A Fair Cop. Michael Bunting

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘No probs, mate. Thanks a lot,’ Gary replied.

      We walked into the hallway. To the left was a half-open door leading to the living room. I could see the man’s legs. He was lying on the floor. I tentatively pushed the door open and looked at his face. He was an elderly gentleman and he lay in an unnatural posture on the floor. His face was white and his mouth was wide open. The ambulance crew had placed his dentures next to him. I noticed he had a wet patch on his trousers and the dreadful smell indicated he’d had a substantial bowel movement upon his death. His fingers were purple and curled round into a partial fist. His hair looked immaculate. It was a really bright white colour, parted perfectly and styled seemingly with precision and pride. It looked unaffected by his death and this recovered his dignity despite the soiling of his trousers. I noticed photos of children on the fireplace. I assumed they were his grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren. I also noticed an old-looking black and white photograph of a woman dressed in old-fashioned clothing. A cross with some religious prose hung over this photo. I assumed it was a picture of his deceased wife. I sensed his loneliness.

      Gary walked over to the window and began to inspect it. This baffled me. ‘What you doing that for?’ I asked.

      ‘When we go to deaths we have to check the place for forced entry, signs of a struggle, anything nicked and stuff like that. You never know, one of these could be a murder and your feet wouldn’t touch the ground if you missed it and let the scene go.’

      ‘Oh yes. I see. This isn’t a murder, is it?’

      ‘No, mate. Poor old sod has seen enough of this life. Looks like a heart attack to me. Their mouths always stay wide open like that when it’s a heart attack. We’ll have to strip the body too, Mick. We have to check for bruises.’ Gary seemed to know exactly what he was doing and this filled me with reassurance. ‘Have you got your surgical gloves on ya?’ he asked.

      ‘Yeah, they’re in the car.’

      ‘You’ll need ‘em for this bit, mate.’ Gary looked at me and gave me a forced smile.

      ‘Right.’

      I went outside and noticed more people had gathered. I felt very self-conscious and made a deliberate effort not to show any expression on my face. ‘What’s happening, officer?’ asked the same man who had spoken to me earlier.

      ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’ This seemed to be the right thing to say but I wasn’t sure whether it was or not. I knew that I wasn’t allowed to tell people much so it seemed to be the best answer. I walked back into the house and unwittingly took a deep breath just as I entered the living room. The smell had worsened, as Gary had moved the man’s body, causing more excrement to leak out. I turned my head back in to the hallway and took another deep breath.

      I walked over to the body and robotically began moving it into positions that made removing the clothes as easy as possible. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in and the body still felt warm. The dead weight felt weird: so heavy and floppy. I pulled my jumper up over my nose, as the excrement had smeared onto the carpet and all over the man’s buttocks and legs. The stench was unbearable. I tried to remain expressionless, but I don’t think I managed.

      ‘You’ll get used to this, Mick. This is a clean one. You want to smell ‘em when they’ve had a few weeks to decompose.’

      ‘I’m quite happy having this to break me in,’ I replied, feeling alarmed at the thought that I’d eventually see far worse.

      We lay him down again and as we covered him with a towel, a small amount of urine leaked out to add to the mess. It was then that the man’s doctor arrived. He was quite old-looking himself. He strained his eyes, looking tired and dishevelled. He had obviously been woken up to attend this death.

      ‘Now then, Ernest, what are you doing dying on me at this time of night?’ Even though the words may have sounded quite unfeeling, he spoke with a sensitive tone and I sensed he was sorry about the death.

      ‘I couldn’t get him into hospital. He’s been very ill.’ The doctor held the man’s arm for a couple of seconds and then shone a torch into his eyes.

       ‘Goodbye, Ernest,’ he said, as he placed his arm back on the floor. He turned to me. ‘Certified dead, five fifteen a.m.’ I looked at Gary who immediately wrote this down. Without being prompted, the doctor gave Gary the other details which we, as the police, needed. This had an ominous feeling of habit about it.

      The undertakers didn’t take long to arrive and by six o’clock, Gary and I were back in the station ready to finish the shift. I had dealt with my first sudden death and felt a little shaken by it. Gary put his jacket on, collected his sandwich box from the canteen and headed for the door. ‘See ya tonight, Mick.’

      ‘See ya, Gary.’ I left the station, scraped the ice from my car windows and began the drive home. I could still smell Ernest in the back of my nose. A similar stench exuded from my clothes. I opened the car window and spat out a mouthful of saliva. I knew from this moment on that I’d never be comfortable with sudden deaths.

      My days off after that particular week were most welcome. I met up with a couple of old friends from school. They listened with intrigue to my story about Ernest.

      As a young man working long and varied shifts to make a living, the thought of being a multi-millionaire was nothing but a dream. I thought that having that kind of money would be the key to a life of happiness. At twenty years of age, this preconception of contentment was completely eliminated when I attended the most gruesome death that I would ever face. It made the scene at Ernest’s death seem tame.

      When I arrived at work that day, the sun shone gloriously and the sky was beautiful and cloudless. I was working an early shift, known as early turn, which started at 6 a.m. and finished at two in the afternoon.

      On this particular early turn, I was eating a bowl of cereal at the station when the call came through at about 7.30 a.m. I hadn’t worked many early shifts, but I’d soon realised that, generally, there were very few calls before 8 a.m. After then, we would be hit with a surge of calls as people woke up to find they had been the victims of burglary.

      I pushed the bowl aside and set off to a call that had been described to me over the air as ‘an elderly woman in distress’. This description didn’t reflect in any way the incident I was about to face. I had only been out of the company of my tutor constable for a couple of weeks, but I felt that an ‘elderly woman in distress’ was well within my capabilities, which is why I decided to go alone. Such was my complacency that I continued to appreciate the sunshine whilst I hurriedly made my way to the scene.

      I arrived. The outside was strikingly similar to the one of Ernest’s death. People had gathered, some with traumatised expressions on their faces. I was drawn to the magnificence of the house in question. It was large, with a number of tasteful extensions attached. The garage looked as though it would fit two, possibly even three cars in it. A brand new Mercedes was on the drive, sporting an extravagant personalised number plate. The house seemed repellent; no one was inside. I saw an old lady being comforted by a younger woman who looked to be in her fifties. Both women looked too numb to cry. I approached them.

      ‘It’s my brother,’ said the younger one quietly, ‘he’s killed himself.’ The shock of these words briefly sent me in to a state of near panic. I was alone and about to have to deal with a death. I instinctively asked where her brother was.

      ‘He’s hanging from the loft over the stairs,’ she replied. With these words, I felt a surge СКАЧАТЬ