The Boonhill Murder Case (3)

Joey was a koala bear at Meltonian zoo who had been fingerprinted by the Meltonian police force. The story had been picked up by all the mainland newspapers who ran comical stories speculating what would happen if Joey's prints showed up at the scene of a major crime. 

And now they had. Joey's prints had shown up on the gun used in a murder. And not just any murder, it was Kit's first murder case. 

"I'm going to go to Meltonian," Kit told Megson. "There has to be a reason that a koala bear's prints have shown up at the murder scene. I'll get a flight from the airport, it'll save a lot of time. You keep things together here. Oh, one more thing, Boson says that Gibson arrived with two suitcases, both identical, so you need to start a search for the missing case."

Harkaway drove to the airport where Kit organised a flight to the Isle of Meltonian. While there he asked Wenders in the Tower whether there had been any strangers recently, but it had as with the ferry, it was just the regular customers. 

Meltonian was a larger island than Boonhill. It too had its own police force, as well as its own zoo, but but unlike Boonhill was a tourist Mecca, with cafes, pubs, restaurants, even a crazy golf and a pitch and putt. 

Kit was greeted by Sanderling, head of the Meltonian police force. Meltonian was a bigger force than Boonhill, a four-man team. The station was bigger as well, and Sanderling even had his own office, complete with printer, fax and dart board. As well as boasting pubs, cafes, restaurants, crazy golf, pitch and putt and zoo, Meltonian had its own darts league. A meltonian had even once reached the first round of the World darts championship, though he'd been beaten handsomely.

"What brings you all the way out here Kit?" Sanderling asked. "I heard you were wrapped up in a murder case."

"That's why I'm here. We found prints on the gun belonging to one of yours. Joey the koala."

"Joey? You think hes the killer?  He was always such a well behaved koala. I find that highly unlikely Kit."

"So do I. I think the prints might have been faked to take us off the scent. Tell me everything about how a koala bear's fingerprints came to be on the police database. He hadn't committed a crime?"

"No sir. I've never heard a single complaint about him. It was a PR thing. You know PR people, they're always on at you to solve cases, arrest suspects, stop beating up protestors, they're the bane of a police officers existence. Anyway, Meltonian zoo was about to open and there was a a lot of concern on the island about animals escaping. You know, lions, tigers and the like. So some PR guy comes to me with a proposal. Koalas have fingerprints, he tells me, indistinguishable from human prints. If you take the koala bears' fingerprints and add them to your database we can reassure the public that we have the animals' prints on file."

"But koalas aren't dangerous", Kit said, puzzled. 

"No, but on the other hand tigers don't have fingerprints, and even if they did I wouldn't want to be the officer taking them. You have to bear in mind that most people are really stupid and don't think things through. The point was to reassure them that the police were in control of the zoo situation, by showing that we had animals on our police database. The fact that this didn't protect anyone didn't matter, PR is all about convincing people, not about reality. The papers loved it, we've never had so much coverage. And the tourist shops all have T-shirts and mugs with a picture of Joey behind bars."

"Could the prints have been faked? Were they taken in an unusual way?"

"No, just a standard set of prints. No easier to fake than any other set. I can only assume that the killer gave the gun to Joey to leave a set of prints on the murder and send the police off on the wrong track. A wild goose chase to search for a killer koala. A wild koala case, if you like." He laughed at his joke, even though, thought Kit, it wasn't remotely funny.

"This does feel a wasted journey," Kit admitted. "But you have to follow every lead in these cases."

"Don't worry Kit. There'll be other leads. Are you staying the night here Kit? The Stompers does a mean pint of Meltonian White Stout. People come for miles to sample it."

They were interrupted by a junior officer, who knocked once, sharply on the door, then entered.

"Yes?" said Sanderling.

"Sorry to interrupt gov, but there's an emergency. One of the animals has escaped from Meltonian Zoo."

"Not the tiger again?" Sanderling said. "Last month it managed to make a duplicate key, goodness knows how. I've never known such a clever tiger."

"No guv. It's the koala. The one on the database."