Play@YSDC

Kris heads off to bed. He gingerly peels off his shirt and then the bandages which are soaked with a sour smelling yellow fluid. Leaning over the sink to study himself in the mirror, the red lesions on his arms and chest sting in the cool air of the bathroom. Across his skin the thin epidermis has sloughed off many of the blisters, leaving an ugly patchwork pattern of yellow and red crusts.

He tries to clean himself and then applies the ointment supplied by Dr Sanderson. Rummaging through the drawers he finds some bandages and applies them as best he can.

Kris scratches an itch at the back of his head and a clump of hair comes away with a little blood. Not for the first time he regrets not following the doctor's advice and resolves to pick up the antibiotic prescription tomorrow.

Sticking on a microwave dinner he wolfs it down and then lies down in bed, eventually sinking into a fitful sleep.

6.30am Saturday 13th March 2010, Cooper's Rise, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

Thirty six hours since Regina Balfour was abducted.

Kris wakes groggily at the sound of his phone alarm. He drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom. Bina still fast asleep. He winds off the bandages and replaces them with clean ones. At least the rash doesn't seem any worse this morning.

Stepping out the house it is bright with a pretty pink glow on the horizon. He gets into his car ready to head back to the station and face the music. Turning on the radio, the weather forecast predicts warm and sunny weather for the whole day. Maybe it won't be too bad after all...

...Kris receives a call on his phone. Expecting DS Bates he answers, 'DC Sapru, can you even begin to appreciate how bad it looks to be accused of religious and...' there's an uncomfortable pause, 'and even racial prejudice?' The voice at the end of the phone is unmistakably DI Malone.

'Do you have any comprehension of the trouble you've caused? It is hard enough maintaining a cordial relationship with the various ethnic and religious groups in this town, if we start alienating the bloody priests what chance do we have?'

Malone's frustration is evident in his voice, 'We're no closer to finding Regina Balfour and I've already had Deputy Chief Constable Habgood on the phone about you.'

Kris realises this is not going to end well.

'I know you're supposed to be working this weekend but I'm taking you off the Balfour case. You are banned from talking to any of the Balfour family, you understand me? And keep away from Bates and the rest of the investigation team. Since Balfour is pretty much all we're doing in Wycombe at the moment and I've had to beg an officer from Oxford to cover you, I'm redeploying you there. Head over to St Aldate's Station. Before you even start I don't want to hear another word, this is non-negotiable if you want to keep your job Sapru.'

Kris has a sinking feeling followed by growing anger but he knows there's no point arguing with the DI. He starts the car and reluctantly heads off in the direction of Oxford.

Even though it is the weekend the traffic into Oxford is still awful and it takes him a good hour to get there. St Aldate's is thick with tourists as he crawls through the traffic and deposits his car in the parking garage behind the station. Inside the station is quite small, despite being in the city centre. The main Oxford station being in Abingdon where the cells are.

Kris introduces himself at the desk and is let through to the offices. He's been here before a few times and finds his way to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). A single officer sits at a desk looking bored. Kris recognises him as DS Williams, another plodding time server. Williams seems barely able to contain his mirth, 'Who's been a naughty boy?' He titters. 'Burke says you wrote off your service vehicle as well. Your penance is you're going to handle all the investigations this weekend while I sit here on my arse.' Kris suspects Williams would have done that whether he was here or not. 'Got something for you, break-in, uniform think there might be a drugs angle.'

”It was just a fucking dent! Burke by name, berk by nature!” Kris tried a studied insouciance that he certainly wasn’t feeling.

He made a note of the address and checked out a stab-proof vest and tactical gear, then headed out the door.

OOC,Kris will head over to the address but if he sees a chemists on the way, he’ll stop and pick up his prescription.

Under a torrent of laughter and abuse from Williams, Kris collects the keys for a CID car. The address is the 'Botley Road Veterinary Hospital', out towards the west of Oxford.

He takes the opportunity to stop off at a pharmacy and pick up his antibiotics, reasoning the vet probably won't be open yet. While he is waiting for his prescription to be made up Kris receives a phone call from Simon, 'Detective Sapru, good morning. Jocelyn and I are at the hotel. Will you be able to stop by?'

OOC,You can reply in their thread: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=469&t=7331#p245905[/url]

Kris sat in his car, rubbing the antiseptic cream into his arms before gently rolling his sleeves down. Ignoring the funny look he was getting from an old woman at the nearby bus stop, he carefully pulled out into traffic and headed over to the vets.

He was still there early, so when he got there, he went and knocked on the front door. “DC Sapru! Thames Valley CID!” he called out. ”I’m here about your break-in!”

Botley Road Veterinary Hospital is, unsurprisingly, on Oxford's Botley Road, midway between Oxford and the village of Botley to the west.

Kris pulls into the small car park at the side of the vet's. The frontage is a 1930s house, extended out the back with a newer red brick building, 1980s maybe. There are a few lights on in the building towards the rear.

Kris knocks but he hears nothing for a minute or so and then there is some rustling behind the door. The light comes on and eventually the door opens revealing a young woman in her late twenties. Her blonde hair is tied up and she is wearing blue medical scrubs. 'Hello officer, the police here twice in one day. I'm starting to feel special.'

”One of my colleagues has already been here, Miss...?” asked Kris, wondering if he had been sent on a wild goose chase.

'Yes, that nice PC Gough was here earlier, he thought this might have been drug related. He said he'd ask for a detective to take a look. I presumed that was you?' she says, looking a little surprised.

”Oh, I see,” said Kris. “I thought that you meant another detective had already been out to see you...” He smiled awkwardly.

“Anyway, I’m Detective Constable Sapru. Would you like to show me what you found?”

The woman leads Kris through the surgery, towards the front is the waiting area and offices. In the extension out the back are the clinical areas. She unlocks a clinic room and shows him a broken window, big enough to crawl through. There is broken glass scattered on the floor.

'I found this yesterday when I came in to work. The alarm was making a weird sort of intermittent beeping. We'd usually lock all the rooms individually but I found this unlocked so someone might have forgotten. Unfortunately it meant they managed to get into the drugs cupboard.'

She takes him further out the back of the building into a store room. It is filled with various pieces of veterinary apparatus. At the rear of the room is a fridge next to a large wooden cupboard. The cupboard doors have been splintered open and there are boxes, pill packets, pots and broken vials scattered over the floor. The shelves themselves are in disarray. Inside the cupboard is a white metal lockbox.

'As you can see, they were obviously looking for medication, but they couldn't get into the controlled drugs', she indicates the metal box.

”So no controlled drugs, but what else might they have taken?” asked Kris as he carefully examined the cupboard.

'Well I've been trying to look through as I tidy it up and I haven't found anything obvious that's been taken so far' she says.

OOC,If Kris wants to look through the drug cupboard for missing medication he's going to need a successful Medicine roll or a hard First Aid roll. Failing that an extreme Idea roll.

OOC,Medicine (01%) - 0 First Aid (Hard - 20%) - 1 Idea (Extreme - 14%) - 2 Edit: Nope, nope, nope.

”Aren’t you supposed to keep a record of all your medical supplies, in case something goes missing? Don’t you ever do an inventory or stock check?” Kris asked, despairing of them finding anything useful amid the mess.

Kris rifles through the cupboard but he has no idea what he's looking for.

A little taken aback at Kris's criticism the vet says, defensively, 'Of course we do, but someone's come in and messed it all up! I'm trying to get everything back in order to see what might be missing and run a busy veterinary hospital at the same time. I'm most of the way through the drug cupboard and I haven't found anything's been taken yet. Can't you look around for clues and I'll let you know if I find anything?'

”Sorry,” said Kris, sensing he was putting the vet’s back up.

He smiled at her to try to get her onside. “Do you have CCTV cameras?” he asked.

”Well, you do keep drugs on the premises,” replied Kris. “In fact, I’d be surprised if your insurers don’t insist upon it after this.”

He sighed and stepped back from cabinet. “Can you show me where they got in?” he asked. “I’ll take a look there while you inventory what’s gone missing.”

The vet takes him back to the room with the broken window. The room itself is uncluttered, it is some kind of clinical room with a stainless steel table in the centre, a fridge in one corner, and a metal worktop with cupboards underneath along one wall and wall mounted wooden cupboards on another wall. The windows look out onto the carpark at the side of the building but the Botley Road itself is not visible. The window has been smashed and there are shards of glass on the floor suggesting it was broken from the outside. There is a half brick in the middle of the floor. Although Kris can see that the window latches are not locked it looks like the burglar cleared the remaining glass from the window pane rather than unlatching it. Presumably they crawled through. Nothing else in the room looks disturbed.

OOC,Anything you want to look at specifically in here? Also, roll Spot Hidden

Kris inspected the window frame. From experience, he knew that your average burglar wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box so wanted to check if they had cut themselves while clearing out the glass. He also checked to see if there were any obvious fingerprints either on the window frame or even on the light switch. In an unfamiliar building in the dark, they may have risked switching on the light so they could see where they were going.

OOC,Spot hidden (40%) - 0