The ringing of the desk phone startled Daffy. He winced at the pull against his hip, then composed himself as best he could and answered in as calm a voice as he could. “Archiveth, Daffy thpeaking.”
“Officer Hussein is here to see you.” Rosie’s unnecessarily chipper voice chirruped down the phone line.
“Thend her down, thankth, Rothie.” Daffy hung up the phone and tried to remember if he’d spoken to an Officer Hussein at any point…ever. The name didn’t sound familiar. Probably it was something to do with Granny’s death. Maybe, if he was lucky, they’d found out who killed her—and how—and he could handle it himself, and then everything would be fine again.
A few minutes later, the door opened carefully and a woman stepped in, almost cautiously. She was human, was the first thing Daffy noticed. The next thing he noticed was that everything about her was varying shades of brown—light brown skin, dark brown eyes, tan pants, mud colored shirt, slightly lighter brown jacket. The only exception was the dark green scarf tied over her head so that Daffy couldn’t see her hair, but judging from her eyebrows, it too was dark brown.
“Are you Daffy Duck?” she asked, a bit awkwardly. Her voice was low and husky.
Daffy raised an eyebrow. “Who elthe would you exthpect to have a name like Duck?”
“I mean.” The woman, presumably Officer Hussein, shrugged. “My godmother’s name is Jessica Rabbit, but you wouldn’t know that to look at her.”
Daffy blinked and stared at the woman harder. Yes—there, in the eyes. He hadn’t known him well, but he knew those eyes…
“You’re Eddie Valiant’th granddaughter?” he asked in surprise.
The woman seemed a bit uncomfortable as she shrugged one shoulder. “Never met him, but yeah. You knew Grandpa Eddie?”
“Not well,” Daffy admitted. “I went to Valiant and Valiant for a cathe onthe, when they were jutht getting thtarted, but Teddy wath the one I mothtly dealt with then, and I didn’t thee much of Eddie after that.” He got up. “Uh…come in, have a theat. You’re here to talk to me…Offither Huththein?”
“Call me Basira.” Something flickered through those dark eyes for just a moment before she added, “My first name isn’t actually ‘Officer.’”
Daffy forced a laugh, since he could tell that was meant to be a joke. “Of courthe, Bathira. Jeththica wath here a few monthth ago, and she mentioned that your dad had changed hith name. I guethth to ‘Huththein’?”
“Yeah. He took my mum’s last name.” Basira sat down, almost cautiously. “What was she here about? Just catching up with…old friends?”
“Not exthactly. She had a thtatement for uth. Wanted to talk about Roger’th…” Daffy swallowed hard. “Death.”
There was another flicker in Basira’s eyes. “A statement?”
Daffy gestured at his desk, which was strewn with papers, pens, laptop, and tape recorder in such a way that it would look like absolute chaos if anyone didn’t look at it too closely. In reality, the mess was carefully calculated to hide what he was really looking into. “That’th kind of what we do here. Memberth of the public who’ve exthperienthed paranormal…eventth come to uth and tell uth about them.”
“And what do you do with them?”
“We…archive them,” Daffy said, a little lamely. “Thome rethearch, if netheththary, but mothtly it’th jutht the recordingth and thtoring. That’th what’th out there on the floor.”
Basira nodded briefly. “That’s what you were so worried about the night…uh…Tweety found Emma Webster’s body, right?”
It was still so weird to hear Granny referred to as Emma Webster. “That’th right. Thome of the paperth were pretty badly damaged—Tweety told me when I came back that he and Ralph had to throw away motht of the oneth Jane Prentithth oothed all over, and we’re thtill not sure which oneth they were, tho we don’t know if we have backupth. And we lotht a couple of tapeth, too.”
“Tapes?”
Daffy tapped the reel to reel recorder. “Thome of the thtatementth…the real oneth…will only record on tapeth. We have a thmaller one, too, but I don’t uthe it ath often.” A little bit of a lie, but not one he felt particularly guilty about. Since he came back from his enforced time off after the attack, he’d started using the smaller one to record supplemental tapes he was keeping hidden…at least, he was pretty sure they were staying hidden.
Basira didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t seem to care. She was staring pensively at the recorder. “But you do have a smaller one. That can…actually play tapes back?”
“Thure do. Motht people who want to referenthe them bring their own recorderth, though.”
“Huh.” Basira pursed her lips momentarily, then looked up at Daffy. “How do you know when they won’t record on anything but tapes? How does that even work, anyway?”
Daffy shrugged. “I aththume it’th the thame thort of thupernatural thtuff we thtudy everywhere elthe in the Inthtitute. It uthed to be that we wouldn’t know until we thtarted recording and got animal noitheth, but now it’th…it’th jutht obviouth. I can’t exthplain it.”
“So if I said I wanted to make a statement for you, what would you reach for?” Basira cocked her head at him. “The laptop or the recorder?”
At the word statement, Daffy had already begun reaching—and he paused, staring at his hand, then back up at her. Without saying a word, he completed the motion he had been making before, and switched on the recorder.
“Doeth that anthwer your quethtion?” he asked.
Basira gave a single, jerky nod. “I shouldn’t really be talking about it on tape.”
Daffy wrinkled his beak. “I mean, you came to uth. You don’t have to make the thtatement. Technically, you didn’t actually athk me if you could. I just aththumed you were being theriouth.”
“Yeah. Just…need to talk about it with someone, you know?” Basira rubbed her face.
“Yeah, I get it,” Daffy assured her.
“Do you?” Basira eyed him suspiciously. “I’m breaking the law talking to you. You understand that, right?”
“What ith it, thome kind of official government nondithclothure agreement?” Daffy snorted. “Nobody lithtenth to thethe tapeth but me, uthually, anyway. To make it thafe, we’ll thlap an ‘Internal Uthe Only’ thticker on the file. The Inthtitute’th got an NDA that maketh anything the government’th got going on look like an open book. Even the polithe won’t be able to requethition it then.”
“That the best you can do?”
“Lithten, thithter, you were the one that wanted to make a thtatement. You can take what I’m giving you, or you can walk away. Or you can write it down yourthelf, and I’ll record it later, if what you’re worried about ith your voithe being recognithed.”
Basira gave a near silent sigh. “I’m not really big on writing. I’m more of a talker.”
Daffy thought back to every police procedural, cartoon or otherwise, he’d ever seen. “Thtrange choithe of jobth, then, ithn’t it? I thought there would be lotth of formth to fill in, whether you’re a private detective or a polithe offither.”
Basira shook her head. “Not much since I became Section Thirty-One.”
The number sounded official. Daffy guessed that was the nondisclosure agreement. “That thoundth like a thtarting point. Or maybe it’th the middle of the thtatement, but either way, let’th cover it in the recording.” He cleared his throat. “Thtatement of Polithe Conthtable Bathira Huththein regarding her time invethtigating…thtrange occurentheth ath part of Thection Thirty-One. Thtatement taken direct from thubject, Theptember nineteenth, two thouthand thixthteen. Thtatement beginth.”
The two of them stared at one another for a couple of seconds before Basira raised an eyebrow. “Now?”
“Yeth,” Daffy said, trying to conceal his impatience.
Basira pursed her lips. “Well, first of all, I’m not actually ‘part’ of Section Thirty-One. It’s not a unit or a division within the police force or anything like that. It’s a form you have to sign. Section thirty-one of the Freedom of Information Act—don’t know how much you know about British law, you being from America and all that, but—”
“We have thomething thimilar in the United Thtateth,” Daffy interrupted her. “Go on.”
“Right. Well, section thirty-one of the UK’s version covers exclusions for information pertaining to law enforcement. It just means that any information that could interfere with the prevention or detection of a crime can’t be given out as part of an FOI request. So what happens is, when you stumble across something a bit…weird, then after it’s over you’re taken off to one side and told to sign a form declaring that what you saw and experienced was directly related to a crime. Then it’s covered under Section Thirty-One and can’t be revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. There’s a bunch of other NDA stuff in there, too, but basically it means you have to keep quiet about it. Thing is, signing your first Section Thirty-One really marks you out. Word spreads fast in a station, and once you’ve signed one, people tend to push you in that direction. They call you ‘sectioned’, which…seems appropriate, I guess?” Basira grimaced. “You’re generally assigned to head out with other officers who’ve signed, and if any other officers get a whiff of something weird going on, they’ll wait until you arrive rather than risk going in themselves and winding up sectioned themselves. I suppose in some ways it is a kind of a unit, just not one with any formal training or funding or official power. Just a bunch of burned out cops with a retirement rate five times higher than normal.”
She sounded bitter as she went on. “That’s why it took so long to get a car here when your friend found Miss Webster’s body. I was on a burglary call with Carver, the only other sectioned officer on shift, and you bet no one else was responding to a call from the Magnus Institute. No offense.”
“None taken,” Daffy assured her. “And full nameth, pleathe.”
“Who?” Basira stared at him for a second. “Oh. P.C. Richard Carver.”
“Thankth. I didn’t thee you the night all thith happened, but I didn’t hear ath much fuththing from you or your partner ath I exthpected,” Daffy admitted. “Even with all the…thhriveled worm carcaththeth.”
Basira wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, that was easily one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on the job, but not the weirdest.”
“Let’th thtart from the beginning, then,” Daffy suggested.
Basira took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, truth is I think I was always kind of destined to be sectioned, even if I didn’t know that at the time. When I first applied for the badge, I put Dad down on my form as a reference. Felt a bit silly putting Uncle Roger down, so I didn’t, but I said that I’d done some summer work at Hare and Hound and they could call the old man for a reference if they needed. I didn’t think they would, but my first day on the job, the sergeant called me into his office and started grilling me. What work had I done with Hare and Hound, how long had I been there, what had I seen, which of the partners had I met. I told him one was my dad and one was my godfather, and you know, he actually asked me which was which? That probably should have been my first sign, honestly, but I just blinked at him and said ‘the hound’ and then had to clarify that, yeah, my last name was Hussein because Edward Hussein was my father, even though it was actually because Samirah Hussein is my mother, but whatever. He just nodded at that, told me I’d do well, and sent me back to my desk.
“I didn’t exactly talk about it—about Uncle Roger, I mean. It’s not that I’m ashamed of him, I loved him, loved Aunt Jessica, almost as much as my own dad, but this isn’t Los Angeles. You tell people your godfather’s a Toon and they look at you funny, or at least they did when I was in school. But word must’ve got around somehow. I was riding with John Spencer at the time and…we didn’t really get on. Let’s just say I wasn’t a fan of the tone he used whenever he said ‘diversity’, although I never had enough to bring a real grievance against him. He didn’t talk to me much, not really, but I started hearing a word around the station. Didn’t think much of it at the time, certainly never connected it to anything in particular, especially since no one ever said it directly to me. Figured they were just talking about someone with a particular job, or a reputation of some kind I didn’t get, and that eventually someone would explain it to me. But when I’d been there maybe six weeks or so, a call came in from Dispatch. It was something urgent, but there was some argument about who they were going to send out and I kind of half got the idea that they were waiting for a particular officer to get back, so I reckoned it was something that needed a deft touch. Seemed confirmed when I heard someone use that word again—‘Hey, send the Tuner.’ Captain snapped for whoever said it to go into his office, but the next thing I knew, Spencer and I had the call.
“There was a fire out near Clapham—a residential house had gone up, and there was some trouble with the homeowner. Apparently there was some suspicion of arson, and the homeowner was getting violent, so the fire brigade had called for police backup. Spencer grumbled about it the whole way out. I didn’t really get why until we were pulling up, and he turned and asked me if I was a full Toon or just chased them. Turns out they were all saying Tooner, and it’s apparently not a polite way of saying someone who has a thing for Toons. I told him my godfather was, but I’d never been in love with him or anything and I sure as hell wasn’t—and then I put two and two together and asked if the homeowner was a Toon. Turns out I’d got five, but, well, I’m getting to that.
“Anyway, he wasn’t. Or if he was, he was hiding it pretty well. Uncle Roger told me about that Judge Doom guy back in the forties and I guess it could have been something like that, some kind of rubber mask hiding the real deal, but somehow I don’t think so. I don’t know Toons that well, but it felt different. He was a Hispanic male, probably mid to late forties, heavy set with a completely shaved head, and a couple firefighters were doing their best to restrain him. Another one, sporting a fresh black eye, came over to brief us. Apparently not long after they had arrived, the guy had burst out of the house, not a burn mark on him. The fire brigade had approached to find out what kind of help he needed, but apparently he just started throwing punches and trying to run. Which, fine, that’s an assault charge, but why the arson?
“The firefighter just sort of nods to him, and I realize for the first time this guy’s saying something. Not loud, but intensely. I mean, this was years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but it definitely involved the words ‘cleansing fire,’ ‘all shall be ash’, and the name Asag. I found out later that was a Sumerian fire demon, but at the time I assumed it was from a cartoon. I reckoned suspicion of arson was probably about right, and Spencer agreed. I offered to be the one to arrest him, maybe talk him down. Still thought he might be a Toon at this point, and thought he was either really into method acting or he’d gone what Uncle Roger used to call ‘crackerdog’, and either way I thought I was the best choice. Spencer disagreed, though. Said if he was a Toon I knew how to restrain him better, so he’d do the talking. There’s part of me that still feels guilty I didn’t fight him harder on that, but I went to cuff him. You know as well as I do it’s…not hard to cuff a Toon. I mean, they can’t just slip out of them, whatever people think—only when it’s funny—so I didn’t think it would be that much of a challenge.
“As I was putting them on, though, there was this sudden, intense pain in my hand. It was just as I touched the metal to close them; it was incredibly hot. I took a welding class once, ages ago, just on a whim, and made the mistake of forgetting that just because the metal isn’t glowing red doesn’t mean it isn’t scorching hot. It was that same burn, too intense for your mind to process for a second, then all your nerves fire at once. It hurt, is what I’m saying.
“That was actually the point I made the mistake, or at least I think it was a mistake. I’m…look, cops swear, all the time. I certainly wasn’t afraid of a few bad words, and even then I used them all the time. But for some reason, I found myself yelling the phrase Uncle Roger always used, the one he said Grandpa Eddie used in the first case they worked together—‘Holy smoke, he’s not a Toon!’
“And just like that—the heat stopped. I can’t explain it. Maybe it was just that I’d managed to get the cuffs all the way on before it got too bad and jerked my hands back, but all I came away with were some badly blistered fingers. The man smirked at me and…winked, like we were sharing some secret, and nodded to me, then leaned forward and whispered something in Spencer’s ear. I didn’t hear what he said, but Spencer went completely pale. He was badly shaken, and I had to drive us back to the station after we got the guy into the car. He…wouldn’t tell me what he said.
“Our arsonist’s name was Diego Molina, and I was right, he wasn’t a Toon. He was assistant curator at some Mexican museum, come over with a loan to the Natural History Museum, but they hadn’t heard from him in a few weeks. He didn’t say much in questioning, though his English was clearly fine. Unfortunately, the arson case collapsed pretty quickly, so we had to just slap him with the assault charge and let him walk with a pretty hefty fine. Spencer didn’t exactly help matters by getting himself suspended. The only thing Diego Molina had on him when he came in was a little book bound in red leather. They caught Spencer in the evidence locker trying to destroy it with a Zippo lighter. I never saw him again. They told me he killed himself when he got home. Apparently he’d somehow filled the bath with boiling water and just…got in. Official story was that he’d somehow done it using a kettle, which…was just about the weakest cover-up I ever heard.” Basira sighed heavily. “Anyway, after that happened, and I explained about my burned fingers, they gave me my very first Section Thirty-One. That was kind of my fault too, actually. There were no witnesses to me having declared Molina wasn’t a Toon other than him and Spencer, so I might have got away with pretending he was when they asked me, but I decided to be honest. Sergeant asked how I was so sure, and I said it was because the cuffs hadn’t glowed red. You know how much Toons love the clichés. But there was no sign that metal was hot until I touched it. Ergo, not a Toon. They had to agree with my logic, and hey presto, I got sectioned.”
“I thee,” Daffy said. He searched for another thought, but could only repeat, “I thee. How many…uh, potentially paranormal inthidentth do you invethtigate ath a polithe offither?”
“None,” Basira said bitterly. “No one says the P-word. Not ‘paranormal’, not ‘supernatural,’ not even ‘spooky’. The words you look out for are ‘weird’, ‘strange’, ‘odd’, and if you hear the phrase ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at’, then yeah, you’re not getting much backup. And I got it worse. I finally came clean about Uncle Roger just to get them to knock off the ‘Tooner’ stuff, and it worked, but it meant everyone in the department knew I had experience with Toons. There aren’t a lot of them in London, you know, but there are a few, and not all of them are upstanding citizens like you and the staff here.
“It’s mostly false alarms, to be honest. We get called to a lot of bad drug trips, animal attacks, and mental health breaks. Those are the ones that have the potential to sound weird initially. And of course when actual Toons are involved, sometimes things can get a bit off kilter. That was actually at the center of my next Section Thirty-One call, but that didn’t happen for…almost another four years.
“July eighteenth, 2014. I remember because it was the hottest day of the year, and the air con in the squad car wasn’t working that day, so we were really suffering. It was me and Alice Tonner, who…everyone calls her ‘Daisy,’ but I’ve never been able to get her to tell me why. Anyway, Daisy was sectioned for years before I was even on the force. She never really talks about her experiences; takes Section Thirty-One very seriously. The most I could get out of her was that she was originally sectioned for something she called ‘spider husks’. The way she described it, she’d found a bunch of things like shells, the sort crabs leave behind when they grow, but I could never quite work out if they were meant to be people-sized husks of spiders, or spider-like husks of people. And Daisy never seemed like she wanted to clarify. She also mentioned vampires once as well, but I’d been talking about that cartoon with the red monster—”
“Goththamer?” Daffy asked.
“Yeah, that’s him. Anyway, she said something about vampires after that, but I reckoned she was joking about it. Probably.” Basira rubbed her face. “So anyway, this call we were heading for Kensington. It had originally been for the ambulance, but then neighbors reported gunshots, so we were called in, and we had a very strange call with the paramedics. They specifically refused to confirm there was a gun on the scene, so we didn’t send in an armed unit. They were still on standby, but something in the paramedics’ report made them think they should wait until we got there. The building was pretty run down for Kensington. Still nicer than my house, but, you know. The paramedics met us at the door. The lift was out, so they showed us up the stairs.
“On each floor I saw faces peering out the cracks in the door. They must have been the neighbors who heard the gunshots. We…we carried up until we reached a door that was already open.” Basira swallowed hard. “Just before we went in—there was this little girl. She had these huge, scared eyes, and something made me stop. Maybe I was going to tell her she was safe, I dunno. But she waved me down, and when I bent over, she gave me this stick. She said it was for fighting off the monsters and if they’d got ‘Mister Dreamer’ it was her fault. I promised her it wasn’t, but it certainly made me more worried about going in, especially since the lights were off. The paramedics confirmed they had all been smashed.
“The windows had all been painted over, and it was like a boiler room in there. But even in the gloom, it was…it was clear there was a lot of blood around. A lot of blood. But it didn’t…smell right. Blood’s coppery, usually, but this all smelled like something chemical, like…turpentine. And as soon as I smelled that, I knew what it meant. This guy, whoever he was, was a Toon.
“I…kind of relaxed, at first, actually. Told Daisy it was probably all right, that it was a Toon, but I said it quietly. Then we got a torch on the ‘victim’. He was sat in an armchair in the middle of the room, and it was clear he’d been shot in the head multiple times at close range. He was male, humanoid, youngish, although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything with Toons. You know, depended on how long it had been since he was actively working, I guess. And if there were kids in the building, that could count. Age was hard to guess from what was left of his face, though. Daisy spotted the gun next to him and walked over to retrieve it, all the while asking me how normal this was, how often Toons bleed, ‘cause, you know, everybody knows you can’t kill a Toon. I told her what I’d learned from Uncle Roger—that the longer Toons spend on this side of reality, the closer they get to following its rules. I was starting to expand on that when I heard Daisy scream. The Toon was moving, trying to gurgle something through what was left of his jaw. He was reaching for the gun. Daisy leapt for it, but it was right next to him and she missed. The Toon raised his hand, pointing the gun towards the mess that was what was left of his head. Daisy grabbed the gun before he could pull the trigger, but he was stronger than her. Or maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just still Toon enough to get the jump on her.
“I knew—or thought I knew—what was going on then. He’d gone crackerdog. Uncle Roger told me that it’s what happens to Toons who…mostly Toons who live in the human world but work in the Toon world, or vice versa sometimes. They’ve still got one foot in one world and one foot in the other, and going back and forth between the two worlds drives them a bit crazy. They forget what’s real and what isn’t, and the stress can literally tear them apart. I reckoned this Toon was in that state, and I wanted to bring him back. So I called him Mister Dreamer, like the little girl had said, and I said she was worried about him and he should let us help, and I held out the stick. I swear I was just trying to—it was good procedure, and nine times out of ten it would’ve been the exact right move. Maybe it still was, I dunno. But either way, he…calmed down, for just a second, and let go of the gun, and took the stick. I was just about to tell the paramedics they could take him, there’s a doctor at Orpington who specializes in Toons, when Daisy yelled. I turned back around, and…the Toon, Mister Dreamer, he looked at me—I swear he looked at me—and he gurgled out, ‘For the monsters.’
“And then he…he bashed his own brains in with the stick. He didn’t move again after that.
“It…wasn’t right. I told Daisy on the way back to the station. Sticks that kill monsters don’t work on people that hand them out, that’s not how it works, and if he’d truly gone crackerdog he wouldn’t have believed it would work on him anyway, so wouldn’t have tried. She said I was probably right, me knowing so much about Toons and all, but she also said she didn’t want to fill out another damned Section Thirty-One form. So we just…took care of the paperwork on our end. Simple Toon suicide, nothing to write home about. Stuck with me, though. I thought about going to talk to Dad or Uncle Roger about it, but I didn’t want to bring that to them, it’s a lot worse than the sort of thing they deal with. Besides, I’d had a fight with Dad a couple years before that because I didn’t want to quit the force and go work for him, and I hadn’t spoken to him since. Still haven’t. So I just…let it go.”
“I guethth that’th pretty eathy to do,” Daffy said. He held up a hand at Basira’s glare. “Not let thingth go. I’m talking about…thweeping it under the rug. Thaying it’th not actually a Thection Thirty-One cathe, ethpecially if there’th a Toon. I’m gueththing thothe might be your only two exthampleth?”
Basira nodded, another single jerk of the head. “Officially, the only other one I’ve had is yours.”
“Why ith that? Why would Granny’th death be conthidered a thup—a weird event?” Daffy tried not to look too hungry for the answer. If there was some sort of clue, some kind of hint as to who or why she had died…if maybe it had been something paranormal after all…
Basira’s response dashed that hope before it could fully take root. “I mean, we’re investigating it as a murder because that’s what it is, but you guys are basically an automatic Section Thirty-One, so I’ve got almost no help on this. Maybe that’s why I wanted to come and make a statement, you know? I can’t talk to anybody about this stuff, and then I come here, and you’ve got all these…boxes of other people’s experiences. It’s…I dunno. I’ve been meaning to come by ever since that call-out.”
Okay, scratch that theory, but luck still might be with him. Daffy had been paying close attention to what Basira was saying. She was one of maybe three people in the department who were sectioned, which meant they might be a bit stretched thin, which meant…
Trying to sound casual, he asked, “Tho…they’ve, what, got you working with no overthight?”
“Basically,” Basira agreed. “I tried arguing that there wasn’t anything obviously paranormal involved in her death, and even the coroner we got in that knows something about Toon anatomy said there was nothing but mundane explanations for her death, but nope. I’ve got a shot up corpse, three boxes of cassette tapes, and Daisy, who’s CID now, so technically she’s in charge, but she’s also the only sectioned detective right now, so she’s overwhelmed. I don’t think either of us has even had a chance to listen to any of the tapes.”
“Interethting. Uh, lithten—” Daffy flicked out a finger and casually shut off the reel to reel recorder, possibly without Basira noticing. “Maybe I could help you.”
Basira raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Like I thaid, I’ve got a tape recorder right here.” Daffy patted the pile of papers concealing the tape recorder, then thought better of it and hastily shuffled the papers aside to reveal it, then patted it again and repeated confidently, “I’ve got a tape recorder right here. You haven’t had a chanthe to lithten to them, maybe I could…help you out there. After all, I know Granny’th thythtem…thuch ath it ith…and I know what thortth of thingth are important and what aren’t.”
“You think her murder might be on one of them?”
Daffy wondered, but he tried to be dismissive. “What kind of thtupid killer would leave a tape behind if they thought they were on it?”
“Someone who didn’t realize it was recording. Or maybe someone who tossed it in a box with the others and shook it up. I had a poke through of them the other day, but most of them are unlabeled, and the ones that do have labels aren’t particularly helpful.” Basira studied Daffy thoughtfully. “It’s not like in cartoons where you see the one that’s…animated slightly differently or whatever.”
“Yeah, I know. Thith ithn’t a cartoon.” Daffy sighed. “I’ve been hearing that for almotht eighteen monthth now, and I’m thtarting to believe it. But the point ith, I can thtill help you and…Daithy, wath it? I’m not athking to thtart a partnerthhip or anything. Jutht offering to give them a lithten and tell you what might be on them.”
Basira stared at him a moment longer, glanced at the reel to reel recorder, and finally nodded. “Okay. Sure. I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you very many, or that they’ll be of any use, but…I’ll see what I can do. Bring them to you when I can. Worst case scenario, they turn out to not be useful and we try again with the next one. But don’t let anyone else know I’m bringing these to you, yeah? It’s technically police evidence. I could get in a load of trouble.”
“I would never get you in trouble,” Daffy assured her. “I thwear on your grandfather’th grave. And no Toon would break an oath on a Valiant.”
Inside, he was exultant. He meant what he said, he would never break the oath, so that wasn’t the secret joy. It was that he was going to get some of the tapes. Maybe he would help the police, maybe he wouldn’t, but at the very least he would be able to learn more about Granny’s time as Archivist, and what she’d been like, maybe some of what she’d been up to.
Her murder might not be on the tapes. But the reason she had been murdered almost certainly was.