The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2575 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 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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I paused for a moment to let this conversation sink in. If I’d heard it correctly, Gasgoine had been facilitating the use of the university for either the manufacture of drugs or their distribution, possibly both. It appeared that this was being done by some Arab terrorist cell, who were going to commit mass murder by flooding the market in dodgy drugs.

I checked this through with James. As far as he could work it out this seemed accurate. He’d been quite ill so could have got it wrong, but I can’t believe he got himself stabbed purely for watching a group of swarthy skinned men buying a kebab. So something was going on.

“Could someone have recognised you?”

“Like who?”

“How do I know, I wasn’t there, was I?”

“So?”

“So I’m trying to understand what happened. Just because you were watching them doesn’t mean it was them who stabbed you, does it?”

“No, but it’s got to be favourite.”

“Why? If they all stayed in view, unless there was someone else in their group, or they called up reinforcements, how could they have done it?”

“It had to be them.”

“Why? It could be anyone. You’ve mixed with some nasty characters over the years, could be any of them taking advantage of an opportunist attack.”

“Okay, it could be...”

“As for the Portsmouth branch of Al Quaida setting up some mass murder of drug users—how could that be terrorism? Terrorism is about striking fear and confusion into its victims. Most of us don’t do drugs, so how’s that going to work? It doesn’t make sense, as for Gasgoine selling us out, he might be a shit but even he wouldn’t have done that. Believe it or not, Gasgoine actually wanted this university to succeed.”

“I thought tigers didn’t change their spots?” he said deliberately mixing his aphorisms.

“I’ll have you know lions do.”

“Do what?”

“Change their spots.”

“Lions don’t have spots, that's leopards and cheetahs.”

“And a number of other big and medium cats, jaguars...”

“I thought you’d know about bloody jaguars.”

“But lion cubs, when they’re small have spots.”

“I thought you did dormice not the animals of the plains of Pompey.”

“Yeah. That big lump of grass in the middle is the Serengeti, didn’t you know?”

“Cathy, you’ve just as good as accused me of imagining something which I was sure I’d uncovered.”

“Okay, if there’s a group of homicidal Arabs running round Portsmouth, did they cause the murder of our lab technician or the poor lad in accounts? If so why? None of it makes sense.”

He shrugged, “If I dreamt it up in a moment of delirium why did it take me so long to recall, if it had been lost for a few days, why did it come back.”

“I don’t know, but it sounds like someone planted it there.”

“When? I came straight to you when I was hurt.”

“If you drove across Portsmouth at that time of night, you should have been here quicker than you appear to have taken. Why was there blood on the front passenger seat? You were stabbed in the right side. Why was there so much blood? I think someone nobbled you.”

“But if they were trying to kill me, why bother?”

“Insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“Yeah, if you didn’t succumb, then you’d have such a garbled story in your head, no one would believe it. Whoever we’re up against, they’re extremely clever.”

“I brought the file I had for you. I thought it was thicker than this—but I’m beginning to doubt everything I think.”

“You told me that Black was working for a right wing religious group to discover my unsuitability to run a department let alone anything more in the university.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar.”

“You also suggested he uncovered something worse and that either he happened in on something or was blackmailing or trying to blackmail someone who was up to no good. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t risk fifteen years in jail for someone who’d forgotten their parking pass, would you?”

“This is so difficult. It sounds familiar but I feel so muddled that if you told me Peter Pan was a biblical character, I’d believe it.”

“Only in the Apocrypha.”

“That’s okay then.”

“There was an element of the management who seemed to be hell bent on discrediting me—why?”

He shrugged.

“I wasn’t planning on doing more than running my department for the benefit of its students and staff. I was hoping the harvest mouse film would bring in another crop of students wanting to see cute furry things and protect them, which would give me a position of strength with which to negotiate our budgets.

“This business has pretty well determined that I get involved, because until we resolve it, my budgets won’t be set anymore than any other department’s will. It’s just total chaos. The council has lost its leader, who may or may not have been killed, so chaos reigns. We’re a small university compared to Southampton or London, so what is going on?”

“I don’t know and let’s face it, if I did know, whatever they poisoned me with, just wiped my memory.”

I switched on a desk top computer on a small table in the corner. It took a few moments to boot up, then I entered some details and we watched the infra red camera on the house record someone getting out of Jim’s car getting him from the passenger seat, walk him to the driver’s side sit him in the seat, tell him something and disappear into the shadows towards the orchard. Ten minutes later, Jim staggered from the car and up to the door of the house.

I asked him to take off his shirt and jacket and after a fairly quick examination found what looked like injection sites near his hairline on the back of his neck. I called Stella who confirmed she hadn’t made them but agreed they looked like hypodermic syringe needle puncture marks. It may have been this which enabled his false memory, but why?

“Who would hate me enough to cause such chaos and mayhem?” I asked absently.

“What if you’re not the target?” he asked.

“Could have fooled me.”

“What if it’s the bank via your connection to the family.”

“Not again?”

“Makes more sense than trying to disrupt the university which doesn’t do anything.”

“But there are so many things happening, surely it wouldn’t encompass all of them?”

“Okay, we’ve got a couple of things happening in synch, they don’t have to be related.”

“It would have to have a massive coincidence factor.”

“What if it did? Isn’t that how you told me life happened here on earth?”

It began to look as if I’d once again been hoist by my own petard, like some suicide bomber. But what if Jim was correct? I thought things were complicated enough already, perhaps not.