AUTHOR'S NOTE: A bit of a tonal change here. It gets ominous, and the T rating starts to make more sense. Also, the first appearance of Zenigata.
They were losing daylight.
Inspector Zenigata could tell, in spite of the dense clouds that shuttered the sun from view. He, a handful of members of Interpol, and a startlingly few number of London Police Department members were combing the hills of the Bodmin moor.
He had received the assignment from a representative of the London Police Department who was an ambassador to the UK's division of Interpol, a man who had stood over Zenigata while Zenigata's supervisor stood to the man's side.
As an interpreter translated the man's instructions, Zenigata recognized the familiar phrasing that came with cases that required discretion, that were classified. The case involved investigating and, if possible, halting an art smuggling operation by an underground organization that used the moors to travel to London without detection.
Zenigata, whose specialty and primary responsibility in Interpol was to apprehend Lupin III, would have normally balked at traveling to another continent, particularly when he had intel that Lupin was in Tokyo. Two factors, however, changed his mind.
The first was a familiar pull in his chest — a hunch, one might call it — that told him he needed to go. Not out of obligation, but compulsion. It made sense. Wherever there was underground activity, particularly of the smuggling art kind, there Lupin would be also.
The second was the briefest flickers of terror that crossed the man's face when he spoke. Zenigata had noticed it, when others might not have, from decades of practice observing people.
The barely detectable winces at the corners of the man's mouth, the shallow breaths, told Zenigata that the case wasn't just clinical. Lives might be threatened, including those of the officers.
It was then, as Zenigata stepped over rocks and pulled his trench coat closer to him, that he realized that he had not seen nor spoken to that officer since.
Except for its proximity to London, Bodmin moor seemed a strange place to carry out art smuggling. While the moorland was expansive, about 80 miles, the moor were owned and maintained by a national park. There were also small towns around the land, which wouldn't make lugging valuable artwork ideal. He and some of the officers would speak to a few residents tomorrow.
For the classified nature of the case, Zenigata was surprised there were not more officers on site. There also wasn't a public warning to London residents. The National Park had sectioned off areas for the officers to search, but the signs that were posted told passerbys that the sections were closed due to flooding.
A shout pulled Zenigata out of his thoughts. One of the Interpol officers waved his arm, motioning for the others to come where he was.
As officers closer than Zenigata reached the area, and as he read their expressions, he realized they must have found evidence. However, it was evidence that no one wanted to find.
Zenigata reached the others and followed their eyes to the motionless body. He saw the vest worn by London Police officers on the corpse's chest, the mouth open in terror.