Jemma still can’t quite put her finger on what is happening. Has plenty of time to mull over the facts, daydreaming while on patrol with Coops. She starts to doubt herself, is she just dreaming all this up. Is it just a case of too many X-files episodes. She thought to herself, staring out the window of the patrol car waiting for the traffic lights. Inevitably her mind went over the facts she had gathered once again.
Forensic testing of the body indicated it had been prone for hours previous to death, possibly unconscious. The body from the fire was of a young male of Greek heritage, Stavos Giokos... She had visited his parents a week or two ago and it seemed there was plenty they didn’t know about his life despite him still living with them. How horrible it must be for them, their son had died and no-one could tell them much about how or why it had happened. Their uncertainty about their only son’s life remained unexplained, they had so many questions in their heads after his death that they no longer knew what to believe. But perhaps there was plenty that they didn’t know about their son, perhaps he was secretive and led a life that he hid from them involving some mysterious, sinister cult that was responsible for his death.
Hang on she thought to herself, she was starting to sound like Nikki. Yet there was certainly something strange happening here. She thought back to the Missing Person report and her previous research, there were warnings of cults in the area made to youths, plastered in the streets by a local church and its community groups but no substantial investigation was made by police.
As her partner, Coops, drives the patrol car off from the lights Jemma thinks back to the forensics report on the fire, it couldn’t pinpoint the exact source of blaze due to limited data and unpredictable nature of fire. But Jemma recalled they could isolate it to the same building where the body was found and she had tracked down a list of the tenants, one of the few entries among the lengthy list that wasn’t a retail outlet or a restaurant was a school of yoga. The parents had mentioned his interest in yoga was the only reason they could think of him being in the area. That could be cover for a cult but so could hundreds of different organizations, all she really had was an idea or theory; though it did explain a lot of the strange things she had uncovered she still needed some evidence and details to complete any explanation of this crime and she was still some way from that. She had gathered some details about the yoga school, according to the lease records for the building a fifty five year old Asian who had no other records on file anywhere, not the Tax Office, nor immigration or any form of citizenship ran the school. While Jemma found this unusual apparently it wasn’t that uncommon around Chinatown. No-one else in the investigating unit thought it deserved much more thought and as the novice of the team she couldn't really disagree. She still hadn’t really told anyone from the force of her elaborate theories and suspicions. This was partly due to fear of being the laughing stock of the office but the main reason was she just didn’t have anyone she felt she could confide like this. She looked across at her partner, Coops, he most definitely wasn’t an option and she barely spent time with anyone else. Oh well, she didn’t really have anything concrete she could say or show anyone at this stage anyhow.
At least the deductive processes of her science degree may not be completely wasted, she told herself as she thought of the arrows and charts that she had made; a diagram of her few clues in a cause and effect relationship. Unfortunately it wasn’t helping her fill in the gaps between the meagre information she had gathered, she was still no closer to details like motive or suspects that might actually help her solve this.
It seemed she would just add this case to her list of frustrations she felt in her new career as a policewoman. There was no escaping that she simply didn’t like it. And it wasn't just because of one particular thing; the boy’s club mentality, the infectious apathy and negativity, all the bureaucratic and political cobwebs. Maybe if it was only one of these she could address it or at least overlook it. She wondered about her expectations, was she being unrealistic? Was the situation more of her creation than theirs, what did she expect this to be like? Was she not making enough effort?
Coops said something to her now and she shut of the swirl of thoughts in her mind, turning her attention away from her discomfort and her conspiracy theories and to partner, to her reality that she seemed to be spending more and more time trying to escape...