The most dangerous place in the world for an innocent man to be is behind the iron bars of a cell. Real, hardened criminals tend to take exception to your presence. Fortunately, the guards were not complete sociopaths, and had put me in a cell opposite Sergeant, rather than in with him.

"You lying son of a bitch!" I shouted across at him. He smiled, a motion which had an interesting effect on his scars.

"Ya rea' my note before they arrethte' ya, I prethume?"
"How the hell did you-"

"Popped i' in ya pocke' when ya were thayin' ya goo'byes to t' copper."
I had to admire his cunning. And I knew something else about my problems. He was getting out tomorrow, as he apparently was mistaken as the criminal. No doubt he would get a large compensation from his trouble. His intelligence annoyed me. After all, why break out of jail and live the rest of your life as a fugitive, when you can lay a trap and not only get your freedom, but a nice pension and a potentially fatal enemy trying to get you back into jail thrown into the can. I, on the other hand, had a rather long stay 'at the emperor's pleasure', and since the emperor had recently sacrificed himself to save Tamriel, he was very unlikely to pleased in the short term.

It had to be said though, there seemed to be some kind of a problem with Sergeant right then. He kept putting a hand to his head, holding it as if in pain. The guard had noticed it too. He walked over to the cell, a look of concern on his usually stern and disciplined face. He knew not to normally trust prisoners, but a prisoner on his last day in clink… "Are you alright?" he asked, and moved closer to the bars.

In one sweeping movement, Sergeant had the man up against the bars. The spoon given to prisoners was made of wood, so it couldn't be sharpened and used as a weapon, and even then the wood was so soggy it was practically sponge. Nevertheless, when Sergeant rammed it through the guards open mouth and down his throat, it still fulfilled its full potential as a killing device. The guard fell to the floor, hands at his throat, gasping for breath, and so it was easy for Sergeant to reach through his bars and grab the set of keys jangling on his belt. On his belt! I thought dismally. Only the most gullible of guards war their keys in big jangling sets on their belts.

The correct key was slammed into place, turned, and Sergeant was free. He looked at my cell briefly before leaving, a few seconds of pure terror where I thought my cell would be unlocked and my life over.

Then he grabbed his head again, and stumbled up the stairs.

And the dungeon was silent again, aside from the choking noises of the guard on the floor.

"Quick!" I shouted to him. "Come here!"
He stopped coughing. To anyone knowledgeable about such matters, this meant that his airway was completely blocked and there was no way for him to make noise. I grabbed at him through the bars, and caught him by a shoulder.

Private Detectives are not, in Tamriel, a particularly popular form of trade. Mages, warriors, thieves and assassins were all far more common. And so it is that there is no real training to be an investigator. So long as you can put clues together, and could climb well enough to get the occasional cat down from a tree, you'd be fine. However, during my youth I had been fortunate enough to be trained by the famous detective Joshua Johnson, whose training had included poisons, recognising the affects of different weapons on people (fairly basic, if they're mangled beyond recognition, it was an axe, anything else was 'probably a sword'), and of course, first aid.

The guard had reason to be thankful of this, because it meant that the little-known 'Heinrich Maneuver' could be employed to remove the remains of the spoon from the unfortunate man's throat, and save his life.

What was less fortunate was the Guard Captain running down the steps as I thumped my fists into the man's chest.