On the Strawberry Moon - 23. Chapter 23

The station was busy, it smelt of cheap air freshener and sweat. There was a baby crying at reception and a guy arguing with the receptionist with a queue behind him. There were couples sitting together in the waiting area, a few people coughing. People were arguing with each, police officers weaving in and out the reception.

Robert took a deep breath and waited behind the line of people at reception.

After the guy in front of him swore and flipped off the exhausted receptionist, Robert stepped forward.

The receptionist was a tired grey-haired man with a thin face and dark eyes.

‘Hello, there,’ the man nodded with a weary tone of voice. ‘How can I help?’

‘It’s just, um, the person you have in, that school shooter person,’ Robert tried to keep his voice calm. ‘You’ve got the wrong person.’

‘Do you want to speak to an officer?’

‘I, I don’t know, I just know it’s the wrong brother, they’re twins, you see.’

‘I’ll get an officer to speak to you.’

‘It’s just the wrong person, you have the wrong person.’

‘An officer will be out in a moment to take some details off you, okay? It’s quite a traumatic thing that has happened.’

Robert felt so useless. He was trying so hard to calm, he thought that would be better than screaming the place down, that people would believe him.

He looked behind the doors of the reception, his heart aching knowing that Kalum was behind there, not deserving any of this. He was desperately thinking of what he else he could do. Why would Kalum take Jasper's place? Robert should not have let Kalum go alone to see Jasper.

***

Kalum sat at the small grey table. He had this lawyer sort of person next to him, a random middle-aged man assigned to him from the care home.

The table was cold and metallic but smaller than what he thought it would be.

The detectives came into the room. He stared at them as they sat down to continue their interview with him.

They stated their times on their watches and clicked the machine on for recording more.

Kalum had barely spoken much, other than shrugging. He was never given preparation on how to deal with this situation.

The detectives were very different from each other. One was a middle-aged woman with a tough face and long brown hair, the other was a tall young man, with short hair and little of stubble.

Kalum was expecting middle aged men for some reason.

‘Okay, Jasper,’ the male detective said, he fished out some photos from a case and glossed them onto the table. ‘You said before you didn’t know where you got the gun. These pictures show you picking the gun up from local source.’

The pictures were CCTV blurred images of Jasper with a hood on going to the local park and picking a gun out of a bin after someone else had placed it there.

The female detective then took a printed-out page from the internet. It was a dark page web screenshot. She laid it out on the table next to the pictures

‘You bought the gun online and picked it up,’ she added. ‘We need the information on how you were able to access this site.’

Kalum had no idea how Jasper got to the dark web in the first place.

‘Just looked online,’ was all he could say.

He knew that annoyed the detectives.

‘You’re facing quite a lengthy charge in juvenile prison, Jasper,’ the male detective said. ‘Think you should start coming up with more answers.’

Kalum stared at the photos splattered out on the table.

‘Were you planning much on the day?’

‘I don’t know.’

The male detective drew in a sharp breath while the female detective leaned forward, ‘You’ve got to help us out here, Jasper, all you’re doing is making things worse for yourself.’