Billy the Kid.
Part ONE
‘In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it’ Police Constable John Crouch finished his sentence and stepped out of the driver side of his patrol car where he manoeuvred his body into a long, satisfying stretch that took in all of his back, arms and legs.
His colleague’s balding head appeared the other side of the roof and it was instantly clear that he wasn’t necessarily going to agree ‘that might be true, but you was kicking him in the crutch.’
‘Which is exactly what he did deserve’. Crouch turned away from his colleague and made for their target address.
PC Darren Tainton watched him go. Spring was fresh in the air despite the fact that the sun was into its descent and early evening was perhaps less than an hour away. For Tainton this was the best time of the year where the shackles of winter had been shaken from the world and it seemed like everyone was stepping out again, blinking in the strengthening light and feeling a sense of hope perhaps; wellbeing. He suddenly felt in no hurry to follow Crouch up the steps and out of the sunshine. Instead he turned to face the sun’s rays.
‘Oi! You got love eggs in or summin’? We ain’t got time to be standing round smiling at the sky. Let’s get this done and get in for some coffee’ PC Crouch continued his stomp up the path to number 17 Blackhill Lane, an address where they had been asked to check on the welfare of the old fella who called it home. It was the type of call that had both officer’s had received many times before; elderly occupant, not been seen for a couple of days, not answering the door or the phone, letters piling up, feint whiff of something undesirable... This would often end with one or both of the officers sat in the living room flicking through televisions stations whilst the other goes through the same doubts over the morality of making a cup of tea in the kitchen. The tea would then be made whilst a corpse sits starey-eyed and lacking in conversation in its favourite chair.
Undertakers were 45 minutes; always 45 minutes without exception and this would give the attending officers enough time for a short sit down at least.
As the door went in on Blackhill lane an all too familiar stale atmosphere engulfed them as they stepped in.
‘HELLO... MR ANTRIM? POLICE’ a small pile of letters slipped underfoot as Tainton made for the living room. He pushed at the frosted glass door and the disturbed air again made straight for his smell receptors. ‘I don’t think he’s gonna be answering us mate’.
Crouch turned his own nose up ‘maybe, but all old people’s houses stink don’t they’ Crouch put hands on hips to further his point. ‘I have a theory that all old people smell like they’re dead, the only thing that makes that worse when they actually are, is that they don’t cover it up with their Old Spice or lavender body wash or whatever any more’
‘That’s an interesting theory’ Tainton was no longer surprised by the views of his colleague or his bluntness in expressing them. ‘Well he isn’t in here’.
‘Or in here’ Crouch had leant round into a kitchen diner that was tagged onto the living room. His torso was distorted black and white behind the glass frosting that seemed to be a theme throughout the house and he called back through. ‘Shall I put the kettle on now or come back down?’
Tainton didn’t reply, opting just to shake his head as he placed his foot on the first step leading to the first floor. Tainton never enjoyed these situations; he would rather pace down a pitch-black alleyway after a suspect armed with a knife or baseball bat than pad up a set of stairs in the expectation of finding someone dead and rotting. Tainton had never been good with the concept of death. Even as a child, he could recall a finding a dead cat scraped up by a car driver who believed he was being thoughtful when he had placed it’s little body by the side of the road. The younger Tainton might have come through this experience unscathed but its eyes had been left open, unmoving, staring, sorry. It was an image that infiltrated his dreams and made them nightmares, an image that visited him for years after that event and one that his child psychologist had warned may well stretch into adulthood.
But Tainton was a police officer now; the people who are called when someone feels the need to run away from something terrible. The same people who are then expected to turn up and run towards it.
Tainton wasn’t quite running this time, it was more of a deliberate movement up the stairs, tensing his neck so that should anything be laying on the landing he could snap his head away and then look back in his own time. He paused at the top and he heard his colleague start at the bottom. He turned to face him and noted he was chewing. ‘What’s that?’
‘Biscuit’
‘Tell me you ain’t eating his biscuits.’ Tainton already knew the answer.
Crouch smiled in response to the disapproving look ‘well he ain’t gonna need them is he’.
‘What if it was the biscuits that killed him?’ Tainton found himself whispering, still stood at the top of the stairs holding the high ground and forcing his mate to stop.
‘Well there was no sign of a fucking struggle’
Tainton shook his head once again before climbing the remaining stairs and stepping onto the empty landing. Gingerly he made his way to the room directly in front of him. The door groaned on its hinges as it swung open to reveal a bathroom empty of corpses, if a little unkempt. Tainton was a little surprised; he’d had a run of discovering bodies in the bathroom and he had fully expected his run to continue. Many popular conditions such as heart failure and pneumonia tend to fool the unfortunate recipient into believing that they are in need of emptying their bowels when in fact all it serves to do is ensure that they shed their mortal coil in such a fashion as to leave it sat upright on the toilet with trousers round its ankles.
Or worse, slumped forward. With trousers round its ankles.
Perhaps fate had shown mercy and allowed this gentleman the quite literal deathbed, gently slipping away overnight as outside of his bedroom window the world spun madly on.
‘Hello... Mr ANTRIM’ Tainton called out again ‘POLICE’ his voice lacking in any conviction as he stepped across the landing to the only closed door on the top floor, that of the master bedroom. The door when pushed open revealed drawn, thick curtains which blocked out the daylight into what was actually a relatively small room. The door’s swinging movement was halted very suddenly and both officers looked down to see a slipper-clad foot pointing directly upwards.
‘Here we go’ Tainton knew that he couldn’t hesitate or he simply wouldn’t enter, he wiped at his nose as the musk of the room was disturbed by movement and tried to step over the prone figure to reach the curtains. The sudden change from the bright light of spring to a darkened room rendered him almost blind and two sure ingredients for Tainton’s worst nightmare would be a dead body and darkness.
Tainton kept his head and eyes up and slowly reached toward the window to tug at the curtains, quickly he realised they were beyond his reach and Crouch expressed his usual patience.
‘Come on mate, get in there, fucking hell.’ Tainton rocked back onto the flats of his feet and fixed his colleague with a stare. He slid his asp from his load vest and snapped it to the open position before taking up the stretch position once again. This time the addition of the length of the asp put the curtains just in reach. Tainton spoke as he tried to get a grip of one of the curtains ‘you know how I am around bodies, I really don’t like it. Freaks me out’
The curtains had been twitched enough to open them up by just an inch or so, but with the sun so bright it was enough to increase visibility tenfold. Mr Antrim was wearing a grey robe with blue piping, which looked expensive to the point of being out of place in amongst what was a less than flamboyant house. His face was tilted away from Tainton and this suited him just fine. The Constable did now hesitate, ideally he would simply step over Mr Antrim laying prone on his bedroom floor and tug at the curtains for full visibility but even this felt wrong. Tersely and with impatience clearly registering on his colleagues face he lifted his foot far higher than necessary and swung it quickly over the body, now off balance his foot fell back to the floor with a thud.
In an effort to get both his balance and his composure back Tainton paused to shift his weight. And this is when it happened.
Some time later, both officers would admit to it happening so fast that neither could say exactly what had occurred, but have subsequently pieced it all back together. Tainton firmly placing his foot on the floor had the effect of jolting Mr Antrim who’s eyes suddenly bulged wide and confused; Mr Antrim, not fully conscious but terrified then snapped up to a sitting position and raised his arms, wrapping them firmly round both of Tainton’s legs in a vice like grip. Tainton; on edge due to circumstance already and now believing that he was being dragged to the underworld by a dead-eyed corpse reacted without conscious thought and screamed at the top of his voice, firmly shut his eyes and slammed down the asp that was still in his right hand, striking Mr Antrim. Twice. The blows, designed to free him from the tight grip, connected with the top of the skull and forced his head back down to the floor at some pace where he was to receive a third blow, this time to the soft part at the back of the head against the floor. Where Mr Antrim died instantly.
Blood flowed freely and quickly from the two wounds, pooling on the surface on the cheap, non-absorbent carpet and around the boot of shocked Police Constable Crouch whose trousers were also smattered with blood and tiny skull particles.
‘Why..? Why did you do that?’ Crouch’s eyes beamed wide and staring. The very same expression was mirrored on the ashen face of his colleague. He flicked from the scene laid out on the floor to his bloody asp and back again as he struggled for a word, a sentence, an explanation.
‘I didn’t mean to. I mean, he just caught me out, I thought he was dead’
‘He fucking is now!’
‘Well maybe he isn’t’ Tainton fell to a squatting position making a two finger salute to find a pulse. ‘Jesus, fuck, there isn’t a pulse. He’s dead! He really is dead! Get an ambulance, get an ambulance here quick!’
The radio strapped to his chest burst to life. ‘Alpha two one, alpha two one are you receiving?’
It was their call sign; the two men exchanged a look like for a second they believed that the force control centre knew what they had done, that they had killed an elderly man. Clubbed to death in his own bedroom. The pause went on too long. ‘We have to answer them’ Crouch said.
‘And say what?’Tainton had changed his mind about the ambulance just as soon as he had suggested it.
‘Alpha two one, alpha two one for a welfare check are you receiving? Over’
‘There you are’ Crouch breathed out, he actually felt better ‘they just want to know that we’re ok, we haven’t updated yet is all.’ With that, PC Crouch turned and moved back onto the landing, feeling like he had to step away from the scene, from what had happened before he could transmit a response.
‘We’re not fucking alright are we; what are we supposed to say’ Tainton slumped onto the bed, the asp, still in his hand lolled against his leg, smearing blood on his trousers.
Crouch lifted his radio to dry lips ‘Alpha Two One, we’re all in order here control, we’ll update shortly’
Tainton’s head snapped upright and he bore a hole in the back of his colleagues head. Crouch turned to meet his stare as the radio kicked in again.
‘All received two one. Assume you have found Mr Antrim and all is well?’
Crouch was held in Tainton’s desperate glare as he replied ‘yes, yes, all in order’
Tainton broke his stare as his head fell into his hands. He gripped fistfuls of his own hair and closed his eyes to Mr Antrim and the pool of thick blood that seemed to have now consumed the whole room. Tainton hissed his words: ‘why did you say that? Why would you say we were fine? He’s dead’
‘What should I have said? Yeah, could you send a body-bag please, appears we’ve clubbed him to death!?’
‘But he is fucking dead!’ Tainton suddenly ran a thought through his mind, his eyes suddenly grew wide again, realisation perhaps or maybe just desperation. He sat upright, his body language holding Crouch’s attention. ‘They were expecting a dead body’ he said, almost sounding excited, ‘they thought he was a gonner when they sent us here. Now we have a dead body. We just say that this was the scene that we walked into, he coulda fell, banged his head; it happens.’ Tainton rose back to his feet, suddenly looking round furtively for props to add flesh to his story. Crouch was unmoving and unimpressed. Tainton picked up on it. ‘What?’
‘You’ve got blood on your asp, hair fibres, probably pieces of skull. Your trousers and mine; both splattered in blood and shit. He’s still fucking warm and he’s bled out within the last few minutes. CSI are gonna want answers; the autopsy is gonna want answers. Every fucker is gonna want answers and right now all we have is that you twatted him with an asp’
Tainton could have gone back into his panic mode, hands grabbing at hair, pulling it tight til it hurts like hell as if the pain is some sort of retribution, what he deserved for what he’d done. But there wasn’t time. A voice, a voice had called up from downstairs.
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