The Inspector and the Cat: A Whitechapel Fairy Tale
Title: The Inspector and the Cat: A Whitechapel Fairytale
Disclaimer: Not my characters. I just borrowed them.
Pairing: Chandler/Kent
Part 1
The day started out normal enough. Chandler arrived at the office at 8am. He had just finished putting his Blackberry, badge, pen and tiger balm in their customary places on his desk when the call came in. There had been a murder at an antique shop. He sighed. Of course, a call would come in early the one morning he’d given his team permission for a late start after pulling a 20-hour shift to wrap their previous case. He contemplated calling Miles, but it wouldn’t hurt to do the initial walkthrough on his own. He could fill the team in later.
Chandler was about to step out of the station when he saw Kent pull into the parking lot on his orange Vespa. Things had been a bit strained between them since the bogeyman case. Joe had gone off the deep end a little after Morgan’s death, and the young DC had bore the brunt of the DI’s rage against the world. Chandler had recovered somewhat since then, thanks to a good talking to from his trusty no-nonsense DS, but the damage had been done.
Still, Chandler would like to think that the camaraderie he once shared with the young man could be salvaged, and now was as good a time for a gesture of good faith as any. He invited Kent to join him on his trip to the crime scene. It was a mistake, Chandler decided later, as they sat in tense silence in his car, with Kent trying to look at anything but him, and him trying not to notice how uncomfortable the young man was.
The walkthrough itself was normal enough as well. The place was ransacked; but otherwise, it was as a crime scene should be, with a dead body and a team of CSOs processing potential evidence. The only slightly out-of-the-ordinary incident was Kent slipping on a small round ornament that the CSOs must have missed when clearing the path. The young man would have fallen flat on his face, damaging both himself and the crime scene, if Chandler hadn’t caught him. There was an awkward moment, in which Kent was in Chandler’s arms, and the DI could feel their breaths mingle. But they parted quickly enough and were able to conduct the rest of the walkthrough in a professional manner as if nothing ever happened.
The day flew by quickly after that, as it oft did when there was a case. The others were waiting for them when they returned from the crime scene. They had their customary meeting; and everyone dispersed to begin their individual assignments. Miles was in charge of contacting the victim’s family. Mansell and Riley would go through the list of the victim’s client; and Kent had the unenviable task of reviewing all the CCTV footage from the shop itself and any surrounding outdoors camera pointed in that general direction.
It wasn’t until 7 pm that the first unusual occurrence of the day occurred: Chandler looked out of his office to find the incident room empty. Kent couldn’t have finished reviewing the footages yet, and the DC was not one to leave a job half-done. The DI stepped out of his office to investigate. Kent’s computer was left on, with CCTV footages still running on the four separate panels of the screen. This was once again uncharacteristic for the normally meticulous DC; and Chandler’s frown deepened.
A soft rustling noise distracted Chandler from his thoughts. He turned towards the source of the sound and was surprised to find a brown tabby cat climbing onto the windowsill. It was large enough to be an adult, but its face was youthful, its large tawny eyes dominating its features, making it resemble a kitten instead. Its thick long coat was predominantly dark brown, striped with a sandier hue; and it had oversized paws that looked like they could do some real damage should the cat so choose.
“How did you get in here?” Chandler wondered out loud, before realizing how silly it would have looked if someone were to happen upon him seemingly speaking to a cat. But the door to the incident room was closed; and it was a valid enough puzzle.
The feline meowed softly in a plaintive tone as it pawed the window, as if trying to open it. The DI highly doubted it could have climbed in through the window; it was customarily kept close in case of rain. Then again, he was interpreting the cat’s behavior as if it were answering his question, which in itself was even more unlikely than his first supposition.
The scratching on the glass continued with more vigor than before, now accompanied by a series of seemingly frustrated ‘NYWEOW”, and Chandler, out of deference for the window’s structural integrity, felt compelled to speak to the cat again, “Are you trying to get out?”
The frazzled feline halted its endeavors and turned its head towards Chandler, face set in what appeared to be a mortified expression. The look reminded the DI of a deer caught in the headlights, completed with wide doe-like eyes, except that it was a cat making that face. Still, it was effective at appealing to his softer side, and he found himself approaching the cat with a reassuring smile. “Hey, it will be alright.”
The cat was close enough to touch now; and he tentatively reached out towards it. His reason told him this was a dangerous gesture, that he was more likely to be get bitten or scratched than be allowed to touch the animal; but he trusted his instincts. The cat initially shied away from him, curling itself into a tight ball. But Chandler would not be deterred. Gently, he stroked the fur of its exposed back; and within minutes, it began to relax and lifted its head to face him. The cat’s expression looked reverent as it let out the softest of purrs; but he wasn’t sure if unadulterated adoration was an emotion felines were capable of.
As the DI’s petting took his hand onto the cat’s neck, he felt a collar hidden underneath its long brown fur. “Well, let’s see if we can get you back to where you belong,” he stated for the cat’s benefit. Part of him still felt a little strange about talking to a non-human; but people talked to their pets all the time, and it was considered more or less normal.
Chandler felt around the cat’s collar until he found a tag. “Orion. Is that your name?” The cat made no response; and he felt a little absurd for having expected an answer, as if this was a normal two-way conversation. He sighed as his hand discovered another curious object on the collar. The trinket looked familiar; but he couldn’t quite place where he’d seen it before.
“Come on,” he carefully picked the cat up, realizing too late that his action would likely result in cat hair, and possibly worse, on his person. Still, he couldn’t really put Orion down when the cat was looking up at him with what he swore was a wide-eyed rapt expression. Part of him cringed as Orion snuggled closer, his mind eye seeing the feline’s thick fur as a hotbed of germs and bugs and dirt; but the small part of him that still hoped against hope to find a companion to ease his loneliness was grateful for the affectionate gesture. In the end, he decided he would make the most of the situation and deal with the consequences later. Scratching Orion’s head softly, the DI mused, “I wonder if anyone has reported you missing.”
Chandler carried his new furry friend out of the incident room down the steps to the station’s front desk. It was a quiet night; and the DI was able to get the attention of the staff right away. “Has anyone reported a lost cat in the station?”
“Not that I know of, sir. I can make a note and have the front desk contact you if a report comes in.”
Chandler wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved by the answer. With a cool polite smile, the DI replied, “That will be great, thank you,” before turning back towards his office. It would seem that Orion would be with him for a while longer; and he could only hope that he was up for the challenge of caring for the feline. If a cat could appear in his incident room seemingly out of nowhere, maybe he *could* make room for someone, well in this case, something, else in his life if he tried.