This is the start to a short series that I had no idea I could, or would, write. It comes about from all the nice comments I received about the set of ‘Polly’ stories.
Marianne

Chapter 1

Cadet policeman Andy Barton was having a bad day. Here he was, supposedly being groomed for life as a crimefighter, currently beating the bushes in the Ryton Park, next to the National College of Policing, near Coventry. The day was hot and the midges numerous, due to the nearby pool. He was about to give up on his task when he saw something he didn’t expect.

Today was supposed to be a straight-forward search for a piece of luggage, which was pretending to be a bank-robber’s loot. There were twenty young men, stretched out in a line, beating the bushes, and trying hard not to just walk away and become bicycle couriers. Andy was at the edge of his wits and didn’t appreciate what he was seeing for almost a minute.

Finally, he reached for his radio and pressed the call button, asking for his sergeant instructor.

“Well, lad, have you found the bag? You have surely taken your time. Some past years have packed up and gone for lunch by now.”

“Sorry, sir. I haven’t found the bag. What I have found is a body.”

“Press the location button on the radio and stay where you are. This, I have to see. If it’s a dead dog, you’ll be up for a very long training run tomorrow.”

Andy could hardly take his eyes off the sight that was in the bushes. It was, at first glance, a man of solid build. He was looking up with sightless eyes, he was naked, and the one thing that rivetted Andy was the gaping wound where the man’s genitals should have been, now covered in maggots.

When the call finally went out that the bag had been found, the sergeant came on the line to tell everyone else but Andy to go back to the college for lunch. The others had cleared off when the sergeant arrived next to Andy and saw the body.

“Bloody hell, lad. You’re right. Back off two yards and work around this in a circle. Make sure you don’t damage any undergrowth as you go. Make a note of any tracks or broken twigs that you see. I’m calling this in. It will take some time for the Forensic Scene Investigators to get here. You’ll get some extra points for keeping your cool.”

A half an hour later, the site was a hive of activity. Andy had given the crime scene officer a statement and had been allowed to go back to the college. He was summoned to see the Chief Super the next day, commended on his cool actions, then referred to the college psychiatrist to see about the nervous twitch that hadn’t been there the previous morning at breakfast.

Two months later, the body had been identified, the cause of death being blood loss due to the castration, and that was about all that had happened. It wasn’t until two years later when a man, cycling to work, discovered another castrated boy in the woodland next to the lake in Moseley Wood. This time, the victim was identified as the son of a prominent politician and questions started being asked.

Detective Chief Inspector Susan Cousins was at the point of telling her team to “Go!” when she felt the phone vibrate. She ignored it and led her team into a house, following the ‘opening act’ of two burly uniformed with a battering ram. Susan was in charge of one of the CID teams, working out of the Aston Police Station in Birmingham. Her team had successfully tracked down a rapist of young girls, and today he was to be arrested. In the house they went through every room quickly, finding the suspect on his bed with an empty bottle of sleeping tablets beside him.

Detective Sergeant Skinner pulled out his phone and called for an ambulance as Detective Sergeant Henderson rolled the guy onto his side, put his fingers in the mouth and wiggled them. He stood aside as the man retched. This one was still going to face court.

When the man had been taken away in an ambulance, with a constable in attendance, Susan congratulated her team and they then stood aside, allowing the Forensic Scene Investigators in to look for the souvenirs that they knew would be somewhere in the house, needing them to make the case watertight. She finally had the time to pull out her phone and check who wanted to talk to her. It was a text from the Chief Superintendent, reading, “Come and see me – NOW!”

She left the current case to be tidied up in the charge of her Detective Inspector, Terry Gardiner, and drove to the station to find out what was biting the CS now. He wasn’t the sort of man who would go ballistic for little reason. It would be something coming down from above that would make him need to see her so quickly.

At the Aston Station, she parked her car and went in, going up to the upper floor and entering the boss’s office reception. Agnes, the PA, looked up as she walked in and immediately pressed the button on her desk to announce that “DCI Cousins is here, Sir.”

The short answer was to send her in.

“You heard the boss, Sue. I think that this may be something to do with a call from the Assistant Commissioner this morning.”

Susan opened the door to the inner office and walked in, seeing the boss at his desk, surrounded by files. He looked up and smiled.

“Oh, thanks for coming in, Sue. I’ve got a job for you and your team which looks like it’s been a total catastrophe for some years. You may have seen the report of the son of the local member being found, having been castrated and bleeding out. He has put the word on the Commissioner, who then talked to the AC, and the word has finally reached this humble office and I’m passing it on to you to solve.”

“Well, thank you for the confidence in us, Sir. I believe, though, that this was just one of others who have been found. The files would have been opened years ago.”

“Quite right. The cases have been given, over the years, to DCI Nicholas, over at Harborne. I won’t suggest that he sat on them, but his is known for his homophobia, so he could have just written the earlier cases off as gay crime. What I have, here on my desk, are copies of the precis files, all nine of them, going back just over two years. You can take these with you and get the full files from Nicholas. Make this one top of the pile for a few weeks. Solve it and we’ll all be happier.”

“Thank you for that, Sir. My team will be put to work on these. I’ll keep you in the loop if we get any good leads. The old ones are going to be a problem if the groundwork wasn’t done at the time, though.”

He gestured to a pile of files, which she picked up and took with her as she left the office. Back down a floor, in her own area, she put the files on her desk and looked into the office that she should be in, to speak to the man peering at a computer screen.

“Doggy, we have an urgent set of cases that the boss has handed to us to do our magic with. It’ll be hard, as they’ve been under the control of Butt for a couple of years. Can you contact the whole team to be here first thing. I’ll have a look at the precis files and see if I can get the full files tomorrow. We’re doing this to make the local member happy.”

“So old ‘Iron Butt’ Nicholas has dropped the ball again. Let me guess, we’re looking at gay crimes. That man is a true dinosaur with his ideas. Some of his guys have spoken to some of ours in the pub, asking if we’ve any vacancies that they can apply for. He drives a lot of them crazy. It’s not that he’s any Sherlock, himself; he lives on the hard work of others while he stays in his cosy office reading the Times.”

Sue just nodded and closed the door, going back to her desk in the open office. She had seen, early on, that Norman Doggett needed somewhere that he could concentrate on the research and data mining that was his forte, so had given him her office. The open office was quite large, and she revelled in the atmosphere when the whole team was here, on the phones, discussing cases and looking in files. It was part of her, now. She was a career detective, happily married to Mervyn, her nutritionist husband. He worked for the chocolate factory at Bourneville and spent some time on the road, sorting out problems with the product and getting ideas for new taste sensations.

She sat at her desk and sorted the files in order, from the latest back. Settling in, she opened a drawer to pick a toffee from a bag, starting to chew and read. The latest was the son of the politician, supposedly a clean-living, athletic teenager with a good life, a good academic record, a girlfriend, and a job working in his father’s office as a researcher. The last usually being code for getting paid but never going to work. The body was found at Moseley Wood.

Going back, the bodies were all similar. All were late teens, athletic, clean-living, and ended up brutally castrated. All were found in similar places; Codsall Wood, Coleshill Park, Sutton Park, Rough Park, Warley Woods, Edgbaston Reservoir, and Chelmarsh Reservoir. The earliest, at Ryton Pools, was odd as it was next to the National Policing College, somewhere she knew well, having lectured there several times.

There was a note at the bottom of the last file, telling her who had discovered the body. When she saw that, she put the files in a drawer and picked up her phone. Her first call was to DCI Nicholas. When she was put through to him, they swapped the usual platitudes, and it was Nicholas who broke the ice.

“I’ve been ordered to pass a bunch of files to you. If you send one of your guys over to Harborne I’ll get one of mine to help him load up. The boss obviously thinks that I’m better suited solving serious crimes and has given you these to finally put in the unsolved storage.”

“That’s not how it’s happening, Nicholas. You send one of your guys over to Aston with the files tomorrow morning. It has to be one who has worked on the cases so my team can ask questions. Tell them to call me when they arrive, and I’ll send someone down with a sack truck. We’re having a team meeting first thing. My CS has told me that this is top priority. I’m sure someone will tell you who the culprit is after we’ve arrested them.”

She put the phone down and had a little giggle, imagining the other DCI getting red and throwing a few files around. It was something she had seen when they were both inspectors. Her second call was to the sergeant in charge of the clerical section.

“Charlie, it’s Cuz. If I remember rightly, you have a Special down there called Andy Barton. Can you ask him to come up and see me, please. I won’t keep him very long.”

While she waited, she looked up Andy on her laptop, seeing that he had been a good student at the college. She remembered him when she had lectured, once, and saw that he had finished the course, with good results, but had been relegated to only be allowed to be in the office, due to a psychological shock, not long before he graduated. Sue mentally congratulated the lad for staying on as a Special, most would have thrown up their hands and done something else. She knew, now, what had given him that shock.

When Andy came in, she waved him over to her desk and to the seat in front of it.

“Andy, I’ve asked you to come and see me because we’ve been given a bunch of nasty cases to try and solve. You might guess what one of them is.”

“I think so, Ma-am. It’s what got me kicked off my career path. I was all set to live my dream and the trick-cyclist decided that I’d been traumatised too much by what I saw that day. It still gives me bad dreams, and I had a twitch for months afterwards, but I think I put it behind me. It was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen, that gaping hole where the tackle should have been, hit me right in the bit of me that had terrors. I have read that others had been found but never realised that they were all still live cases.”

“Would you like to help my team solve it?”

“Yes, please, Ma-am. That would allow me to put it all behind me.”

“You realise that there are nine cases, including yours, and all of them were castrated brutally. There will be pictures, and descriptions, that you’ll see. We’ve all seen bad things and it’s become almost normal. Some of our guys use drink to help, or some outside activity that takes their mind off the job. Four of my team go running whenever they can, they tell me that it helps them think of more normal things, as well as keeping them fit. If you survive this, we can try to put you back on the career path and get you away from that keyboard.”

“That would be great, Ma-am. I see all of the cases that I’m filing notes for, and it’s been getting to me that I can’t do follow ups. I really enjoyed the courses at the college. That lecture that you gave on doing the hours of detail, rather than sitting in an office, smoking a pipe, really resonated with me. It would be good to put in for a proper uniform and give back the lollipop I sometimes have to use outside the primary school, when the usual pensioner can’t make it.”

“I’ll give Charlie a call to second you to this office for a while. Report here in the morning when we’re having a team meeting on these cases. Someone should be coming with the main files, so I’ll get you to take a sack truck down to bring them up. Hopefully, they’ll be someone who worked on the cases so they may be here for a while. Tomorrow, you’ll find that my team call me boss or Cuz, we leave the ma-am bit for when there’s a superior officer within earshot, OK?”

“Yes, boss, see you tomorrow.”

After he left, with a big smile on his face, she phoned downstairs and told the sergeant that Andy Barton will be helping her team full-time for the foreseeable future. She them picked up a notepad and started writing her thoughts.

That night, she got take-away on her way home, eating it in front of her laptop as she looked up all of the newspaper reports of the bodies being discovered, discounting the grandstanding from old Iron Butt. Her notepad was almost full when she went to bed, Mervyn away in Scotland tonight. She knew that she would be keeping the notepad to herself, certain that her team would allow her to tick off most of what she had found, just leaving her to ask about the few things that she still hadn’t ticked.

Next morning, in the office, she looked at her team with some pride. They had been one of the more successful teams in CID, mainly because they worked as a team, being allowed to do what they did best. Norman Doggett (Doggy) was like a canine with a bone when tracking down links on the computer; DI Terry Gardiner was the perfect general in the field; the two DS’s, Paul (Lean) Skinner and Martin (Super) Henderson; and her three Detective Constables; Jack Brownlee, Bill (Porky) Piggott and Lucas (Sky) Walker, all hard working and career detectives. With them was Andy Barton, off to one side.

She introduced him to the others and told them that they would realise why he was here, later into the meeting.

“We have been given the responsibility to solve a group of murders that have been put on the shelf until the latest. We are under a microscope on this one, as the last victim was the son of the local member. I’ve got the full files coming over so we will be able to get stuck into them, but I’ve had a look at the precis files, and all have some major things in common. All the victims are late teens, athletic men and all were brutally castrated. The first one happened over two years ago and the person who found the body is Andy, so he will be able to give you some input with the very first police presence at the scene. I thought that I might put him with you, Doggy, if he doesn’t do all right in the field. He’s bright and thorough.”

Her desk phone rang, and she listened for a few seconds.

“Tell them to wait, I’m sending someone down.”

“Sky, can you get the sack truck. One of the Ds from Harborne is here with the full set of files. Andy will help you load them. Downstairs, you’ll find DC Maria Holdcroft, bring her up here with the files. Super, you have a smile on your face.”

“Yes Cuz, Maria sometimes comes to the pub we go to, keeping apart from the guys who work for Butt. She’s a good investigator and is wasted working there.”

“We’ll keep that in mind. I asked for someone who had worked on the files. If Butt gave them to her, it was because he thought it beneath his male team. If she wants to come to us, I’ll run it by the CS upstairs. I think that there’s enough pressure from further up to get him to sign off on anything we throw at him.”

They stopped to make some tea until Sky Walker opened the door to let Maria Holdcroft lead Andy in, pushing the sack truck, now laden with files. There was more there than Sue had expected.

“Welcome, Maria, to our humble office. I gather you’ve met most of the team, grab a cup of tea and join the throng. We’re taking over the nine cases. I asked for someone who had worked on them. How much do you know about this lot?”

“Quite a bit, Ma-am. DCI Nicholas didn’t want any of his men to have bad dreams, so gave all the cases to me and Jennifer Anderson. She was transferred out, last year, to the West Country to be near her aging parents.”

“They’re big files, did you have enough to identify a killer?”

“No, Ma-am. There are a lot of incidental details, but no concrete links between the cases, other than the ages and some of the injuries. I got the impression that they had been taken off the street, at random.”

“Right. First thing, I’m going to see if we can get you transferred here for the duration, are you happy with that?”

“Absolutely, Ma-am. I’ll just need to take the office car back and clean out my desk.”

“Good, I’ll set that up. While you’re here, I’m Cuz or Boss, unless there’s a superior officer about. There should be a spare desk for you. While I get you transferred, I want you and Andy to talk to the rest of the team. What we do is have everyone look at a file and you two can talk to them in turn. Then they move the files around, and you repeat the process. It may take a day or two, but by the time we’re done, everyone would have seen everything. We have a note sheet for each file, which is added to by each one of the team, which will give us a consensus of thoughts to start the real work on. This pile is our priority.”

She noted that Maria obviously had something else to say.

“Maria, you look like there’s something else on your mind. Are there facts we kept from the media, as well as not putting in the precis files – they are pretty thin?”

“There are some things in the main files, Boss. The fact is – well – it’s a bit hard for me to get my head around, even now. The castration was extremely brutal. The injury was big enough to take the penis, testicles, and a large part of the lower stomach. What we kept back was that the killer also removed the liver and kidneys in the later cases.”

Susan stood aside as Andy Barton ran towards the toilets.

“Maria, there’s something here that you should know. Andy was the one to find the first body. He finished the course, but it caused him enough problems that they didn’t allow him to join the force. He’s extremely bright, but that time alone with the body has stayed with him since. Sky, can you go and check that he hasn’t turned himself inside-out.”

While the team collected a file, each, Susan beckoned Maria to join her in a quiet corner.

“Maria, this is a strange situation. If we solve the case and it hits the media, you here without keeping Iron Butt in the loop is going to make him mad. I’m going to talk to the CS to get you permanently transferred. My team are all good guys, I think that you’ve already had drinks with a few. You won’t be their tea maker; they can all type and tie their own shoelaces. What I’m saying is that you will be safe with us, on equal footing and able to have your input without worrying that it might upset some male ego. Say that you’re happy with that and I’ll make the cogs turn, if you’re not, we’ll keep you a few days and send you back. What do you say?”

“I’m with you, all the way, Cuz. My life has been a wasteland in the same office with a bunch of ego-driven Neanderthals. I had some ideas about these cases that were howled down. Jenny had the idea that they were all being harvested for the other organs, but we couldn’t fit the loss of the genitals in with that notion.”

“Keep that to yourself, let’s see if the team come up with that. Now, have a walk around and let them pick your brain. I need to head upstairs.”

As she went towards the stairs, Sky and Andy were coming out of the toilets.

“How are you, Andy. That was a shock to all of us. Will you be able to talk about it, now?”

“Yes, Boss. It’s funny, although I’ve had troubles with the memories, I’ve never thrown up. Maybe, that’s what I needed to do to rid myself of the horror of it. I’m much better, now, and even more determined to help catch the monster who did that to young men.”

Susan continued upstairs to see the CS. When she came back down, she had good news for her new team members. They would be in her charge until the cases were solved, and probably after that as well.

Marianne Gregory © 2023