Detective Ijeoma stood in the centre of the locked room. The scene felt arranged, as if someone had set it with careful hands. A man in his late forties lay face down on the floor in a well-pressed suit. No signs of struggle. No blood. Only the stillness that follows a death no one planned to witness.
One thing in the room felt out of place. A note.
It rested on the desk, stark white against dark mahogany. She picked it up, turned it over, and read.
I am sorry it had to end like this.
A tightness drew across her chest when she saw the name on it.
The message was simple, though the situation was not. Nothing pointed to robbery or a fight gone wrong. The man had been killed, yet there was no suspect, no motive, and nothing apart from this carefully placed note.
She gestured for her partner. “Who is he?”
Tunde opened the file. “Chijioke Anozie. Finance consultant. Lived alone. No close ties.”
“No forced entry. Nothing missing,” she said, running a thumb along the edge of the note. “So, we are looking for someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”
“Precisely,” Tunde said. “The note, it’s strange. The handwriting is steady. No panic. No farewell. You saw who it was addressed to, right?”
She nodded and paced slowly. The tone was wrong. Detached. Impersonal. It read like a stranger signing off. There was no trace of the emotion people cling to in their final moments. It did not feel like a man writing his own ending.
She knelt by the body and scanned for what might have been missed. His watch had turned a little on his wrist. She straightened it and stopped.
A mark.
A small puncture, almost invisible.
“Call forensics,” she said. “Now.”
The lab report confirmed her suspicion. Chijioke had been poisoned by injection. Clean. Subtle. Easy to miss unless you were searching for it.
Later, Ijeoma sat alone at her desk in the station and read the note again.
I am sorry it had to end like this.
Her finger traced the sentence. Whoever wrote it understood how to unsettle a reader. It offered just enough truth to feel relevant and just enough misdirection to cloud the trail.
The puncture? The still room? The perfect staging?
One question remained.
Why was the note not addressed to Chijioke’s family?
It was addressed to her.