Mayhem on Nightingale Street (McNamara, #1)

CHAPTER ONE-2

ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE street had gathered in front of the Dobbs’ house. They saw the doctor arriving and going inside.

Here and there, a rumour passed around. Poor Mr Dobbs had had a heart attack and, probably, had already passed away before the doctor got there.

They didn’t understand why his wife hadn’t come out yet and why no one had heard anything from her. Everyone knew she was too nosy of a woman to stay inside when something like that happened on the street and especially on her own lawn.

The sirens announced the police cars. The people fell silent and watched the cars drive up Nightingale Street. Unconsciously, they stepped farther away from the Dobbs’ yard, as if they’d wanted to distance themselves from all that had happened there. They were not involved in the mess on that lawn.

The police cars pulled up to the Dobbs residence and men came out of the cars. Some of them were wearing police uniforms, while others wore dark coveralls, somewhat resembling the uniformed officers’ clothing. The residents of Nightingale Street curiously observed the coverall-clad respondents carry black cases in their hands.

One of the detectives, a tall man somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, noticed the crowd in the street and shouted to a younger policeman, “James, get their names and addresses, and send them home. We’ll talk to them later in the morning. Right now, I want more room here and no on-lookers in front of the house. Too many people have already trampled through this yard, and they’ve probably destroyed all the evidence.”

“Aye, sir,” said the young man.

He headed to the people, taking a little black book out of his front pocket. He went to each one of them and asked for their names and addresses. He inquired whether they’d seen anything before the murder happened.

That last question remained unanswered. No one had seen anything. They had only heard that inhuman scream and woken up. Coming out of their houses, they had seen the body on the lawn and nothing else. Neither of them had approached the young woman, at Mr Thompson’s request not to touch anything until the police arrived.

They even told James of the rumours about poor Mr Dobbs, who had fainted on his own porch. When there was nothing left to say or spread rumours about, they let themselves be sent home, somewhat reluctant to abandon the ghastly sight without having any of the answers they’d expected.

James returned to his colleagues and reported to his boss everything he had learnt.

The CI listened to him carefully. “All right, James. Good job. Now go and see what’s with that Mr Dobbs. I think I just saw two men go into his house. I want to talk to the three of them, too.”

James nodded and walked to the Dobbs’ front door. The door was ajar and he didn’t bother to knock. He just entered.

Whispers came from somewhere on the right, so he followed the voices.

When he entered the living room, his eyes fell on a man, probably the doctor, checking the pulse of a woman of an uncertain age. The extreme pallor in her cheeks and the obvious toll the evening had taken on her made it difficult to tell exactly how old she was.

James’s eyes scanned the room. He analysed the five people, and then, knocked on the door and interrupted them, “Good evening, everyone. I’m very sorry to disturb you at such a time. I’m DS James, and I need to speak to Mr Dobbs.”

At that precise moment, as if his words had been the signal for which she’d been waiting, the woman burst into tears. The men froze in place, surprised for one moment.

Then, the man James thought to be the doctor, studied her, and said, “Finally, she’s crying. That’s good. She was bound to do it sooner or later, and it’s always better if the grieving starts soon,” he commented with a satisfied, yet sympathetic nod.

He turned to the sergeant, “I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I’m afraid Mr Dobbs died earlier tonight. He had a massive heart attack. There was nothing I could do for him, unfortunately. I think the shock was too much for him.”

“I see,” James nodded. He wondered why the shock had been so devastating for the old man. Yet, he continued, “All right, then. I’ll leave you now to Mrs Dobbs. But sir, when you’ve finished here, we must talk to you. And to you, too,” he said, turning to Mr Thompson. “Who are you, sir?”

“I’m Thompson. I’m Daniel Thompson,” the man answered and came forward to shake James’s hand.

“Oh, I see. I’m told you’re the one who made sure the others didn’t disturb the body.”

“Indeed, sir,” Thompson nodded. “I was in the Navy in the past. I know something about such things. There are also the movies, you know... I’ll be with you shortly. I just need to finish talking to good Doctor Connolly. Is that all right?”

“No rush, sir. We still have plenty to do outside. We’ll be here for a while. Come and see us before you leave.”

James went back outside. His eyes found his boss, CI McNamara. He was talking to one of the investigators.

James waited a few steps behind, going through his notes, until the chief had finished discussing the scene with the detective. Then, he approached McNamara to relay his latest findings.

“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr Dobbs passed away. He had a massive heart attack. His wife is in shock right now and I don’t think we’ll get much out of her. She’ll probably need some time to recover. However, Mr Thompson will come out with the doctor soon and we can talk to them.”

“Oh, damn it!” McNamara swore, furious because they were too late. “Rotten bad luck! He must have seen something if he died so suddenly. We’ll see,” he said in a hushed voice, and then repeated, “We’ll see.”

His thoughts still on the Dobbs situation and the significant piece of the puzzle they might have lost, he turned to the older man next to him and inquired, “So, doc, what do you think?”

“Well, not very much now... But it is obvious she had her throat slit – brutally too, from one side to the other. She was stabbed several times before that. You see those stab wounds there?” he showed the detective several marks with significant traces of blood. “I can tell you she didn’t go quietly,” he continued, shaking his head. “Look at her hands. Scratches and broken nails. This girl fought hard to survive. I can’t make a positive statement right now, I know you understand that, but I’m almost positive the time of death is somewhere between only several minutes ago and an hour,” he waved his hand. “We’ll know more later on. Anyway, before she was killed she was severely beaten, more than once. The beating occurred over the course of several days. Notice here,” he pointed to the body, “the bruises on her body are at different stages. Their colour isn’t the same. These marks here are older, maybe three or four days old. They’ve already changed colour. As you can see, her face is beyond recognition, I’m afraid. Aye, lad, we’ll have to find another way to identify her,” he concluded, then looked across the lawn to the Dobbs house.

He shook his head in regret again, before he glanced back to the detective, “Well, I’ll tell you more later. I’ll have to do the autopsy first.”

“All right, David. Anyway,” he continued, “if we consider the time when dispatch got the call and the time when people heard the scream, supposedly just minutes before the call came through, I think we may safely presume that she died then or a few minutes after. That would mean she died a little over 30 minutes ago,” CI McNamara said. “James, go and see if there’s an ID in her purse. If I remember correctly, they found her purse on the ground there,” he pointed somewhere towards the middle of the grass, several feet away from the body. “It must have been hers,” he concluded.

James followed the path marked by numbered, yellow cards on the grass, until he reached the investigator who was taking inventory of the personal effects found in the victim’s purse.

James asked him for the sealed evidence bag. At first glance, it contained several cosmetic items — a lip-gloss, mascara, a compact. A closer look at the investigator’s notes revealed that they had found a card inside, as well.

James felt a small surge of pride at their first significant lead that evening. He signed on the bag, opened the seal and carefully moved the other items within the bag with his pen until he found the ID. After he located the name and address on the card, he resealed the bag and signed it.

James returned to McNamara and spoke to him in a low voice so that no one else heard him, “It’s an ID for a Patsy Porter, sir. She lived right here on this street. Oh,” he stopped, noticing he’d missed one bit of information. “She was quite young, sir, only sixteen,” he continued with dismay.

“It’s good we found it, James.”

McNamara found solace in the progress they’d made to counter the sadness they both felt at the loss of such a young lass.

“We’ll go and see her family in the morning. They’ll have to come to the coroner’s office and identify the body at the morgue sometime tomorrow.”

CI McNamara sighed. He knew from experience how unsettling those formalities were for the families involved.

McNamara signalled the two men waiting by a stretcher. One of them was leaning on the stretcher by the van, a plastic bag hanging off his hand carelessly. He passed his boredom away with a game on his phone.

The detective scowled. He understood their job demanded they become tougher and not allow the violence they witnessed affect them.

Yet, he didn’t like the complete desensitized lack of emotion either. He refused to understand the cynical and callous attitude of some of the people who had seen too much death. Sometimes, they reacted as if they’d lost any kind of humanity.

“You may take her now,” he said in a harsh voice.

The sound of his voice snapped the two technicians out of their boredom instantly.

They placed the body inside the black plastic bag and took it off the lawn. They carried it to the coroner’s truck and left the area free for the forensic team.

The forensic experts had already been searching the place minutely and collected what little usable evidence they found.

They didn’t find the murder weapon, but, after all, they didn’t hope to find it, either. It would have been too good to be true, to have the knife, and if possible the killer’s prints on it...

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