The Conceiting Portrait (Part 16)

"The meeting has been scheduled for fifteen minutes past one. We will reach it in an hour. Jennifer has requested you to keep your notes ready beforehand to avoid confusion like the one you had created the last time." "How did you change the bodies?" Jo asked as she took out her Macbook. The person who sat beside her was none other than Clara Weigel; the same Clara Weigel who died out of excessive dehydration three weeks ago. "Interpol took care of it." She put the convertible on auto-drive and tied her long blonde hair. She turned towards Jo and smiled. "I got him." Jo smiled back and played a video clip. "Did he use Max's Wi-Fi?" Clara asked paying close attention to the clip. "No, he is not that dumb. But this is definitely some progress." Jo sighed. "What was your confusion about?" Clara asked, turning towards the steering wheel. She shifted the gearbox and sped off. "If Blake is a spy who works for whosoever mastermind, why would he help us?" Jo asked. “Simple. It is a trap. He wants you and Max to cut off all connections with Interpol and slowly lead you to the lion’s den. There, without any sort of hesitation, he can execute you both. Everything that Interpol has received will only lead them to a dead end.” Jo opened her mouth to disagree but decided it was best not to. Clara pulled over the convertible in front of a stilo. They had arrived in the countryside, far away from the lights of the city. Clara pulled down her side of the window and faced a small electronic device that was firmly gripped to the end of a wired tripod. “Clara Weigel; Field Agent 043.” She said. Jo leaned in and said, “Joan McCallister; Field Agent 089.” The electronic device blinked for a few seconds and a green line flashed. The door of the stilo opened and brought along a bright white light. Clara drove in. Interpol had disguised its temporary outlet as a farm with the stilo being the central unit. Clara parked the automobile and stepped down on a white marble floor. Although the stilo seemed like any other architecture of wood planks covered under acrylic red paint, it was a spacious well-designed technological construction planned under supervision. Jo followed Clara as she led the way to a small compartment shielded with four sound-proof glasses. Jennifer and the board of directors had seated themselves on either side of a wooden table as Clara and Jo walked in. Jo pulled out her Macbook and connected it to the projector. "Good evening ladies and gentleman." Jennifer broke the silence. "Let me introduce you to our top field agents 043 and 089.

They have been working undercover as orphan college students and we believe that they have established a close association with our suspect Basil Blake. Basil has been on our radar for as long as we have been working on this case. Let me brief you on all the details we have collected so far. Interpol has been working on this mysterious case for almost a century. We have never been able to dig deeper as much as we have done today. It started with the brutal murder of a young damsel, Celeste Cesàir on 14th June 1979. Her body was recovered in the west wing of Le musée franco-américain de de ‘la Vanilli; stabbed more than sixty times as deep as twelve centimeters. It was titled as the most catastrophic murder of the late 1970s because of the flare it lit among the women. Initially, interpol ignored it as a simple murder case. Like it is said, every criminal leaf a trace but we were astonished to see the case file come to our desks due to the lack of sufficient evidence. While the case continued in the judiciary, Interpol struggled to collect evidence. Eventually, the file closed, like it has happened many times. But then came in the next news- Daniel Francis, the aspiring anthropologist, found dead under a heap of biological waste. 17th August 1982. We realized that it was just the beginning. We did not link the two murders immediately. But the murders followed by these were, without a doubt, related. We handpicked the most intriguing similarities between the deceased. First, they all were tortured before they were murdered. Second, they all had traces of an unstable radioactive matter in their blood. We believe this was injected into their bodies by producing a deep cut on their left wrist using a blade since it was common in all the postmortem reports. Third, the bodies recovered after the death of Hannah Parker Kent in 2001 did not exhibit any signs of physical abuse such as stabbing and gunshots. Instead, they showed signs of a biological weapon which was either radioactive matter or any kind of pathogen. Interpol never went public about this secret investigation. We were afraid of the financial consequences we would have faced. It was not until the death of Olivia in 2009, we found a lead. Here, comes into the picture, Mr. Basil Blake. Olivia's body was found hanging in her hostel room, clearly imposed as a suicide. Basil was called upon as a suspect by the local authorities since he was the last one to have a conversation with Olivia on the day of her death. He definitely got away then but we kept a close eye. It was then field agent 089, Joan McCallister, who played all the CCTV cameras from 1979 to 2009 and found images of Basil Blake being present at every crime scene. Obviously, there can be many people coincidently appearing at all the crime scenes. Then why him? How did we narrow it down to him?"