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.