Preacher Boy

by Gwyn GB

  ‘No, man.’

  The boy could have been lying, but from where Harrison was, poised ready to snap his arm, he didn’t think so.

  Harrison pushed the lad away from him and kicked the large knife that still lay on the pavement down a drain. The lad picked himself up and dusted down his clothes. The street muck was easy to get rid of, but he couldn’t wipe off the look of humiliation that was all over his face.

  Having got what he came there for, Harrison turned his back on the gang and started to walk away. Lunch break was over.

  For a few moments the teens considered jumping him from behind, but then their survival instincts kicked in, and instead they just watched him walk away, stunned. Harrison had confirmed what he’d suspected. The couple had baited him, and he’d come, like his mother had all those years ago. But what did they want from him? Whatever it was, he’d be ready next time.

  20

  DS Salter and DC Oaks walked towards the estate manager’s office at the base of one of the Marion Estate flats. It was one of the older estates, built in concrete in the late 1960s, to replace the rows of bombed-out houses from the Second World War, and meet the desperate need for affordable housing. They’d called them ‘streets in the sky’ as the tower blocks rose above the city. For many, that anticipation had turned into an isolated living experience, a social experiment that failed. Jack looked up. There were about twelve storeys, and the area around the estate, which was initially promised as a green oasis for the residents, had long since been built on as the local council tried to meet growing demand and rising costs. They’d passed a patch of grass, worn and tired, a small concession to nature. Large graffitied initials were sprayed all along the wall which ran beside it. Jack had read a newspaper article recently that said a lot of these, what he considered ugly tower structures, had been made listed buildings. Other blocks were being demolished or refurbished, and their residents decanted into newer social housing. He wondered what kind of living experience Marion Estate was for its families.

  They turned a corner, and in front of them was a huge colourful mural, painted on the end of the block. A transcendental multicoloured face, smiling down on those below in an attempt to encourage smiles in return. Underneath it, there was the usual mix of multiracial kids playing on battered bikes and skateboards along the paved area outside the block.

  One kid shouted, ‘Watch out! The filth are about!’ and his companion joined in. ‘It weren’t us, rozzers. ‘onest,’. The boys were about ten years old, going on sixteen. They had an innate ability to spot a police officer in their midst, Jack wondered if it was in the genes or part of their upbringing. Estates like this one were fertile recruitment grounds for the drugs gangs who needed a constant supply of young couriers to keep their county-lines business networks running. The fact their bikes were both battered and old gave Jack some reassurance that these two had so far managed to avoid the temptation. He hoped for their sakes it stayed that way.

  Jack was on his mobile again, but whoever he was calling didn’t pick up, so he pocketed it. The kids laughed and scarpered quickly, thinking they’d said something daring, pedalling their bikes as fast as their scrawny legs would go. He saw them turn round to check they weren’t being followed. They were still just kids, after all.

  The estate manager’s office door was open. He came out before they’d reached it, alerted by the shouts from the kids. He was one of those nondescript types of men, a Mr Average who’d blend into a crowd and bore a resemblance to countless other Mr Averages. Average height, average build, brown hair. The only distinctive feature on his face was a large scar that stretched from the corner of his right eye all the way down to his mouth. However that had been caused, he’d been incredibly lucky not to have lost his eye in the process, thought Jack.

  ‘About time you came. I phoned it in hours ago,’ said Mr Average.

  ‘Phoned what in?’ DC Oaks asked. The pair of them hadn’t even uttered a word.

  ‘The smell.’

  ‘Smell?’ DS Salter caught up with the conversation.

  ‘Yeah, phoned it in first thing,’ he replied, and looked at them both like they were speaking a foreign language.

  ‘No, mate. We’re not here about a smell. We’re looking for a Cameron Platt.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. It’s his flat I’m talkin’ about. I ain’t goin’ in there, mind. Smelt that stench before, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Don’t want no nightmares. Been doing this job fifteen years, and I can still remember my first one.’

  The hairs on the back of Jack’s neck instantly rose. There was no confusion over exactly what the estate manager was intimating. Question was, who was inside that flat?

  ‘Show us the way,’ he said, and checked his jacket pocket for a pair of gloves. He’d been faltering. The long hours and lack of a decent lunch had dragged down his energy levels, but now the adrenaline fired up again.

  The flat was one of eight on the second floor, positioned at the end. The smell filled the entire corridor, and someone had obviously tried to clear the air by propping open the door. It might have helped, but it didn’t solve the problem.

  Jack doubled-checked with the manager. ‘So you’ve not been in?’

  ‘Nope. A couple of the neighbours mentioned it a day or so ago. I came up this morning to check. Thought it was going to just be the drains, but that ain’t no drain.’

  The man knew his smells, thought Salter, but then again, once you’d smelt rotting flesh, you didn’t forget it. He pitied the poor neighbours who must have been getting fed up with their lazy estate manager for not doing anything about their complaint.

  ‘Who lives in the flat exactly?’ Salter asked.

  ‘It’s rented by John Platt, but his son Cameron lives with him too. I ain’t seen either of them for a while.’

  Jack thought it would be difficult for anyone—even someone who was deranged—to live with that stench and its primary cause, but you never knew.

  The manager headed toward the flat door, key poised, ready to insert.

  ‘Hang on. This might well be a crime scene,’ Salter said in a loud whisper. The man’s eyes widened, and he looked from Salter to Oaks and back again, then thrust the key at him.

  ‘I need you to step back and away, please,’ Jack said. There was no hesitation. The estate manager scuttled straight back to the safety of the fresh air at the other end of the corridor.

  Jack got on the radio and alerted the team back at the incident room of what they’d heard and found. Then he left his radio on and open. He was going to have to go in there, and he had no idea what he was going to find.

  ‘We need to do this quick and cleanly,’ Jack told Oaks. ‘The boy could be in there, so I’m going to have to check that there’s no life inside. I’ll go in first, you stay outside to avoid further contamination of the scene, unless I call for assistance.’

  Oaks nodded. His heart was pumping hard, and his stomach churned with the bile-creating odour that filled his nostrils outside flat number sixteen. He’d thought they’d drawn the short straw plodding round all the spray-painting workshops; he’d had no idea they might end up finding the nest of their key suspect, a nest that clearly contained a deceased individual, or more. He was, however, quite glad he didn’t have to go inside.

  Jack’s heart was also beating fast. The adrenaline rushed through his system, ready for whatever was next. The moments before he entered a property like this were the closest he got to the Christmas Eve feeling he’d had as a child. That mixture of excitement, anticipation, hope, and a little fear. The balance between those elements wasn’t exactly the same. In this instance, fear played a larger role than when he’d been a child, but the hope that they might find Alex alive, or at least take a big step towards that goal, was as important to him as an adult as Father Christmas when he’d been little.

  He couldn’t put crime-scene covers on his feet because if Cameron Platt was in there with the boy, he’d need to restrain him. Slipping around on pl
astic overshoes wasn’t a good move. He double-checked that his body cam was on and recording. The first look at the scene was critical for forensics. He motioned to Oaks to put his gloves on too. Jack would slip the key in the lock, and Oaks could open the door with his glove; that way he’d dive straight in, unencumbered. If there was even the tiniest chance a young boy was alive behind that door, he had to check it out.

  Jack spoke to his body camera.

  ‘It’s Monday, the seventeenth of October at fourteen twenty-one. We have reason to believe there’s a deceased individual in flat sixteen, Marion Estate. We were attending the premises while investigating a tip-off during Operation Genesis. I’m now entering the flat to ensure there are no individuals in need of medical attention.’

  Oaks pushed the door open on cue, and Jack went to dive straight in.

  As it was, it was the blowflies that dived first. The instant the door was opened, a small swarm made a dash for the light, nearly making Jack lose his balance as they flew straight into his face. But it wasn’t just the flies they’d released. The noxious stench billowed out with them, and Jack heard Oaks gag behind him. He had a split second of feeling sorry for the young officer before he too gagged as it hit the back of his throat. Jack struggled, but he regained his composure and wasted no time stepping straight into the flat. He couldn’t worry about Oaks; he’d be okay. Jack had seconds to gain his bearings, just in case Cameron Platt was in there and been alerted to their presence.

  It was dark inside, and his eyes struggled to adjust. Directly in front was a room with yellow curtains drawn across the windows, giving a dull golden hue to the scene. There was also a shape in the large armchair facing him. It made his heart jump into his throat and his breathing stop. For a few seconds he thought it was a man staring at him before he realised that what he had mistaken for staring eyes were in fact the empty sockets of a well-rotted corpse. He still couldn’t see the face in detail because the little light that escaped through the curtains had turned the bulk of the chair and body into shadowed outlines. Right now, the body wasn’t his concern anyway, and if he was honest, he didn’t care to look at it in too much detail, anyway.

  As he stepped forward, there was a crunching underfoot. Dead blowflies. That meant the body had been rotting for weeks.

  Gut instinct told him there was nothing alive in the flat besides the flies and their maggots. He’d felt this feeling before when entering properties where he was the only person alive. It was a stillness that embalmed the air in a room with the weight of death. Not something he’d ever try to explain to anyone, a bit too woo-woo for his liking, but he felt it. Nevertheless, he had to be absolutely sure. Check every room in case a boy was being held captive here.

  The smell was overwhelming. Sickly sweet, it clawed at Jack’s nose and throat. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, and his stomach bile burnt as it battled to stay inside. He could almost feel it sink into his hair and clothes, a heavy weight of stench.

  He progressed carefully, but also as fast as he could, desperate to get out of there. All the time he tried to relay his progress so Oaks and the rest of the team were kept informed—but it wasn’t easy.

  ‘A deceased male in the sitting room with plenty of evidence of blowfly activity and advanced putrefaction.’

  His voice came out breathless and broken, the smell getting to his vocal cords and settling in his lungs. He was trying to take the minimum breaths possible to avoid sucking in the putrid air.

  To the left of the corpse was a door that led into a bedroom. Jack walked in. He pushed the door with a gloved fingertip so as not to contaminate prints. A bed. A wardrobe. A chest of drawers.

  He looked inside the wardrobe and peered under the bed.

  Clear.

  Back past the corpse to the other door. Same routine. Same setup. A bed. A wardrobe. A chest of drawers.

  Clear.

  Back out. The open-plan galley kitchen, nowhere to hide, but he checked the cupboards, anyway.

  The bathroom. Also clear.

  Jack sucked in a quick breath of air. ‘Alex?’ he called out into the empty flat. It was definitely more of a forlorn shout than a hopeful one. His ears strained to hear the slightest noise. A muffled cry. The sound of fabric rubbing against a hard material. Any sign of life. But there was nothing except the buzzing of the flies.

  Jack walked straight back out through the front door, trying to follow the exact path he’d used to enter. Then he closed it. Shut the door on the stench, the flies, and the ghastly vision of the rotting corpse behind him. A scene he’d carefully averted his eyes from. It was a vision he didn’t want in detail in his head, because it was one that even a cursory glance could tell him would stay in his memory forever.

  ‘Call Barker and get SOCO down here now,’ he told Oaks, his voice cracked and breathy with the effort of trying to hold his breath inside the flat. Oaks was wiping his mouth. He’d clearly been sick while Jack had been inside the flat, but he didn’t draw attention to it.

  ‘You’re right,’ Jack addressed the estate manager, who was peering at him from the end of the corridor. ‘It’s not drains.’

  As he watched the attractive forensics crime-scene manager, Dr Tanya Jones, get suited up ready to enter the flat, DS Salter felt almost guilty. ‘It’s not pleasant in there,’ he told her.

  She smiled at him, but only out of politeness. ‘It’s okay. It’s my job,’ she replied, and he immediately felt chaste, as though he’d insulted her intelligence and experience. Of course it was her job; she must be used to stuff like this. How sexist had that comment sounded? He made a mental note not to say anything like that again to her. But even so, what she was going to find in there wasn’t your average deceased body. He’d have said the same thing, even if she’d have been a bloke. Inside the flat was the stuff of nightmares.

  The SOCO team prepared to open the door. They had nets for the flies, which could still be heard buzzing around the flat, and would dive into the corridor again within seconds. Some of them would be euthanised and kept as vital entomological evidence, along with the scooped-up carcasses of their dead cousins on the floor. If they could see how many fly life cycles were present in the flat, it would help date the death.

  As the door to the flat was pushed open, dozens of them rushed at freedom and light again and flew straight into the nets, although quite a few dodged their prospective captors and ended up buzzing at Jack and the rest of the team in the corridor. He swatted them away. The thought of one landing on him after what it had just been sitting on and eating turned his stomach.

  Tanya Jones wore full-face protection, including an anti-odour mask, and was completely suited. She was still a little annoyed at DS Salter’s comment, like she was some fragile female he had to protect. She wasn’t sure why it annoyed her so much, but she thought it was probably because it was him who’d said it, with his overall machismo attitude. If DCI Barker or Dr Lane had made the same comment, she’d have just felt like they were keeping an eye out for her. Lots of police officers struggled with the smell; it was because they were literally in and out after about five minutes. Her team had to work with it sometimes for hours on end. They got used to it, although there was no doubt it was much more pleasant to wear an anti-odour mask. Nobody would breathe that stench by choice.

  The presence of so many flies was indicative of what she might find inside. As she stepped into the hallway, her foot crunched on the carcasses of their dead predecessors. Just outside the door of the flat, Jack gave an internal shudder at the sound of her footsteps and the memory of what he’d seen.

  ‘The victim has been dead for weeks,’ she called out, ‘We’ve not only got adult flies, but dead adult flies.’ As Tanya proceeded, a photographer walked with her, taking images of the scene before them. Another member of her team was already scooping up fly carcasses so they could determine how many generations had lived and died.

  ‘Going to be a long shot, I know, but we need to confirm if it’s Cameron Pla
tt or his father asap,’ Jack called to her from outside. He saw the flashes from the camera lighting up the doorway. Anytime now, Tanya and the photographer would come across the corpse, the image of which still sat in his mind’s eye. At least his view had been in the semi-darkness. She would see it in full flash-lit glory.

  Tanya knew DS Salter had already made sure the flat was safe, and there was no one alive—apart from the buzzing insects. They raced around her, confused by the sudden flashes and the entry of light into their dark, enclosed prison. Nevertheless, there was a definite cold chill in her spine. She got that sometimes, not because of the presence of death, that was a mechanical process which held no surprises to her. It was the spirit of evil which permeated into the fabric of the flat and made her shudder.

  She could see where Jack had walked up the short corridor into the flat, squashed flies showed the trail of his feet. She also knew the body was directly in front of her in the sitting room. He’d described the layout, and as she and her team slowly progressed, preserving evidence, covering the floor with protective plates as a walkway, she steadily took step after step towards it.

  Tanya had seen a multitude of deceased humans in her career, some brutally murdered or having suffered horrific injuries in accidents. She’d attended the results of beheadings and train suicides, drownings, and fires. She’d seen the mortal remains of individuals in every stage of decay, from early rigor mortis to almost skeletal. What she saw in front of her now caused even her to let out a quiet gasp of shock, which sent waves down to her stomach and back up again.

  In front of her was a black, rotted corpse in an armchair. Its stomach ruptured from decomposition and covered with a layer of wriggling creamy white flesh. She hadn’t needed to step any closer to know that this flesh wasn’t human; it was fly larvae eating away at whatever was left of the soft tissues. The ghastliest part of this scene, though, wasn’t the natural process of decay, but the fact that on top of the now lopsided head was a pair of red plastic devil’s horns, the kind you get at a joke shop at Halloween. Underneath the hollowed-out sockets, which had once contained the man’s eyes, the jaw was fully extended and what looked like a copy of the Bible had been shoved into his mouth. It looked horrific. It looked as though evil had been here.