The problem with death is that it's messy. Not always in the 'bloody' sense, as those slasher-type films would have you believe, but in the sense that someone is always affected by it. Now, it's true, that maybe someone dies and leaves no loved ones behind, but there is still a mess that needs to be cleaned. Searching databases, ruling on the cause of death, and those sorts of things. Death is messy. I should know. I've dealt in, and around, it for more than half my life now.
Could I be less cynical? Perhaps. Could be I more concerned? Definitely. The problem is, I've become somewhat desensitised to the whole thing. Not much conjures an emotional response in me anymore. I'm tired, and I still have a decade - give or take - before I can retire. There was a time when I loved the job. When I was eager to learn and to perform my duty to the best of my ability. That was then. This is now. Now, where my eyes are shaded by a shroud of jadedness and my consciousness is protected by years of purposefully grown callouses. Desensitisation is a bitch.
In case you're wondering when all of this began, when I became a shell that couldn't really feel anything anymore, you are, I'm afraid, going to be disappointed. There is no real point in time. No cataclysmic event that drove me to hollowness. It was a natural progression. Something, that if you are in the job long enough, are likely to suffer from. You might think me stereotypical. A parody of all well-worn police officers. Well, I don't care. I'm not here to please you, and I'm certainly not sorry for what years of serving has done to me. In fact, maybe I'm not a stereotype at all. Maybe, just maybe, I'm a certainty in this line of work.
What I can tell you about, though, is the day that compounded everything. The day that reinforced everything I'd learnt to feel over the past few decades. It was a day that revealed to me, the sinister nature that lurks just beneath the surface, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting, rending them apart until there is nothing left. Some days have passed into oblivion, never to be recalled again, but this day, and the events that preceeded it, will forever remain with me. It will haunt me until the end of my time.
The Initiation
I suppose this began two months ago while I was sitting at my desk, waiting for my coffee to brew. It was what you would call a normal morning. I had rose, as usual, just before my alarm had sounded. I could never understand why this happened, but I found out recently, that it has something to do with the circadian rhythm or whatever it's called. It just causes the body to feel when an alarm is about to go off - or something like that, wich makes it subconsciously react. I had tuned out by this point. My boss had forced me to go to some seminar on sleep apnoea, which, evidentally, I had, or have, or whichever it is he thinks. But it had been the sort of drivel that made me want to scratch my eardrums straight out of my ears.
So the coffee was monotonously plinking into the pot. Plink! Plink! And I was trying to distract myself by reading the news on my phone. Each drop was boring deeper into my ability to remain calm, and as much as I wanted the morning pick-me-up that came from the caffiene rich fluid, on this particular morning, I was about to grab the pot and hurl it out the back door onto my newly tiled patio.
As I reached snapping point, the article on my screen was replaced with a centred word, Dispatch, and the smooth sound of my Barry White ringtone (oxymoronic, I know!) eased it's way into my ears, giving temporary relief from the wretched plinking of the coffee into the pot.
Even as I answered, I knew that the news was going to be bad. Nothing that ever came through from dispatch was good. Dispatch is kind of like Damocles' sword. They just hang over you, and every time you begin to enjoy yourself, they are there to snatch it away. Of course, I was right. They needed me to investigate a disappearance. It had been phoned through as a kidnapping, however, there had been nothing to indicate such an event. The caller was a distraught wife, and as best as I could assume, she was having trouble coming to grips with the idea that her husband had discovered Tinder.
It turns out, that I couldn't have been more wrong.
We, that is to say, I grilled the wife. I was sure that she had become jealous and somehow disposed of her husband after finding something that indicted him of cheating or some other offensive behaviour. We interviewed her quite a few times over the preceeding weeks, and each time, her story remiained the same. She was not budging on the idea that there was something wrong at her husband's place of employment. That he had stumbled onto something big, and had been, as she put it, 'taken care of'.
I just couldn't buy into it. I remained cool and calculated during all of our conversations. There was something that just wasn't adding up. I couldn't comprehend that an employer who had been so happy with the guy's work, that they had only recently promoted him, would also be wanting to get rid of him too. I was sure that the wife had done it. I was so sure that I was starting some enquiries into her. I needed to know more about her. I needed to know everything about her.
But mostly, I needed a body, or some other evidence, any evidence, that pointed to foul play, or even any play at all. So far, apart from her word, there was no substantial reason to get past him having just walked away from her.
The Hazing
I got my evidence two weeks after the disappearance. A call from the wife; distraught. There was something in her voice this time that just registerd an emotion deep within me. One that had been locked away for the better part of my career. One that I had believed I'd never see resurface. She was talking faster than a rail gun - her words spewing through the phone, hammering their way into my head, smashing through my brain and lodging themselves firmly into my memory. She was not quite hysterical, but she was close. I instructed her to calm down and told her to leave the package alone. To not touch it anymore than she already had. She told me that she would comply, and pleaded with me to hurry. I told her that I'd get to her place in record time. I did.
When I arrived, lights flashing, siren just recently switched off, she was standing on the porch, unmoving. You could see something etched into the creases of her face. Something indistinguishable, yet palpable. Worry? Fear? No, not quite. It took me a while to place my finger on what it was that I saw that afternoon, but when I did, you could've knocked me over with a leaf.
Exiting my vehicle, my radio chirrped to life. I turned it down somewhat, but not before hearing that there had been a motor vehicle accident not too far from here. From what I heard, a van, maybe yellow in colour, maybe a courier or something similar, had been involved in an altercation with a Beemer. Witnesses had retreated inside after hearing gunshots. Odd neightbourhood for that sort of thing. Perhaps they had misheard. I couldn't imagine gunfire in this area. It must've only just happened though. I remember being slightly surprised that I hadn't seen or heard anything myself, but then again, my sirens had been blarring at full tilt.
I'd called in my own dilemma as I was driving, and my 'backup' teams were beginning to arrive. As they exited their cars, I began barking orders and assigning them tasks. I didn't care what anyone thought. This was my crime scene, if that's what it was, and I was going to carry myself like it was until I was told it wasn't. As I approached the wife, I could see that she had already begun opening the brown package that was on the verandah. It wasn't completely open, which is probably a good thing for her. Who knew what could've actually been inside it - if it was anything pertaining to her husband. She was better off for not seeing it.
I made sure my team spent a good few hours at the scene. No stone unturned and all that. Something within me now wanted to clear this woman's name of whatever this was - what was it actually? Mystery? She had looked almost frail as I talked to her. I had a stack of questions, but she was unable to shed any more real light on the situation. Pretty much the only new information she had been able to relay was that she had glimpsed a yellow van making a turn out of her street after she had looked up upon seeing the package on her doorstep. My mind flicked to the radio call that had gone out as I was exiting my car. Hadn't they reported a yellow van being involved in a motor vehicle accident? It was close to here too. Too close to be a coincidence, but then again, one can never really tell.
After we had cleared and packed away any real mess we had created, and the other officers had departed, I made my way over to the woman. She was standing in the middle of her garden, one arm wrapped around her small waist, as if to hug herself and impart whatever comfort she was able. The other arm was bent at the elbow, in front of her, the hand upstretched, the fingers, slowly playing with a cross that hung from the necklace around her neck. She stared out at the sun that was now slowly setting in the western sky. She just stared and twirled that cross. I asked if she was going to be okay, and she nodded dispondently. Eyes fixed on the setting sun. I turned to leave and she asked me if I would let her know what was in the package. I told her I would, but wasn't entirely sure I could.
As I made the turn onto the main road, I noticed, in my rearview mirror, that she was still standing in the middle of her garden, staring out at the now almost gone sun. She hadn't moved. I was only a few metres down the road, when a thought came to mind. I was following the path of the only person who may actually know anything about this potential crime. The driver of the yellow van. I pulled to the curb and grabbed my iPad from the bag on the passenger seat next to me. It only took a couple of seconds to access the information I was after - the address of the crash.
When I arrived at the scene of the accident, the van was still there. On it's side like a big yellow beached whale. It looked out of proportion laying there on it's side, and completely out of place. A tow truck was manouvering it's way into position to start loading the overturned van. I wondered briefly how they were planning on getting the thing back on it's tires, but dismissed the thought quickly. That wasn't my problem. There had been an officer still at the scene and although wary when I first approached, he was more than happy to tell me everything he knew once he saw, and was able to verify, my badge. It turns out that he knew a lot. A whole lot.
The Death Punch
Back at the station, I was able to unravel a little bit. My nerves had been unwound and cut right at the endings by the revelations that had been dumped on me by the officer at the scene of the van accident. I was surprised to hear that the driver of the van had died. It didn't seem like it was such a problematic crash. I would've expected, that unless really unlucky, the driver would have actually been able to walk wasy. However, that was not the case. You can imagine how much more of a shock I got, when the officer informed me that he hadn't died from injuries sustained in the accident. But rather, that he had been shot, not once, but twice.
To me, it didn't seem like the sort of incident that someone got shot over, and my mind began racing as I tried to piece together the shards of the day. My head began to develop a deep familiar throbbing right near the juncture of my skull and spine. If I didn't do something fast, my brain would feel as if it were splitting in two within a matter of minutes. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and pulled from it a packet of fast acting paracetemol, and some soluable asprin. I also grabbed a bottle of bourbon that I kept hidden under a few miscellaneous files at the bottom of this drawer.
Pouring half a glass of the amber liquid, I added four of the asprin, watching as they furiously fizzed away in the alcohol. Quickly, I popped six of the pills from the blister pack that had been keeping them safe for just a time as this, and not waiting for the asprin to completely dissolve, strted to swallow the pills using the bourbon to wash them away. The bourbon felt good as it helped the pain killers make their way down my throat. I could feel it relaxing my mind almost immediately. I knew from experience, that the pills and alcohol would work in five or ten minutes and I'd be fine to function for the remainder of however long I was going to need tonight.
Closing my eyes and reclining slightly in my desk chair after having taken the last of the pills, I was beginning to feel the pain at the base of my skull dissipate, when I was startled back to reality by the crooning of big bad Barry White. My mobile. Bloody thing. I leaned back forward in the chair, and snatched it off the desk in front of me. It was a crime scene investigator, one from the house earlier in the afternoon. They had finished with the package and were ready to give me the run down on what was going on. This should be good. I told them to give me a few minutes to get to their area and ended the call.
I carried the consignment note with me as I made my way to the tech lab. On returning to the station, I had made a beeline for the evidence lockers and was able to retrieve, and make a copy of, the consignment note that the officer at the scene of the accident had told me about. Turns out, it was lucky he had found it. It had blown a couple of metres from where the driver of the van had been laying, and the officer had only noticed it after the sun glinted off something on the surface of the paper. Turns out it was blood, and the officer immediately recognised the delivery company logo on in the upper-left of the note, and dutifully logged it. Running my fingers absent mindedly along the edges of the copy, I was thinking the same question over and over. How could the husband have posted the parcel to his wife? I was intrigued to say the least.
Entering the lab, the crime scene guy got right to the point. He led me over to a table were they had emptied the contents of the box. It was a metallic table, one like you see in the movies - evidentally, they are easier to keep sterilised. I had already seen the main item that had been in the box, but not the other one. That's right, folks, I lied back at the house. I didn't tell the wife that I already knew what was inside the parcel. I really did't think she needed to know. I still don't.
The tech reached out and removed a folder piece of paper from the table. Acutally, it was a few folded pieces of paper. After a couple of brief explanations, he asked if I needed him any. I didn't, so he left. I unfolded the paper he had handed me and was surprised to see a letter. It was hand written, which was possibly the wierdest thing of all in this era of computer and word processing apps. The writing was neat, an old-style of script, and looked as though it had been written using a fountain pen. The ink was much more vivid and the script smoother than what you would've expected from a modern pen. If it wasn't for the bleached white paper it was written on, I would've half expected to find this in a museum or some sort of histroic display. Slowly, I began to read, and what unfolded as I turned the pages was unbelievable.
I finished the letter and placed it back on the table next to the severed foot. The bone stuck out the top of the wound like a morbid candle from a birthday cake. Blackened blood caked around the ankle area, and the charred foot itself stood proudly on the table. Someone had burned the foot and wrapped it in cling wrap before putting it in the parcel. I wasn't sure why they had wrapped it, maybe to keep the odour trapped. The wrap had since been removed, and the charcoally smell of the burned appendage had been assaulting my nose since I had entered the lab a few moments before. But that didn't really bother me. No. Now, the letter bothered me.
At some point in the naxt day or two, I was going to have to return it to the wife, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to.
This is Chapter 3 of The Wheelie Bin Mafia. Thank you once again for reading it. I hope you are enjoying the ride and finding it to be a least a little entertaining. Once again, just to acknowledge that images within this post have been 'lifted' from Unsplash, and Pexels, with some minor editing made by myself.
If you would like to read the first two chapters as well, you can find them at the following pages: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
As always, I welcome any comments, suggestions and feedback you may have, and will get back to you as soon as I am able.
Again, thank you for reading.
