Police, Arrests & Suspects

by John Donoghue

  “It seems that you and Andy held quite a fascination for the brothers. If you want I can show you what the forensic guys found, although I should warn you that it might have a mild laxative effect.”

  “I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you, Sarge.”

  It transpires that after Robert’s encounters with the police ten years earlier, their mother, in a bid to start afresh and keep her sons out of trouble, had decided to move halfway across the country to the smallholding near Sandford. Reclusive by nature, they had kept themselves to themselves and out of trouble for over a decade. A couple of years ago, however, their mother had died thus the restraining influence over the pair was gone. They found it difficult to cope without her and turned to any means they could to try and contact her in the afterlife.

  “Clearly, judging by Robert’s past,” he continued, “he was, to a large degree, already messed up. Combine this with dabbling with a Ouija board and they soon became obsessed with the occult.”

  Burning down a random stranger’s house on Christmas Eve was, they believed, the ultimate test they had been set by the spirits to convince them that they were serious in wanting to join the forces of darkness. Unfortunately, Andy and I had inadvertently thwarted their plan when we had kicked the door in and rescued the family. The Ouija board had then told them that the only way they could redeem themselves was by punishing the police officers involved.

  “Well, that’s just like me blaming everything that has gone wrong in my life on that unsuccessful wishbone pull back in 1987!” I protested. Barry raised his eyebrows to suggest that I was already preaching to the converted before he continued with his revelations.

  The brothers had then devised a simple plan which involved one of them committing a crime and then waiting to be caught. Meanwhile, the other brother would hide to see which police officer responded. If it was either me or Andy, their strategy was to hide in the police vehicle and turn the tables by abducting us. They had even learnt how to clone car keys so that when the officer locked the car via the key fob they could replicate the signal and let themselves into the car to lie in wait while the officer was tied up, dealing with the other brother at the scene.

  Frustratingly for them, neither Andy nor I had been on duty during their orchestrated crime spree; however, they had used every opportunity to gather intelligence on us along with police protocol and procedures. They had even managed to calculate when E shift were on duty, allowing Robert to call at precisely the right time with his cry for help as this greatly increased the likelihood of their intended target being successfully lured out to their property. All that had been left for them to do was identify who had actually arrived at the house, before putting part two of their scheme into operation. What they hadn’t bargained for was Lloyd turning up, too.

  “I’d jump in front of a lightly tossed beach ball for you,” my crewmate informed me when he discovered that his presence had probably saved my life. I was touched.

  “And what about the animal parts in the jars?” I asked.

  “Just a hobby, I presume,” Barry replied. “Or maybe practice for when they caught you.”

  Well, that was just rude!

  Chapter 15

  Therapy

  The dead man was sat back on the sofa, his mouth open and eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. His body was mottled and bloated; naked apart from a dirty dressing gown caked with dried excrement. The whole room stank of a pungent mix of faeces, body odour, decomposition and stale cigarette smoke. The cadaver had been there a few days before it was found and long enough for putrefaction to have set in: for the gases to build up; the body to begin to bloat and discolour; for the eyes to bulge out of their sockets and the tongue to swell and protrude; yet, thankfully, not long enough for the flies to discover it. I considered myself lucky.

  Back in March, Brad the Impaler had attended a routine report of a concern for safety. Relatives hadn’t heard from their uncle since before Christmas and, arriving on scene, Brad had immediately known the reason why. The windows had been thick with bluebottles and even after he had forced open the front door he had had to wait for several minutes to let the swarms of flies out. Pulling his fleece up over his nose and mouth, he had then ventured inside where he was welcomed by an overpowering stench. He found the body lying in the front room next to a gas fire that was still dutifully burning. The eyes and the tongue were gone, and a mass of writhing maggots were spilling out of the mouth and the abdomen; the fingers were mere black twigs; the skin like greaseproof paper. On the table were half-written Christmas cards never to be sent. But the flies, he told me, the flies were everywhere; tens of thousands of flies.

  “He was like this when I found him,” the woman told me as she stood in the doorway, bringing me back to the here and now. “We only went away for a week. We thought he’d be alright.”

  Stepping over the detritus strewn across the floor, I pulled open the curtains and surveyed the scene before me. In front of the sofa was a low table, its surface covered with overflowing ashtrays, dirty plates with the remnants of half-eaten food, an empty glass tumbler and a toilet roll. Thirty or so empty whisky bottles littered the carpet, alongside scores of crumpled-up cigarette packets. Dozens of takeaway pizza boxes were randomly discarded, seemingly thrown across the floor having served their purpose.

  I navigated my way through the mess, my boots sticking to the floor with every step; then a crack as I stood on a plastic bottle, breaking it and sending its contents spilling over the carpet. An intense smell of ammonia filled my nostrils.

  “It’s urine,” the woman informed me, pointing to a heap of bottles on the other side of the room. Nearby stood a metal-framed commode with a dirty red bucket suspended underneath.

  “It’s my father,” she explained as she made her way over to the body. She stood in silence, looking down at him and shaking her head. “Why did you let yourself get like this?” she whispered, addressing the corpse. “You were so fit and healthy.” He continued to stare into space, leaving her question unanswered.

  “Just look at him now,” she added, turning to look at me. “He hasn’t shaved for days, there are food stains down his dressing gown, he hasn’t even bothered to put any pants on, and it looks like he could swoop down and catch his dinner from a lake with those toenails…”

  I remained silent. People have different ways of coping with death and who was I to tell her how to grieve, although I did find her personal criticisms of her dead father a little jarring. Before joining the police, I believed that relatives always cried when they were with the dead body of their loved one as that’s what they do on television. In reality, however, I’d found that they tend not to be numb with grief or constantly reminiscing about their dear departed; instead they are usually inclined to talk about any disconnected subject rather than confront the reality of the situation. And it’s not because they are ‘hard faced’ or uncaring either: it’s just their coping mechanism; what gets them through. After all, death is not something that we can rehearse for. In my experience, most relatives appear calm and collected. I’ve chatted about anything and everything, laughed with them and even shared jokes or told them about my day. Ultimately, it’s their call and I’ll do what’s necessary to make them feel at ease. In this case, I just allowed her to talk.

  “Goodness me, that looks irritated!” she exclaimed. I instinctively glanced over but wasn’t particularly keen on having some horrendous rash pointed out to me; then I realised that she was staring out of the window. I went over to see an unhappy-looking paramedic climbing out of his vehicle. He looked like he was in a foul mood – he would be even more hacked off when he discovered that he had been called out for someone who had died days ago. Paramedics don’t usually attend if it is obvious that the deceased has been dead for some time.

  He entered the flat, greeting us with a grunt, and began to carry out his procedures while the daughter outlined her father’s medical history. It didn’t take long as there was virtually none
. Her father, it seemed, had always been fit and healthy and hadn’t seen a doctor in decades. However, after retiring from work, he seemed to have lost his purpose in life and had slowly gone downhill.

  “He had no interest in anything,” she told me.

  It seems it pays to have a hobby…

  “He would just sit in the house all day watching television. Then he took up drinking and by the end of the year he was consuming a bottle of whisky a day.” I had to ask her to repeat herself just to make sure I had heard it right as whenever I’m lucky enough to be given a bottle of Scotch it usually lasts me between two and three years!

  Next he gave up cooking for himself and just lived on takeaways – the pizza delivery boy even had a key to let himself in. It seems it wasn’t just Alice in Wonderland who kept eating and drinking hoping magically it would solve all her problems.

  He was a heavy smoker, too. Apparently, he had always enjoyed the odd cigarette but, by the end, he was getting through forty cigarettes a day. Finally, around Christmas time, he decided that he couldn’t be bothered to walk anymore. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but he had decided that going through to his bedroom or even walking the ten yards down the corridor to the toilet was just too much effort.

  “I told him hundreds of times that if he wanted to live a long life he’d need to exercise and eat healthily, but he just didn’t seem to be bothered.”

  On the other hand, in the course of my job I’ve seen the insides of lots of nursing homes and I have to say that living a long life doesn’t always appear all it’s cracked up to be.

  “What’s the story behind the televisions?” When I had first entered the living room it had struck me as unusual to find two sitting side by side.

  “All he did was watch the telly,” she replied. “All day every day. Day and night. He used to have one on for twelve hours and then switch it off so it wouldn’t overheat, and then switch on the other one so he could keep watching.”

  “How long do you think he’s been dead for?” she asked pensively.

  “I’d guess about three days.” The TV was paused on Wednesday’s evening news, which seemed as good an indication as any.

  “I’d go with that,” interrupted the paramedic, packing up his equipment.

  “Cause of death?” I whispered as I accompanied him out to his vehicle.

  “Suicide,” he replied grumpily. “A heart attack brought on by his lifestyle, I’d say. A long, slow suicide.”

  “Sorry about the wait,” he added, getting back into his car.

  “I was only on scene minutes before you,” I told him. “It’s fine.”

  “No, sorry for the weight,” he clarified. “He’s a large man. The funeral directors will have some trouble getting him out of the flat, especially around those tight corners. I’d stay and help but another job’s just come in.” And with that he was off, trailing rainbows of happiness in his wake.

  I got on the radio and asked Comms to arrange for the undertaker to attend. Heeding the paramedic’s advice, I also put in a call to Andy, asking if he would come and help move the body.

  Returning to the house, I found the deceased’s daughter in the kitchen making a cup of tea. We took it into one of the other rooms to drink whilst we waited for the undertaker to arrive. As we chatted, I learned that her name was Rosemary and that she lived just a few streets away from her father, whose wife had died some years before. She wasn’t sure why her father had let himself go, but admitted that the years of caring for him had taken their toll on her. She had felt constantly stressed and the whole situation had impacted on her own personal life. A week ago, Rosemary and her partner had gone away on their first break in years to try and salvage their battered relationship and had returned home to this. If anything, though, she had confided, it was a blessed relief that it was finally over. She’d had years to prepare for this eventuality and had known that this day would come sooner rather than later.

  It’s said that the first time that someone takes the time simply to listen, is the time that true empathy is born. I’ve also heard it said that if you reply with: ‘Wow! That’s crazy’ that ninety-nine per cent of the time you haven’t been taking in a word of what was being said.

  Although I tried to be attentive as she poured out her troubles, every now and again my mind kept wandering back to what I had found on my doormat this morning. Preparing to leave for work, I had noticed a small plastic bag lying on the floor under the letter box. I had picked it up, feeling its weight and then held it up to the light before hurling it away in horror! Gingerly approaching it again, I had picked it up once more and studied it to make sure my first impression had been right: it was. Someone had posted me a bag of excrement! Why on earth would anyone do that? I immediately thought of the Taxil brothers but they had both been remanded and were in prison. But did they have contacts on the outside? Had they found out where I lived? Who else had a grudge against me? I’d locked up hundreds of people over the years – it could be any one of them.

  “I said, don’t some of the sights you see in your line of work give you nightmares?” I was instantly back in the room as Rosemary posed her question for the second time, raising her voice and clearly demonstrating that she expected a reply. “I mean, it can’t be nice seeing all those unpleasant things. Do you have trouble sleeping at night?”

  The reality is that I don’t have any trouble at all – I sleep just fine. I wouldn’t say that I have become hardened to the suffering and cruelty that I see, but it certainly doesn’t affect me as much now as it did when I first joined the police.

  “I’ve heard that a lot of emergency service personnel – police, firemen and paramedics – don’t tend to talk about their emotions much,” she added.

  “I can’t say that I’m surprised,” I told her, but she didn’t seem to get the joke.

  “Have you heard of CBT?” she asked.

  I told her I had heard it mentioned in connection with psychotherapy, but didn’t really know much else about it.

  “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy,” she explained, “is a type of therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave. It was originally used to treat depression but is now used in all sorts of ways. I got into it because of the difficulties I had dealing with my father and discovered that it helped me. It can assist with anything from post-traumatic stress to insomnia. In fact, I found it so useful that I’m now training to be a full-time therapist myself.”

  “Wow! That’s crazy!”

  “It’s just that I thought I could try a little session with you now while we wait for the undertakers to arrive? It’s not difficult – just a short, easy introduction to the therapy. We just talk through things. It’s nothing to be worried about.”

  “It’s very kind of you,” I replied, “but I’m fine, thank you.” It seemed a little bizarre that at a time like this she wanted to talk about my feelings rather than her own, but perhaps this was just her way of coping. I’m not comfortable talking about my feelings at the best of times and, to be perfectly honest, I still had the bag of faeces on my mind. Now, I might have been interested if she could have solved that little mystery for me.

  “Suit yourself,” she pouted, before disappearing off into the kitchen to make another cup of tea.

  They say time flies when you’re enjoying yourself and after what seemed like an eternity later I heard a knock at the door. I shouted for whoever it was to come in and moments later the door was pushed open and Andy appeared in the room, looking eager to tell me something. He asked where the body was and then went and closed the door, as though worried the corpse might overhear. He looked around conspiratorially to make sure no one else was listening and then, when satisfied that we were alone, he motioned for me to come closer.

  “You know that job I went to this morning?” he questioned, eagerly. “Guess what it was all about?”

  “You’ll have to tell me,” I replied. “You’d be amazed at how often I’m
wrong when people ask me that question.”

  “Well, it was down as a domestic but, when I arrived there, I discovered the reason for the fuss was that the wife had come back to find her husband nailed to the dining room table!”

  Wow! Now that actually was crazy! It transpired that whilst his wife was away on a business trip, the husband had invited one of his friends over and then, in the words of Andy, they had proceeded to ‘abuse each other’s genitals’. He used air quotes to accompany his revelation.

  “Apparently, it’s a real thing,” he continued, making rabbit ears with his fingers around ‘thing’ to emphasise the point. “It’s part of the bondage and sadomasochism scene, by all accounts. They punch and slap each other’s penises or penii – whatever the word is – and attach weights to their testicles, squeeze them, tie it all up with ropes… all sorts!”

  When I mentioned earlier that everyone should have a hobby, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

  “Anyway, it looks like their little games went too far and the friend ended up nailing the husband’s scrotum to the table.”

  “Bollocks?”

  “No, it’s true! I thought they were supposed to have a safe word or something!”

  “Like an ex-partner’s name?” I suggested. That would certainly stop any romantic activity dead in its tracks, although I wasn’t sure where the romance fitted into this particular pursuit. Andy frowned and continued with his tale.

  “The visitor then panicked, leaving the husband attached to the dining table. He was stuck there for twelve hours until his wife returned from her trip. She went mental when she discovered him!”