Poster by Nusmus!

The first part of the afternoon involved getting in contact with everybody Semi knew to see who had been the last person in contact with her.  Lay gave Xiumin Tao’s number as he couldn’t get into Semi’s phone and then left him to it, obviously snickering to himself when Xiumin got an earful from Wendy about being an awful husband.

“That girl is scary,” Xiumin complained, making Lay dissolve into a fit of giggles, as he cast his phone to one side.

“I agree,” said Jongin’s voice as he entered, flashing Lay a surreptitious thumbs up.  “Who are we talking about?”

“Semi’s friend.”  Xiumin rubbed an eye tiredly with the heel of his palm.  “She’s just spent forty-five minutes yelling at me for being a manipulative, abusive b*stard who she’s going to castrate for secretly murdering her best friend and burying her in a ditch somewhere.”

Lay let out a strangled choke of laughter.

“She’s got a point with the manipulative b*stard,” Jongin pointed out.  “You are one.”

Xiumin scowled.  “Yes, but she doesn’t know that.”

“Sounds like she has good intuition, then.”  Jongin dumped a stack of reports on Lay’s desk.

Xiumin sighed and refrained from spitting out a retort.  “You were the last person with Semi, from what I can make out.  When did you last see her?”

Jongin paused to think.  “Well, she spent the night before last with me because she didn’t want to go back to the apartment, and then she left around midday yesterday because I was going on a date with Song Qian.”

“You left her alone when she was clearly in an emotional state?”

Jongin held his hands up.  “She looked fine and said she was fine.  I didn’t question it.”

Rolling his eyes, Xiumin slumped back in his seat.  “You’re an idiot.”

“She seemed to want to be alone.”

“She could have killed herself!”  Xiumin turned to Lay.  “Is there a psychologist he can speak to?” he demanding, pointing at Jongin, “because I think he needs it.  And because a psychologist might be able to determine if Semi was likely to do that.”

It was another few hours until Park Chanyeol arrived.  Lay said something about him having been Semi’s therapist before (Chen had been the one who spent twenty minutes locked in the disabled bathroom to explain what was going on to him) and Chanyeol was only able to come over after he had finished with all his patients for the day after seven in the evening.  In the meantime, Xiumin had relocated to Kyungsoo’s office and he and Kyungsoo had spent some time trawling through security cameras around Jongin’s apartment (“Goddammit, why are camera feeds always corrupted?”) and Jongin joked about moving house when he walked in.  Or he could have been serious.  Xiumin wasn’t sure.

“What’s your connection to Semi?” he asked when Jongin came back in at quarter to nine with coffee for Kyungsoo.  “It’s at least the second time you’ve hung out and you seem to be pretty close if you were her go-to person over her friends.”

“Me?”  Jongin stopped and pointed at himself, sending a wave of scalding coffee over his hand.  “Ow – – I have no connection other than Siwon filling me on details on this case in case Semi feels more comfortable being around or speaking to somebody more her age when it comes to her security.  Usually I’m doing other things.  Like coffee runs.”  He set the mug down and stuck his hand in his mouth, grimacing before mumbling something about cold water and leaving the room.

Chen and Lay joined him and Kyungsoo ten minutes later.  Chen had a set of headphones around his neck and was smirking as he tossed the key from a pair of handcuffs up and down.  He had a memory stick in the other, and before too long, Lay had taken both that and the key off him and was trying to teach him how to juggle.  Xiumin scoffed.  They had another five minutes on shift and they were already slacking.

Their bickering was cut short by Kyungsoo swearing.  Everybody looked round at him.

“Guys.”  Kyungsoo waved them over.  “You should come and see this.”

The two policemen peered over his shoulder.

“That’s Semi,” said Lay.  Xiumin pricked his ears up.  “Where is she?  I’ll go pick her up.”

“It’s from yesterday.  Watch.”

Intrigued, Xiumin snuck over to join them.  One of Kyungsoo’s screens displayed Semi sitting on what he assumed was a park bench in a grainy image.

The clip was only short.  It showed Semi sitting there, bored and cold – almost as though she were waiting for something, Xiumin noted, from the way she kept looking around – and then being tapped on the shoulder from behind by a young male before he trapped her in a vicelike grip and pressed something over her nose and mouth.

“Which park is it?” Lay demanded Kyungsoo urgently.  “I’m going to grab any spare hands and ask them to help me trawl over the place for clues.”

Xiumin frowned as Chen set the video to replay and zoomed in on Semi.  “One of her friends is lying,” he said slowly.  “She was waiting for somebody, which means somebody knew where she was yesterday evening.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Chen snapped.  “She got kidnapped.”

“Friends don’t kidnap each other.  Even people who arrange to meet up don’t kidnap each other.  Somebody knew she was in the park yesterday.  We need to find out who.”

“Hey, Xiumin,” said Kyungsoo, wresting control of his computer back from Chen and pausing on a close up of as much as they could make out of the young male abductor’s face.  “He’s a criminal – do you know him?”

Xiumin shot him a scandalised look.  “That’s like asking an English person if they know the queen.”

“I know an English person who knows the queen,” Chen said absently.  Kyungsoo started laughing, but before anybody could reprimand Chen for being an idiot, Ryeowook came tearing into the room, Jongin trailing behind with a bandage on his hand and a glass of water.

“Suho’s got her!” he gasped out.  “Just had a message.”

Everybody stopped.  Ryeowook grabbed hold of the nearest chair to prop himself up and nicked Jongin’s water, downing it.

Xiumin was the first to break the silence with a loud, incredulous scoff.

“You are unbelievable,” he told Lay, dropping into Jongin’s empty office chai