If you’ve ever sat down to a game of Trivial Pursuit, you will recall that most, if not all the questions asked, offer three or four multiple choice alternatives. One, sometimes two, are usually easily excludable.

There’s another which is so totally out there, it’s almost designed to put you off scent (which makes you naturally suspicious and keeps you wondering); and of course there’s always that one alternative which fits the bill and is almost too good to be true.

Eventually, when you get the hang of the game you find yourself saying stuff like I’m ruling out (a) and (b); (c) sounds so utterly farfetched and wrong, it must be right; (d) fits perfectly. All signs point to (d), but your gut tells you to go with (c) because (d) is just too obvious.

Trivial Pursuit uses a lot of this reverse game psychology. But once in a while, when you least expect it, the reverse strategy goes full circle, and you end up beaten at your own game. Because, very rarely, it’s the obvious answer which prevails.

Cyrus Engerer’s mid-summer nightmare, particularly the way the Nationalist Party seems to be falling over itself, ordering police investigations and inquiries has got me thinking (a) (c) (d) (c)? And no, I’m not being funny.

Engerer is no criminal. Or if he is, he’s as criminal as the rest of us who have occasionally been guilty of a lover’s quarrel which got vicious or out of hand. Many couples have brutal domestics – but few end up at the police, because most people know it’s the surest way to forfeit your privacy.

Admittedly, people usually go to the police because they want the matter to stop there. What they don’t realise is the minute they do that, they inject a whole new lease of life therein, where none may have existed before.

Engerer’s case was dead before it even started, if it ever started that is. I am told by people in the know, that a formal complaint (kwerela) was never actually filed by the victim, but let’s leave that alone for the moment.

I also know that the victim lost interest in his complaint a long time ago. Which is neither here nor there, because the police are still duty-bound to proceed when the case is prosecutable ‘ex officio’.

Having said that, once their star witness was not going to testify, the wind was taken out of their sail.

Which may explain why the police appeared to have dragged their heels. You see, given the victim’s disinterest, they knew this was just another one of those cases which would fizzle out as soon as it got to court.

Engerer had long been in touch with the inspector in charge and was repeatedly assured that taking the case to court, was a matter of procedure and course – a formality which needed to be observed.

He was also told that cases of the sort were generally heard ‘in camera’, mainly to protect the victim and his family. Not only had the case long been collecting dust andgathering moss at police headquarters, it was totally played down to boot.

Until Engerer switched political sides that is. Then the police suddenly woke up from their apparent stupor, and within days, what had for 18 months been a virtual throw-away case, successfully kept under wraps and very hush, instantly became a national scandal. The media, it appears, somehow got hold of the charges before Engerer knew about them. Go figure that one out.

Engerer’s decision to e-mail his ex-lover’s workplace and attach a bunch of compromising pictures which featured his ex-boyfriend, was definitely a bad call and an exercise in poor judgement.

I am in no way suggesting that Engerer should have escaped investigation. On the contrary, I am wondering why the case was left on the back burner for so long and then sauteed overnight. And yes, I am definitely suggesting that were he still within the PN fold, it might have played out very differently and chances are he would have emerged largely unscathed, or at least been well looked after.

The way the case was sluggishly handled by the police, mysteriously leaked and then hijacked by the media says far more about the powers that be, than it does about Engerer and is far more worrying.

I’m hardly the sort of person who buys into complicated conspiracy theories, but something just doesn’t add up. Certainly, some theorists could argue that this whole mis-en-scene was orchestrated by the Nationalists, in an effort to make an example of young Engerer, thus serving as a deterrent to all those who contemplate following suit.

And still we haven’t scratched the surface. If 18 months wasn’t long enough for alarm bells to start ringing, this next one might do the trick.

His father Chris Engerer’s drug arrest pursuant to a supposed two-week old tip-off, also occurred just after his son shifted political alliance. For as long as I have known Chris Engerer, I have also known he smokes marijuana.

Trust me, they didn’t need an informer. A sense of smell would have sufficed. Here was a clear case of ‘wake up and smell the pot’… with apologies to the coffee.

Now the PN have taken exception to the fact that we the people, of the Facebook republic, smell a rat. And it’s not just the way Edgar Galea Curmi cavalierly called up the Police Commissioner asking whether PN had in some way exerted pressure on the police force.

Although I’ve always known the Nationalists to be arrogant, stupidity wasn’t a side I had ever factored in. And this is exactly the card the PN is now playing. The mock indignation, the reverse psychology – the ‘who does something like that in plain view of everyone?’ Well, you know what? Sometimes you have to look in the most obvious places and the likeliest scenario is the one staring you in the face.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com