Detective Jones was so hardboiled he turned the streets around him into shady cul-de-sacs writhing with crime. It would have been interesting to note the statistical upsurge of felonious activity as Harlan Jones entered any neighbourhood. He even had the name to complement his carefully disheveled appearance. Today was just another cliché day in the world of Detective Jones. He had received his annual three hours of sleep last week, and presently sat in a sterile room with a single bare light bulb, drinking bag espresso and waiting for the phone to ring. When it inevitably did, he cursed, counted three rings and picked up the phone with a husky voice “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Well yes,” purred the woman on the other end. “I rather thought you might be awake”

“What in hells name makes you think that? It’s two in the frieken morning!”

“Well, either I know for a fact that you have no life, or maybe I’ve been watching you”

Ominous piano chords crashed into the scene. Jones looked wildly around him only to find his partner Kelly Cruscoe sitting on the three seater lounge just metres away.
“Har har hardy har,” grizzled Jones, clearly baited by the busty blonde who sat stroking her thigh and smoking a cigarette in the corner. How she had managed to breach his high security office was the next question, posed in slightly more colourful language.
“Well… thing is, I turned your handle, and let myself in”, she smiled. “I received a fax a few hours ago. It’s a letter, definitely cryptic. Found next to a body – male, late fifties, stabbed seven times. Quite gripping really. They think the letter is some kind of signature thing, up at head office; but I thought you may have some other ideas.”

“Okay. So where was the body found?” Jones asked, glancing at the spidery script on the page, and before Kelly had a chance to answer, took his eye to the paper, “I’m guessing a coffee shop?”
“How? – Who? – Wha? –”
“The cinnamon Kelly, the cinnamon stains are typical of coffee dusting”
“Well, actually, you’re right. Vic was found in one of the Starbucks on Forth Street. The one nearest Peel, in between ‘Crispy Crème’ and ‘Barnes & Noble’”
“Oh yes, yes, I know the one. Dangerous, dangerous areas those Starbucks are. Too many…‘people’; and I’m guessing nobody noticed the stabbing because, firstly, lets be honest, we’ve kind of become desensitized to stabbing in New York. I mean, for Christ sakes, wont they start getting a little more inventive! Starbucks is the best place to do it I suppose; everyone distracted with their new menu and such.”

Jones sighed, shook his head and once more glanced down to read the letter. Written on white A4, it had two even folds running horizontally across it and a small Cambridge watermark in the left corner. It read:

‘Oh Draconian Devil, Oh Lame Saint
The cheated virgin receives revenge
In the mail – and Times weep
For another of their wretched minions lost
But this is but deception’

“No, no, no – it’s too easy. Much too easy” Jones whispered to himself as he left his chair and began to pace the office. “He’s overseas too. Or at least I think he is; and the watermark; curious.” The time passed with Jones deep in thought, occasionally exclaiming words such as “trilobite”, “illuminati”, “deception point” and “flinders”. Two hours of pacing and another two coffees later, Jones was back in his chair, his eye spasmodically moving of its own accord. Kelly was sitting on his desk, fanning herself with the letter. Then suddenly, Jones’ eye stilled; Kelly paused mid-fan. They looked at each other. “Call Belmarsh Prison Kelly; we need to check on our good friend Jeffrey Archer, for if he is where I think he isn’t, I fear I may for once be wrong.”

Kelly dialed the number, asked the question and stood mouth agape as she put down the phone. “He’s gone. Left some time two weeks ago. Hasn’t been in the papers though; they mustn’t have wanted to alarm the taxman I guess.”

Jones’s eyes began to sparkle. “I knew it. He is not where he isn’t and my theory is almost most certainly correct. Jeffrey Archer broke out of jail, took revenge on his latest critic, and framed Dan Brown for the murder. The perfect crime! And the good old Harvard/Oxford/Cambridge rivalry rears its fabulous head again.” Jones shook his fist at some invisible novelist and looked into the distance wistfully. This incredible leap of judgment caused Kelly to leap from her seat and plant him with a passionate kiss, before gazing at him wide-eyed and asking the question on everybody’s mind, “How on earth did you manage to figure out this case with no scientific evidence, no interviewing of suspects and no personal examination of the crime scene?” Rather than boring the responder with the details, which clearly were self evident had the reader been paying attention, Jones rehashed a tried and true quote from his good old coke addicted muse, Holmes – “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“What does that mean Harlan?” Kelly questioned with an adoring stroke of his face.
“I think it means I’m in love with you”, he replied, as the letter made its way from the desk and into the trashcan.

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