The Seven Ages of Death by Dr Richard Shepherd

Author:Dr Richard Shepherd [Shepherd, Dr Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781405947114
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2021-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

12

We sat with our cups of tea in the mortuary, examining a collection of pictures.

‘Deceased lived here …’ the junior detective said, passing around a photo of a large and respectable Victorian town house. It was very clean, with all surfaces bare. There was modern, quite expensive furniture.

‘How many kids?’ his colleague asked.

‘Two.’ He handed us pictures of bedrooms that were a great deal less tidy than the rest of the house. The floor of each was covered in discarded clothes and criss-crossed by wires and gadgets.

‘Teenagers,’ he explained, unnecessarily.

It was December, a time of good will for some and murder for others. There was a tree in the living room and Christmas cards were neatly arranged in a vertical holder. In the kitchen, someone had been systematically writing their way through a list of cards to send. The box was open on the table. Each card barked: ‘Peace at Christmastime!’ Completed envelopes, stamped, had been stacked neatly to one side.

This was an entirely normal family house in December, except that it was covered in blood. In the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the hallway. Almost every door handle was smeared red, there were towels soaked in blood on the landing and on the stairs, and the bathroom floor was covered by a large, red puddle.

‘Why isn’t Daniel’s body in the pictures?’ I asked. ‘Did the paramedics think they could save him?’

‘The paramedics got there first and the doctor was right behind them in a helicopter. Said he’d operate then and there.’

‘On the bathroom floor?’

‘Yep.’

Brave doctor.

‘They thought he’d saved Daniel. The nearest trauma hospital was quite close, so they got him in the wagon, but he went straight downhill. Died a few minutes later, pretty much at the entrance to A&E.’

‘What’s the wife saying?’ asked the senior officer.

‘Nothing.’

The officer raised his eyebrows.

‘But apparently, when the paramedics got there, she opened the door and was still holding the knife.’

‘Where is she?’

‘At the station. She’s barely said a word.’

‘Shock,’ the senior detective said wisely.

‘Not as shocked as the husband, though.’ The coroner’s officer put down his mug and stood up.

‘Amazing how often people kill someone else then go into shock themselves,’ another officer said as we trooped off to change.

‘Just as well,’ the boss agreed. ‘They’re much easier to arrest.’

Daniel lay waiting for us in the post-mortem room. He was forty-five, not tall, but slim and strong. His face was gaunt and a few deep lines were chiselled around his eyes and mouth in places that would have been smooth a few years ago. There were flecks of grey in his dark, curly hair and, at his temples, white hairs were winning their battle against the black ones.

There was evidence of the strenuous attempts to save Daniel. An endotracheal tube was still in situ, he had numerous intravenous injection sites but, most noticeably of all, there was a large surgical incision right across his chest, an incision called a clam shell, loosely sutured with large stitches.

The stab wounds were immediately obvious, and they were all on the front of his body.

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