The Altered Case by Peter Turnbull

gallery,’ he said proudly, ‘more in the pipeline. They keep a good eye on the old man and it helped me that I grew up in a large family, and so I learned from an early age that I am not the centre of anyone’s world and that has helped me cope with solitary living.’
    â€˜Good . . . good.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled approvingly. ‘I am pleased you are coping.’
    â€˜Well, you know, I had a good life. I dare say that I never amounted to much as a police officer. I got worried about my lack of advancement for a few years and eventually settled into the routine of being a low-ranking CID officer and stopped worrying about the young, thrusting high-fliers shooting past me. I just settled into my post and consolidated. I had my family and I began to look forward to my retirement. I never got to be part of the team investigating the million pound jewellery raids, or the large-scale fraud, but someone has got to look into the theft of tools from the old lady’s garden shed and the lifting of Yorkshire stone paving slabs which occurs during the hours of darkness, and I made a respectable number of arrests which led to a respectable number of convictions. I pulled my weight. I did my duty.’
    â€˜Good for you, sir.’
    â€˜Oh . . . don’t call me, sir. You know, I was very pleased to receive your phone call, very pleased indeed. The only calls I get these days are from my family checking up on me, which I don’t mind, or from double-glazing companies, which I do mind, so a phone call from my old station, good old Micklegate Bar nick . . . or Mickie Bar as we used to call it.’
    â€˜Mickie Bar?’ Carmen Pharoah grinned. ‘I have never heard it called that before. mind you, I am fairly new.’
    â€˜It used to be the nickname until a new station commander arrived and he put a stop to it. Sent an angry memo round to all hands; it was unprofessional he said, so after a while it fell into disuse. I dare say he was correct in his attitude.’
    â€˜I confess I quite like the sound of it,’ Carmen Pharoah replied. ‘I think it has quite a homely ring to it. It speaks for a police station which had a good level of morale among the officers. I seem to have noticed that when a place of work is known by a nickname among the people who work there, then it has a happy working atmosphere.’
    â€˜You are probably right, miss, in fact I know what you mean.’ Adrian Clough struggled with a difficult breath and then continued. ‘We used to feel that way about it, homely, as you say, but I wouldn’t reintroduce the nickname if I were you; dare say it was unprofessional, dare say we did have the wrong attitude.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ Carmen Pharoah replied, ‘but I do like the name, I really do. So, the missing family?’
    â€˜Yes, the Parrs, very, very strange, a real mystery, like the missing Roman legion. What was it?’
    â€˜The Ninth.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced out of the window and noted a small but neatly kept garden. ‘I think it was the Ninth Legion. I read about it before I came up here.’
    â€˜Yes, it was the Ninth, an entire Roman legion, some five thousand men; they just vanished without a trace. They left Eboracum, the place of yew trees, which was the name of the original settlement which became York.’
    â€˜I see how you have been using your retirement, sir.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled.
    â€˜Yes.’ Adrian Clough returned the smile. ‘I developed a passion for history, particularly local history. The Ninth Legion left Eboracum to go north to Caledonia . . .’
    â€˜Scotland?’
    â€˜Yes, now called Scotland, to quell an uprising of the Picts and just vanished . . . but that was about one hundred AD. Four people, a complete family disappearing in this day and age, well, it is probably not to the same scale but the mystery is still as powerful. Something happened to the Ninth Legion