Cath Staincliffe: Blue Murder

Dean listened to the older ones chatting to the driver as they boarded.

‘Cold enough for you, chuck?’

‘I hate it. I like the heat, nice and hot I like it.’

‘So I hear, but I was talking about the weather.’

‘Cheeky bugger.’

‘Oy, give her a ticket or we’ll be stuck here callin’ all day.’

Teasing each other, comfortable, as though the bus belonged to them. The driver whistled all the way. Dean watched the city pass. The bleak suburbs of North Manchester, practically a different country from the south where he lived. No students stayed up this side. No media people, no pavement cafes here or tapas bars. Large areas of old terraced housing had been bulldozed to make way for inner relief roads. Retail parks with their curving paths and burglar-proof metal cabins lay between landscaped areas planted with vicious shrubbery.

They went past the stadium they’d built for the Commonwealth Games 2002 and the Velodrome. Great that. Having the games. Sydney beat them for the Olympics, he could remember everyone waiting for the announcement back then, the feeling that they were up there with a chance. Gutted, they were. There was a big party down in Castlefield, he’d watched it on the telly, and people not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Least, after that, they’d got the Commonwealth, all them athletes in town, brilliant.

With a lurch he remembered why he was running. He couldn’t go back inside. He couldn’t. Be Strangeways this time. Twenty-two, wasn’t he. Oh, Paula. Man, what would he tell her? Sick relative? Mate in trouble? Maybe if he turned it round. Told her Douggie needed him, being hassled or something. Make it sound dangerous so she wouldn’t try to come calling. What was he going to do if Douggie was away? The thought drenched his back with sweat. The driver started on a new tune. Oasis – You Gotta Roll With It. Aw, God, thought Dean, if only

The socos took positions at the shoulders, hips, knees of the body. Rachel Grassmere readied the camera and gave the count. ‘On, three. One, two, three.’

They grunted with the strain as they rolled the corpse. Janine stepped back involuntarily as the mass of guts slithered from the abdominal cavity with a sucking sound and came to rest over the corpse and on the ground. Lurid, multi-coloured coils: a shocking sight. She wished she’d taken two Fisherman’s Friends. She thought of the book Catch 22 where the young air man was complaining about the cold as he held his guts in his fingers. She took a small breath through her mouth. And another.

She gagged then, silently, feeling the sour wash hit her throat. She swallowed hard, kept her mouth tight shut. Everything sticky with blood. So much of it. Trousers and t-shirt stiff with the stuff. The left side of his face darker where the blood had pooled after death. She was amazed there’d been any left in him.

‘That is nasty. Very nasty.’ Richard said.

‘Thank God I skipped breakfast,’ said Janine.

She turned away, from the sight and smell, drank in the cold, cleaner air, took a few steps down the plot. He had put a lot of work in here, Mr Tulley. She was no big gardener but she knew enough to recognise the fruits of labour. Rows of cabbages and the tops of root veg at one side. Plots clear and the ground prepared for more. She wondered who he was, this murder victim? What sort of man was he, who’d planted the seeds here and picked the harvest and pottered in his shed? In the hours and days to come she would be finding out everything about him. Nothing would remain private. It would become her property: his life; to study and explore, to sift through and sort and peer into in her efforts to find out who killed him. Who had robbed him of that life, left him to bleed on the cold, winter ground?

‘Chief Inspector.’ They called her back. The deceased was now wrapped in a body bag which lay to the right of the path backed by a border of small cyclamens. The juxtaposition made her think of some modern art installation. Doc was packing his bag. Rachel Grassmere stood by the shed doorway. ‘Looks like it started in here,’ she said.

Janine moved over and Richard followed. She peered inside, careful not to touch the doorframe and spoil any possible prints. The stench of death still tainted the air. The shed was large with potting tables on two walls and tools hanging on the third. Neat and tidy. No smashed pots or spilt compost.

‘We’ve blood spray to the wall either side of the door and the floor here. We’ll try for prints on the door frame, the gate, door, tap on the water butt over there.’

She took in the splashes, ochre against the greying wood of the shed. ‘Rough wood.’ Janine noted.

‘Yep. Not promising anything.’

‘Probably a knife,’ Richard said.

‘Well spotted, Sherlock,’ Janine said wryly.

Janine retraced her steps to the young PC at the gate.

‘Constable.’

‘Yes, sir – ma’am.’

‘What else do we know about Mr Tulley?’

He rifled through his pages. ‘He lives round the corner, Ashgrove. It’s a big house on the corner, further up. He’s a teacher,’ he added, ‘the deputy head at Saint Columbus High.’

Deputy head. A professional man, then. Perhaps the allotment had been his way of unwinding, escaping from the demands of busy school life.

‘Lives alone?’

The eyes panicked, a fine sweat burst onto the upper lip. ‘Don’t know.’

More officers arrived to be briefed by Rachel Grassmere for a fingertip search of the allotment and nearby area. Janine watched them gather round for their instructions and she signalled with a wave that she was on her way. She removed the bunny suit and slippers and bagged them. They would be retained in case there were any allegations of cross-contamination by the defence should charges be brought. She would call on Mr Simon, the man who’d found the body, and hear the gist of his story. Richard came over to join her. She asked him to set house-to-house in motion and then come and find her.

‘What’s going on?’ Mam said.

‘Don’t know,’ Jade said quickly.

‘Out there,’ Mam hung onto the sink, stood on tip toes to try and see over the wall. ‘Something is.’ She opened the back door and went out. Jade followed her. Their back gate was broken. The wood had gone all soft and crumbly and one day when Mam was putting the wheelie bin out the top hinge had come loose. Now you had to open it carefully or it swung over and nearly fell right off. Jade never bothered, she just climbed up onto the wheelie bin and over the wall instead.

Jade watched Mam lift the gate open and go out into the back alley. Jade climbed up to sit on the wall. The stone was cold through her clothes.

‘What is it?’ Mam asked.

‘They’ve found a body,’ one of the neighbours said.

‘What, down there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do they know who it is?’

‘Mr Tulley, deputy at St Columbus.’

They were all excited, like it was a special on East Enders or something. Good and awful all mixed up.

‘His insides were hanging out.’

‘Good God.’

‘Who’d do a thing like that?’

‘Like the Ripper.’

‘Only saw him last Sunday at church.’

‘He teaches our Joanne.’

No one bothered Jade. There was a lump of moss on the wall. It was dry and soft, like a fairy carpet. Jade stroked it. If she looked close there were tiny brown stalks sticking up from the green with little bells on the end of them. She flicked them with her fingers.

They talked for ages then Mam said she felt rough and had to go in. She made a drink and took one of her tablets. Pretty soon she started looking sleepy again. Jade said, ‘Can I get some sweets?’