Mercy Killing Read Free

first thing he noticed was that the man’s face was purple and mottled, his tongue hanging slightly to one side. A plastic cable-tie was cutting into the flesh of his neck.
    The paramedics turned him over. Josh’s years of policing meant that the sight of the dead man’s wrists bound together with cable-ties didn’t surprise him in the least.
    ‘Makes a change from a stabbing,’ he murmured as the full realization came to him that instead of the rest of his 5th of November being spent trying to type up an outstanding
complaint report, it was about to be taken up with the launch of East Rise’s latest murder investigation.

Chapter 5
    With the few resources he had available, Josh set about first securing the crime scene, and then finding out what the neighbours had to say about the person who used to occupy
the corpse staring at him. He found out the deceased’s name from paperwork and photo identification he’d glanced through on the coffee table, but left everything else undisturbed. He
would wait until the crime scene investigators and the detective inspector arrived.
    It looked like a straightforward crime scene to him: dead body in suspicious circumstances with boot marks on the front door of the otherwise empty flat. The foot imprints were likely to be key
and on occasion had proved to be as unique as a fingerprint.
    Josh knew how important boot marks could be, but it threw up a very practical problem when it came to preserving them: he needed to keep the door half-closed because the face of Albie Woodville
stared at anyone as they reached the top of the stairs. He only had two officers and now one was with the initial police informant, while the other was rummaging around in the boot of her car
trying to find scene tape and a scene log to record details of everyone within the crime scene.
    Josh stood in the doorway, blocking anyone’s view, and busied himself making sure a CSI was on their way, as well as trying to find out as much as he could about Albie Woodville. As with
any Friday night, the police operators were busy asking for available patrols to deal with domestic assaults, pub fights, traffic collisions, abandoned 999 calls. It never stopped and it never
would. The only difference was that modern-day policing meant that Josh now only had eleven response officers for a population of half a million.
    Even though he knew the control room would make direct contact with the local area on-call detective inspector for a suspicious death, Josh was also aware that a last-minute Crown Court
appearance by the person supposed to be on duty meant that all cover was being handled directly by Major Crime. He had already looked up on the roster who it was. He dialled DI Harry Powell’s
mobile.
    ‘Josh,’ said Harry. ‘How’re you doing, mate?’
    ‘Not so bad, Harry, not so bad. Where are you?’
    He heard a sigh from his plain-clothes counterpart. ‘Almost made it out of the door for home, though just at the moment, there’s not much to rush back to. So right now, I’m
still at the nick, about to make my way over to you.’
    ‘Things haven’t improved with your missus then since we last spoke?’ asked Josh, listening out for sounds of any other patrols arriving from anywhere in the county that could
spare them.
    ‘You could say that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was having an affair. I don’t think it’s that: at least it would cheer her the fuck up. I’m making
my way over, but based on what you’ve seen so far, what have we got?’
    Josh lowered his voice and stepped back inside the flat, glancing down at Albie’s body as he did so, mindful of where he was treading.
    ‘I’m satisfied that we have the body of the flat’s occupant. It’s a male called Albie or Albert Woodville. Seems that someone broke in, tied his hands behind his back
with cable-ties and then put one around his throat. Poor sod probably suffered for a couple of minutes and then knew no