting US banks and industries but it sounded as if the new administration weren’t interested, as they seemed intent on adopting the Russians as friends—it takes all sorts, including total idiots to form governments.

I helped her do her laundry while Trish hung around not doing very much except irritating Sammi who wasn’t interested in helping her little sister find the name of a killer.

“But I need your help,” she said pouting like a sulking salmon.

“Tough, Trish, I have better things to do than try to do the police’s job for them and I’m trying to stay away from my computer for a few hours. So why don’t you go and play, there’s a good girl.”

“Did she tell you the guy she was talking to at McGill died falling from a second or third floor window?”

“No, who was that?”

“Bannister, I think his name was?”

“Not Brian Bannister?”

“I think it was.”

“Nice chap, met him a couple of times on cyber security courses.”

“So he’s not Canadian?”

“No, Aussie I think maybe a Kiwi, can’t remember. He was gay, so we didn’t have much in common except the IT stuff.”

“He was married to someone your dad knew, John French, used to be at Barclays.”

“There was bloke named French on the courses too, could have been the same one.”

“Was he gay?”

“Dunno, wasn’t my type anyway.”

“He’s dead too.”

“Who?”

“John French.”

“Is he, so both of them are dead?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Okay, just confirming data,” she said smirking.

I pulled the first lot of her washing out of the tumble drier and she set to ironing it while I loaded the next lot.

“What do I need to do to write an algorithm to identify criminals?” demanded Trish of her big sister.

“I don’t know if you can, look leave it to the police, they get paid for it.”

“Huh, they arrested the wrong man.”

“How d’you know that?”

Not the best question to ask because for the next half an hour, Sammi did more talking to her sister than ironing. She also pointed out that Trish’s analysis was wrong of the data she had and told her how to sort it. We had peace for an hour before the brain reappeared with a different name. ‘Michael French.’

“Oh, any relation of John French?” I asked.

“Dunno, that’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Sammi grabbing Trish’s iPad and sitting herself at the kitchen table began tapping away like mad.