Albatross: Friday 13th

I was ordered to patrol the city street and keep my eye out for unusual behaviour. Harry was ordered to do the same, only he was sent to the other side of the city.

Patrol is generally very boring, especially when it is on a fairly quiet day - like Friday 13th. Most people tend to stay at home and hide from the world after they have survived work without incident. Even the most popular night spots have a dip in custom on Friday 13th.

So being sent out to look for unusual behaviour on Friday 13th is tantamount to being locked in a cupboard to keep me out of the way of whatever Rogers and Ellis don't want me to be involved in.

What's interesting about being out on Friday 13th? Nothing. Nothing at all interesting happens on a nighttime patrol of the city of the quietest night of the year.

Well nothing interesting happens unless you come across a young girl running around the streets wielding twin revolvers, screaming insults at a small group of wannabe gangsters. The four rather big men were all running away in fear from the girl, bullets eating at their heels. Something told me that I had to at least try and arrest her, but by the time I had started to cross the road to where she was - she was gone.

Albatross: Louise Mace

If you want to know what kind of a man you are dealing with, you always look at his children - at least that is what my father always told me. I wanted to get a more rounded view of who Arthur Mace is and with him being a single parent, it seemed like a good place to start.

His youngest daughter is a hard creature to get a fix on - so far all I know is that she is called Nicolette. Her exact age, her date of birth and place of birth, all the normal information that people give away so freely, it is just not there. By all accounts it looks as though someone as purposely gone through all known records and removed any and all reference to her.

It could be a response to all the horrendous comments that I have heard other people - namely Ellis and Rogers - make regarding what they'd like to do to her, but I don't know who in this station would be so protective over a girl they don't know.

Louise Mace, on the other hand, seems to have her own files listed with all national and international agencies already. She has set up an alias "The Raven Siren" to operate under in a similar capacity to her father and lists "Little Sparrow" as her business partner.

I assume that "Little Sparrow" is her sister, Nicolette, but other than my instincts, I have no proof of that. Louise's attendance at school is possibly the worst I have ever seen, even worse than my brother, Ryan's. Yet she seems to be very well educated and equipped with street smarts on top of that.

In some respects this does shine a positive light on Arthur Mace, yet there is something about a man who is willing to let his offspring follow him into a profession filled with danger and some of the seediest individuals on the planet that makes me uneasy. Though that doesn't make him guilty of all the things he is being investigated for. There is something intangible that keeps eluding me but when I can pin it down, I think it will be the key to unlocking this whole mess.

Albatross: Laura Mace

Laura Mace seems to be a very interesting piece in the puzzle that is this investigation into Arthur Mace.

From the information I have been able to gather on her, she is the daughter of Colonel Samuel & Lady Isobel Moore. Her pedigree is impeccable and her fortune seems to have remained in tact. Both Colonel and Lady Moore were killed in a mysterious fire when Laura was 17 years old. It was ruled an accident but the lead investigator, Detective Simon Hyett at the time. His personal logs reveal that he had suspicions that it was murder but the higher ups wanted the matter resolved as quickly as possible and as discreetly as possible. A murder investigation did not fit either criteria, so it was ruled to be an accident.

Harry looked into the people who were surrounding the family at the time of the accident and I had the new guy, Rick Clegg, look into old police reports and complaints filed by and about the family. 

Harry thought it was a bit of a risk to involve the new kid, but he is, as of yet, untainted by corruption and if he mentioned anything to Rogers or Ellis I could simply explain away the line of enquiry as trying to see if Arthur Mace could be implicated in the death of Colonel & Lady Moore.

Laura Mace herself was reported to have been killed in the crossfire of two street gangs nine years ago. I have tried to get hold of the records of her death and the investigation into it but the records have either been deleted or are missing.

I am beginning to get the feeling that this branch of the investigation is going to get very dangerous, very quickly.

Albatross: Investigation Methods

When I was originally given this assignment I was excited about working with two such experience and distinguished policemen. This excitement went down like a lead balloon after three hours of being around both men.

I tried to trace the source of the information we had received that had led to this investigation being launched, but all documents relating to the original report and the original report are missing from the case file, it seems all too suspicious to me.

The easy to follow trail through his accounts and business dealings, the information that led to this investigation being missing and there is one other piece of this strange puzzle that has begun to bother me.

I was wondering where I had seen the name 'Albatross' before, not in literature, but in case reports around the station. I went back and looked through all the reports where 'Albatross' was named, I spoke to all those that could be trusted not to report back to Rogers or Ellis.

It turns out that 'Albatross' was the codename for an informant who was working for the former superintendent to expose corruption within the police force. The informant went to ground and refused to speak again after the death of Superintendent Gregory Dean. I am starting to get a horrible feeling that I have gone down a rabbit hole that should have just been left undisturbed. The death of Superintendent Dean was explained away as an accident, caught in the crossfire between two rival gangs, but now I am not so sure. There is something pricking at the back of my mind that tells me to keep looking but I am not sure that what I find is going to be the healthiest thing in the world for me.

I spoke to my partner, Harry Lee, about it all and he has the same suspicions. It's nice not to feel alone in this but I can't help feeling that whoever is behind all of this is not going to take too kindly to it all being exposed.

Albatross: Arthur Mace

The assignment to investigate a private investigator isn’t an unusual one. There are some who are above reproach; they have modelled themselves upon Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. They work inside the law, help catch the bad guys and have discretion about which cases they accept. Then there are those who don’t. By all appearances, Arthur Mace is one who doesn’t.

I am a little bit more than suspicious about why we are investigating him though. There are plenty of dirty P.I’s operating in the city that we turn a blind eye to, so why is it that we are looking into the activities of this one?

The trail that we have been following through his accounts and dealings with criminal syndicates seems far too simple to me to be accurate. It’s almost unbelievable how obvious the trail is to follow. I am more than convinced that this is a setup, more than that, I am pretty sure that the trial is being set up for me to follow by the two men that I am supposed to be working with.

I am becoming increasingly concerned with Ellis and his obsession with the two daughters of Arthur Mace. From what I have seen they are both in their late teens and he is a man in his early thirties and all the photographs from the file of the two of them have disappeared. The index of the contents of the file states that there should be seven photos of the two girls in there, but I haven’t seen a single one.

When I tried to broach the subject with Rogers, he told me to mind my own business. I have been tempted three times to contact Arthur Mace directly but what I would say to him, I don’t know, and compromising this case would cost me my job. I don’t know what to do except to keep working on the case and try to expose Ellis and Rogers when evidence presents itself.

Albatross: Ellis and Rogers

This is the first time that I had worked with Sergeant Ellis and Detective Rogers. In all honesty, I never want to again. There is something about the two of them that I just don't trust. I couldn't put my finger on it but there is definitely something they are hiding in the course of this investigation. 


Ellis is a man of ill gotten independent means. This is, of course, conjecture. Ellis is too smart to put anything down on paper or to leave a trail to follow, but his natural propensity to flaunt his imagined genius in the face of people he thinks are stupid by comparison does lead him to almost betray himself.


Rogers is a slimy creature, none of his mistakes ever seem to come back to haunt him. He has the terrible ability to avoid taking responsibility and managing to pass it off onto other people. Looking at the files I can see all the careers he has ruined. He stores up information on people, leads them into situations where he is their only way out and then he has them working for him, forever, doing whatever he tells them to and if they try to walk out on him, he reveals everything they have done and none of it leads back to him.


Funny that it should be these two that were in charge of investigating Arthur Mace. Seems to me that someone has a vested interest in seeing Arthur Mace stopped. There seems to be a lot of interest in his daughters as well. Ellis has been assigned to track them, the way he pours over the photos of the two of them really isn't right. 


Working with them has even made me want to leave the police, but there are people like Harry Lee who make me see the good in those around me, people who want to see the streets clean of criminals. It's people like that, that I want to work with, not people like Ellis and Rogers but I don't think I am going to get much of a choice.