James Tarkin calmly strode into the small room and closed the door behind him. Robert tried to take him in as Ian gestured for him to sit in the available chair. He was tall, without really being tall. Probably six one, six two. Unusually for these middle aged academics, he looked in good shape, but again without looking particularly sculpted. He was wearing plain black trousers and a deep grey shirt with thin white vertical stripes. There was nothing remarkable about him at all except his tan. He looked like he's just come back from a month in the tropics.

"Morning" was all he said before taking the proffered seat. It creaked slightly as it had all morning as the other college tutors had sat in it and drawled their unhelpful responses. Robert glanced across to Ian, who was frowning slightly. What was up with him?

"Good morning, mister Tarkin," Robert said in response, "I'm Detective" the drawl was cut by Tarkin.
"Professor." He said abruptly.
"Excuse me?" Robert replied.
"It's Professor Tarkin. No mister. But please call me James. Only two types of people call me by my surname; students and paymasters." A smirk rose up one side of his face, as though privately sharing a joke with himself. Obviously this guy thought he was a hardass.
"Ok, James," Robert emphasised the name and added a little irritance to his voice. It had already been a long morning, and it had borne nothing so far "I'm Detective Gift, and this Detective Stephenson." Tarkin's eyes didn't move from Robert's face "We just want to ask a few simple questions about an incident that occurred just off campus the other night."
"You mean the double murder?" The smirk was gone from his face. Not wiped off, just replaced by pure, anticipatory calm. Robert glanced briefly at Ian, who was still frowning. He couldn't decide if his partner was thinking the same thing, that this asshole was just a little too cool, or if he was getting an early start on his 'bad-cop' routine. He fought the urge to frown himself.
"Do you know anything about it, then?" he asked.
"Only that I'm glad I didn't walk past when it was happening. Sounds like they got roughed up pretty bad." He finally glanced away from Robert then, an almost cursory look at Ian, as though to check that he were still there, before returning to meet his eyes.

"So exactly what time did you leave the Neon Haze?" The murder had taken place less than 5 minutes walk from what was apparently the tutor's regular hang out. Five minutes walk, that was, in the direction of Tarkin's apartment. Robert wasn't expecting much from the interviews today, but he was hoping that he could coax some hidden detail from Tarkin's memory of the evening that would help the case.
"It's hard to remember, exactly. I think I'd had quite a bit to drink." Which fit in with what he'd gathered so far. Tarkin had been knocking back scotch by the double the whole evening. However, he'd also learned that the 'Professor' had a reputation for handling his drink.
"I know it's hard, but please," he drawled in his finest 'patient good-cop' voice "try to remember. Any detail could be important." Tarkin frowned slightly - almost imperceptibly, probably at the almost pedantic tone he was being addressed with.
"I guess it would have been just after 10." He spoke slowly, as though wary of saying something he would have to back up later. Experienced with police questioning are you, Professor Tarkin? "These nights are pretty much like clockwork. You knock a few back, talk about bad students, get rubbed up by sociology tutors," he shrugged slightly, and the smirk crept back into his face "and then everyone realises they've got a long day ahead, and we call it a night."

"What route did you walk back, Professor?" Robert was almost surprised to hear Ian's thick, southern voice enter the conversation. He'd been quiet since Tarkin had entered the room, and he'd assumed that Ian was leaving him to do this one on his own. Tarkin moved his eyes to look at Ian. Did he linger for a second? Who the fuck does this asshole think he is?
"My usual route." Was there an edge of humour to his voice? "Past the edge of campus, up Broad Street and I follow Canal Avenue up to my apartment on North Bank."
"So you would have walked right past the scene of the crime?" Ian continued.
"Yes." Was the monotone reply.
"At the approximate time of the crime?" Was it even a question? There was a slight pause before Tarkin answered.
"Am I a suspect?" he asked slowly. That was certainly a question. Another pause. He wasn't a suspect. Not at this stage, anyway. But letting him think he was might loosen his tongue a little. And at least it wiped that fucking smirk off his face.

Instead of answering the question, Robert moved into his good-cop role, and tried to ease the tension. "What is it you teach here, James?" The eyes swooped back, the most indistinct brown eyes imaginable. Anybody's eyes. Nobody's.
"Classic Mythology, mostly. Beasts and demons, not the sort of thing I expect will help with your investigation, unless those two men were killed by a werewolf or something." The smirk threatened to return.
"Do you believe such things exist?" Robert asked.
"Of course not, do you?" Robert's mind flew back to the scene of the crime. The brutalised bodies, the pools of blood that the SOCO insisted were just too small, the impression on a brick wall where a face had been thrust into it with the force of a ballistic missile.
"You'd be surprised what I'm prepared to believe today, James." The smirk halted in mid-birth, and slid slowly back out of existence.
"You're not serious." It was most definitely not a question.

Twenty minutes later, Tarkin calmly stood and walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He didn't see anything suspicious, didn't hear anything and didn't remember anything that might help the investigation. He didn't rise to Ian's challenges, didn't look concerned that he was a potential suspect and didn't seem to give a damn that it had all happened inches away from where he had been walking. Who are you?

"Did you see that sonofabitch?" Ian interjected into Robert's thoughts "There's no way he's telling us everything."
"And what the hell was wrong with you anyway?" Robert retorted angrily. "You were scowling at him so hard, I was surprised his face didn't burst into flame!"
"I knew there was something wrong with him right away" Ian said quietly. "The moment he stepped into the room, he sized everything up. How much space is in the room, the furniture" he gestured to the cheap table that separated their two chairs from the third "he even checked us both out, a threat assessment." His eyes narrowed.
"You're fucking paranoid." I said it, but I didn't really believe it. Ian was hardcore, could've been some elite special forces spook if he'd wanted to.
"I've seen it before, you know. Spec Ops bastards that would make you shit your pants." I believed him "But this guy..."
"What? He's a college tutor for crying out loud!" Ian was wearing a full on frown, a look in his eyes that I really didn't like to see. One thing thought I'd never see there. Fear.
"Don't you get it? He dismissed us both out of hand. That was why he was so arrogant." He looked at me then. A look of fear fused with absolute sincerity "He took less than a second to decide we were both so insignificant as to be beneath contempt."

Robert didn't say anything. Anything that he did say would have come out as a whimper anyway. Instead he looked out of the small window in the closed door, and watched Tarkin just as he turned away down a corridor.

"What the fuck is going on?"

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