by M A Comley
“There’s more? I didn’t get that far,” Lorne replied, acid burning her throat.
“Oh yes, the man’s penis was cut off.”
Lorne cringed and pulled a face. “Has the perp taken it as a trophy?”
Patti shook her head and returned to the body. She held up an evidence bag that she extracted from her medical case. “Here it is.”
“Oh right. Do you think it was cut off as part of a torture ceremony or post-mortem?”
“I’m guessing the latter, but it’s hard to say with the amount of blood loss the victim suffered from the injury to his stomach.”
“Okay. What does that tell us?”
Patti shook her head again. “I haven’t finished yet.”
“Oh fuck. Get on with it, Patti. I’m losing the will to live here.” Lorne’s knees weakened; she had to dig deep to remain upright.
“I found the man’s dick hanging out of his mouth.”
Lorne gagged. “Oh bugger. That’s awful.”
“I’d say the killer was intent on sending a message, either to the police or the man’s friends and family. But that’s just an assumption of mine, take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it. We haven’t got anything else to go on at this point.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I’d better crack on. The quicker we get this poor soul out of here, the more comfort the neighbours will have, knowing that we’ve rid them of this putrid smell.”
Lorne, her stomach now slightly more settled, took a final look at the victim. She put his age at between fifty and sixty. With his stomach split open and his insides spewing out, it was hard to judge what type of build he was. In the end she plumped for on the heavier side. She glanced around the flat. By the look of things, the man lived alone as there were no, what she would call, feminine touches in the room. The coffee table was full of empty takeaway cartons, and dozens of crushed cans of lager lay beneath it.
“Looking for anything in particular?” Katy asked.
“A photo would be nice.”
“Not likely to get one here, not unless he’s taken a selfie on his phone. Might be worth hunting around for that.”
“Good idea.”
Katy went to the other end of the couch and bent down. “Here we go. Someone must have knocked it off the arm of the chair. Of course, it needs a password to open it.”
“We’ll ask Patti to get her team on it. Pop it in an evidence bag for me, will you?”
“I’ll get the results to you ASAP,” Patti shouted across the room, eavesdropping into their conversation while dealing with the corpse.
Smiling, Lorne replied, “Thanks, Patti. We’ll get out of your hair now.”
“I’ll be in touch soon.”
Lorne and Katy stripped off their protective clothing at the door and shoved it in the black bag in the hallway.
“Do you want to split up or do this together?” Katy asked.
Lorne chewed the inside of her mouth. “Together, I think. If I dry up, then you can take over.”
“You won’t dry up, you never have in the past.”
“Glad to see you have more faith in my abilities than I do.”
They walked several paces to the right, and Lorne knocked heavily on the front door of the flat. A wizened old lady opened the door and peered under the chain restraining it from opening fully.
“Yes, who are you?” She squinted at them through her large-framed spectacles as if her eyesight was rapidly deteriorating.
Lorne held her ID up in front of the woman’s face, so she didn’t have to strain too hard to see it. “Hello, Mrs Smithson, we’re DI Lorne Warner and DS Katy Foster. Would it be all right if we come in for a chat with you?”
“Oh my, look, I don’t want any trouble. I was only doing my duty by calling you.”
“I quite understand. We won’t take up much of your time, I promise.”
“Very well. Just a moment.” The woman closed the door to remove the chain and opened it wide for them to enter. “You’d better come through. I need to sit down before my legs give way; I can’t stand for long. If it wasn’t for that lift, I would be housebound. Bloody council couldn’t give a damn. It’s despicable putting old people up on this level, don’t you agree?”
“I do. Shameful. Would you like me to see what I can do for you?” Lorne felt sorry for the old woman.
Katy shot her a look as if she was mad. Lorne shrugged.
The three of them took a seat in the chairs available. The furniture dated back to the sixties and had seen better days. The woman wrung her hands in her lap. A small grey pug was lying on the floor in front of a gas fire that was set on a low heat.
“There’s no need for you to be nervous, Mrs Smithson, we just need to take a few details from you, that’s all. Thank you for ringing us. Can you tell us when you last saw your neighbour?”
“Let me think… It’s Monday now. I suppose it must have been the back end of last week, possibly Friday. That’s a guess really. When you get to my age, every day seems the same.”
“Okay, I don’t suppose you can give me a name?”
“For him next door?”
Lorne nodded.
“He told me his name was Denis. I don’t know any more than that.”
“That’s fine. I take it you didn’t have much to do with Denis, is that correct?”
“No, Doris and I tend to keep to ourselves. I go out three times a day with her for a brief walk around the block and that’s it. I come back home and shut the world out. Do you blame me with all the crimes taking place these days?”
“No, I don’t blame you, although I would like to reassure you and tell you that deaths such as Denis suffered are mostly rare.”
“It wasn’t natural then, his death?”
“No. He’s been murdered. Hence our need to have a chat with you. Can you tell us if you heard anything next door, an argument or fight perhaps?”
“Let me think…no, I can’t say I did. When was this?”
“That’s yet to be determined. My guess is between last Friday and today.” Although she’d told the old lady that, Lorne herself put the time of the man’s death closer to Friday just because of the rate at which the body was decomposing.
“Either way, I didn’t hear anything. He’s usually pretty good. I might hear the TV go up now and again and him shout when there’s a match on, but apart from that, he’s no bother. Let’s hope the next person they move in there is the same. You never know, do you? I likes me peace and quiet, I do.”
“Well, hopefully it’ll be you who is moving before long. I have a friend on the council. I’ll ring her today and see what we can sort out between us.”
Mrs Smithson smiled broadly, showing off some rotting teeth at the front and the sides. “Oh my, that would be wonderful. It’s such an effort for me to get out of here some days, but I have to do it for Doris’s sake. She’s had a mishap now and again; I can’t blame her for that. My legs seize up in the morning, you see, takes a while for them to get moving. Trouble is, poor thing finds it hard to hold on for more than twelve hours.”
Lorne smiled. “I’m with Doris on that one, I’d have trouble hanging on for that long, too,” she joked, trying to put the woman at ease, in the hope of getting more information out of her.
“You’re right. I tend to get up three or four times a night. It would be wonderful if your friend could sort out a nice bungalow with a garden for me. I don’t care what area I live in. Actually, after what’s happened next door, the farther I can get away from here, the better.”
Lorne winked and tapped her nose. “Leave it with me. I’ll have a word in her shell-like and see what we can come up with.”
“You’ve brightened a dreary day—no, month, for me, dear. I can’t thank you enough for caring about an old fuddy-duddy like me.”
“Fingers crossed we can work something out for you. Going back to Denis… Do you know if he had many visitors? What about family? Did you know him well enough to ask him if he h
ad anyone?”
“No, I haven’t a clue whether he had immediate family or not. All I know is that he lived alone. Can’t say I heard him have any visitors in the time he’s lived here.”
“How long has that been?”
“I suppose just over a year at a rough guess.”
“I see. Okay, well, if there’s nothing else you can help us with, then I suppose we’d better be on our way. Thanks for your help, Mrs Smithson. If you give Katy your number, I’ll get my contact at the council to call you direct, how’s that?”
“Oh, how wonderful.”
Lorne shook the woman’s hand and left Katy with her to get the details down. She made her way back to the front door and rested her forearms on the balcony, surveying the run-down area around her. It’s places like this, slums, that I won’t miss when I’m frolicking around in my acreage in Norfolk.
“Hello? I said that was a waste of time. Where were you?” Katy raised a hand. “Aww… don’t tell me, you were daydreaming of pastures new, am I right?”
“Yep, we’ll make an inspector of you yet.” Lorne grinned and set off down the passageway. Katy trotted to keep up with her. “Let’s not throw in the towel just yet, Katy. Someone must have seen something, unless the perp turned up here in the dead of night.”
“Do you intend questioning everyone on this level? Is that your plan?”
Lorne stopped. Katy almost barged into the back of her. “What would you do, if you were in my shoes?”
“Okay, point taken. Ignore my griping. I’ll go with the flow.”
“It’s called ‘good intuitive policing methods’, Katy. Get used to it, there’s no point in cutting corners, it’ll get you nowhere come the end.”
Katy’s eyes widened. “All right, there’s no need to quote the police training module to me.”
Lorne laughed. “I wasn’t, merely stating facts, dear girl. Here we go. Do you want to ask the questions on this one, to give yourself more practise?”
“Now you’re just being downright condescending. Are you forgetting that I used to be in your job once upon a time?” Katy huffed.
“I’m winding you up, Katy. It breaks up the day, or have you forgotten that?”
Katy glared at her and knocked three times on Denis’s other neighbour’s door. “If you’re not careful, I’ll be putting the flags up when you finally leave instead of feeling down in the mouth.”
Lorne bowed her head, trying to suppress the chuckle that was building.
The door to the flat opened. A young woman holding a crying baby on her hip demanded abruptly, “Yeah, what do you want? If you’re the filth, I know nothing. End of.”
Lorne thrust her foot in the gap, preventing the woman from slamming the door in their faces. She showed her warrant card. “You’re right, we’re the filth. We’d like a word if it’s not too inconvenient for you.”
“It is. I have to be at the health centre for eleven. Like I said, I know nothing.”
“Can we come inside?”
“What? Why? Are you going to treat me like a suspect? He was my neighbour, for fuck’s sake, nothing more. I didn’t even know the old codger.”
“That’s answered one of our questions, but we have plenty more. We can either do it here or we can do it back at the nick, it’s your choice,” Lorne shouted over the child’s incessant crying.
The young woman flung the door back. It bashed against the wall in the hallway and half-closed again. Lorne pushed it open and followed the angry woman up the hallway and into an untidy lounge. Toys and baby’s clothes were strewn everywhere. A carrier bag of used nappies sat underneath the window, and the smell was atrocious. She crossed the room and threw the window open.
“’Ere, what do you think you’re doing? Close that damn thing.”
Exasperated, Lorne stared at the woman in disbelief. “I can’t believe the smell in here. Have you ever considered that your child might be telling you something?”
“Keep your frigging nose out of how I raise my child, or I’ll report you,” the young woman snapped back, clearly offended.
“Report me? For what? Caring about your child?”
“Ladies, please, why don’t you both calm down? This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Katy intervened, standing between Lorne and the uptight woman.
“You need to tell your mate that, not me,” the woman blasted.
Lorne stared at the woman, disgusted by the way she was bringing up her child. There was no need to subject the infant to such filth. It was wrong of her to be so judgemental, she knew that, but there also had to be a reason the infant was crying, almost to the point of sobbing its little heart out. In her eyes, kids of that age should be crawling across the floor in a safe environment, which this clearly wasn’t. If the woman was at home with her child all day, she needed to get off her backside and care for her child properly. Her stomach clenched with anger, and she winced as the pain shot through as if she’d just touched an open live wire and received a shock.
Katy touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Lorne replied.
“Oi! It’s me you should be asking that to, not her. Look, just ask your damn questions and get out of my face.”
Lorne nodded at Katy to take the lead while she crossed the room and waited by the door. The young woman closed the window again as soon as Lorne moved. Her anger jumped up a notch, and she stared at the woman, wanting to make her feel uncomfortable in her own home, matching the way she was feeling right now.
“We’re here to make enquiries about your neighbour, Denis. Did you know him?” Katy asked, her notebook and pen in her hand.
“Nope. Next question?”
Katy exhaled. “If you’re going to be obstructive about this, Miss…?”
“It’s Mrs Turner, if you must know. I ain’t being obstructive in the slightest. I told you the second I opened the damn door, I know nothing.”
“A few more questions, and we’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”
Turner flopped into the leather sofa that was cracked in numerous places. “Go on, make it quick. I have to get us both ready for our appointment.”
“Okay, when was the last time you saw Denis?”
She shrugged. “Not a clue.”
“This past week, in the last month?”
“Pass. Next question.”
“Maybe you’ve either heard or seen him having visitors?” Katy asked, tapping her pen impatiently against her notebook.
“Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t, I can’t remember.”
“It would be good if you could try and remember. This is a murder enquiry we’re dealing with here, not an insignificant incident such as shoplifting.”
Turner fell silent, thinking over the question, going by the expression on her face.
“Nope, nothing. Now will you leave?”
Katy sighed again. “Have you heard any shouting or any form of argument coming from his flat? It’s obvious someone got in there the other day.”
“Nope. How was he killed?” Turner asked, her gaze darting between Lorne and Katy.
“We’re not at liberty to reveal that at this time. Do you know if the man had any relatives?”
“No, I didn’t know him. Never spoken to the guy and until a few moments ago didn’t even have a clue what his damn name was. Now, if you don’t mind, or even if you do, I’ve got to get ready for my appointment.”
Katy slammed her notebook shut and tucked it into her jacket pocket. She smiled tautly at the woman and turned to leave the room. “Thanks for your help,” she threw over her shoulder.
“Anytime,” Turner hollered back.
Lorne and Katy left the flat, the breeze of the front door being slammed gusting behind them. “What a frigging bitch. I bet she’ll go to that health centre and tell them her place is spotless. I should report her. Her sort get on my bloody tits.”
Katy rubbed Lorne’s arm. “Calm down. She’ll get what’s coming to her.”
“Ya think? And what’ll happen to the kid in the meantime? That place was an absolute tip. I bet the kid never gets taken out to the park or anything. Her sort riles me up the wrong way.” She growled and strode away, ready to knock on the next door, preparing herself for yet another barrage of abuse from the inhabitant. She definitely wouldn’t miss this side of policing, not in the slightest.
The resident in the next flat was a young man. He opened the door in his boxer shorts, his hair messed up as if they had disturbed his sleep.
Lorne offered up her warrant card and introduced herself to the dazed youngster. “Is it possible for us to come in for a moment?”
He scratched the side of his face, trying to decide if it was a trick question. “I guess. Have I done something wrong?”
“We don’t know, have you?” Lorne teased, smiling.
“I don’t think I have.”
The three of them stepped through the front door and into the lounge. Lorne was surprised to see this flat was much tidier than the one they’d just visited. “Sorry, I missed your name?”
“It’s Fletch, Paul Fletcher. You can call me Fletch, though. What’s this all about?”
“The gentleman two doors down, Denis, was found dead in his flat this morning. We’re making general enquiries, seeing if anyone knows anything about the attack.”
“Wow, poor Denis. I mean, he was a nice guy. I often had a pint with him down the pub on the corner, The Dragon’s Lair.”
Katy jotted down the information.
Lorne nodded. “That’s interesting to know. Perhaps you can tell us if he had any relatives?”
“Nope. He told me he got divorced over twenty years ago, been by himself ever since. Said he preferred it that way, that women were like an anchor around his neck. No offence like, but I tend to agree with him.”
“Thanks,” Lorne replied, her tone sarcastic.
The youngster’s face coloured up.
“Do you happen to know if he had a job?”
“Yes, he’s a builder, or he was. Self-employed, as far as I know. He runs an ad in the local paper with his phone number and tends to do small jobs now and again. Said he was tired of working and as long as he had enough money for his rent, a few pints every night and a takeaway of sorts every day, he was happy.”
