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 thhe menthioned 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. Thhe 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 thure 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?