Report From The Front Line

 

It is just a year since the battle against the Coronavirus pandemic started. Perhaps time for an update.

In the UK we have had 104,701 deaths and some 3.7 million reported cases. Just how accurate these figures are is somewhat difficult to judge. There is no doubt that the numbers are inflated in some way by the way in which they are reported. Some cases are reported as Coronavirus related when in fact the death is possibly from some other factor. The fact remains however that we have been hit badly.

Many of the ‘knockers’ of the government in the UK are happy to gloat that they have made numerous errors in the handling of the pandemic, but one thing which they conveniently tend to ignore is the higher incidence of population per square mile in the UK than many other countries around the world.

To give just one set of figures.

UK 638 people per square mile

Germany 230 people per square mile

France 100 people per square mile.

Added to that is the high incidence of Afro Caribbean, Black African and Asian population within the UK. This is in no way a racist comment, it is simply a reflection of the numbers from those population who have died. Many people from these communities live in multi generation households and the incidence of unwillingness to accept that the vaccine is a valid and useful tool is often higher in these communities. Add to that the fact that many of the poorest of our nation are from these peoples. Poverty, once again, is a major factor in ill heath, disease and premature death, and always has been. Only now, many many years after the death of Joseph Cadbury who established poverty levels, is this seemingly being addressed.

Yesterday I received a letter asking me to make an appointment to have my first of two Covid 19 injections. I was happy to do so and am due at Preston Grasshoppers Rugby club to have my first injection this coming Thursday. This is an enormous relief for me and my wife. She has said during the past twelve months that she has had nightmares about me contracting the virus, and due to my underlying health condition, the last she would see of me would be getting into an ambulance. So far, so good.

The numbers being infected in the north west of the UK is beginning to fall, but the death rate is still rising. Presumably this is a fallout from the slight relaxation of the rules over the Christmas period. Then, people were able to congregate and mix. The outcome was predictable, and we are now seeing the figures.

In my area the figures are as follows.

In the past seven days 316 people have been reported with the virus. A drop of 98 on previous week.

There have been two deaths, a drop of 6 in past week.

These are for the town of Chorley with a population of 33,000.

In the UK so far 7.8 million people have had their first of two doses, whilst, 478K have had their second dose of vaccine. The EU have shewn their true colours by trying unsuccessfully to block the import of vaccine into Ireland and other non EU countries. The outrage against this forced them to climb down. So much for cooperation against a common foe.

John Browns Body 1

 

It was a few days after Christmas and the weather was cold, there was snow on the ground from last night and I was just starting the 3pm -11pm shift in a hamlet a few miles away from the station in the village where I lived.

Shortly after three o'clock I parked my Police car in the drive way of my mates house.  He and his wife and three kids had long been friends of mine and my wife, we used to knock around together in our off duty time.  It was Sunday, I was cold and because it was just after Christmas and freezing cold there was nobody out on the streets.  What other incentive could you ask for to stop off for a brew of tea and some home made Christmas cake in front of a roaring coal fire?  Not much.

Margaret opened the front door as I walked up the drive and welcomed me into the warmth.  Frank was going to be off for two days and was seated by the side of the fire toasting his feet in the hearth and nursing a large single malt whisky.  He smiled as I walked in and sat down in the large comfy armchair opposite him.  "I'd offer you one" he said, lifting the glass of whisky to his lips.  Shame you are on duty".  I smiled thinly at him.  "Bastard" I muttered.  We sat for a few moments talking of the quiet day he had had on the early morning shift.  It was Christmas, nothing was happening.  A dead time of year as the festivities of the parties leading up to Christmas had been and gone, and New Years Eve parties were still a few days away.

Margaret came in and presented me with a couple of mince pies and a cup of coffee.  I smiled and thanked her, she knew what my appetite was like.  Biting into one of the pies I grimaced as my personal radio called my name.  Frank turned down the sound on the television and I reached to answer the call.

"Report of a body on the moors above Milnrow.  Two children found it.  They are with their father at the Ogden reservoir.  Can you attend?"

Can I attend?  What bloody choice did I have.  John Brown had finally turned up.

The thin wintry afternoon sun cast hardly a shadow as I left the warmth of the fire in Frank's house.  I pulled my short heavy woollen overcoat around me as I settled down into the Panda car and turned on the engine.  

The road out of the village onto the moors was icy.  The highways department had not yet started to grit them following the onset of ice that afternoon, and driving skills learned during the previous eight years on traffic patrol came in very useful as I drove higher out of the village onto the moorland roads.  Along the sides of the roads the trees in the woods were tinted with white frost and occasionally, as the car pulled out of the tree line onto the moors, there was a thin covering of fresh snow clinging to the branches and lying in patches on the ground where it had fallen the previous night.

The car heater was good, about the only thing about the small Ford which was good.  The screen heater worked overtime to clear the ice forming on the inside as I pulled into the unmade road leading to the reservoir I was looking for.  Ogden Reservoir, a cold inhospitable place on a warm sunny summers day, but in the middle of a cold winters day there was nothing at all remotely pleasant about it.  It had been built into a level piece of hillside on the moors.  It was remote and cold, the water black and icy.  Around it's perimeter was a seven foot high wall of stone, the only access a large ornate metal gate with the name of the water company made out in twisted metal at the top of the gate.

In front of the gate stood a man with two shivering children, both boys.  Shivering despite the heavy outdoor clothing they were both sweating and the heavy wellington boots they sported. They huddled close to the man and watched me with some apprehension, I thougth, as I walked towards them from the car.   

The man told their story for them.  They had been on the moors high above the reservoir playing in the snow.  At one of the highest points on the moor was a dry stone wall, he said, and lying on the ground beneath it was the body of a man.  I looked at the two children.  Their faces were white and they made no comments to interrupt the man, their father, about what he said.  I took out my notebook and started to make a note of their names and addresses when one of the boys suddenly said, "He's lying on his back and he's got snow on him".  Then as suddenly he stopped and reversed back into the shelter of his fathers leg.  The boy was about seven years old and had the scrawny build of most of the kids from the remote moorland village, thin and pinched.  "Built for speed not comfort" as my father would have said.  I questioned them both, brothers who played regularly on the moors and knew every inch of the hummocky ground. The man, it appeared, was lying near to the junction of two dry stone walls right at the top of the moor, at a place just where the moor started to slope away from reservoir and off towards the eventual summit of the moor known as Windy Hill.  

I left the three of them standing by the gate to the reservoir and went through the gate, making use of the pathway which wound around the perimeter and off up onto the moor proper.  I glanced over my shoulder as I started to make the climb off the path and into the peaty boggy ground.  There was no sign of the man and his sons, they had obviously gone to seek warmth at home and retell the story to their mother, who no doubt would admonish them about going out on the moor alone in the cold and with the dark drawing in.

The dark was drawing in, and by the time I had fought the sodden ground to reclaim my feet and walked across the open moor to the wall at the summit of the hill, the light was failing quickly.  It was almost four o'clock by the time I reached the point which the boys had told me I would find the body.  I was forced to bend my legs hard to push my way up the hill, a hill made by the glacial action of the last ice age and the almost total lack of any real habitation for thousands of years, at least since the Iron Age of man.

The cold bit into me despite my exhausting climb up the hill, a cold based on fear of the unknown as well as the rapidly dropping temperature.  My inadequate uniform was no comfort or protection against the snow and my sodden frozen feet were rapidly taking on the feeling of a lump of frozen meat.  I was wearing shoes which were normal protection for town work, but completely useless for walking in the wet moors.

There he was.  Suddenly in front of me, exactly where the boy had told me he would be located.  Lying near to the join in two sections of wall, the back wall forming a frame to the scene of the moorland and separating it from the sky.  He was lying on his back with his feet crossed at the ankles and his arms spread out wide level with his shoulders.  His head was pointing in the direction of the wall behind him, and he was about ten feet from it.  From where he lay he could see over his home in Milnrow and the town of Rochdale, had he been alive.  His eyes were closed and his face was at peace, relaxed.

A light cover of snow had dusted him with white, and had then frozen.  He was wearing clothing which was more than adequate for the hills and cold weather.  A waterproof outer coat with a long zip up the middle and then velcro fasteners as double protection.  Under that a thick high neck jumper, and beneath that a woollen shirt, and under that a cotton tee shirt.  On his legs he wore moleskin trousers thick enough to ward off the cold, and on his feet heavy leather walking boots.  

The jacket, the jumper and the shirt were all unfastened and opened so that I was able to see the tee shirt he also wore.  The hat and gloves he had also been wearing were lying by his side.  The tee shirt, the jumper and the jacket were covered in snow, as was his pale grey face. Obviously he was dead, but the law determined that the only person to give this verdict was a doctor, so he had to be taken to a mortuary.  But before that Force regulations determined that an unusual death out of doors had to treated as suspicious.  Suspicious deaths had to be investigated by the Criminal Investigation Department, the CID, otherwise know to the uniform branch of the force as Coppers In Disguise, but not to their faces.

With some malicious delight I took up my personal radio and with frozen icy fingers called up the control room.

"Can you contact the Duty CID Officer for me please?" I asked, hoping that the duty officer on a Sunday at this time of year would be a high ranking one, a Chief Inspector at least.  "Tell him I have a suspicious death on the moors.  It's John Brown."

"Roger will do"  Came the reply.

I looked down at his body and said, "Sorry John.  You'll have to wait a bit longer before we can get you home."

I climbed up onto the wall a lit a cigarette.  Drawing on the Dunhill I watched the last of the winter sun disappear behind the misty town in the distance, and prepared to wait for the Brass to arrive.

Sitting on top of the wall it was cold, very  very cold.  The light had finally gone and all I could see in the distance was a steadily increasing number of lights on the roads of the towns visible in the distance.  I pulled my overcoat tighter around me and lit another cigarette. There was nothing to be done until the brass from CID had arrived.  The occasional radio call from the nick told me that the duty CID officer had been informed and would be attending in about forty minutes, and the divisional Land Rover was also being dispatched with a canvas coffin to load John into and take him to the mortuary at the local hospital in Rochdale.

I lit yet another cigarette and shivered as the temperature fell to well below freezing point.  My feet were sodden through tramping over the soaking humocky grass.  On these moors and over these fields the water level is only inches below the surface, one of the reasons why the reservoir was built there in the first place in the 1800’s.  When the water came to the surface it was black or at least a very dark brown due to the peat inches beneath the surface.  Icy peaty water dripped from my feet.  I took off a shoe to try and squeeze the excess water from my socks, bit of a useless exercise really, made no difference to the temperature of my toes.  I kicked my feet together and tried to get some life into them, waste of time.

Eventually it became so cold that my body was starting to become so numb that I climbed down off the wall and went to have a closer look at John Brown.  He looked very peaceful lying on his back in the grass.  There was no sign of a wound that I could make out anywhere on his head, his mouth was closed and his head lay slightly angled to his right shoulder.  His eyes were closed gently.  I was fairly certain that he had not died due to the actions of any other person, but it was very puzzling all the same.  

John was a single man, never been married, in his mid forties and lived alone in a small cottage in Milnrow, the village I had been patrolling for the previous six months since leaving the motorway patrol.  As a village it was now little more than a dormitory for the bigger town of Rochdale and had struggled for years to establish its own identity.  The main industry in the times of the industrial revolution had been cotton spinning and coal mining.  Now the cotton looms had gone, the mills closed and the coal pits long ago closed as well.  People travelled to Rochdale and Oldham in the main to find work and new housing had grown all over the area of the original village, but the original village still was there if you knew where to find it.

John Browns Body 2

 

John’s stone built cottage was what was known locally as a ‘two up two down’ as that was the number of rooms the house had.  It was in a row of perhaps ten or twelve houses, all identical and originally built to house the poorly paid cotton workers who came to Milnrow and other of the cotton towns of Lancashire from Ireland, Scotland and the more remote parts of the Lancashire hill country.  You entered the kitchen from the street door and then there was a room leading off from that.  This second room was often known as ‘the parlor’ and was normally kept clean and tidy just for the benefit of occasional visitors, or ‘Sunday best’.  The door was partially sheltered from the outside elements by a wooden partition no more than three feet wide extending intotheroom.  It stopped the winter winds from stealing all the heat from the open coal fire in the kitchen when the door was opened.  Upstairs was a bedroom with his single bed, a bedside table, a chest of drawers made from cheap wood and a wardrobe.  The second bedroom had been converted into a bathroom with a cast iron claw foot bath, a small porcelain sink and toilet.

I looked up from his body at the sound of something other than the noise of traffic off the motorway over to my left and in the next valley.  In the darkness I made out the form of two people coming up the hill towards where I was stood with John.  It was the duty CID officer and another Police officer in uniform, possibly my Sergeant.  As they drew closer I could hear them both muttering to themselves.  The uniformed officer was my sergeant.  The CID officer was a Detective Superintendent who I knew was a bit of a tyrant.  Joy of joys!! My cup raneth over!!  I had picked the right one to make life unpleasant for. Two days after Christmas Day would have meant that the Superintendent would be at home, television on, hot drink in hand when thetelephone call arrived to destroy his peace and quiet. You see, there is a God.  As they drew up to the body on the floor I saw that both of them were wearing wellington boots and heavyovercoats. 

The Superintendent spoke first.  “Warm enough for you?” he said.  “Not too bad thanks sir” I replied.  “Could do with a brew though, don’t suppose you brought one with you?”
He tried to kill me with a look, but he never did have much talent in that respect. My Sergeant broke the slight silence,  “Dickie Night is on his way with a trainee in the Land Rover and the coffin for you to take him to Birch Hill.”  “Oh shit sarg!”, I pleaded.  “Why Birch Hill? What’s wrong with the infirmary?”  “Sorry, has to be Birch Hill Hospital as the body is not within the Rochdale borough boundary area, has to be a Lancashire county hospital”.  And that was it, Birch Hill Hospital with its tiny frozen mortuary would be our destination, John Brown and I.

After looking closely at the body the Detective turned to me and said, “Nothing suspicious about this one as far as I can make out.  Let me have a copy of your report when you have submitted it.  He’s been missing a bit hasn’t he?”  “Yes Sir” I replied, “Missing six weeks”.  I shivered and stamped my feet.  The two of them made off back down the hill in the mud and icy cold leaving me alone with John on the hillside and the noise of motorway traffic drifting over the hill.  Then there was silence, and cold, and just the occasional blast of freezing wind whipping in from the east of Yorkshire to liven things up.

“So why”, I said to myself out loud, “Why after having dropped off the face of the earth for six weeks do you suddenly decide to turn up again, and dead?   More to the point, where have you been during that time and why choose to die on my patch, and in this bloody cold?”  I was beginning to feel that John had planned this all along and knew what my shift pattern was.  

I stamped around a bit and beat my arms against my body for several minutes before I saw a welcome sight, the headlights of the divisional Land Rover coming through the gate in the wall at the bottom of the hill.  The only bad thing about it was who was driving it.  Dickie Night.  A fairly bad specimen of a copper.  Wore spectacles thicker than beer bottle bottoms and with a keenly developed sense of being able to be anywhere other than were work was required to be done.  Not a good sign, but I was determined he would not be lumbering me with all the work which John Browns body was going to cause me over the next few hours.  I stood and lit another cigarette as I watched the headlights struggle up the deeply mud rutted path towards me.

The headlights on the Land Rover slowly drew closer, bobbing and bucking over the rutted moorland field, hitting the sides of rocks and kicking sideways off the path.  As it grew closer to me and John I started to make out the figures of the bespectacled Dickie Night fighting the steering wheel of the short wheel based vehicle.  In typical Night Time fashion, as we had termed it, he was holding the wheel stiffly at a ten to two position, and finding it hard work.  He rived the wheel and fought it as it fought back against his grip.  The closer the vehicle came to me the clearer his tense face became,hisface contorted in grimace after grimace as he tried to control it to make it go where he wanted it to go, instead of allowing it to find the path of least resistance up the moor.  

“Stupid sod” I muttered under my breath, “Just let it go by itself, there’s no need to fight it.”   But he didn’t and eventually he gave up driving and just let it stand in a mess of icy peaty water twenty yards down the hill from me.  He turned off the engine and I watched as he alighted from the drivers side door and started off up the moor to me.  The headlights were still blazing away like Blackpool Illuminations.  “Dickie you pillock” I shouted, “Turn the bloody engine back on or you’ll flatten the battery!”  He stopped and looked quizzically at me, then daylight dawned and he turned back to the vehicle and fired up the engine again.  As he closed the drivers door again I heard a cry.  “Oh shit!  This bloody water isfreezingisn't it?” he said.  A voice answered him from the passenger side of the Rover.  “Yeah it is isn’t it?” It was the trainee who Dickie had brought with him, a nineteen year old fresh out of training college recruit with no more than three or four months service under his belt.  For a second or two I wondered what terrible sin this young man had committed to earn himself a shift with the shiftless Dickie.  “No matter” I thought.  “It’s not his fault”

Dickie and the young copper, Alan, struggled up the hill until they stood breathless in front of me.  Young Alan looked nervously beyond my shoulder at the dead body of John lying peacefully on the moor behind me.  “Alright Dave?” asked Dickie.  “Yes thanks.  Bloody frozen though.  Don’t suppose you brought a nice hot brew with you did you?” I said.  “Er, no.  Sorry, Never crossed my mind,” replied the useless one.  

“Typical!” I snorted.  “Never mind, lets get him into the back of the Rover then.”  Dickie turned to Alan, “Get the coffin out the back will you?” he said, and Alan turned back to walk down the hill to the Land Rover.  I started to walk back with him.  The coffin was too much for one and Dickie would foul up even a straightforward job of carrying a canvas coffin, besides I rather liked the idea of Dickie being alone with a stiff on the moors with no one else to lean on.

 

Alan had had the forethought to bring a torch with him and together we staggered against the rocks and pot holes in the path until we eventually came to the rear door of the Rover. The major part of the vehicle was parked in a pool of icy water several inches deep, including the access to the side opening back door.  Alan and I looked at each other as he opened up the door.  “What a gobshite he is” I said quietly.  Alan, showing a fairly well developed sense of diplomacy and tact said nothing, but reached across the pool of water into the back of the Rover and started to struggle with the coffin.  I came to his side and together we got hands on the carrying handles on the sides of the coffin and pulled it out ofthe vehicle and onto the moor.  Alan closed the door with a bang.  He looked at me a little shamefully at the loud noise the door had made shattering the silence of the black moorland.  I grinned at him to try and put him a little more at ease, he was fairly obviously very nervous and probably had never been so close to a dead body before.  Certainly he had never been out on the moor at night before.  Enough to put the wind up anyone really.  “Don’t worry” I said, “You’re not going to wake him up.  He’s been dead some time”.  Alan grinned a nervous grin in the darkness and we turned to struggle back up the hill carrying the coffin between us.  

The coffin was made of a very thick duck canvas and was rather like a modern body bag.  The bottom of the coffin had metal rods sew into it to provide stability once you had a body loaded up.  There were six handles, two on either side, one at the head, one at the foot and a long zip running down its length from top to bottom.  It weighed about twelve pounds and was a bulky unbending bloody thing to have to manoeuvre about even before you had a stiff in it.  With an occupant inside it was almost impossible to carry unless you had a person on each of the four carrying handles plus one at the head and one at the foot.  We were three.  This was going to be fun! Oh joy!!  What else could one wish for other than to be out in the freezingwintercold on a black moorland field, struggling through puddles of icy peat laden water with a large stiff male body? Shit, shit, shit and double shit!

As we manhandled the coffin up the last part of the hill to where John was lying Dickie was standing close to the body, lighting up a cigarette.  I stopped and dropped my end of the coffin to the floor.  “Don’t think of giving us a hand Dickie” I said, “Don’t even let it pass through your mind”.  He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. “Oh sorry” he said eventually, and came down the steep grassy slope towards us.  He lost his footing when he was about four feet from us and slid feet first down the rest of the slope on his behind, colliding with the coffin resting on the floor.  He swore.  Loud and briefly, but we still heard it.  I grinned.  “You alright Dickie?”  I asked, in the best contrived solicitous voice Icould manage.  “Fuck off” he said.  “That’s not very polite is it?” I replied.  Dickie put down one hand into the icy grass and heaved himself back onto his feet.  Alan and I just ignored him and his requests for help and simply carried on sliding up the hill to John carrying the coffin between us.

John Browns Body 3

 

We laid the coffin down alongside John’s body and unfastened the zip all the way down to the bottom.  I looked at Dickie and then Alan.  “Well one of you is going to have to help me get him in here” I said, indicating the coffin.  Dickie made a move to Johns side and took hold of his arm to bend it back towards the side of his body.  It refused to move.  He glanced up at me.  “Oh bugger” he said, “It’s rigor mortis isn’t it ?”  I reached down and took hold of his other arm and tried to bend it.  There was an instant when the arm moved for a fraction of an inch, then it held firm.  The flesh was cold, and covered in a thin layer of snow from the previous night.  I let his arm fall to the grass and thought foramoment. “Don’t think it is rigor mortis alone, I think he is frozen stiff.  He’s been here a good few hours and it’s been bloody cold all day, let alone last night.  He must be frozen solid.”  I said.  The other two stood looking at the body not wishing to make a decision or judgement on our course of action.  A wicked thought went through my mind.  I looked at Dickie and winked, then looked sideways at Alan, our young new recruit.  

“Only one thing for it “ I said.  “Going to have to break his arms to get them by his side so we can get him in the coffin.” Alan looked alarmed and stuttered.  “We can’t do that can we?” he asked. “How will it look when his family come for him and he has two broken arms?”  He was obviously concerned, and lacking in experience, guile and the finer points of the 1861 Ways and Means Act.  This little known act of Parliament, amended by the Smart Arse Act of 1960, enables the Police to sort out seemingly intractable and insoluble problems without resorting to certain niceties or conventions, like due respect for dead bodies where the said dead body is creating a bloody nuisance and stopping the officer concerned from getting back to the nick for a warm brewand something to eat when they have been on the freezing cold moor for what was now approaching three long bloody hours.  I was not amused, nor was I in any mood to stay up there in the cold any longer than I really had to.

“Dickie” I said quietly, “Grip his arm and bend it to his side.”  For once Dickie did as he had been told.  He took hold of the arm on his side and gently eased it from the horizontal to lie alongside his trunk.  I repeated the same action with the arm on my side, and between the three us we managed to get John’s body into the canvas coffin.  Standing with one foot straddling either side of the coffin, Alan held the two arms down inside the coffin as Dickie and I tugged away at the zip until we had managed to pull it all the way down from the top to the bottom of the bag.  John was now all sewn up, so to speak.

With the coffin lying in the spikey grass between us we stood and stretched our backs for a moment and caught our breath. I glanced from one to the other.  “Are we fit then?” I asked.  Dickie nodded, still gasping for breath from his exertions, Alan nodded too, a little grim faced I thought.  “Take a hold of a handle and lets get him back to the Rover” I said.  Six handles were on the coffin for a very good and logical purpose.  A dead body is a dead weight, that’s how the phrase came into being.  Six handles presumes six people are going to be used to transport the stiff from where it had been found to where ever it was going, not three.  Now, believe me, with the best will in the world, unless you are an Olympic class weight lifter you arenot going to be able to carry a dead body in a canvas coffin across a stretch of black icy hummocky grass in the mid evening in winter in the north of England without having the right number of people to carry out the task.  It is not going to happen.  But it had to, we had to get the body the twenty yards from where he had decided to lay himself down, or where someone else had decided to lay him down, and into the Land Rover so that we could transport him from the freezing cold moor to the freezing cold mortuary at Birch Hill Hospital at Littleborough.  

Dickie and Alan took one handle on either side whilst I took the handle at the back of the coffin, and we lifted.  The coffin immediately nosedived towards the grass.  We laid it down and I went to the front handle.  Again we lifted.  It taildived this time.  Dickie giggled.  “This isn’t going to be easy is it?” he said.  “No” I grunted as we tried lifting again.  No matter how we tried it the damn coffin insisted on diving into the earth from either the front or the rear, it seemed like we were trying to carry a see-saw down the moor.  We slid on the grass, we fell into puddles, we swore and slid some more, but eventually by the grace of whoever was up there watching us, we reached the rear door of the Land Rover.  We stoodthe coffin up on ‘it’s feet’ against the back door and stood to catch our breath and try to remove some of the peaty mud from our trousers which by now had lost any semblance of creases, and our overcoats which were now splattered in large brown stains from contact with the mud and grass.  “Lets have a fag” suggested Dickie.  “Yes,” I responded. There were the odd occasions when Dickie Night made good suggestions. “Then we get him in the back and off this bloody moor”.

We stood smoking away and gradually got our breath back.  Alan kept looking around him nervously at the dark moorland fields.  The only sounds were coming from the motorway, the only lights from the village in the distance.  Otherwise there was total moonless cloudy darkness.  We flicked our cigarette butts out into the moor and heard them hiss in the wet grass.  Dickie and I manoeuvred the coffin away from the door handle and Alan opened the door wide to allow us to access the rear compartment.  It was then immediately apparent that the compartment was not long enough to enable us to feed the coffin in lengthwise and flat on the floor of the vehicle.  There just was not enough length between the rear door and the back of the passenger anddrivers seats in the front of the vehicle.  He would have to go in cross ways, from bottom left to top right, slanting.  We eventually managed to get him into the back of the Land Rover. One person would go inside and tug at the head of the coffin and the others two would stand in the peaty puddle and push and shove him.  His head was in the top right hand corner of the compartment and his feet lodged securely against the bulkhead of the bottom left door stanchion.  There was a problem however, John Browns body insisted on trying to get out, or fall out of the back of the vehicle.  Frozen solid as he was there appeared to be some sign of life left in him yet.  “Dickie” I said, “You hold the bugger in and I’ll shut the door on him to jam him in.  OK?”  Dickie did as he was instructed and I managed to get the door closed against the coffin.  We now were faced with a second problem.  Two seats in the Land Rover and threepassengers. Dickie was the driver, and I was certainly not going to have anyone sat on my kneed whilst we struggled to get the Rover off the moor and to the hospital.  The seats just were not big enough. Alan looked from Dickie and myself and back agin.  “What?” he asked suspiciously.  “What?”  

“Is this the first dead body you have seen Alan” I asked.  “Yes, it is” he replied taking a great gulp of air.  “You’ll like him by the time we get to hospital.”  I said.  “Get in the back with the body.”  I jerked my head back toward the rear of the vehicle.  His young face creased like he suddenly knew he had filled his trousers with whatever he had eaten for his last meal.  Then realisation dawned and he slowly and very quietly slid his way to the back door.  I opened it and reached inside to stop the coffin falling out.  “In you get “ I said.  Quietly, ever so quietly, he climbed up onto the step and into the cramped compartment, clutching his arms tenderly around the coffin for support. Gently, ever so gently, I closedthedoor on the pair of them and got into the passenger seat.

“Get that bloody heater going Dickie” I said. “My balls are colder than a brass monkeys, and my stomach thinks my throat has been cut”.  Dickie fired up the engine, set the heater to blast setting and engaged first gear.  We jerked forward a foot and the engine stalled.  Dickie fired it up again.  We stalled again.  I looked sideways at him.  “Want me to have a go?” I asked.  He looked forward through the misty windscreen which the pathetic excuse for a heater in the Land Rover had failed miserably to clear.  With his freearm he leaned forward and with his gloved hand wiped the condensation from the screen.  “No, No it’s okay, I’ll be alright” he stuttered.  This was getting a bit beyond a joke.  

John Browns Body 4

 

I got out from the vehicle and examined our predicament.  We were probably overloaded, up to the wheel hubs in thick icy water, on the moor, at night, in winter, snow on the ground, temperature dropping quicker than a prossies knickers at a Naval dockyards with a totally incompetent prat who was masquerading as a driver.  I looked to the cloudy skies for some form of divine intervention.  As usual nothing came.  We were knackered, goosed, buggered and totally up the creek without any form of propulsion.

I sat in the passenger seat of the Land Rover trying to dry out my frozen and wet shoes and trousers from the completely inadequate warm air draft coming from the heater. “I could fart warmer air than this thing is producing” I muttered.  Dickie looked sideways at me but said nothing.  His spectacles glinted in the reflected lights of the instruments on the dashboard.  Ahead of us down the moor and beyond the wall of the reservoir were homes and farms, their lights taunting us as we sat in our icy cold tin can.
“I suppose there is one good thing about this whole mess” I said.  “What’s that?” Dickie asked.  “Well at least John isn’t going to go off in this cold.  Should be still well preserved for the post mortem.”   If my nether regions were in danger of death by freezing, at least my slightly warped sense of humour was still intact.

We sat for a while trying to work out how we were going to get the Land Rover and contents off the moor and back to civilisation.  Nothing immediately presented itself.  Calling out divisional transport would be out of the question, they would simply call a rota garage from the call out list, and we would suffer the ignominy of the cat calls and jokes from our fellow officers for months to come.  I looked at Dickie and mentally stabbed him between the eyes.  It didn’t work, he was still alive.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.  Dickie half turned towards me, his arm starting to reach out to take one from the pack.  “Piss off” I said, “Smoke your own”.  I was not in a benevolent mood.  “Charming”hereplied and sat back in the drivers seat.  I lit the cigarette from a box of matches and slipped the spent match out t hrough a crack at the top of the window.  It was the only thing stopping the whole vehicle from steaming up as our damp clothing and bodies started to thaw in the meagre heat.

My thoughts turned to the dead body in the back of the Rover.  How had he suddenly reappeared after being missing for six week?  Where had he been?  Had he been with someone?  What further light would his distant relatives be able to throw on him and his life?

John was in his mid forties, never married, lived alone but had one or two cousins living in the local area.  He was something of a loner and rarely saw his family.  His disappearance had been reported to the Police some three days after he had failed to turn up for an arranged cycle ride with a lady friend.  She lived some twenty miles away, and two days after he had not materialised for their ride she telephoned John’s cousin.  Together they went to his house, fearing that they would find his body somewhere in the house having had an accident or been struck down by some sudden and fatal illness.  He wasn’t there.  He wasn’t anywhere.

The law presumes that a sane adult is capable of deciding where and how they wish to live.  The fact that sometimes those decisions might not accord with those of the people living with or around them is of no significance.  An adult can go where they wish, live where they wish and talk with who they wish, and it should be no concern to anyone close to that individual.  In other words you can suddenly take off in the middle of the night taking with you whatever you want and the law deems this to be perfectly alright.  You will have broken no law, you go where you want and do what you want to do.  When John was reported missing from his home to the Police the initial reaction of the officer taking the report was almost, “So what?”, but maybe not thatcallas.  From the questions asked of his relatives there appeared to be nothing untoward in his sudden unexplained non appearance for the cycle ride.  However, because he had not shown any signs before of ill health, mental instability or in fact anything out of the ordinary, some alarm bells started to ring.  

Here was a quiet single man, living by himself yet who had a friendship with a single lady of similar age who lived twenty miles away.  They both shared an interest in cycling and had in the past on many occasions taken themselves off for rides in the hills of Lancashire and Yorkshire.  They had had meals out together and been for the odd drink in one or other of the pubs in Milnrow, but never anything to excess.  Neither had a problem with alcohol, and both in fact lived single contented lives where they were able to meet with each other when it suited both of them.  The only thing slightly out of the ordinary was that John had been prescribed sleeping tablets some months before which he apparently took only irregularly.  For him suddenly to disappearwas a cause for concern, as the only seemingly obvious answer to the reason for his disappearance was that some misfortune had befallen him, either at his own hand, or the hand of someone else.  From the outset it was not a straightforward Missing From Home enquiry.  I was given the job of trying to progress the enquiry file after it had been running for some four weeks.  The file was thick.

Judging from the paperwork numerous enquiries had been made with the Yorkshire police force to try and gain some more information about the appointment he had made with his friend to go for a rid on their cycles.  It seemed that the arrangement had been made the week before he suddenly went missing.  He was to cycle over to her house on a Saturday and they would then go off for the remainder of the day.  When he failed to turn up at the house she did not immediately feel that anything was amiss, simply that he was not feeling well, or he had a cold, but nothing to raise her fears.  After two days during which time he had failed to contact her she went over to Milnrow to his home, she had her own front door key to the house, and let herself in.  Whatshe found there was what I subsequently found when I visited the house for the first time.

The house was cold and I shivered as I stepped over the threshold into the kitchen.  The floor was made of stone flags, large irregular rectangles of stone which had been partially covered by a rag rug.  There was a white porcelain sink set beneath the one window in the room which had a wooden draining area to one side.  On it were the washed plates, cup and small pan with which he had made his last meal in the house.  A question raised itself in my mind.  When was that last meal consumed?  There was nothing to indicate when it had been made or eaten.  

Upstairs in his bedroom the bed was made up ready for his return, his wardrobe contained a two piece suit, a few shirts, a couple of pairs of trousers and little else.  The bathroom was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house.  In general terms this was the home of a single unmarried man, plainly furnished with none of the ornaments or pictures on the walls or on furniture which you would find in a home furnished by a woman.  It lacked ‘a woman’s touch’.  Comparing this house to my own it was Spartan, even the walls of the few rooms lacked any life.  The place was sterile and had no semblance of warmth in it.  As I moved from room to room I felt time and again how simply this man had lived, how frugally he had existed, how lonely he musthave been.  Even with the company of the one woman who was occasionally in his life he had only a few people where he worked who spoke to him.  He was something of a loner, but from what I read, did not appear to be unhappy with his life.

So what to make of his disappearance and his death on the moors high above Milnrow?

John Browns Body 5

 

My thoughts left John’s home and back to my freezing cold feet on the floor of the Land Rover and the problem of how to get the damn thing off the moor and back to civilisation.  Smoking a cigarette had not stimulated the brain in any way and I was loathe to ask Dickie for any thoughts which might have strayed through his head, therein would lie problems of their own.  Not the brightest knife in the drawer was our Dickie.  He opened his window an inch and flicked the butt of his cigarette off into the moor.  I looked sideways at him,”Well?” I asked, “Anything come to mind?”  He shrugged and took offhis cap and then replaced it on his balding head.  “Nowt really” he answered.  I grunted and turned to look down the moor to the farm nearest to the reservoir, maybe almost half a mile away in the darkness.  Something was moving across the front of the farm, yet it was too far away to make out what it was.  I followed the object until it came out of the light cast by the farm buildings and to the end of the short track leading to the reservoir service road.  It was a farm tractor, and it had a passenger holding on to the driver mounted on it.  I wondered what could have possibly persuaded the farmer to leave his warm home on a night such as this to go out on the moor.  Then it became clear.  The tractor chugged it’s way through the gate in the wall and then turned sharply to head up the moor in our general direction.  It was making to the path we were sitting on in the Rover.  It appeared that rescue was coming ourway.

As the tractor drew closer to us our hopes rose and we got out of the vehicle to greet our saviour.  The farmer stopped a few yards from our stricken vehicle.  He was middle aged and dressed in clothing far more adequate than ours for the temperatures and conditions.   “I could see you were bogged down.  Thought you might use some help”  He said.  Turning to the young boy riding on the back of the tractor he nodded to him to get off.  The boy jumped off the back of the tractor and I could see he was having great difficulty in keeping a wide grin off his face.  I couldn’t blame him really.  Not every day you get the chance to show off to the local Police is it?

I walked to the farmer.  “Many thanks for coming out.  I’m afraid this moor is too much for even a four wheel drive with the weight we have in it”  I said.  He smiled from under the thick woolen knitted hat he was wearing on his head.  “No problem.  We’ll have you off here in no time, got a chain to pull you with,”  he replied, turning his head to indicate where his son was removing the largest chain I had ever seen from behind the seat of the tractor.  Anything bigger would have been more than adequate to tie off an ocean going liner, anytime.  Dickie, Alan and myself helped the farmer and his son to unwind it from the back of the tractor.  I gave one of the free ends to Alan and told him to fasten it to the towinghookunderthe front of the Rover.  Alan pulled hard to free the chain taking it in both hands and leaning back against its weight to free it.  His feet slid from underneath him in the bog and he fell heavily on his behind into the cold wet grass.  With a shout of surprise and shock he struggled to his feet holding the free end of the chain in his hand.  “Not quite what I had in mind” I quipped, “But if it works then that’s fine”.  Alan started to say something then immediately judged it would be unwise to make any sort of sarcastic reply in response.  I could feel his teeth grinding as he regained his balance and composure.  

Dickie walked to the front of the Rover and together with Alan fed the free end of the chain through the circular loop beneath the front bumper bar.  Dickie secured it in place with a D clamp pushed through both ends of the chain until it was screwed in place.  “We’re okay now” he called to the farmer.  Dickie pushed himself onto his knees, ignoring the cold water seeping through his uniform trousers and stumbled through the grass and mud to the drivers door.  The farmer returned to the drivers seat of his tractor and half turned so that he could watch the progress of the Rover behind him.  Seeing the glinting spectacles in place in the drivers seat and the raised thumb from the drivers window the farmer threw his machine into forward gear and pressed down on the accelerator.  With a sudden jerk the tractor pulled forward over the muddy track taking up some of the slack in the chain between the two vehicles.  He stopped and glanced back at the chain then at me.  “Tell me how much slack I’ve got will you? “ he said. “I can’t see bugger all in this light”.  I slid over to the back of the tractor and stepped over the slack chain so that I could have more room to jump should the need arise.  I had no wish to be in the line of fire if the chain suddenly went taught and jerked the front of the Land Rover off.  

Dickie released the handbrake and pushed the gear lever into first as the farmer started to gently ease forward through the muddy path to take up the slack in the chain.  I watched from one to the other as the chain became tighter and tighter.  “Stop!” I shouted, “You're nearly there now”   The farmer slipped the clutch on his tractor and set the brake.  He leaped down from the seat and came round to the rear of the tractor to inspect the state of play with the chain.  It was almost fully tightened.   “Right, “ he said rubbing his hands against the sides of his thick trousers.  “I think that should be alright.”  He turned to face Dickie who pushed his head out of the drivers door window.  “Keep it tight on the brake ifyouneedto “ he said.  “I’m going to try for a straight pull down the track and don’t want you running up my arse when we get to the gate down there”  His arm shot out to indicate the general direction of the wall down below us.  Dickie nodded his head grimly and withdrew it back into the warmth of the cab.  

I looked around for Alan.  He was no where in sight.  “Where the bloody hell is Alan?” I shouted to Dickie.  Dickie could not hear me over the noise of the engine and the tractor.  Couple that with the fact that he could often quiet easily ‘cop a deaf un’ whenever he wished to I was rapidly coming to the end of my tether, and my tether was never regarded as being very long at the best of times.  

“I’m here” called a voice from the passenger side of the Rover.  Alan had removed himself into the warmth whilst the rest of us were struggling with the chain and taking up the slack.  
“Get your arse out of there and into the back with the stiff”  I called to him.  “If you think I am getting in there with him you are sadly mistaken.  Now move it” The passenger door of the Rover opened and Alan slowly and reluctantly stepped down into the long wet grass, slamming the door closed as he trudged back along the length of the vehicle.  I saw the rear door open and Alan climb in.  Not a happy bunny, but so what.  No one said this was an easy life.  Welcome!!

The farmer climbed back into the seat of the tractor and slowly started to pull the chain tight.  The Land Rover jerked forward a few inches, digging its front wheels into the muddy path, but the strength of the tractor overcame the weight of the Rover and the pull of the terrain.  We started to make progress down the path towards the reservoir wall and its gate.  “Keep the foot brake on Dickie” I shouted.  His head nodded a couple of times in acknowledgement as he grimly clenched his teeth with the effort of keeping the chain tight and ensuring the Rover kept as close to the path as was possible.  Slowly the caravan trundled down the hill to the gateway.  Close to the gate the farmer stopped his tractor and Dickie pulled forward a littletocreatesome slack in the chain, then pulled on the hand brake.  I ran forward to the front of the Rover and knelt down to unfasten the D clamp holding the chain in place.  The well oiled screw bolt came away easily and I dragged the free end out of the ring beneath the Rover and started to drag it back to the tractor.  The farmers son took the end from me. “It’s alright officer, I’ll do it now”  he said.  “Thanks lad “I said.  I turned to the farmer and blew a big sigh of relief.  “I don’t know how the hell we would have got down there without you.” I said.  “Thanks so much for your help.”  “Glad to help” the farmer replied.  “Hope you get to the bottom of the bloke.  Can’t be easy”.  

We shook hands and I turned back and climbed into the passenger seat of the Rover.  I looked at Dickie.  “Home James, and don’t spare the horses” I said.  “Birch Hill first stop please Dickie.  Lets get him unloaded and stripped so I can get some bloody warmth into my body”.  Dickie pushed the gear lever forward and released the handbrake, the vehicle moved slowly along the path and through the gate in the wall.  The headlights picked out the ten foot high stone columns of the gate posts and then the track beyond.  I sat back in my seat and turned to the rear of the of the vehicle.  “You alright in the back” I called to Alan.  He made no reply, but I could feel a certain amount of pure hatred emanating from the place where he was sat crunched up between the side wall of the Rover and the canvas coffin containing John Browns body.  I turned to Dickie and commented,” Alan doesn’t seem to be liking this job much.”  Dickie grinned.  “You’re a bit of a bastard at times aren’t you?” he said.  I did not reply, just took a cigarette from the pack in my pocket and lit up.  The smoke was good after all that freezing fresh air.  “Too much fresh air is not good for you is it?” I asked Dickie.  He just grunted and concentrated on manoeuvring the vehicle along the ruts in the path and then onto the tarmac road leading down the hill to Milnrow.

John Browns Body 6

 

As soon as we came onto the lighted road the world seemed a friendlier place.  My spirits lifted and I felt warmer although nothing inside the vehicle had changed.  There was still an icy cold body in the back with a slightly scared young copper, and we still had to get the pair of them unloaded and one of them stripped off and placed in a mortuary.  The thought sent a cold chill back up my spine.  No matter how to spelled it out, this was not going to be a pleasant evening.  Dickie started to hum a tuneless melody.  I looked sideways at him. “Pack it in” I pleaded.  “My life is shit enough as it is without having to put up with your singing.”  “What’s the problem Dave.  Lost your sense of humour?”  He grinned backatme. Isaid nothing but just kept looking ahead at the lights of buildings and cars travelling along the road towards us.  It was not going to be a happy night.

After a few moments the force radio set into the dashboard came to life.  “Papa Two Five” said the disembodied voice.  I picked up the handset and placed it close to my mouth. Pap Two Five was us.  “Papa Two Five receiving “ I said.  I recognised the voice on the other end from my days on Traffic patrol.  He was a very experience former Traffic officer who rejoiced under the name of Tommy Steele, the same name as an English pop singer from the 1960’s.  He was a guy you could trust to get the job right every time he spoke.  One of the really good guys who could combine humour with getting the job done.

“Papa Two Five,” he said.  “From your Sergeant at Littleborough.  You need to go to the Infirmary at Rochdale to have the body certified dead and then take it from there to the mortuary at Birch Hill.  Apparently there is no Accident and Emergency at Birch Hill so they will not have an appropriate doctor on duty.  Received Papa Two Five?”   I heard the message and sat quietly for a moment, trying hard to control the outburst of foul thoughts and language going through my head.  Birch Hill was a hospital, doctors and nurses worked there on a regular basis.  The reason why we were being diverted to the Infirmary at Rochdale was nothing to do with the fact there were no doctors available, it was all about some lazy idle doctor ondutyatBirch Hill not wanting to become involved with a sudden death and the complications he or she thought might be involved.  

I put the handset near to my mouth and keyed the transmit button.  As soon as this happens the radio is transmitting, whether or not the person holding the handset is saying anything.  What Tommy Steele was hearing was the noise of Land Rover engine and whatever noises were happening in the vehicle.  “Fucking lazy bastard doctors” I muttered into the handset.  Raising my voice to normal speech level I replied, “Papa Two Five, Roger.  Off to Rochdale Infirmary.  Out”.   There was a pause as Tommy keyed his handset.  “Roger that Papa Two Five.” Then the unmistakable sound of a very slight belch coming over the airwaves.  I grinned at Dickie who looked at me in astonishment.  “Was that what I thought itwas?”heasked. “You bet your sweet arse it was”  I replied.  “That was Tommy Steele agreeing with my sentiments”  

The drive to the infirmary took no more than fifteen minutes through the evening traffic, but it was still eight o’clock by the time we pulled into the Accident and Emergency yard at the hospital.  The wide glass doors of the department were closed but we could see nurses and doctors and patients moving around in the warmth inside.  It was still too early in the evening for the pub rush of drunken injuries to have arrived, so Dickie pulled the Rover to a halt right outside the main door.  Before he could turn off the engine the door of the emergency department opened and a young thin male coloured doctor in a white coat came bustling out.  As I climbed out of the Rover he came to me.  “Where do you want him doctor?” I asked.  He lookedatmyquizzically.  “Oh, “ he said, “No need to get him out.  I will have a look at him in the back.”  and he started to walk to the rear door of the Rover, which opened just as he was about to place his hand on the door handle. “Oh my God” he yelped and jumped back a yard or more.  Alan climbed painfully from the rear of the vehicle.  “That bloody thing is the most uncomfortable fucking car I have ever been in “ he said.  “Doesn’t help have a coffin in their either”.   The doctor breathed a long deep sigh of relief at the sight of Alan.  He looked into the dark rear compartment and then turned round to look at me.  “There is no need to get him out, “he said.  “I will examine him in there so you can take him straight to the mortuary.  Your Sergeant has explained everything to me.”  

I held the door open whilst he climbed into the back with some difficulty.  The tails of his white coat kept tangling around his legs and the stethoscope around his neck threatened to fall off onto the floor or to strangle him.  He held onto the instrument with one hand and using the other started to pull himself into the darkened space.  I placed my hand against the small of his back and between the two of us pushing, shoving and heaving he managed to get into the back.  It was very dark so I shone Alan’s torch into the back and illuminated the coffin still wedged firmly from top to bottom of the compartment.  I could see that he was having difficulty working out how to get to actually examine his patient, so I climbed into the back with him. It was cosy in there, just the three of us.

He looked closely at the coffin trying to work out how to get inside it to view the body.  I let him struggle for a few seconds then my better nature took over and I pulled the zip from the top of the coffin until it was half way down, and John could clearly be seen.  I felt rather than heard his intake of breath.  “My my, “ he said.  “He does look dead doesn’t he?” He asked.  I nodded from behind and to the side of the doctor.  “Just a bit” I replied quietly.  The doctor took the stethoscope from around his neck and started to place it on John’s chest, then he hesitated for a second.  “I don’t think this is necessary really is it officer?” he asked.  I made no reply.  Whatever he did, he would have to justify in a Coroner's Court.  I was simply the person presenting the body to him for examination.  He was the one having spent years at an expensive university to earn the privileged of wearing a white coat.  Very gently he placed two fingers against the place on John’s neck where the carotid artery should have been pushing blood around his body.  He left it there for two or three seconds, then turned to me.  “I can confirm that his man is dead officer” he said gently.  “Thank you doctor”  I replied.

I pulled up the zip on the coffin and backed out of the Rover.  As my feet touched the floor I turned to help the young doctor from the back.  He thanked me quietly and asked, “Is there anything else you need from me officer?”  “Not at this stage thank you doctor.  I will be in touch at some point for a statement.”  He turned away and walked quietly back into the lights of the Emergency department.

So now we had a body which was officially dead according to the requirements of the law.  So now we had to take it off to the mortuary at Birch Hill Hospital.

I turned to Dickie.  “Come on Dickie.  Back up the hill to Littleborough we go.” I said.  
“Oh, “ he said.  “I am finishing my shift now.  I spoke to the sergeant before we came out and I’ve got some time off.    I’ll drive you back to Littleborough nick and then you have to take the body to the mortuary.”    

“Dickie Night” I thought.  You really are a first class skiving bastard.  I climbed back into the passenger seat of the Land Rover.  “Lets get back there before I blow” I said quietly.  Dickie fired up the engine and we drove in total silence back to the Police station at Littleborough.

John Browns Body 7

The Sunday evening the traffic on the main road back to the station was almost non existent.  I thought briefly of the families in their houses which we passed, sitting in the warmth and comfort of their homes perhaps watching the television or enjoying the companionship of friends and family, and realising that John’s family would have none of that comfort this evening.  By the time we had recovered his body from the moors his family, both in the local area and Yorkshire, would have been informed of his discovery.  From now on any dealings with his body and his family would have to be carried out inavery circumspect and respectful way.

As Dickie drove the Land Rover along the main road I looked out of the side window of the passenger door.  The sky was clearing and a deep black cover was forming over the town to replace the rusty reddish brown of the cloud cover which had been present all evening thus far.  Pin pricks of stars shone through the cloud cover, and occasionally a thin moon slipped in and out of the odd thin clouds scudding across the sky.  A breeze had picked up, which would mean the temperature would be dropping as the evening turned into night.  “Pity the poor sods who would be on night duty tonight”, I thought.  The Rover lurched to the left and then to the right as Dickie pulled off the main road and into the driveway which ran the length of the front of the Police station.  From the rear of the Rover came the sound of heavy objects being thrown from first one side then the other.  No doubt Alan and John were getting to know each other more intimately.  No matter, we had arrived.

As I turned to my right to call over my shoulder to Alan in the back Dickie opened his drivers door and hopped out, slamming the door shut behind him.  Before I had the opportunity to say anything Dickie was sprinting up the series of steps to the front door of the station.  The thought crossed my mind that Dickie was desperate for the bathroom.  “Alan” I called though, “I want you to stay here until I get back.  I’m just going to speak to Sergeant Harrison.  Won’t be more than two minutes, but you have to stay here with the body.  OK?”  An unhappy muffled noise came out of the back which I took to be Alan agreeing to do as I requested.  I opened the door and stepped down from the Rover closing the passenger door behind me.  As I had thought, the temperature was dropping, already it was below freezing and the grass on the lawns by the side of the steps to the front of the station were starting to turn white.

As I opened the front door to the station a warm draft of air hit me and it smelled stale after the clear cold air of the moors.  Going through the small entrance hall I opened the door into the Enquiry Office as it was known officially, or Front Office as it was called by all who worked in any Lancashire Police Station.  In front of me was a waist high solid wooden counter mounted on a series of cupboards in which was kept many of the forms on which the Police was able to function.  Across the counter and six feet away was the ‘goldfish bowl’, a small office made of glass panels which housed the radio and telephones used by the officer on duty to pass on messages and jobs to the ‘troops’ on the ground.  This evening it was an elderly Constable called George on duty.  As I stood by the counter his head raised briefly from the newspaper he was reading.  “Where’s Dickie Knight got to George” I asked.  He looked up again and grinned at me.  “You mean Greased Lightening? You’re too late, he’s off out the back by now” and his head inclined towards the back door of the station off to my left.  The rear of the station was where we all parked out cars whilst on duty.  Dickie would have been off and through there whilst I was still getting out of the Land Rover.  

I swiveled round and ran back to the front door and pulled it open.  As I went through into the entrance hall Dickie Knight was changing into second gear and booting his car along the driveway to the exit from the station area.  “You lazy skiving bastard!” I thought.  “One of these days you are going to get it”.  I went back into the Front Office and rested my elbows on the counter.  “George” I called out, “Any idea where Sergeant Harrison is hiding out at the moment?” George glanced at a plastic situation board fixed to the glass panel in front of him.  “He’s out on patrol at the moment, think he’s gone off to DHQ with the mail”.  This didn’t sound right.  Mail went to DHQ on Friday evening, and then not again until Monday evening.  A sneaking suspicion went through my mind that he was avoiding me, he didn’t want anything to do with a dead body found on the moors where the Detective Superintendent had been called out.  I grinned to myself.

“George, do me a favour will you?” I asked.  George looked up from the desk again.  “What?” he asked.  “Get on the radio and tell Der Fuhrer that my car is at Ogden Reservoir and needs to be collected and brought back here.  I am going to Birch Hill with the trainee Dickie Knight lumbered me with and will be tied up for about the next two hours.”  I paused.  “You can also tell him that I will be finishing when I get away from the mortuary, I haven’t had a break yet so will take time off in lieu.  If he kicks off tell him where I live, he can come and sort it out face to face.  The prat.”  

Sergeant Harrison was built from the same lousy mould as Dickie Knight, in that he would avoid work as diligently and with a frequency which would put any normal person to shame.  He was known in the job as a Uniform Carrier, since he did nothing other than port the uniform around for eight hours a day if he could possibly get away with it, doing the absolute minimum of work during that period.

George grinned and nodded his head in agreement.  “One other thing please George” I added.  “Give Birch Hill a call and ask a porter to meet us at the mortuary.  I don’t see Alan and I being able to get the coffin out of the Land Rover by ourselves.  Tell him I will meet him there and will have our key.”  George nodded his head and swung around in his chair then, pushing his feet hard on the floor, scooted over the floor to a wooden cupboard on the back wall of the office.  He stopped his rather fast progress across the smooth floor with one foot and opened the cupboard with one hand and reached in with the other.  The cupboard contained a wall of keys on hooks.  George searched for the one he wanted and, having found it, removed a large old iron key with a plastic label attached to it.  It was the key for the mortuary.  He swung round and tossed the key through the door of his goldfish bowl and over the counter to me.  I caught it and held it up triumphantly.  “Cheers George.  See you later”.  “Cheers David.  Take care” he replied and slowly scooted back to his newspaper and mug of instant coffee on the desk.

I turned and left the station walking out again into the cold night air.  It’s chill hit my face first and then a second later my lungs, it really was becoming even colder than it had been in the afternoon, if that was possible.

The Land Rover was in darkness and quiet.  I walked around the front of it so that Alan could see me and opened up the drivers door, hauling myself up into the drivers seat.  “Alan” I called back over my shoulder.  “You can come and sit in the warmth in the front now”.  I heard him open the back door and then his groans as he dropped down onto the floor.  A couple of seconds later the passenger door opened and he pulled himself up into the seats by my side.  I looked at him, he appeared to be in some discomfort.  “You alright?” I asked.  He winced as he tried to find a comfortable position in the seat by my side, stretching out his legs into the well in front of him.  “It was a bit cramped up in the back there with the coffin, and Iwas thrown around a bit.” He replied.  I grinned quietly to myself.  “Lets get the fire going in this thing and see if both of us can thaw out a bit.” I fired up the engine and turned the heater on to maximum.