03:30: We were struggling to stay awake.
“John!” Ten minutes later Lloyd broke the silence. “How about him?” He nodded towards a figure slowly making his way up the street. “I hope he’s a drunk and not a zombie,” he chuckled.
He had a point. The male appeared to be dragging his left leg as well as having problems remaining vertical, let alone moving in a straight line. From my own personal observations of films of this genre, it would seem that most zombies die from some sort of foot-related injury. How on earth they ever managed to perform the Thriller dance is beyond me, although Michael Jackson probably looks the part by now. Following suit, our particular subject also looked very dishevelled. “Why do zombies always have such ragged clothes?” I whispered. “I mean, they’ve only just died?”
“I’ve heard that embalmers at the mortuary insert a butt plug into corpses to prevent leakage. That would probably explain the way they walk,” added a pensive Lloyd.
“And the way they groan,” I suggested back.
I’d always hoped that zombies would start killing those people that confuse there, their and they’re in emails, but I guess funeral directors would be the first on their list judging by Lloyd’s revelation. We continued our observations in case it was actually Gwain, but our subject hauled himself past and off down the street. We settled back down and continued our lonely vigil.
“John, hold the fort!” Fifteen minutes later and Lloyd broke the silence with his desperate plea.
“Now?” I queried.
“Now!” came the adamant reply as he disappeared out the door.
When nature called, it seemed to demand an immediate answer from Lloyd.
As police officers, we can never be sure how long we’ll be out of the station and away from basic facilities. A quick detail can turn into a job that takes hours, and from there we can be sent to another incident and so on. It’s not uncommon to leave the station at the start of the shift and not return until the end of play. Scene preservation duties bring their own set of problems too: crime scenes need to be preserved for forensic examination whenever and wherever they may occur. The image of a police officer or community support officer standing outside a house where some horrendous murder has occurred is pretty commonplace on the news and in TV dramas – we can’t just nip away to use the toilet or have a break. It’s not unusual for me to become dehydrated by the end of the day as I try not to drink too much to avoid such problems.
But with Lloyd nature didn’t slowly meander up the path, gently announcing its impending arrival by whistling a merry tune en route, and giving him time to think where he could do his business. No, with Lloyd, nature seemed to jump out of nowhere and hammer at the door – in his case the back door. You would think that for a man for whom poop has no concept of time, he would prepare himself for such eventualities. However, as ‘Exhibit A’ demonstrates, it seems this was clearly not the case. In this particular incident, Lloyd had been standing in dense woodland in the dead of night and in pitch darkness, miles from anywhere. Some sort of satanic ritual had occurred there that CID were looking into. Amongst other things, a goat’s head had been discovered stuck on a pole in the middle of a clearing. The scene had needed to be guarded to prevent anyone coming and disturbing it before it was fully examined.
Four hours later and at about three in the morning, Lloyd felt those familiar rumblings. He called up on the radio asking if anyone could take his place as he had an urgent matter to attend to, but after having to endure listening to everyone respond with: ‘I ain’t afraid of no goats!’ it seemed that all other units were tied up on other jobs. Ten minutes of pacing followed, and the rumblings still wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually, he could take no more. Urgently waddling to the car, with legs straight and buttocks clenched, he reached in and grabbed a packet of wet wipes that someone had left in the glovebox, before disappearing back into the dark and foreboding woods to do his dirty business.
“Initially,” he had explained to us later, “I was worried that CSI might find my deposit and think it was somehow related to the bizarre and ghoulish ceremonies that had been taking place. However, a few minutes later, a very different set of concerns obliterated every other thought from my mind.”
Lloyd then described the slow burning sensation he had experienced. The slight discomfort that had started as a warm glow had steadily increased to the blistering heat of the surface of the sun… and in the very place on the body where the sun doesn’t actually shine at all. Initially, Lloyd had wondered whether he had unwittingly squatted over some stinging nettles when he had released the beast. He even began to wonder whether the devil himself was taking revenge on him for defecating on his unconsecrated ground. Eventually, he returned to the vehicle to get some more wipes to try and sooth the burning pain and it was only then, when he switched on the interior light, that all became clear. It wasn’t actually the work of some toxic plant or the sorcery of Beelzebub, but rather it appeared that the agony he was experiencing had been self-inflicted. Picking up the packet and examining it in the light, he soon discovered that he hadn’t been using a pack of wet wipes at all – these were industrial-strength, highly chemical dashboard cleaning wipes!
I was still chuckling at the memory of my colleague’s misfortune when he returned to the room after completing his current ablutions.
“Sorted?” I queried. “You found an actual toilet and actual paper to use this time?”
“Pristine toilet and two-ply paper to hand,” came the response. “The show home is well-equipped. Mission accomplished… of sorts.”
“Of sorts?”
“Well,” was his shamefaced reply, “it seems the water hasn’t actually been connected yet.”
Before I had time to comment, I heard a dull thudding outside. I looked out to see a male kicking violently at the front door of the target house. It was our man!
We raced down the stairs, three at a time, bursting out onto the street, catching our suspect by surprise. Hearing our front door swing open, he looked back and hesitated for a second before deciding to make a run for it. He sprinted across the front garden, vaulted over the small perimeter wall and then ran off down the street. He had about forty yards on us as we raced along after him in the middle of the deserted road. I racked my baton as I ran, whilst Lloyd gave updates on the radio guiding units to our location.
Gwain was fast, and not weighed down by twenty pounds of body armour and steel-capped boots. We hurtled down the street and onto Avery Walk, but he had already fled down an alley and was now on Lucknow Street. He was gaining ground on us, so I shouted after him in a bid to get him to give himself up.
“Stop! Or we’ll release the dog!” How was he to know that we didn’t have one?
He appeared oblivious to my shouts, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the other units descended on the scene. Suddenly, a police car, blue lights flashing, rounded the corner at the other end of the street. Gwain was trapped. In a panic, he suddenly darted to the right and scaled the gates of St Christopher’s Park. Gotcha! The park covered a large area which included woodland, a small lake, extensive flower gardens and a play area; our target was contained – at least for now, but we needed to act quickly. As soon as resources had been deployed to cover the exits and everyone was in position, we went in.
Hauling ourselves over the gate, Lloyd and I dropped down onto the gravel beneath. Again, we shouted for Gwain to give himself up before starting to systematically search the grounds. However, the park was too big an area to comb effectively and after ten minutes of fruitless searching the decision was taken to call out the helicopter.
It wasn’t long before we heard the familiar sound of the rotors chopping through the air. A police car, parked at the gate, illuminated its blues to guide the chopper in. The helicopter’s high-intensity beam soon lit up swathes of the park. After five minutes, we were informed that they were switching to infrared mode. Gwain may have been able to hide from the helicopter
lights under benches or the budding foliage on the trees, but in infrared mode his heat source would be easily picked up. He would soon be ours. We all waved our arms to identify who on the ground were police, and with that the helicopter changed modes. The first scan picked up a couple of rapidly moving heat sources that were most likely foxes running from the scene. The second sweep identified the small glow of nesting birds on the island in the lake. Then, on the third look, a call came down from above.
“To the officer standing by the play area, start walking to your left.” I started pacing as directed.
“Now stop. Move to your right. That’s it. Now stop. Directly in front of you: what have you got?”
“It’s a large holly bush,” I reported, illuminating it with my torch.
“We’re picking up a large heat source coming from it.”
I couldn’t see anyone, but if the helicopter said he was there, he most probably was. I thought I’d bluff him out.
“Gwain, I know you’re in there! Come on out, the game’s up!”
After a couple of seconds I heard rustling, and then an arm, followed by a leg, emerged from the foliage. I wasn’t sure whether he would still be as mad as an un-medicated honey badger, especially after being immersed in a prickly bush and I held my baton at the ready. Just a few seconds more and our absconder appeared in the full glare of my torch, scratched and bleeding. From his demeanour, it looked like his brush with the Aquifoliaceae plant had taken all the fight out of him. He was also much smaller than I expected – hardly the ogre that I had pictured in my mind following his wife’s character assassination.
We’re all guilty of it to some degree: bestowing physical attributes to the criminal class that they almost never possess. If you’ve ever fallen victim to a burglary, you probably imagined that some man-monster selected your house and studied your routine for days before making his move; rifling through your precious things and carefully selecting his haul. The reality is that usually some smack addict, weighing six stone wet through, on seeing an open window or trying a door and found it unlocked has chanced his arm, stealing the first thing that comes to hand.
I slapped the cuffs on Gwain and informed him he was under arrest for threats to kill. He must have recognised my voice as he immediately began apologising for his attitude on the phone.
“I was angry, but it was all talk. I said some things that I meant, but should never have said.”
Maybe it wasn’t such an apology after all.
“I don’t think that came out right. Look,” he continued, “I’m not usually a violent man. I’m a lover not a fighter.” That was the second time I had heard that tonight.
“Your wife doesn’t seem to go for the fighting sort,” I replied.
“How would you feel, though?” He seemed to be winding himself up now. “I’d just paid four grand for a new set of tits for her, and now some other guy is playing with them!”
I had an involuntary flashback to Mrs Gwain pushing out her pneumatic assets when I had taken the initial details.
“And I should have known something was up when she started making me wear condoms,” he bemoaned.
Condoms? In the plural? I was about to tell him that you were only supposed to wear one at a time, but instead I decided to tell him to save it all for the interview back at the nick.
Lloyd, meanwhile, came hobbling over from the other side of the park, complaining that he might have pulled something. That’s the trouble with foot chases – you don’t get to warm up beforehand. It’s nought to sixty in a matter of seconds, like a greyhound out of a trap. It’s all too easy to strain a muscle in those circumstances, although I don’t suppose that extra biscuit had helped him. Bisc-etiquette karma, I thought to myself.
As I led my prisoner towards the gate, Jacob and Ffion from the night shift came over and offered to take him down to custody whilst I got on with my arrest statement. I gratefully agreed, and twenty minutes later I was back in the office, sat in front of a screen, merrily typing away.
“Ah, PC Donoghue.” Carol Dunbar, B shift’s inspector, walked into the room, obviously pleased that our offender had been brought to book. “Would you like to debrief me?”
I told her that I’d love to. Fifteen minutes later, she had an even broader smile on her face.
“Excellent result! When I saw it on the log, I thought it was going to be a bit of an…” she paused, checked behind her, and then, curling her fingers in the shape of bunny ears, mouthed the words, “excrement job.” She seemed pleased with her little funny.
I liked Inspector Dunbar, despite her use of air quotes. There was something naive and innocent about her – like a librarian in police uniform. She was not long out of university and on the Accelerated Promotion Scheme but, with her delicate mannerisms, it seemed more like she had come straight out of Hardy’s Wessex. I suspected that on her days off she probably expressed herself ‘via the medium of dance’.
“And where is your colleague?” she enquired, clearly wanting to share the love with him, too.
As she spoke, a flustered Lloyd rushed into the office with a pair of rubber gloves, a bottle of bleach and a roll of bin bags all tucked under his arm. He quickly grabbed the key to the show home and exited stage left.
“He’s a little busy at the moment,” I explained and, despite my personal hatred of them, I raised my arms and prepared to make a set of air quotation marks. “He’s busy with one of those ‘excrement’ jobs that we were just talking about.”
Chapter 7
The Grinch
“Is that your BMW parked out there?” The young man pointed towards the road.
Mrs Garfield peered at the man standing at her front door. He was tall with short, dark hair and slightly built, some might even have said gaunt-looking. From what little she could see, she’d probably have put him in his mid-twenties. She tried to get a better look at him but it was too dark, his face only semi-illuminated by the 60-watt light that was half-heartedly spilling out of the doorway from the hall. She had lived in the village all her life and prided herself on knowing everyone, including their children and now their children’s children, but this man was a total stranger to her.
Mrs Garfield glanced at the hall clock: it was after ten in the evening; an odd time for someone to call. She had actually been dozing on the sofa when the persistent knocking had woken her and it had taken a moment for her to orientate herself. She leant out of the door and stared past him in the direction he was indicating.
“Oh no, that’s not mine,” she answered when she saw the vehicle. “It belongs to old Mr Edwards next door. There’s not a problem is there?”
“No problem,” replied the male, and set off down the footpath.
“You probably won’t get an answer…” she began, but it was too late; he was already out of earshot.
How strange, she thought, slowly clicking the door shut. As she began turning the lights off in the lounge, she could already hear the man banging on Mr Edwards’ front door. She shook her head as she made her way upstairs. The whole terrace was occupied by pensioners and they wouldn’t take kindly to being woken up at this time of night. Mr Edwards was particularly hard of hearing, and she was sure the whole street would be awake before he realised there was someone at his door, if at all. She could still hear the hammering as she started to brush her teeth. Some people just have no consideration for others, she sighed to herself as she rinsed her toothbrush under the tap. Eventually, the banging stopped.
“Is that your car?” demanded the male as Mr Edwards opened his door. His tone betrayed the fact that he was clearly angry at having to wait so long for an answer.
“Steady on!” countered Edwards indignantly. “And what sort of time do you call this?”
“Is that your car?” the male repeated, raising his voice.
“What’s all this about?”
“Just answer the question. IS THAT YOUR FUCKING CAR?” The man was now screaming in Mr Edwards’ face.
�
�YES, IT FUCKING IS!” Edwards shouted back, mimicking the crudity of the question. He was angry at the attitude of his caller yet curious to know what was so urgent at this time of night. Had there been an accident? Had this male crashed into his parked car? Was he trying to tell him, albeit bluntly, that someone had damaged the vehicle? He looked across at his car but couldn’t see anything untoward. “What’s it got to do with you, anyway?”
“Give me the keys!”
An awful rush of realisation suddenly swept over Edwards as it dawned on him that this wasn’t simply some rude upstart: this man was here to steal his vehicle. He was being robbed on his own doorstep! He went to slam the door shut, but the thief immediately jammed his foot in to stop it closing.
“GIVE ME THE FUCKING KEYS!”
Edwards kicked the intruder’s kneecap, causing him to withdraw his foot in pain. He seized the opportunity to slam the door, the night-latch clicking it locked. He made for the phone on the hall table, but, before he could get to it, he heard a smash. He turned to see the intruder punch his fist through one of the small glass panels in the door, sending shards of glass flying into the hallway. Immediately a hand came through and began grasping blindly for the lock. Edwards momentarily froze, thoughts racing through his head: had he time to ring for help? Should he lock himself in the kitchen or make a run for it? Where were his bloody car keys anyway?
Aware that he had already wasted valuable seconds, he knew he had to act now – a moment later and the intruder would be in. Instinctively, Edwards picked up the nearest thing to hand – a letter opener lying on the hall table. As the intruder found the handle, Edwards drove the long blade hard into the back of the robber’s hand. He heard a scream of pain but, undeterred, the assailant continued to turn the lock.
The blood drained from Edwards as he realised he had crossed a line. He had stabbed the thief and now that same thief would have no compunction in using violence against him. He had wagered that his tormentor would run away when he realised someone was prepared to fight back. He had gambled… and lost. The thief wouldn’t just be after the car keys now; he’d also want revenge. If he managed to get into his house, he would certainly be on the receiving end of a savage beating. He quickly discarded the letter opener, casting it down the hallway – the last thing he wanted was for it to be prised out of his hand and used against him. Edwards now threw his weight against the door in a vain attempt to keep it shut, but the male was bigger and stronger. Inch by sickening inch, the door was slowly pushed open. He tried to shout for help, but nothing came out.
Police, Arrests & Suspects Page 11
