A Voss and Pike Casefile: The First Case
Section 3: The Telephone
"Ada. It's Callum." You hadn't heard that voice since a graduation photo nobody had got round to throwing away - Callum Rook, who'd sat two rows behind you in first-year Criminology before swapping theory for the real thing, twelve years a serving officer now, freshly a Detective Sergeant and sounding like a man who wasn't sure he'd dialled the right kind of help.
"Desmond Hume's dead," he said. "Found at his desk this morning. Heart gave out, by the look of it - he's had a condition for years, everyone says so, coroner's not raising an eyebrow." He paused. "Except he was meant to give a public lecture at the Grand Lantern this Thursday, title nobody at the university will explain to me, and his research files are full of words like 'positivist' and 'value-neutrality' that mean something to you and nothing to me. I need someone who can actually read them before I sign off on an easy explanation."