Justice Postponed

Andrew Challoner

Description

The book opens with the police attending a sheltered accommodation bungalow in response to concerned neighbours reporting the yowling of many of an elderly occupant's cats. They are confronted by a horrific murder scene where the frail old woman has been stabbed many, many times on her bed surrounded by her distressed and starving pets. The team of detectives, having been summoned, followed closely by their forensic colleagues, spring into action, but there seems to be no real clues or help when they canvass the neighbours. Nothing suspicious had been noticed and no visitors had been seen. However, after 48 hours, the forensic report produced proof positive as to the identity of the killer from blood and partial fingerprints, as well as the full fingerprints found on the knife left behind in the victim's body. Forensics even came up with the name and address of the suspected murderer a petty burglar and well known to the local police force.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528957335
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Justice Postponed
Andrew Challoner
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-08-30
Justice Postponed About the Author About the Book Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1 Tuesday, 12 November Chapter 2 Wednesday, 13 November Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Charles Harvey Tuesday’s Task Chapter 5 16 November Chapter 6 Charles Harvey Charles Task 1 Task 2 Chapter 7 Tuesday, 19 November Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Peter Kendall Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24
About the Author
After spending eleven years in the Royal Navy, Andrew Challoner left to become a teacher. It has been his lifetime ambition to write, in his own words, a ‘page-turner’ and to introduce believable characters, good and bad, whom his readers might almost recognise and relate to.
About the Book
The book opens with the police attending a sheltered accommodation bungalow in response to concerned neighbours reporting the yowling of many of an elderly occupant’s cats. They are confronted by a horrific murder scene where the frail old woman has been stabbed many, many times on her bed surrounded by her distressed and starving pets.
The team of detectives, having been summoned, followed closely by their forensic colleagues, spring into action, but there seems to be no real clues or help when they canvass the neighbours. Nothing suspicious had been noticed and no visitors had been seen.
However, after 48 hours, the forensic report produced proof positive as to the identity of the killer from blood and partial fingerprints, as well as the full fingerprints found on the knife left behind in the victim’s body. Forensics even came up with the name and address of the suspected murderer… a petty burglar and well known to the local police force.
Copyright Information ©
Andrew Challoner (2019)
The right of Andrew Challoner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528957335 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Firstly, I would like to express my appreciation to all the various ‘teams’ at AM Publishers for their sterling work in bringing my first book to life. Also, I must accept full responsibility for all the errors or mistakes my eagle-eyed readers may wish to point out. Those errors are mine alone. Sorry!
I am grateful to so many friends I have ‘met’ online for their encouragement and suggestions offered during the writing of this book. It was a welcome team effort. Two, in particular, shared their own expertise. Both Angie Kersnick and Debra Carter were there for me every step of the way. Debra, a talented author herself, helped me enormously with great suggestions or alternatives to the direction of the plot. They offered ideas when I needed them, criticised my work constructively where necessary but always supported my efforts. Thank you all!
Chapter 1

Tuesday, 12 November
Barry Osborne rolled over in bed to avoid the sharp elbow of his wife Theresa and to reach out blindly for the bedside phone.
“DI Osborne,” he mumbled into the phone.
Within a minute or so, he groaned and rolled into a seated position on the edge of the bed and asked once more for the address in Allenton where a corpse had been found. PC Harvey and WPC McCrum had been summoned by worried neighbours, who were disturbed by the noise of howling cats inside the sheltered home of the elderly resident, a Mrs Ursula Raines. No more information was offered so Barry dressed quickly checked his watch, 2:45 am, and was soon on his way through Alvaston and across to Allenton. He knew that his sergeant John Williams would probably be there before him as he lived nearer to the address given and was proved right as he made out the tall, burly figure of ‘Jonno’, Sergeant John Williams, stepping out into the road from the shelter of a handy bus stop into the less welcoming driving rain.
In the background he could see that the two patrol car officers had made themselves useful and had erected the blue and white plastic tape used to keep sightseers away. He couldn’t actually see either uniformed officer but knowing Jonno they would be beavering away somewhere, hopefully out of the rain, on their next task. ‘Not a natural death then,’ he thought to himself as he joined Jonno; now back in the relative dryness of the bus shelter.
“Have SOCO been called?”
“Already done guv and I rang Doctor Smith. They are all on their way. I think you better have a quick look first but cover your nose and mouth, and, for what it’s worth, this is a bad one.”
They walked swiftly to the locked front door and ‘Jonno’ knocked softly. The door was briskly opened and WPC Debbie McCrum stepped sharply outside, and took great gasps of the much-welcomed fresh air outside…closing the door just as quickly behind her.
“We have to keep the door closed to keep the cats inside Inspector, but I am slowly herding them all into the kitchen until you decide what must be done with them. They have all been starved for more than a week we think and so they have eaten the food available…their owner, I’m afraid. She is not a pretty sight now, bless her, but she has a knife sticking in her chest and there are multiple other stab wounds.”
“Thank you…errrrr.”
“Debbie…sir, Debbie McCrum.”
“So where is your partner right now, Debbie?”
“Probably in the back garden sir, we have been taking it in turns to be inside or outside and he is probably throwing up in the back hedge. The smell in there is so bad it makes your eyes water… Oh and be careful where you tread, the cats haven’t been fussy about where they do their business!”
“Right then, continue rounding up the cats and keep them in the kitchen…how many are there anyway?”
“There are eight in the kitchen but the last few are getting harder to corner.”
“Jonno, ring the station and ask for a dog van without the dog and warn the driver to bring thick gloves and blankets for transporting all the cats away from here. They are to be kept in a single dog pen until further orders. Meanwhile, I will enter the property and take as short a look as I can…the priority right now is to remove the cats so we can establish an aired scene of crime… OK, everyone? By the way Debbie, where did you find that key?”
“The most stupid place to leave your emergency key sir,” she smiled.
“Not under the mat, Debbie?”
“Certainly not sir, it was under the potted plant!”
“The second most stupid place to leave your spare key then. Right?”
They both nodded their heads wondering at all the daft tricks the public get up to. Barry snapped out of his thoughts and asked, “Did you check all round to see whether there was any sign of a break in?”
“Yes, sir and no, there wasn’t.”
“Hmm. that means our murderer returned the key to where he found it. So very thoughtful of him, wasn’t it?”
The SOCO van arrived and parked close to the blue and white tape. They were told to remain in the van until the cats had all been rounded up and the windows opened slightly to get some breathable air into the place.
“Right, Debbie, open up and show me to the bedroom and then you can go back to bagging the last of the cats so we can disperse the smell.”
****
The smell inside the bungalow was like a hammer blow to the system. Despite the warning from his sergeant and another from the young WPC, and considering the many other terrible crime scenes he had experienced, none of them prepared him for the toxic miasma of cat faeces, rotting human flesh and the various wet puddles of cat urine that permeated the fabric, table tops, seats, carpets and any other surface that the cats could reach.
Barry looked at the WPC, whose eyes were already watering, and passed her his spare handkerchief. He nodded to her as she went in search of the last roaming cats and putting on his latex gloves, entered the bedroom. He walked carefully across the smelly carpet and saw the wreck of what had been a human being.
He was battle-hardened by his job and had seen much to wonder at man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man but his first sight made him falter. This poor woman had been smothered first if the discarded pillow on the floor was an indication of the method of death. The one remaining eye was bloodshot, usually a tell-tale sign that she had probably been smothered, and most of her face was nibbled away by sharp cats’ teeth. She was small, frail, certainly and no threat to any intruder. At the end of her life she had probably weighed not much more than ninety or a hundred pounds.
Most sickening was the fact that bedclothes covering her lower body had been flung off her and her nightie was around her waist. She had been stabbed several times but there were no defence wounds. That fact alone led Barry to consider that the stabs were possibly post mortem. There was little sign of blood. He hoped that the poor lady was dead before her defilement and savage knife attack, but a voice in his head cautioned him that the lack of blood present might be due to the raging thirst of twelve or more cats.
Within twenty minutes, the numerous cats had all been rounded up and then been gently transferred to the dog cage in the back of the police dog van and driven off to the station in the city centre but not before the dog handler, the WPC an