Police, Arrests & Suspects Page 21

  Alas, however, when he arrived on scene, his brother’s paws proved too big for the particular cavity on offer and the buzzer, in this case replaced by Drew’s anguished screams, was sounding far too often. There then followed a frantic phone call to their dear old mum, in the hope that she would have smaller and daintier hands. On arrival, she was instructed to do something no mother should ever have to do: attempt to extricate a foreign object that was embedded deep in her son’s rectum. Chris, meanwhile, was subsequently relegated to ‘holding open’ duties, using the two dessert spoons his mother had brought with her.

  We listened patiently, wincing and grimacing at the appropriate times during his unfortunate tale. Drew appeared physically drained as the story came to an end and he looked up at us expectantly.

  “You’re a good liar, Drew,” said Brad eventually, “but before you get too excited, I’m also a good liar. You’ve got a long way to go before you’re in Pinocchio’s league.”

  Actually, in this case, I wasn’t so sure that Pinocchio was such a good example to use: I’d read that scientists had worked out that, assuming he was made of oak, Pinocchio would have weighed just over 9lb with a nose about an inch long; on that basis, if his nose doubled in length after each fib, the thirteenth lie would have put so much strain on his neck that it would have broken. Hardly the role model for liars that he makes himself out to be!

  Before I could come up with an alternative suggestion, however, Brad was off again. “I’ll give you the bit about your mum and your brother delving into your anus – I can see that, but I don’t believe a word about Big Vince coming round.” Unbeknownst to Drew, Big Vince had been locked up two days earlier and was still on remand; therefore, he couldn’t possibly have been responsible.

  “By the way,” added Brad, turning his attention to Drew’s mum, “I think you can probably take your hand out now.” Mrs Peacock looked visibly relieved that her ordeal was finally over, and Chris withdrew the spoons with a clink.

  Whilst Brad continued questioning Drew as to what had really happened, I used the opportunity to call for an ambulance in case there really was something ‘languishing in the depths’. Twenty minutes later and Drew was still maintaining his innocence, although by now he had conceded that Vince hadn’t been round and that there were no car parts involved.

  Hearing a vehicle pull up outside, I gratefully went out into the fresh air and waved to the crew, before noticing the Red Cross symbol on the side of the ambulance.

  “We often turn out to help the regular ambulance service if they are hard–pressed,” explained the technician as he hopped out of the passenger side, clearly having noted my furrowed brow.

  “It makes us sound like a Third World country,” I replied, but, before I could elaborate, I was drowned out by the sound of my colleague yelling from inside the building:

  “DON’T TRY AND SHIT IT OUT!”

  I ran back inside, quickly followed by the Red Cross staff, to witness Brad pleading with Drew not to strain to force the unidentified object out.

  “Your insides might come out!” cautioned my colleague in a bid to stop Drew from self-administering. Mrs Peacock hurried over to my side to ask what he meant.

  “I think he’s suggesting that he might suffer a rectal prolapse if he were to strain too hard,” volunteered one of the medics. Mrs Peacock’s face remained blank.

  “I think we’re worried he might get a little tail,” I explained. She seemed satisfied with that.

  “So what on earth has occurred here?” queried the other medic, scratching his head.

  I think the stress of it all – not least the indignity of having to put her hands up her son’s bottom – had become too much for Mrs Peacock. She broke her silence and told us that she was sick and tired of this farce, ordering Drew to get on with it and tell us all what had really happened so that we could all be on our way.

  There is a golden rule in life that says: Never do anything that you wouldn’t want to explain to a paramedic. However, it seems Drew had ignored this advice when he found himself bored with nothing to do on a slow Thursday afternoon.

  “… so I just started to wonder what I could fit in my arse – don’t look at me like that! We’ve all done it!”

  We all did look at him like that… because none of us had done it!

  “What’s in there?” I asked him.

  “A tub of my mum’s moisturiser,” came the reply.

  “I hope it’s not my Nivea!” exclaimed a distraught Mrs Peacock.

  Drew hung his head. It seems that research and development had eventually turned into shame and regret.

  We had no desire to prolong Peacock’s embarrassment, and satisfied that this wasn’t a police matter, we got back in our car and left the job in the capable hands of the British Red Cross. We were just about to head back to the station for a well-deserved cup of tea – and to soak our eyes in bleach in an attempt to erase the awful sight from our minds – when Comms must have realised we were on the move again.

  “Reports are coming in of a body being found near the boating lake beside the shop, can you attend?”

  I went to hit the blues then remembered that we were still in an unmarked car. It was rapidly turning out to be one of those days! I should have realised this morning that something was awry when I rolled my car window down to let a spider out and a bee flew in. Five minutes later, just as dusk was falling, we arrived at the lake. An ambulance was already on scene, parked up on the grass, blue lights flashing.

  “Dead?” queried Brad as we approached. We were already thinking ahead to what needed to be cordoned off, what other resources might be required and if there were any witnesses.

  “Not quite as reported,” replied Lysa, poking her head out of the vehicle. “He’s collapsed – maybe had some sort of allergic reaction.”

  “Any idea what to?” I added, “Do you think he’ll survive?”

  “Well, if he doesn’t, John, I’ll be sure to invite you to an Open Mike Night,” she replied.

  I couldn’t really see the connection between the medical state of the patient and a date at the local comedy club… until I saw her slowly shaking her head. Perhaps her sarcastic tone should have been a clue.

  “He’s called Mike, isn’t he?” I clarified. “And by Open Mike Night you mean the post mortem, don’t you?”

  She nodded to both. “We’ve only just got him into the ambulance, Sherlock. Give us a chance before you begin asking us to predict his future, will you! Those teenage girls over there found him.” She pointed to a couple of females standing outside the shop.

  “When we arrived they were giving him CPR, which was all very laudable except for the fact that he was already conscious and breathing. The bigger girl was sitting astride him and beating on his chest – we had to drag her off before she broke all his ribs. The other girl was busy French kissing him, by the look of it. We told them to stand over there and wait for you to arrive. You’ll probably get more information out of them for the time being.”

  Point taken, I put away my notebook and we headed over towards the pair. At the most, they looked to be about sixteen or seventeen. They were stood idly chatting to each other, dressed in the requisite velour tracksuits and Ugg boots, which seems to be the standard uniform of most teenage girls in Sandford. I could have sworn I vaguely recognised one of them but, before I could be certain, she ran up and flung her arms around me.

  “PC Donoghue! My favourite copper!” she exclaimed.

  “Can you stop hugging me please, Kirsty?” I calmly requested, standing passively, my arms pressed tightly against my sides.

  “It’s just a grab unless you hug me back, PC Donoghue!” she added, inviting me to reciprocate.

  “Well then, can you stop grabbing me, please?”

  She eventually let go but, undaunted by my lack of cuddles, she bounced excitedly from foot to foot. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you for so long!”

  “That’s a good thing,” I told her. “It
means that you haven’t been in any more trouble.”

  “PC Donoghue is lovely,” she explained animatedly to her friend. “He locked me up when I glassed my boyfriend, and he was really nice to me.”

  All I can say is that if you ever find yourself going out with Kirsty Stromboli, don’t forget to buy her flowers on her birthday. Her partner, Wayne, had described her in his statement as: ‘temperamental – half temper, half mental’. His lack of petrol-station roses had been just the thing to tip her over the edge and all hell had broken loose.

  “And what’s your name?” I asked her friend.

  “Anne-Marie,” she replied shyly.

  “Is that hyphenated?”

  “No, she’s just got a bit of asthma,” interjected Kirsty. “And she can hear what you say, you know!”

  I chose to ignore her comment and introduced myself and my colleague to the girls. Anne-Marie glanced hesitantly over to her friend and slowly began to approach Brad with her arms outstretched. He responded by indicating that, contrary to what her friend had done, it wasn’t necessary to welcome every police officer you meet with a hug.

  “Did you notice anything unusual when you found the male on the floor?” asked Brad after the basics of the incident had been established.

  “I did notice a snake,” volunteered Kirsty.

  “What did it look like?”

  “Shifty,” came the reply.

  “It could be an adder,” I suggested. It is the only venomous snake native to Britain. They’re not usually aggressive, but will react if trodden on or cornered. Then again, lots of households in the town have exotic snakes as pets – if one had escaped it could just as easily be one of those. We’d need to identify what type of snake it was if we were to establish what antidote would be required. I’d break the news to Lysa later that she might have to suck out the poison.

  “Where do adders come from?” whispered Anne-Marie, as we began searching the nearby bushes. If we’d had more time, I’d have told her that it was when an abacus and a grass snake loved each other very much, but there was no time to waste. Ironically, in a bid to flush it out, we racked our asps and began beating the long grass.

  “THERE IT IS!” yelled Kirsty, jumping back. “IT BIT ME!”

  The snake was following her, almost jumping up in a bid to attack her again. She was hysterical; tripping over as she tried to escape. It kept after her, rearing up each time she tried to kick it away.

  Brad and I rushed over and immediately started to beat the snake to death with our batons, sending it flicking in the air with each blow that struck. Alternate thwacks rained down on the serpent as we sought to put an end to its killing spree, but it seemed impervious to our strikes. Finally, my colleague took hold of the handle of his baton with both hands, raised it high above his head and then delivered the final coup de grâce, bringing it down hard into the centre of the snake. The two ends sprang up as its middle was driven into the ground before flopping back down again to leave the beast flaccid and spent on the grass. Brad the Impaler!

  After our period of manic activity we now stood bent double, breathing heavily, our hands on our knees, positioned either side of the limp and lifeless corpse; satisfied that we had executed the demon and put an end to its trail of destruction once and for all.

  “Get Google on your phone and I’ll describe it,” instructed Brad breathlessly as I put my baton away. There wasn’t a second to lose if we were to find out what effect the bite would have on our victims. The paramedics were still at the site, carrying out urgent checks on their patient. A glance over at Kirsty saw her pale and shaking, hanging onto her friend for support. Retrieving my mobile from my pocket, I saw Brad hook the thing over his asp and raise it up towards a street light to get a better view.

  “It’s blue,” he shouted out to me. I punched it into the search bar.

  “Blue Malaysian, Blue Bungarus, Blue rattlesnake, Blue Indigo… there’s a few.”

  “Shiny texture.”

  I refined the search and rapidly scrolled through the results. “Eastern Indigo or Blue Coral snake?”

  “It’s rot and mildew resistant.”

  “I think they all are?” I fired back. “Can you describe the head?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Why, is it too badly damaged?”

  “No, it’s a frayed knot. How obvious do I have to make this? I’m describing a piece of blue rope. That’s what we’ve just brutally murdered – some blue twine that someone has tied a granny knot at the end of.” Brad now turned his attention to the girls. “You’re saying that this thing actually bit you?”

  “Well, my foot touched it!” replied Kirsty defensively.

  “Let me get this clear,” clarified Brad. “This is the shifty bit of rope that you saw earlier?”

  “I think so,” came the muted reply.

  Brad let out a loud sigh. He asked to see the underside of Kirsty’s boot and as she teetered about on one leg, he shone the torch on the bottom of her Ugg.

  “The rope was stuck to the bottom of your boot with chewing gum… that’s why it leapt about after you.” He shook his head.

  The girls just stood there looking shamefaced and despondent. I felt a little sorry for them – their hearts had been in the right place, even if the snake’s hadn’t. I tried to make them feel better by telling them that it could have been anything that had stricken down our original victim, before telling them the case of Valerius Maximus, a Latin writer who had lived in Rome centuries ago. He met his death when a tortoise was dropped on his bald head by an eagle who had mistaken it for a rock.

  That seemed to cheer them up a bit and I could see that Anne-Marie was itching to tell me something, as she tentatively raised her hand.

  “The girl in the second row: have you got a question for the panel?”

  She looked around as if to make sure that it was her I was actually speaking to.

  “I don’t know if this is helpful at all?” she began slowly, “But when we found the man on the grass he seemed really keen for me to have this; he kept on trying to give it to me as he lay there. I couldn’t work out what he was trying to say as his face was all swollen like a pumpkin. Maybe it’s a clue to who tried to kill him?”

  We looked at her dumbfounded. Why had she waited until now to reveal this vital information?

  “Well?”

  She held out her hand to reveal her secret.

  “It’s his bloody EpiPen!” we chorused in disbelief. Brad unceremoniously grabbed it from her and ran over towards the ambulance.

  “Was it important?” asked Anne-Marie, looking pleased that she had been able to help.

  “Yes, it was,” I replied, patting her on the shoulder. “People carry them in case they go into anaphylactic shock – they deliver a dose of adrenalin. It’s great that you’ve given it to us but, you know, you really should have mentioned it sooner.”

  “I forgot about it when we were looking for the snake. It was just all so exciting.” She looked as if she was about to cry and I wasn’t sure if it was because she felt she had done something really good, or something really bad. I tried to think of something to console her but before I could say anything, Kirsty was in like a shot.

  “I once watched a mime artist almost choke to death on a street corner and everyone clapped… for a couple of reasons.”

  Brad had now reappeared, and told me that the arrival of the EpiPen had answered a couple of questions for the paramedics and they were now ready to leave for the hospital.

  “PC Donoghue! PC Donoghue!” pleaded Kirsty on hearing this. “If I give you my phone, will you take a selfie of me and Anne-Marie with the body before they go?”

  “There’s two parts to this answer, Kirsty. Firstly, if I take a picture of you both, that’s not a selfie, and, secondly, no.” What kind of mawkish society are we living in!

  “Well, can you give us a lift home then, please?” she requested, bouncing up and down. “I’ve got to see to the little ‘un.”
>
  With all that had been going on, I’d almost forgotten that she had a child. A wave of panic suddenly overtook me as I realised that the baby might have been left home alone while we had been chatting. She must have read my mind and reassured me, telling me that the baby’s granny was looking after her.

  “You’ll remember her, PC Donoghue,” she added, “you were scrapping with her outside the pub last Saturday. She told me all about it.”

  Before you begin imagining that I had assaulted some poor pensioner, let’s just remember that this is Sandford: whilst Kirsty’s mum might well be a grandmother, there is no need to picture her with a blue rinse and a tartan shopping trolley. Due to the high rate of teenage pregnancies in Sandford, you can be a grandmother in this town while you’re still in your early thirties.

  If my memory serves me right, this particular grandmother had peroxide blonde hair, was spilling out of her very low-cut top, was wearing six-inch stilettoes, had a very dirty mouth on her and some very sharp rings on her fingers, judging by the cut under my right eye.

  “And how is your mother?”

  “She says she’s never drinking absinthe again. Oh, and she apologises for biting you.”

  “Well, pass on my regards to her and tell her that she’s got a good right hook.”

  “I will PC Donoghue. She’ll be pleased with that!”

  “So, are you and Wayne still together?” I enquired, changing the subject – Wayne being the victim in the glassing incident for which I had originally locked Kirsty up.