A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

  Kennedy quickly body-swerved his way through the crowd, flashed his warrant card to the constable on the gate (a new face to Kennedy), and nipped into the compact grounds of the house. Eagle-eyed Detective Sergeant James Irvine was the first to spot Kennedy. He quickly made his way across to his superior and shook his hand furiously.

  “Ah, we missed you, sir. Absolutely brilliant to have you back in action again. The whole team thinks so.”

  Kennedy didn’t take compliments well.

  “It means we won’t have to work on shit cases any more,” Irvine added, deflating the compliment somewhat.

  Kennedy’s vivid green eyes smiled his thanks as Irvine led him towards the white stucco building that housed the swimming pool.

  “Who found the body, James?”

  “Jean Claude Banks, a Frenchman. He’s the housekeeper, it seems,” Irvine replied, in his usual dulcet, Sean Connery-influenced Scottish tones.

  “A male housekeeper?”

  “Just wait until you see him.”

  “The geezer who’s trying too hard with the hair and the fake tan?”

  “Aye, spot on, sir,” Irvine said, breaking into a lopsided grin. “That’s him.”

  “Right. I’d like to speak to him first, please,” Kennedy said quietly, and then added as an apparent afterthought, as the ever-lively Detective Constable Dot King joined them, “before I see the body.”

  “Jean Claude,” Irvine began, “this is Inspector Christy Kennedy.”

  Jean Claude Banks was sixty-plus, slim, dressed all in black except for a pristine white shirt opened a couple of buttons too many, the exposed wrinkled skin visible around his neck betraying his years.

  “He’s wearing his hair much too long for a man his age,” Dot King whispered to Kennedy. “He’s older than my dad!”

  For all the sniggering, Jean Claude still had a twinkle in his eye and he looked very fit. In fact, he looked like someone who worked out in the gym every day of his life and who had no problem refusing the pick of the contents of the desert trolley. Equally, Kennedy thought, the Frenchman didn’t look like someone who was suffering a great trauma over his boss reaching the end of his natural life.

  Kennedy, his right hand unconsciously twitching furiously by his side, led Jean Claude away from the ever-growing team of Camden Town CID Scene of Crime Officers, and they walked through the double-bay car-parking area alongside the swimming pool building. There was a covered cobbled pathway between the main house and the lower level swimming pool building.

  “So, Jean Claude,” Kennedy began, “when did you discover the body?”

  “I came into zee house this morning as usual. Mr Mylan, he is not here. It was perhaps eight a.m. when I arrived to get zee day organised.”

  “So, you’re not his housekeeper?” Kennedy asked, remembering Irvine’s information.

  “Zee housekeeper? Please, monsieur,” Jean Claude protested, “we have a housekeeper, Mrs Cynthia Cox. She comes in Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

  “Right, I see,” Kennedy replied. “She’s not in the house now cleaning, is she?”

  “No, Inspector Kennedy, she is not, how do you say, ‘destroying zee evidence.’ I rang her earlier and told her she would not be needed today.”

  “Good, Jean Claude. Good. Now, you were about to tell me how and when you discovered the body.”

  “Ah yes. I was surprised Mr Mylan was not in zee home. He likes to start his morning quietly with a bit of a workout - he has a gym just off zee pool. He usually gets up around six o’clock, goes over to zee pool for his workout, swims for thirty minutes, showers out there and returns to zee house at seven. He will then spend an hour doing his emails and getting up to speed before stopping for porridge, honey, and blueberries - every morning, zee same,” Jean Claude said, sounding a little exasperated, considering his boss’ current stone-cold body.

  “Every morning?”

  “Mr Mylan was in very good condition for a man his age,” Jean Claude offered, by way of explanation.

  “How old was he?” Kennedy asked.

  “He was fifty-two, just after Christmas.”

  So Mr Mylan had passed over the big five-oh, Kennedy thought. In fact, Kennedy realised he was as far short of the big five-oh as Mylan was past it. He certainly felt a lot younger now than he thought he’d feel when he reached this age. When Kennedy turned twenty, he’d thought he would feel ancient by the time he was honing in on the half a century, not out. Not out indeed, although he’d a very close call, and his hand instinctively went straight to his gut to try and trace the scar from his wound. Nonetheless, he was beginning to accept his father’s approach to the ageing process: starting into a new decade is a lot like considering a new tenner. It’s fine when you still have the ten-pound note intact in your pocket, but when you need to break into it, you’re always shocked at how fast it disappears.

  “How long have you worked for him?” Kennedy asked, consciously pulling himself away from thoughts about the unstoppable ageing process.

  Jean Claude’s eyes looked to the stagnant canal water, as he appeared to try and focus on Kennedy’s question. “Oh…” he began but stopped.

  In Jean Claude’s pause, Kennedy spotted the rotund Dr Leonard Taylor exiting the swimming pool building.

  “Christy!” Taylor involuntary shouted at that precise moment, disturbing the usual stillness of a crime scene. “So, Castle’s got you back in the saddle again?”

  “Sorry,” Kennedy said, just as the Frenchman was about to continue with his answer, “we’ll continue this later if you don’t mind. I need to have a word with the pathologist before he leaves.”

  They hugged, although both men for different reasons were unable to circumnavigate the other.

  “Something like that,” he continued, now answering Taylor.

  “How’s the back?”

  “Perfectly fine now,” Kennedy replied, fleetingly thinking of Miss Chada.

  “Sad to do this, Christy,” Taylor said in a much quieter voice, nodding backwards in the direction of the swimming pool building.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Well, it looks like he was trying to achieve higher self-gratification and it all went horribly wrong. I need you to take a look, Christy, so that I can move him and continue my examination.”

  With that Taylor led Kennedy back through the double glass doors to the swimming pool.

  Chapter Four

  Even though it was a fine June morning, the cool air still managed to drag clouds of steam from the hot water of the blue pool. How beautiful and pure a blue the walls and bottom of the pool had been painted struck Kennedy. He found himself concentrating on the power of this blue even at the expense of looking at the body. Once again he was delaying the inevitable meeting with death.

  He could feel every single finger of his right hand flex and stretch to the extreme as he turned to the gym section of the pool. There, amongst the various pieces of apparatus, he spotted the deflated carcass of what had once been a human.

  Kennedy stood and stared at the body. He had to go to the third person. It had to be Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy who was there now with the good doctor and the victim, one Mr Patrick Mylan. The Ulster detective really did have to distance himself to that degree to get through this. Otherwise he would go off on one of his “How can humans do this to each other?” tangents.

  It would appear that the deceased - dressed in a white sleeveless undershirt, blue, red, and black striped boxer shorts and blue socks attached to garters - was in the throes of solo passion, the pleasures of which he appeared to be trying to heighten through strangling himself using a noose made up from a belt looped through its own buckle with the free end attached to a hook inside the cloakroom door. In his efforts to free himself from his predicament, he’d obviously kicked and splattered around, thereby opening the toilet door and displaying his pathetic last scene in all its sordid detail.

  In death, the deceased looked each and every day of
his reported fifty-two years. Although at the same time he looked slim and fit enough, the ageing process on his tanned skin betrayed his years. He had thick, longish, dyed black hair and was clean-shaven, with no embarrassing ear or nose hair visible. On closer examination, the front of the crown section of hair, at least, had obviously been transplanted; the betraying hairbrush-like clumps of hair were very visible at this close distance. He looked a couple of inches short of six foot. There were no visible marks or scars about the body. His hands and fingernails looked as if they were regularly manicured.

  Kennedy stared and stared at the victim’s body, but it was saying nothing to him. He needed to hear Mylan’s voice. He found that the voice betrayed so much about the owner. Kennedy’s mind had now clicked into its professional working gear, and he was very happy he could get on with his work of resolving the cause of death, rather than being distracted by the actual death of a human being.

  On closer examination, the toilet and, in fact, the entire interior of the swimming pool building was hospital-ward, disinfectant-smelling clean.

  “And the big question?” Kennedy asked, not realising until he’d actually spoken how loudly the echo of the room would amplify his words.

  “How long has he been dead?” Taylor whispered. Even at a whisper, his words seemed to go skiing off across the steaming water and returned to them quite a few decibels louder.

  Kennedy nodded as he glanced once more at Mylan’s remains. It was clear to Kennedy how important the heart was to the body in its daily lifetime efforts to keep pumping blood to all parts of the body and keeping at bay the yellow, shiny hue currently evident on Mylan’s body. It really was incredible how quickly the body started to destroy itself. The decaying process that threatens you all of your life takes total control of your remains immediately on your final breath when it sets about returning you to the dust whence you came. With his recent debilitating back problems, the Ulster detective had started, for the first time since he was a teenager, to consider his own mortality, and in doing so, thought maybe it was time to stop waiting around; not that he’d ever considering himself to be waiting around, but with hindsight…

  “From the state of the body,” Taylor offered, interrupting Kennedy’s thoughts, “the rigor mortis has started to wear off, which happens after about a day and a half. The eyes are quite opaque, which shows us he’s been dead for more than a day but not quite two. Equally, the eyes haven’t started to bulge yet, which confirms it’s definitely not three days. I’d think we’d be safe in saying our victim has been dead forty hours max.”

  Kennedy looked at his watch.

  “Which would give an approximate time of death of around six p.m. on Saturday,” Taylor offered, confirming Kennedy’s maths.

  “Give or take?”

  “Oh, no more than two hours either way.”

  “Any notes?” Kennedy asked.

  Irvine and Taylor both answered, “No,” simultaneously.

  “How does this actually work?” Kennedy asked.

  “How does what work?” Taylor asked.

  “You know, this thing about lack of oxygen giving you greater sexual pleasure?”

  “Right, it’s known as autoerotic asphyxiation or AEA. Supposedly you experience euphoria when you cut off the oxygen supply to your brain, and if this occurs as you’re pleasuring yourself, then…”

  “You have twice the fun, or double o’ heaven, as we say in Scotland,” Irvine offered mischievously.

  When Kennedy didn’t appear to get it, Irvine explained, “Well, sir, the first ‘O’ is the noose, and the second…”

  “Okay, okay,” Kennedy whispered, annoyed more at himself than his favourite bagman.

  “I believe our American friends refer to it as ‘The Choking Game,’” Taylor added very soberly.

  “And is it true, do they, you know… feel better?” Kennedy asked, seeking an end to this part of the conversation.

  “Well, all the reports start with the disclaimer, ‘It is believed,’” Taylor offered.

  “Is it common?” Kennedy asked.

  “Statistically speaking, more than we’re led to believe, and particularly with young people. The feeling is that a lot of what gets filed as young suicide cases are in fact attempted AEA incidents turned bad,” Taylor said with a sigh. “The parents discover the body, feel ashamed, so they reset the scene and remove embarrassing evidence before the police arrive. All this serves to do is greatly distort the stats. The authorities also seem happy with the cover-up approach. They seem to think if it comes over ground, there could be an epidemic. But really, as with all bogeymen stories, all that’s really needed is the light of knowledge shone on it. This can kill you, is actually quite a powerful deterrent to the majority of people.”

  Kennedy recalled a story of a pop star dying under similar circumstances in a lonely hotel room in Australia. He wondered if in that instance the local police had ever considered the incident more a suicide than an attempt at self-fulfilment gone badly wrong?

  Kennedy walked around the body, viewing it from as many angles as he could through the various exercising and fitness pieces of poolside apparatus; he was looking for something, a clue maybe, or even just a hint of what had happened. Yes, the SOCO crew would go through the scene with the finest toothcomb for evidence of fingerprints, alien hairs and materials, but what Kennedy was looking for was logic to the proceedings. Something out of place that would ultimately betray the real facts of what went on. One thing would be enough for him, but the lack of a suicide note would not be that one thing for the detective.

  “He seemed to be serious in his search for fitness,” Irvine offered, breaking into Kennedy’s thoughts.

  “And quite hard on his equipment,” Taylor offered, pointing at wear and tear marks on the heavier gear and the deflated large orange exercise ball close to Mylan’s feet.

  “What’s that used for?” Irvine asked.

  “It’s for back strengthening exercises,” Kennedy replied, remembering some sweat-induced routines he’d been put through himself over the past year. Kennedy had found that aqua treatments had worked best for him, so he’d forsaken everything else. All else that was until ann rea introduced him to Miss Chada.

  This is no time to be thinking about Miss Chada, Kennedy thought, as he noticed something. Taylor immediately picked up on Kennedy’s increased alertness.

  “What?”

  “Maybe… can we take the body down carefully please?” Kennedy replied as he continued to examine Mylan’s legs.

  A couple of the SOCO boys helped Kennedy, Taylor, and Irvine unsuspend the victim. A couple of the girls, including DC Dot King, offered to help in the awkward manoeuvre, but Irvine waved them off. Kennedy wasn’t sure if he was trying to spare their blushes or reclaim just a little of Mylan’s lost dignity.

  Due to the position of the body and the resultant livor mortis, Mylan’s ankles, just above his socks, were very dark blue. The smell was unbearable. Kennedy always found this a little weird. Yes, he knew exactly why the decaying process produced such vile and gut wrenching stenches, but the fact was that even in death the body was still capable of well… carrying on, was the best phrase Kennedy could think off. And it was the exact timing of this process that enabled the likes of Dr Taylor to determine precisely how and when the victim had met his end.

  “Is there a possibility that he could have died elsewhere and been placed here?” Kennedy asked, now gloved, gowned, and shoed up, as he closely examined the areas just above the calf of Mylan’s legs.

  “No,” Taylor replied firmly, as he gingerly unbuckled the brown leather belt from Mylan’s neck. “I was checking the body as we removed it, and there is no evidence of livor mortis discoloration elsewhere.”

  Kennedy seemed happy with this information.

  Taylor handed the belt to Kennedy, who held out a transparent evidence bag from one of the SOCO team for Taylor to place the belt inside.

  Kennedy examined the belt very closely, partic
ularly the area around the punch holes. There were no evident wear marks around any of the holes.

  “I don’t think this was his usual belt.” Kennedy passed the belt to Irvine and continued his close examination of the victim’s lower legs.

  “It looks like our victim didn’t normally wear sock garters,” Kennedy declared.

  Irvine and Taylor looked at him, bemused.

  “Okay,” Kennedy started, “none of us ever put our socks on in exactly the same position every day, so if we wear tight socks there will be varying degrees of marks on our legs from the numerous sock positions. The oldest will have all but faded, and the most recent will leave clear, precise marks on our skin. Now these garters are much tighter than socks, yet each leg displays only one impression of the elastic.”

  Taylor crunched his chin up towards his nose. “And the point?”

  “Well, either our Mr Patrick Mylan died on the first day he wore garters, or someone wanted to humiliate him in death.”

  “So, you think there’s at least a fifty/fifty chance he didn’t commit suicide?” Irvine asked as Kennedy stood and removed the plastic gloves with two loud snaps, which echoed across the still water of the pool. The detective hated the sensation of plastic so tight on his skin. It always left him feeling he needed to inhale deeply to catch a breath.

  “I’d say there is a 100 per cent chance he didn’t commit suicide. He’s not going to want to be found like this now, is he?” Kennedy said.

  “So you think he was murdered?” Irvine persisted in a stage whisper.

  Kennedy was about to reply, but at the last moment pulled himself up short.

  “I know, I know,” Irvine said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Yes, precisely,” Kennedy whispered. “Let’s let the good doctor here take the body back for a post-mortem, and we’ll start our investigation.”