It’s 4.55 p.m. I’m preparing to head home, when across the police radios a road traffic collision is called through with the officer detailing a pedestrian fatality at the scene. Officers are dispatched; not me though. I’m a Detective Inspector and it isn’t protocol to send us out initially for such incidents. However, when I hear the code, I have a strange feeling settle over me – a sense of foreboding gnawing in my chest. I decide to wait at my desk a while longer – I have reports to finish anyway, I tell myself. A quick text to my Becky telling her I’ll be a bit late – she likes to know; it stops her getting worried.
‘Okay, love, we’ll wait for tea then xxx’ comes back.
My phone rings at 5.25 p.m. and I’m called to the scene at 44 Wesley Street – which is in a poorer, but not rough, Birmingham suburb.
‘Just get here fast, Bill, please, it looks bad.’ Is all I get told. My heart quickens, my stomach knots, and I never get like that – ‘calm, steady, and strong’ usually appear in my performance evaluations.
I’m guided into the otherwise unremarkable address by the flashing blue siren lights. There is a hive of activity – neighbours are flanking the road, buzzing with expectation, like a theatre audience waiting for the curtain to rise. A cluster of police officers is gathered next to an old car with a crumpled bonnet. A tarpaulin loosely covers a human shaped lump on the ground. Paramedics guard it.
I step out onto the pavement, grateful I’ve had a high coffee count today, and am immediately greeted by a constable who fills me in on the situation.
‘Sir, we’ve established that one of the residents of forty-two, a Mrs Jane Bell,’
I write her name and the house number in my notepad, ‘ran her car into the resident of forty-four, crushing him against the front wall of his property.’ He speaks clearly, gesturing to the car and the scene as he talks. ‘The victim was pronounced dead by the paramedics on their arrival.’
‘Where specifically was the perpetrator – Mrs Bell – when the first police officer arrived? I need exact details.’ I interject, following my honed practice of getting a clear image of the situation straight away so that my brain doesn’t fill in the gaps wrongly. The constable flicks back a page in his notepad and scans his eyes across quickly, sweat beading on his temples, shifting from one foot to the other. Homicides hit hard in the early days. In all the days, really, you just get better at coping.
‘Sorry, sir, just wanted to check I’d remembered it exactly right.’ I give him a single nod of approval. ‘When we arrived, Mrs Bell was waiting beside the body, frozen in shock, until my partner touched her arm in an attempt to get her to respond. All she said was, “He’s not breathing!”’
‘It was you and your partner who were the first officers here?’ I confirm. That explains his jitters.
‘Yes.’ He nods rapidly. I dip my chin to encourage him to continue. ‘I asked her what had happened, and she became frantic, urging us to go inside the victim’s house. That was the moment everything changed.’ Colour is setting onto his cheeks, his blinking more rapid – they are tells of the heat of this memory. Fresh, raw, terrifying.
‘She was adamant. “Bombs,” she implored. “He has bombs inside.”’
Protocol is that officers on the scene do not investigate bomb threats due to the danger. I’d been called at the same time as the bomb squad.
‘Obviously we couldn’t go in,’ he continues, ‘so we called for assistance, followed the protocols. It seemed like as soon as she heard help was coming, she just shut down. She was trembling so badly, wouldn’t utter another word.’
‘Good job, officer, thank you.’
I go to stand beside the police car Mrs Bell is sitting in, wanting to see for myself the woman at the heart of all this. I look down and am struck by her gentle eyes. Her cheekbone and forehead are split with oozing gashes and the right side of her head is shadowed by grazes. My first impression upon observing her is that her muteness is from shock rather than from a lack of cooperation. Gut instincts are a police officer’s ticket home each night.
The constables had held her in handcuffs but hadn’t officially arrested her; they’d waited for a higher-ranking officer to arrive, given the nature of the situation. That higher-ranking officer is me.
I’m initially sceptical of her bomb claims, just based on probability rather than anything in Mrs Bell that seems dishonest. However, I’m painfully aware that as the senior officer on-site, I am responsible for every single life here, which now amounts to a lot. Therefore, if the bombs are real and active, we are all in too much danger gathered only metres away from the house they’re contained in. I have to take a look for myself, assess the situation since the bomb squad still hasn’t arrived.
Any doubt I had about the integrity of the bomb threat is annihilated as I step through the victim’s kitchen door. I see three full rucksacks on the table along with a detritus of chemicals, nails, and related debris, which form a sea surrounding those three fatal islands.
I feel it deep in my bones, in my fibres – this is the real thing.
My stomach seizes and falls to my feet.
Now I know why it’s called terror.
I immediately shepherd the officer who has accompanied me out of the room, and I call in to see where the bomb squad is. Just minutes out. At this point I am aware that the deceased may not be working alone and that these bombs could well still be active, with a huge variety of remote detonation methods possible.
I return to the car where the rigid and silent Mrs Bell is being held. I bend down to the level of the open window, lean in fairly close to her and ask, ‘Did you run this man over, Mrs Bell?’ She is unresponsive.
A neighbour who is standing behind the police tape shouts over, ‘Yes, officer, it was Jane who did it.’ I wander over, letting out a heavy sigh before I reach the neighbour.
I need a witness to give me enough evidence for an arrest.
‘Did you actually see it happen?’ I question the small, bony, confident lady wearing a dishevelled tracksuit. She nods, hard and fast. If I were to give her the benefit of the doubt, I’d say she’s trying to be helpful, but my harsher side is recoiling from her busy bodying.
‘I saw her drive straight into him – the engine was roaring – which is most unusual for our quiet Jane. We’ve got a good thing going here on Wesley, officer. Jane’s a big part of that. She cares about people, you know, more than most these days. She checks in, does the little extras – takes mince pies round in December, gets her husband to mow the lawn of her neighbour on the other side now he’s too unwell to do it himself.’ She’s earnest, before shaking her head clear and returning to her memory. ‘After a moment or two, I saw her stagger out of the car, and go to look at him, like. Then, she covered her face with her hands and screamed. Everyone else came out then like, and my Nev called the police.’
‘Thank you. I need you to remain close to give your full statement okay, madam, Nev too?’
‘Course, officer. I’ll make sure to tell him. He always does as I tell him.’
She nods proudly, with a grin and a wink that makes me shudder, then pushes her chest up a fraction.
I stride back to Mrs Bell and motion to an officer to get her out of the police car. She winces as she unfolds and I make a mental note to get one of the paramedics to check her over more extensively. ‘You are under arrest, on suspicion of murder.’ I read her her rights. ‘Do you understand your rights as I’ve read them to you now?’
Jane is unresponsive and staring at the ground.
‘Mrs Bell?’ I ask, loudly and sternly – this is a situation that’s still highly dangerous and could turn volatile at any moment; I need to progress it. She turns to me and nods slowly, vacantly. Her response will have to do. I motion to one of the constables who leads her gently back to the car and tucks her inside.
I dispatch officers to clear the onlookers, given the imminence of the bomb squad’s arrival.
Minutes later, the bomb disposal team appears and after a brief update swarms into the house. It’s a tense wait for all of us outside, every scratch and clunk making us flinch or jump, like a Mexican wave of fearful reactions. They emerge as from the bowels of hell. The leader gives us a nod, signalling the threat was real but we are safe. He then fills me in on their findings. He is concise and direct, turning blunt. His eyes never break contact with mine.
‘The three rucksacks each contain large propane nail bombs, rigged up to mobile phone detonators. They’re no longer live so won’t go off.’ He pauses for a moment before landing the disabling blow. ‘If all three of those bombs had detonated in a densely populated building, there would have likely been a hundred casualties per bomb. There’s a massacre waiting to happen in there.’
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
