A Fair Cop

‘Let me do the talking at this one and you learn as we go. I’ll do the form as well. They’re a nightmare when you haven’t seen one before.’

‘Okay, mate.’ My mouth was dry, and I felt cold. People had gathered in the street. We were the sole focus of their attention as we drove towards them.

‘Coppers are here,’ I heard one person say.

I took a deep breath and got out of the car. A young couple approached me and pointed to the house. ‘It’s there, officer.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ I noticed they were still wearing their slippers. I found this rather strange. One of the ambulance crew walked out as Gary and I approached the door. He shook his head and said, ‘Hi lads. There’s nothing we can do here. He’s dead. Doctor’s been called to confirm death. We’ll have to leave it with you, I’m afraid.’

‘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 of adrenaline shoot up my back, as the shock of what I’d just been told hit me. My inexperience was now being publicly exposed and I tried to not to let it show. I took a deep breath and gave myself a couple of seconds to come to terms with what I had heard. My mind raced. I tried to remember the protocol for dealing with deaths. Who should I inform? Did I need help? What would the body be like? Would I have to deal with it alone? Fortunately, this heightened mental activity anaesthetised my emotions and I cautiously entered the house.

I saw the staircase immediately on my left. I looked up. My view directly upwards was partially blocked by the underside of the landing, but I could see something dripping from directly above. The drops were different colours; some were red, others were white and frothy. Thoughts of Ernest came back to me as an identical stench hit me. I was unprepared once again. I stood on the bottom stair, pressing myself against the wall so as to avoid the dripping saliva, urine and blood. I looked up and saw the soles of the man’s feet about six feet above my head. His body rotated very slowly and sinisterly: half a turn one way, then half a turn the other. It’s extremely difficult to clearly describe the feeling that overcame me as I stood there, only that it was very unnatural and uncomfortable. I climbed a couple more stairs. I couldn’t take my eyes off the feet above me. I felt scared, and I was quite out of breath. As I walked up a few more stairs, I began to see more and more of the man’s body. He continued rotating. As I got to the top, he was positioned with his back to me, but I knew it would only be a couple of seconds before he would rotate to face me. I braced myself, as I knew I was about to see his face. What I saw next lives with me to this day as the most frightening sight I’ve ever experienced.

He was hanging with electric cable cut from his vacuum cleaner, which he’d looped over one of the beams in the loft. On the floor underneath him was his stepladder, which had fallen over, presumably as he’d hung himself. The cable dug so deeply into his neck that the top of his head almost pointed downwards towards his feet. His neck was broken. The pressure had caused blood to ooze from his nose and ears. The groove which the cord had made was so deep that his whole neck had turned dark purple. His eyes were wide open. As he rotated round and faced me, he seemed to look at me. His eyes looked alive; his tongue was hanging out of his mouth and had inflated to almost half the size of his head. A mixture of blood and frothy saliva dripped out with chilling slowness. His hands were white and his fingernails were blue. The television in his bedroom was still on and, strangely, made me feel very uneasy. I was scared and had seen enough. I went back downstairs and out of the house.

I wasn’t at all surprised to be the focus of everybody’s attention as I walked out. I couldn’t even pretend to look unaffected by what I’d seen. A woman in her forties approached me and asked if I was okay. I instantly liked her; she appreciated that I was human, despite the impression a police uniform could give. ‘It’s a bit of a mess in there,’ I said.

I immediately realised that this was not the best thing to say with the man’s family in close proximity. I used my radio to ask for supervision to attend the scene, as this was procedure for any suspicious death, which was how I was treating it until it had been confirmed as a suicide. I needed assistance in any case. I went back into the house and did everything that I could remember to do. I checked all the doors and windows for signs of forced entry. I wasn’t surprised there was no damage. Even though I was treating the death as suspicious, I’d formed the opinion that it was suicide. This was confirmed when I found a letter left by the man on his bed. It read: Can’t go on any longer. I’m sorry to the person who has to find me like this. Please don’t let Mum see me in this state and tell her I love her.

I left the letter there, as I didn’t know what would need to be photographed by Scenes of Crime. I looked at the man’s face again. Half of me felt gut-wrenching pity for a person who had obviously been unable to cope with life, and half of me felt irritated that he could do such a thing to his family. The body carried on slowly rotating. It didn’t even enter my mind to get him down. Anyone could see that he was dead and, indeed, when the ambulance arrived they didn’t get him down either. One of the ambulance crew held the dead man’s wrist for about ten seconds and told me that he had been dead overnight. He was very matter-of-fact about the process. I knew I would have to get him down at some point, but I decided to wait for my shift sergeant to arrive.

I went outside again with the ambulance crew and watched as they drove off. Then I went back into my car and reluctantly looked for the dreaded Form 49. Just as I found it, my sergeant arrived and my ordeal of being alone with this situation was over.

‘What have we got here, Mick?’ he asked.

‘It’s a male hanging from the loft by electric cable, Sarge. Ambulance have been and gone. I’ve checked the house. There’s no sign of foul play and I found a note from the deceased. It looks like suicide.’

‘Good lad. Are you okay?’

‘Fine, Sarge.’

We entered together and I pointed Sergeant Hopkins in the right direction. As we walked up the stairs, he pulled out a handkerchief and covered his nose and mouth with it. I was reassured that he, too, found the odour too much to bear. I would always carry a handkerchief with me at work after this particular incident. For now, though, I had to resort to burying my face in my jumper again.

Sergeant Hopkins looked closely at the man’s face. ‘Oh dear,’ he muttered. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Come on, Mick, let’s get him down.’

We both looked at the position of the body. There wasn’t much room on the landing so getting him down was going to be awkward. Sergeant Hopkins climbed up the stepladder immediately next to the man’s body and removed an impressive-looking folded utility knife from his pocket. ‘Come on then, Mick. Grab him.’

‘How do you mean, Sarge?’

‘I’m gonna cut the flex and you catch him.’

I stood next to the hanging body. His waist was at the level of my head and the stench became almost too much to take. With straight, locked arms I took a firm hold of the man’s belt around his trousers. Then I turned my face away.

‘Go on then, Sarge. I’m ready.’