Requiem: Chapter 42

It was a job he was bummed. Norino Vastai had had to do with the internal service in a few cases. They were people you turned inside out, and once they were done with you, you had no secrets from them. Now he had to do the same with his staff. He had asked the Secretariat to make a list of the people who worked on this case. When he read all those names on the list, he was shocked that there were so many. Yes, the case had escalated so much that more and more people had been put on it. The pressure from public opinion and the press, and especially the growing discontent of the management that Norino Vastai did not produce results, played a major role in this respect..

He wanted to delete a dozen names immediately because he couldn't assume, purely out of his gut, that they were underhanded and would pass information on to the killer. But everyone had to go through the sieve. He couldn't afford to skip someone and stand in front of a monkey afterwards if it turned out that he was the mole. His first idea was to inform the board of directors about this, but on closer inspection it remained silent on that side and that Director Taketani had not responded. They'd get a suit from the same sheet.

The night had fallen and he had taken his data home on a data stick. There he would continue working at his terminal. The days seemed to fly by, and he came to work in the dark in the morning and returned home only late, also like a thief in the night. It was a depressing time. Norino also stopped eating at fixed times and what he ate was not really healthy. A quick bite flushed with some soda or tea. He's been feeling a little less spry lately. It was the years of course, but his health was also not the best. How long has it been since he had applied for a full medical check-up? Too long, he just did not have time to go to the doctor. Probably, one day or another, he would just fall dead behind his desk.. Statistically speaking, given the many hours he knocked there, the possibility was very large. He grinned in himself. What gallows humor could never hurt.

Death itself had no secrets from him. He had seen so much suffering during his service. So many murders and violence that would make you blunted. You had to get away from it somehow. Some young guys in their early years went down because they couldn't displace the images. They didn't have a special place for it in their heads. There were even some who had taken their lives away because they blamed themselves or because they couldn't cope with the powerlessness you felt in many of those homicide cases. It would also have taken him years and much more than those years just to keep the distance needed to survive. Norino no longer looked at the eyes of the victims, as he himself could not go to their heads. It helped... a little. The core of man, his soul lay in his thoughts and feelings. You could read them on their faces, somewhere deep in their eyes.