Sunday, February 5, 2012

Mr. Doyle's Opus

For as long as he can remember, all Mal has ever wanted to do is solve one really big case by himself.  Of course, as is the case for most people, the necessity of providing for his family always meant that he had to take jobs that paid regularly or quickly.  It didn't help that whenever he made a bit of headway Jake would screw up in such a way that would send him back to square zero.

What Mal didn't realize is that while he was solving these small cases he was making a difference in the lives of the residents of St. John's.  There was less theft, there were fewer drug pushers, and maybe even a few less murders.

Mal couldn't see any of the good he had done.  All he could see was that he hadn't cracked a big case - everything was just small potatoes.  All he'd managed to do all these years was keep his head above water.

Just when Mal was almost ready to accept that his life had been a failure and that cracking that big case would forever be out of his reach Rose and Jake called Mal into the office.

What Mal saw when he entered the office was a spider web of string and photos stretching all the way across the room.  It didn't take Rose, Des, and Jake long to start explaining what they had done and why Mal was involved.

It seems that all of Mal's little cases, those same cases that he had despised for so many years, were related to a Moriarty-like figure who had been at the epicentre of crime in St. John's for years.  Without all of the leg work Mal had done catching the small guys the pattern at the heart of the St. John's crime world would never have emerged.

It just took someone else to see it first and then Mal was able to accept that his life really had been worthwhile and that he hadn't been wasting all of those years just working on small cases.  Mal was much easier to live with after this revelation.  Jake, due to his meagre contribution to the case, on the other hand, became insufferable.

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