Hangman (ON HOLD)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Detective Grey.

I was attending the funeral of the late Benjamin Griffin when I felt my phone vibrating in my right hand pocket. I quite often attended the funerals of the cases I worked. Being that this was a relatively small community you usually could find some kind of connection with the deceased, and I liked to offer my condolences to the family, it helps create favourable PR for the police force here. I genuinely didn't want to answer my phone, even though I was technically on duty, so I let it go to message bank. My service provider sent all my voicemails to me via text, so I would read that and decide if I needed to go.

Sure enough a few moments later I felt my pocket vibrate again, signally the voicemail message. I slid the phone from my pocket discretely and opened up the message.

WOMAN FOUND DEAD THIS MORNING BY ROUTINE CHECK AFTER CONCERNED NEIGHBOUR PHONED IN. YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED. PLEASE PHONE THE STATION FOR DIRECTIONS AND FURTHER DETAILS.

You've got to be kidding me. Another death in a little over a week. I know that for some stations this was normal, but we usually dealt with reckless behaviour, drunken stupidity and the petty crime side of the law, we didn't get a lot of 'dead body' cases.

I stayed until the end of the service, it's not as if the dead person was waiting for me or anything. I offered my condolences to the family and accepted there thanks for finding him and 'doing such a good job', before leaving the cemetery and heading for my car.

I phoned into the station and spoke briefly with Pypa, she gave me the address and name of the deceased as well as the basic details of the scene. Elaine Tooter, 44, single, apparent suicide, neighbour called it in after the cat of the deceased came looking for food and water at her place, says she never missed feeding that cat so was worried she had fallen and called us.

Another suicide? That is most definitely out of character for our community.

I drove to the address I had been given, pulling up on the kerb, joining the line of emergency services vehicles. Making my way to the front door, I flashed my ID at the officer standing guard before heading to where the most activity seemed to be coming from.

The bathroom.

When I got there, I started to wish I had stayed at the funeral.

The victim had hung herself from the shower screen support beam. Which had snapped sometime after death. It appeared she had also slit her wrists, obviously making sure there was no chance of the suicide not working. This I could have dealt with, I wouldn't have liked it, but it was dealable. It was all the things that had happened to her since she died that was what had me backing out of the room. Not before I had a chance to notice it all though.

The way her eyes were wide open and glassy, seeming to stare straight through me. The image of those cold, lifeless eyes was haunting in its own right. The fall her body had made when the support beam snapped must have caused enough pressure for her bowels and bladder to release themselves as she was resting in a puddle of urine, faeces and dried blood from her wrists. Her body itself was twisted at an impossible angle and was mostly a purplish, red colour, like a giant bruise. Her stomach was bloated with what I could only assume to be bodily gases, and you could tell from the look of her skin and posture that she would be stiff and cold to touch, and the smell, there was no way possible that I could think of to explain the stench coming from the room.

This woman had been dead for a few days. At this moment, I cursed rigor mortis for causing such disgusting and unwanted things to happen to a dead body.

I gave a rushed examination of the scene. I wasn't worried about missing anything, this was obviously a suicide, absolutely no doubt about that. I couldn't stay there, I ordered the photographer to take the photo's of the scene before telling the rest of the team to remove the body as soon as he was done.