Chapter 1

I suppose that I should have expected that my first day in the CID office in Loughborough Police Station would follow my previous days through school, university, and the Police College.

“Sorry, son, the juvenile court is in the next building.”

These were the first words spoken to me as I reported for my first shift on the detective roster. I had been fast-tracked from the Police College due to my intelligence and almost manic need for closure that enabled me to concentrate on a problem until it was solved. I had spent some time in a number of small villages around the County of Leicester before being transferred to the detectives. Actually, it was a long line of transfers that stretched behind this particular one as I had excelled where-ever I had been put, but my superiors had never managed to consider me a true copper.

I stood my ground this morning, though.

“I’m here to report to Inspector Andover to be assigned my duties”.

“By God, I must be getting to be an old copper when a newbie looks like a child,” the voice continued. “I’m Detective Sergeant Harris, and I will introduce you to him.”

He led me across to an office, knocked on the door, then opened it.

“Boss, your new Detective Constable is here, and I suggest that, as he is undersized, you should throw him back into the water.”

He waved me into the office and, as I went in, I heard the gale of laughter that billowed behind my back as I closed the door. The Inspector looked at me and I looked back.

“I asked for the best candidate for my vacancy, and they sent you!” he glowered. “Let me look at your file.”

He browsed through my file as I stood there feeling a wave of shame flow through me. It wasn’t my fault that I was well into my twenties but still looked like a teenager. It wasn’t my fault that I was barely the minimum height for the force. It wasn’t my fault that my voice never broke properly. I was about to turn around and walk away from my career when he put the folder down and asked me to sit.

“Constable Boon,” he started, “Looking at your file I see an intelligent and dedicated officer who has always given his best but could never stay anywhere for very long. Why is that? Please feel free to tell me the truth.”

I decided that I would make it plain. “Sir, my previous superiors always maintained the concept of me that your Sergeant has, and never allowed me to work anything other than juvenile crimes, littering or school talks. They thought that the kids would relate to me as I was so close to them in looks. I may be small, but I am a stickler for neatness and closure, and will worry at a problem like a dog on a bone, if given the chance. All I ask is for you to give me that chance as I do not believe there is anywhere else that they can transfer me to, except out of the force.”

“Come with me, I think I have just the job for you,” he said, getting up and leading me to the door.

He ushered me out and then spoke loudly.

“Listen up, this is Detective Constable Boon and I have looked at his file and decided that he may fit in to this pigsty very well. As you can see, although I noted his Black Belt on his file, he cannot really go out and hassle our local criminal element. As such, I am going to put him in charge of this office to oversee its tidiness and to make sure everything is under control. He will also monitor and file your crime reports and keep the murder book, should we have one. He is not, I repeat not, your tea maker or pencil sharpener but he will be the one who makes sure that we have tea and pencils in stock. Anybody got any questions?”

And so began my first day as a detective, consigned to be the office girl. What I had not realised then, but came to recognise later, was how much more the job entailed. As the weeks passed, the rest of the team began to understand that they would have whatever they needed, when they needed it. I was also able to streamline their filing which allowed them to access any written records as soon as they required them, although much of the records were kept on computers. What I discovered was that I got to read every report written about every crime that was being investigated.

Before long, my head was filled with multiple problems which kept me fully occupied. I had flashes in inspiration but had learned not to announce my deductions to the world. Instead, I tried to put myself into a position where I could nudge the other detectives.

The occasional, “I wonder why he said that?” or, “Doesn’t that scene look a bit odd to you?” would be enough to put them onto the right track. As our success rate went up, so did my popularity to the point where I started to get invited to the after-case pub sessions.

Of course, sooner or later I would be picked on as a likely candidate for the affirmation of some bully’s’ ego. It happened at a get-together of me and three other detectives at our usual watering hole, after a particularly complex case that had turned out to be merely one where the bad guy was a bit too greedy and had left a few, very small, clues.

The four of us were sitting at a table when six off-duty traffic coppers walked in. Everyone knew everyone except me, so the first thing that a great hulk of muscle and fat said was, “Bloody hell, one of the ‘D’s has brought his son with him. On kiddy duty tonight, are we?”

My companions smiled and one replied, “Woodsy, we would like to introduce DC Albert Boon, a very well-respected member of our office and definitely not a kiddy.”

Woodsy laughed along with his companions. “Ye gods, when did they let toddlers join the defectives? Things are so bad they can’t recruit real men, eh?”

I stood up to reveal my whole five and a half. “OK, real man; I will not allow my fellow officers to be insulted like that. Want to take this outside?”

He gave a great bellow of laughter and went to put my lights out but found himself on his face with my foot on his neck inside a couple of seconds.

I looked at his companions and asked, “Anyone else have something to add?”

They all shook their heads, and I stepped back while they helped their champion to his feet and left the pub in a hurry. My fellow officers were beside themselves with glee and I was informed that I had just put down the biggest bully on the force.

One had captured it all on his phone and he sent it off to everyone on his call list. By the time we got back to the office I had become the toast of the team. One of the guys had already printed a picture of me with my foot on the neck of the bully with the words ‘Our Weedy versus Their Woodsy’ superimposed on it and it had been pinned up on our notice board for all to see.

The Inspector was not happy, or, at least, tried to show he was not happy, but my fellow drinkers assured him that it was all in self-defence and, when he got to see the full video, had to agree to the point where he shouted at the Traffic Division Chief Inspector to keep his bullies under control when a complaint of unprovoked attack was put forward.

Thus, I got the nick-name of Weedy, not for the first time, but it was the first time it had been said in respect, rather than scorn. We carried on with our jobs as before and, whenever the traffic guys walked into any pub we were in, they always turned and walked out again, whether I was there or not. The guys revelled in the reputation, and I hardly ever had to buy the round after that time. The other thing that happened was that they would include me in arresting the felons in some of the cases we were finalising. Of course, anyone who tried to run thought that it was easy to run through me, mainly ending with them on the floor and handcuffed.

Although I still had not been a part of a team to investigate a particular case, I had become a part of every team and had input into every case after I had sussed out wrinkles that the others had not been aware of, due to my being able to read every report coming through.

I was now in my element. A proper copper after all and the Inspector was happy that he had kept me, instead of throwing me back, as suggested. Mind you, Sergeant Harris never really warmed to me as I had usurped some of his responsibilities, and he was not happy about that.

Then we had a body discovered in a shallow grave in bushes alongside the cycleway through Shepshed Cutting. This was in the Charnwood Forest boundaries. The cutting had been both the site of a railway and also a canal but was now a walking and cycling path. The body had already been disturbed by wildlife and had been there long enough to be partially decomposed. When the Inspector called everyone together to tell us that it was our case, he said that we had got it because our good success rate had been noted by the bigwigs in headquarters.

This time I was picked to be part of the team investigating the case and had to write up and maintain the ‘murder book’, the physical notes on the case. I also had to collate the autopsy report, the crime scene report, and the various photos. The first thing to stand out was that the body was a male but no longer had a penis or testes and the autopsy concluded that they had been removed before death. The conclusion was that, as there were no other obvious wounds, the victim had bled to death from the wound in his groin. Also missing was all the teeth and fingers. That makes it difficult to identify the body.

Another thing found was that there were fibres of a common plastic rope on the wrist and ankle areas so he may have been tied before he was killed. They didn’t find any remains of drugs in the body so he may well have been fully conscious when he had been castrated.

While we waited to see if they could extract DNA and do a trace, we went through the missing persons lists. Nothing stood out in the height and age, and it looked as if we were looking at a case where the victim was either not missed or not reported as missing. Finally, the DNA came through and we had a match. The match came from a paternity case and the person in question was now known to be Charley Kraft, a forty-seven-year-old businessman from nearby Rempstone.

A couple of our guys went to see his wife Gloria and came back to report that she had not seemed overly upset to learn of his death. She had told them that her husband was a womaniser, and any one of twenty husbands would have been happy to kill him if they could get away with it. She told them that the last time she had seen her husband was when she drove him to the Leicester Airport at Stoughton, where he kept a small plane. She had said that she thought he was going to fly to Europe somewhere on business, but she said that he had done that often. “Probably got some floozy or two shacked up in France or Spain,” she had told them.

At Stoughton we found that his plane had left the airport some six weeks previously, but no-one could remember actually seeing him. We sent out requests and finally tracked the plane, still on the ground at an airport near Madrid. Again, the landing was logged but no-one could remember actually seeing the pilot. Asking airports along the way we found that the plane had been refuelled on Jersey, but the fuel guys said the pilot had gone for a walk while they were pumping the fuel.

It was now down to getting enough facts to get close to the truth. Murders are usually How, Where Why and Who. We already had the how, just needed to get the other three. We found that he was a director of a registered company called Flush Limited.

There were other directors listed; Gloria Kraft being one of them. The others were Maurice Young, Corey Brighton, Jake Monahan, and Janice Hetherington. Janice was in the system with a record for procuring and prostitution; Jake was there with quite a long sheet that included assault and grievous bodily harm.

Following the threads, we had Flush Limited being the parent company to four ‘clubs’. One, here in Loughborough, was called ‘The Aces’ and was classed as a members only card playing club. That was locally understood to be poker. There were two in Nottingham; ‘The Jacks’ was a registered brothel and ‘The Kings’ a registered casino. The final one in Leicester was a LBGTQ haven called ‘The Queens’ but was registered as a dance club.

Further looking saw that ‘Aces’ was managed by Morrie Young, ‘Jacks’ by Corey Brighton, ‘Kings’ by Jake Monahan and ‘Queens’ by Janice Hetherington. My instinct kicked in immediately; a flush in poker is five cards of the same suite and a Royal Flush was ace, king, queen, jack and ten.

I looked high and low on the company records but found no company that would fit the criteria with ‘The Tens’ as the name or even anything close, number wise. We set to trying to get as much information as we could and found that all of those who would profit from the death had alibis as long as your arm for the period around the victim being last seen.

We mounted ‘inspections’ on the clubs with the assistance of the local authorities but found nothing. It all pointed to law-abiding businesses, operating under the local laws, and seemingly earning good profits that were now only split five ways, instead of six. They had kept putting his cut into his bank up to the day we told his wife of his death.

We left it a few weeks and then made raids on the clubs and his house with the drug and vice squad on hand. Nothing untoward was found anywhere, something that made my teeth grind. All the while I was left in the office to co-ordinate things but finally, when everyone else had gone home for the day, I knocked on the Inspectors door and asked if he had a few minutes.

He asked me what I wanted to speak about.

“Sir, we did unannounced inspections of those clubs, and they were squeaky clean. We then did raids of the house and clubs and found nothing. We are talking about gambling and brothels and there was not a single thing out of place. No drugs: not even a baggie of weed and we are talking about at least one building full of prostitutes.”

He looked at me. “I see where you are going with this. They knew we were coming, didn’t they?”

I nodded my head and we both knew it meant we had a bad cop in our own office who gave the early warnings.

“I was afraid of this. I need to think about where we go from here. If I organise something, would you be prepared to go under cover? None of the suspects have seen you but we will have to give you a good disguise and cover story that would not make you stand out to our own team. If we do this, I am going to have it announced that you have requested an immediate transfer and that I have accepted it.”

When I went home that night, I thought on the fact that I may soon be doing proper police work, under cover, even. The prospect excited me. Over the next few days, we carried on as usual and then I had a note one morning, in my desk drawer that said, ‘See me tonight’.

I stayed at my desk, working, until everyone had gone and then the door to the inspectors’ office opened and he beckoned for me to come and sit down.

“I’ve spoken to Internal Affairs and have been given permission by the Chief Constable to mount an undercover operation to try to solve the Kraft murder and, along the way, get a line on our mole. Here is a phone number for you to remember – it will be easy as you just remember ‘bad weed’ and you have it. Here is an address in Nottingham; the vice squad there have a small group that act as bait for predators. They are all about your size and all are black belts, like yourself.”

I sat there and wondered just how I was going to infiltrate the Flush Empire and he then gave me the way in. “The vice squad in Leicester have told me that the ‘Queens’ is always on the look-out for new staff as they have a pretty high turn-over. After ten days with the squad in Nottingham, they will take you down to Leicester and install you in a shared accommodation with one of their own so that you can front up to the club and ask for a job. If it doesn’t work, we will have to try and think of something else. If you find anything out, just ring the number and there will be someone on the other end who can take your message.”

I cleared my personal items from my desk, and he escorted me from the building after I had handed in my warrant card and keys.

“Good luck, son,” he said, shaking my hand. “Just get up to Nottingham first thing in the morning, they will want to get started on you as soon as they can. I am told that the process they have can take a little while to master.”

I found it a little hard to get to sleep that night but was up, bright and early the next day and at the railway station with just cash in my pocket; everything else was in a box in my room. At the Nottingham Station I took a bus a few bus-stops away from my destination and walked in a round-about way to the address. When I knocked on the door it was opened by a gorgeous girl in a short denim skirt and a peasant blouse.

I told her my name, and she smiled.

“Welcome Albert, I am Suzi Schwimmer, and I will be your guide today.”

She giggled and closed the door behind me before taking me through the house where another girl was waiting.

“This is Jane Doe,” she laughed. “You will be staying with her in Leicester. She has worked at ‘The Queens’ from time to time and will help you get into the place. Firstly, though, we have to make you ready, and I can see that some of that will be easy, other parts may not be. Did they tell you what we are going to do?”

I said that I was totally in the dark and, unless they could add about fifty pounds to my weight and a good six inches to my height, I could not see any way I would be useful to a club.

They both laughed at that.

“Oh, that’s precious,” Suzi said. “The weight and height that you are now is perfect for your new life as a girl. It’s the only way you can get a job there as they seem to have a very high turn-over. We start now by you needing to strip right down for us to work on your body.”

I know that I blushed as I felt the heat in my cheeks.

“A girl,” I cried. “How on earth am I going to pass as a girl. I’ve never wanted to be a girl and don’t have the slightest idea of what it takes. I didn’t have any sisters and my mother died when I was very young so just had my father who brought me up.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” she said. “Like I said, some of it will be easy. We will have you looking so much like a girl by lunch you could go into town and only turn heads of those who admire your looks. It will take the rest of the ten days to get you acting and thinking the part.”

Marianne Gregory © 2025