Chris Simms: Killing the Beasts

'Thanks very much, madam,' Jon said, making a mental note of the ravehead description. 'If I can have your number we'll call as soon as access is possible.'

He jotted it down and she trundled moodily off up the road, the buggy's wheels picking up bits of sodden brown leaves littering the street.

'Right,' said Jon, looking at the house. 'Have you checked the rest of the property?'

'No,' said CSO Whyte, looking alarmed that he'd failed in his duty.

'That's fine,' said Jon. But, having been caught by surprise on a recent murder investigation when the offender had still been hiding in the upstairs of the house, Jon was taking no chances. 'What's your patrol partner's name again?'

'CSO Margaret Payne. She's comforting the girl's mother in the kitchen.'

Jon trod carefully across the patchy lawn, eyes on the driveway for any suspicious objects. When he reached the front doorstep he called over his shoulder, 'CSO Whyte, only people with direct permission from me are allowed past, understood?'

'Yes sir,' he replied, checking down the street as if there was a danger of being charged by a curious crowd.

Pushing from his mind the information he had been given by the officer, Jon turned his attention to the front door. He saw that there were no signs of a forced entry. He stepped into the hallway, keeping his feet as close to the skirting board as possible. Immediately he was struck by an odd smell — sharp and slightly fruity. For some reason he was reminded of DIY superstores. As he made his way along the hall he examined the carpet for anything unusual. Reaching the doorway to the front room he glanced in. The body of a young white female with bleached spiky hair lay partially on its side by the coffee table. Her pale pink dressing gown was crumpled up around her legs and had partly fallen open at the front, revealing her left breast. He didn't know if it was the lack of obvious injuries, but she didn't look like she was dead. Unconscious perhaps, but not dead.

He carried on into the kitchen where CSO Payne was sitting, holding the mother's hand across the table. Aware that a six-foot-four stranger with a beaten-up face suddenly stepping into the room could prove unsettling for both women, Jon gently coughed before quietly announcing, 'Hello, my name is Jon Spicer. I'm a detective with Greater Manchester Police.'

The woman lowered a damp handkerchief and looked up at him. Her face had that emptiness which shock and grief instils, but her eyes were alert. He felt them flickering over his face, settling for a second on the lump in the bridge of his nose, which had been broken in a rugby match.

'Could I ask your name, please?' he continued.

'Diane Mather,' she whispered, reaching out and taking a sip of tea from a mug with a snail on it.

'OK Diane,' said Jon, walking round the table and checking the back door. A bolt was slid across the top and a key was in the lock. 'Has anyone touched this door?' he asked them both.

CSO Payne answered no and he looked at Diane, who also shook her head.

'And have you been in any other parts of the house apart from the hallway, here and the front room?'

'No.' Now she was watching him a little more closely.

Jon walked from the kitchen. Carefully he climbed the stairs, pausing when his head was level with the landing to check where the doors were. The first led into a little bathroom: no one behind the shower curtain. The next was the spare room, only just big enough for a clothes horse that was adorned with vest tops, socks and knickers. The final room was the main bedroom, fairly tidy except for the middle drawer of the chest in the corner. It hung half open, and a few photo albums and booklets lay haphazardly on the corner of the bed, as if dumped there in a hurry. Jon checked under the bed and in the wardrobe. Satisfied no one else was in the house, he walked over to the bedside table and looked in the ashtray. Amongst the Marlboro Light cigarette butts were a few crumpled bits of foil, dried brown crusts on one side. A plastic tube lay next to the small alarm clock.

Jon shook his head. From his earliest days as a uniformed officer, he had watched as more and more drugs crept into Manchester. Now, along with the alcohol riots on Friday and Saturday nights, they were dealing with the devastating effects that crack, heroin, speed and God knew what else were having on people's lives.

At the window he looked down to the road below and saw the CSOs' supervisor had arrived. He went back down the stairs and headed outside.

'Sergeant Evans,' the older man said, shaking Jon's hand over the police tape now cordoning off the driveway and front garden.

'DI Spicer, MISU. I was just passing when I heard the radio call.'

The sergeant nodded. 'So, we have a body inside?'

'Yup,' Jon replied. 'Apparently her throat is blocked with a load of white stuff. 'Jon looked at CSO Whyte. 'Could it not have been saliva? An allergic reaction or something?'

The officer looked at him as if he had asked a rhetorical question and was about to supply the answer.

Sergeant Evans then dropped a question into the silence. 'When CSO Payne checked for a pulse, did she say how cold the body felt?'

CSO Whyte thought for a second. 'No. She was trying to get the mother away from the body when she spotted the white stuff…' Abruptly, he stopped talking.

'What?' Jon prompted.

The officer stumbled slightly with his words. 'She didn't actually check for a pulse. But the mum — she kept on saying,“She's dead. She's dead.” So we just sort of assumed-'

'Jesus Christ,' said Jon. He went to his car, grabbed a pair of latex gloves from inside and hurried back into the house. In the hallway he spotted a pile of women's magazines by the telephone. One by one he laid them across the living room floor, creating a series of stepping stones that enabled him to get to the girl without treading on the carpet.

As he got closer to her, he noticed that the strange smell was getting stronger. As he'd noted before, the dressing gown was crumpled, but he couldn't tell whether she had been assaulted, dragged there or the disturbance to her clothing was from where her mother had been hugging her.

He crouched down and checked for a pulse. The skin was cold to the touch. He let out a sigh, then examined the rest of her more closely.

No defence wounds to her forearms or hands, no obvious sign of any injury at all. He leaned in for a closer look at her fingers. Apart from being bluish in colour, the nails were fine — no debris under them or damage caused by a struggle.

Next he looked at her face. Her eyes were shut, a few small red dots around them. Mouth slightly open, lips also a faint blue. No blood, saliva or vomit on her lips. No bruising to her throat. Getting up he made his way back across the magazines and into the kitchen. 'CSO Payne,' he said, pointing to her utility belt, 'could I borrow your torch please?'

In the front room he switched it on and directed the beam into the girl's mouth. Peering in, he saw the back of her throat was completely clogged with something white and viscous. The substance had completely blocked her airways. Death by suffocation? Some sort of lung purge or bizarre vomit?

He bent forward so his head was just above the carpet. Holding the torch to one side he swept the beam backwards and forwards across the floor, looking to see if the light picked out any tiny fragments lying on the carpet. Nothing apart from fragments of cigarette ash and an old chewing gum wrapper. Standing up, he noted the bin in the corner was full of crushed cans, empty cigarette packets, bits of cigarette paper and other pieces of rubbish. Next to it were a couple of empty three-litre cider bottles.

Back in the kitchen he sat down and quietly asked the mother, 'Do you know what time it was when you discovered your daughter?'