I took a deep breath and gave myself a couple of seconds to come to terms with what I had heard. My mind raced. I tried to remember the protocol for dealing with deaths. Who should I inform? Did I need help? What would the body be like? Would I have to deal with it alone? Fortunately, this heightened mental activity anaesthetised my emotions and I cautiously entered the house.
I saw the staircase immediately on my left. I looked up. My view directly upwards was partially blocked by the underside of the landing, but I could see something dripping from directly above. The drops were different colours; some were red, others were white and frothy. Thoughts of Ernest came back to me as an identical stench hit me. I was unprepared once again. I stood on the bottom stair, pressing myself against the wall so as to avoid the dripping saliva, urine and blood. I looked up and saw the soles of the man’s feet about six feet above my head. His body rotated very slowly and sinisterly: half a turn one way, then half a turn the other. It’s extremely difficult to clearly describe the feeling that overcame me as I stood there, only that it was very unnatural and uncomfortable. I climbed a couple more stairs. I couldn’t take my eyes off the feet above me. I felt scared, and I was quite out of breath. As I walked up a few more stairs, I began to see more and more of the man’s body. He continued rotating. As I got to the top, he was positioned with his back to me, but I knew it would only be a couple of seconds before he would rotate to face me. I braced myself, as I knew I was about to see his face. What I saw next lives with me to this day as the most frightening sight I’ve ever experienced.
He was hanging with electric cable cut from his vacuum cleaner, which he’d looped over one of the beams in the loft. On the floor underneath him was his stepladder, which had fallen over, presumably as he’d hung himself. The cable dug so deeply into his neck that the top of his head almost pointed downwards towards his feet. His neck was broken. The pressure had caused blood to ooze from his nose and ears. The groove which the cord had made was so deep that his whole neck had turned dark purple. His eyes were wide open. As he rotated round and faced me, he seemed to look at me. His eyes looked alive; his tongue was hanging out of his mouth and had inflated to almost half the size of his head. A mixture of blood and frothy saliva dripped out with chilling slowness. His hands were white and his fingernails were blue. The television in his bedroom was still on and, strangely, made me feel very uneasy. I was scared and had seen enough. I went back downstairs and out of the house.
I wasn’t at all surprised to be the focus of everybody’s attention as I walked out. I couldn’t even pretend to look unaffected by what I’d seen. A woman in her forties approached me and asked if I was okay. I instantly liked her; she appreciated that I was human, despite the impression a police uniform could give. ‘It’s a bit of a mess in there,’ I said.
I immediately realised that this was not the best thing to say with the man’s family in close proximity. I used my radio to ask for supervision to attend the scene, as this was procedure for any suspicious death, which was how I was treating it until it had been confirmed as a suicide. I needed assistance in any case. I went back into the house and did everything that I could remember to do. I checked all the doors and windows for signs of forced entry. I wasn’t surprised there was no damage. Even though I was treating the death as suspicious, I’d formed the opinion that it was suicide. This was confirmed when I found a letter left by the man on his bed. It read: Can’t go on any longer. I’m sorry to the person who has to find me like this. Please don’t let Mum see me in this state and tell her I love her.
I left the letter there, as I didn’t know what would need to be photographed by Scenes of Crime. I looked at the man’s face again. Half of me felt gut-wrenching pity for a person who had obviously been unable to cope with life, and half of me felt irritated that he could do such a thing to his family. The body carried on slowly rotating. It didn’t even enter my mind to get him down. Anyone could see that he was dead and, indeed, when the ambulance arrived they didn’t get him down either. One of the ambulance crew held the dead man’s wrist for about ten seconds and told me that he had been dead overnight. He was very matter-of-fact about the process. I knew I would have to get him down at some point, but I decided to wait for my shift sergeant to arrive.
I went outside again with the ambulance crew and watched as they drove off. Then I went back into my car and reluctantly looked for the dreaded Form 49. Just as I found it, my sergeant arrived and my ordeal of being alone with this situation was over.
‘What have we got here, Mick?’ he asked.
‘It’s a male hanging from the loft by electric cable, Sarge. Ambulance have been and gone. I’ve checked the house. There’s no sign of foul play and I found a note from the deceased. It looks like suicide.’
‘Good lad. Are you okay?’
‘Fine, Sarge.’
We entered together and I pointed Sergeant Hopkins in the right direction. As we walked up the stairs, he pulled out a handkerchief and covered his nose and mouth with it. I was reassured that he, too, found the odour too much to bear. I would always carry a handkerchief with me at work after this particular incident. For now, though, I had to resort to burying my face in my jumper again.
Sergeant Hopkins looked closely at the man’s face. ‘Oh dear,’ he muttered. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Come on, Mick, let’s get him down.’
We both looked at the position of the body. There wasn’t much room on the landing so getting him down was going to be awkward. Sergeant Hopkins climbed up the stepladder immediately next to the man’s body and removed an impressive-looking folded utility knife from his pocket. ‘Come on then, Mick. Grab him.’
‘How do you mean, Sarge?’
‘I’m gonna cut the flex and you catch him.’
I stood next to the hanging body. His waist was at the level of my head and the stench became almost too much to take. With straight, locked arms I took a firm hold of the man’s belt around his trousers. Then I turned my face away.
‘Go on then, Sarge. I’m ready.’
‘Mick, I said grab him. It’s dead weight. He’ll flatten you like that. Really get hold of him.’ As he said this, he gestured a bear hug with his arms. He wanted me to take hold of the man and catch him. My face would have to be touching him for this. I had to do it.
‘Sarge…Are you sure?’
‘Just do it, lad. I know it’s not nice. We’ve all had to do it.’
I knew he meant it. I took hold of the man’s waist with a bear hug and braced myself ready for the fall. ‘Go on then, Sarge. I’ve got him.’
So there I was, hugging a dead man with my sergeant standing next to me on the top step of the ladder with his Swiss army knife, about to cut the flex. Maybe one day I will be able to see an amusing side to this, but this man was someone’s son, and someone’s brother, and his last moments must have been desperate. I still look back on this with great sorrow. I tensed up, as I knew that catching the dead weight wouldn’t be an easy task. ‘Here goes, then.’
With these words, I felt the man’s body weight plunge down onto me. I had no chance. The weight crashed down and the man’s body came directly on top of me, forcing me to fall to the floor. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with the man’s face directly above mine. All the trapped air slowly released from his lungs and out of his mouth. His eyes stared into mine and our noses touched. His inflated tongue brushed across my cheek. ‘Shit!’ I bellowed and I momentarily developed superhuman strength and shifted fourteen stones of dead weight from myself. Sergeant Hopkins looked down and despairingly shook his head. I stood up and shouted the same word again. I couldn’t help it.
Once
