Let's Forget The Whole Nasty Business

“That was a nasty business wasn’t it dear?”

I just stared at Mrs Williams in disbelief. If her habit of gross under-exaggeration hadn’t been so laughable it would have made me angry. I expected the next words out of her mouth to be “If Helen had insisted that Peter had done the washing up properly…”

Zac and I had clambered out of my Peter and Helen’s bungalow just as an ambulance had appeared out of nowhere as if we had been engaged in a large scale field battle. The Underbelly’s only police car and part time officer wasn’t far behind. I can only imagine I looked like Sissy Spacey after prom night such had been Peter’s bloody evacuation. I blurted the only words that seemed relevant, “This isn’t how it looks. Can someone get a hose and wash my dog?”

Mrs Williams continued: “Helen told me what she thinks happened. She said that he’d never made it to bed. The last thing she said to him was ‘be a love and load the dishwasher.’”

“People just don’t fall on dishwashers do they?”

“If only Helen had insisted that Peter had done the washing up properly. I don’t know but there’s a lesson for us all.” I could only put Mrs William’s blithe attitude to trauma and disruption down to some Second World War resolve. I imagined body parts flying past her ears, intestinal redecoration make-overs of the suburbs as something she saw three times a day. I imagined her saying. “There’s a lesson for us all there” as a freshly ripped kidney landed at her slippered feet.

I thought back to the last time I’d seen Peter and remembered I hadn’t actually seen him. I’d heard him as I was crouched down under their window listening in. There was certainly a great deal of tension between them and it was then that I remembered they had a child, a very sick child. That was the impression I formed, unless they were talking about a pet. I strolled outside in to the Underbelly’s repetitively forecasted gloom. I expected to see an army of white suited men and women with tweezers and vacuum cleaners but didn’t. I stepped inside the bungalow. Instead there was well dressed be-suited man with a bucket and a mop, making the best of a bad job. He tip toed around thick drifts of blood that merged with the kitchen units.

“So have they finished then?”

The man looked up surprised but calm. “Has who finished what sir?”

“The forensics people?”

“Forensics?” He paused. “No, I think you must be mistaken. No forensics here sir.”

“No forensics eh? Who are you by the way?” The man stopped mopping and stepped over a particularly large pool to shake my hand.

“Chief Superintendent Cutler at your service sir.” The man’s delivered the line perfectly from a face that was red, unshaven and clearly irritated. “Now I know what you’re thinking…” I stepped in.

“Why is a chief superintendent mopping up the scene without notifying the forensics unit?”

“Quite. Now sir, I don’t want to put you in the difficult position of explaining why you and your dog were found at the scene covered in so much of the poor man’s blood. In fact some might say that a dog who has tasted so much human blood, might pose a danger to others and should really be destroyed.”

“He was after the mashed potato not the jugular.”

“That’s all as well as maybe, but there are those that might be concerned. For now, please take it from me that Helen is not the murdering type.”

“So whose mess are you cleaning up then?”

“This was an accident, nothing more. Now, shouldn’t you be getting back to your dog?”

There was still no sign of Ray and Mike. I imagined the silhouetted golf buggy bumping off into some sunset and arm holding a bottle of wine raised in triumph. More importantly, it meant that the post hadn’t been delivered. Mrs Williams and Zac had returned to their respective positions in front of the shopping channel whilst I sat and pondered the chief inspector’s words. He had called her Helen; please take it from me, that Helen is not…; me and Helen. Had Cutler bumped off his lover’s husband? I went into the lounge and watched Mrs Williams attempt to purchase a £700 pound silver necklace with her cancelled credit card.

“You couldn’t cover this for me could you dear?”