“That’s got to hurt.” Detective Peters remarked to his partner with a slight chuckle. His partner, his junior partner, wasn’t the least bit entertained as he walked away from Peters. “What? Lost your sense of humour”. Peters couldn’t stand people who took things overly seriously, so he took issue with his latest in a long line of sidekicks. That’s exactly how he saw them too, as his sidekick. He was in charge, and they would do as he said. Whether that was to scoop some poor bastard’s brains off of the floor and into an evidence bag or laugh at his jokes, he didn’t overly care - it was more about respect for him.
What lay in front of them, wasn’t all that funny when it came down to it, though. Peters covered his nose from the piercing smell that wafted its way through the air to the point that he could almost taste it. He lowered himself into a squat, face covered, and eyeballed the scene in front of him.
The house was not particularly noteworthy for a bachelor’s apartment. There was very little in the way of personal items on display, nothing to be able to identify any close relations of the young man who lived here. His interior decoration was more concerned with posters for kung fu movies from the 70s, and the katanas to match. This contradicted the zen garden that sat next to the owner of the property atop a side table in his living room.
What played against the interior design more than anything was the owner of the apartment himself. Or as Peters was to know him, the victim. A white man in his 20s that had never left the West Midlands, never mind having travelled to such an exotic distant land as Japan. He didn’t seem the kind to have his life infused with Japanese culture by looking at him, either. Tattoos that seemed to be derogatory to just about everyone on the planet lined the disgusting canvas of his skin. Then there was the fact the 5-foot pole currently splitting his skull in two didn’t exactly seem to resonate with any zen practices.
Peters stared into the lifeless eyes of the man, who must have been not a dissimilar age to his new partner, a captivating baby blue colour that had started to grey as the life dissipated from behind them. Save for the fact that he wasn’t exactly in one piece the way things currently were, he wasn’t a bad-looking chap Peters thought to himself.
“Are you quite finished?” his usually silent, contemplative sidekick uttered.
“I just don’t understand how a Buddhist gets themselves into a situation like this, you know?” Peters was being genuine, too. Not even the slightest sarcasm underscored his words, much to his sidekick’s disapproval.
“He wasn’t a Buddhist, Sir, he was just a fucking dickhead!” fumed his partner, “If you’ll pardon my language.” Peters, despite having a sense of humour comparable to a 90% cocoa chocolate bar in both its bitterness and darkness, wasn’t really one for the use of foul language. He simply exhaled in disappointment. “I knew him from school, you see,” muttered his partner to attempt to break up the silence before a sense of awkwardness was given the opportunity to take over.
The pair continued about the rest of their job in silence from this point. It was an atmosphere that suited his partner, but one that Peters was fairly unaccustomed to experiencing in every aspect of his life never mind while working.
In the absence of conversation, Peters began to notice things he’d never noticed when attending a crime scene before now. The stench of the urine that hugged the body like an unloved relative. The way in which the blood formed an almost marble-like pattern in the way it dried. The way in which the different parts of the body were never quite the exact same temperature. Were they things that were always there that he simply hadn’t spotted before? Or were they unique to this case?
A light pierced through the window, a beacon summoning Peters’ attention to the west-facing kitchen window. The snapping sound of his gloves being removed kickstarted his gentle walk away.
Peters deduced that the owner must be doing pretty well for himself. Until he died, that is. This was the most detective work he had done for a while, as it wasn’t the young man’s P60 that led him to this conclusion, but the windows. You could tell a lot about how well someone was doing based on their windows. In this particular case, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows made of triple glazing is hardly a shabby form of protection from the elements. Then there was the view. A top floor view, and not just a top floor council estate view - there wasn’t even the faintest whiff of 60s architecture in site, just a sea of glass. Just as he nodded, sure of his conclusion, he clocked a solitary blackbird perched on the window next door; though his moment with nature was cut short by the sound of metal scraping against metal which made him turn around.
“Why on earth would you take that out?” Peters exclaimed as turned to see his partner clutching the pole, the body that it once propped up slowly slipping down against the kitchen cabinet behind it. “Do you think this was an accident?”
“No,” retorted his partner, pacing back and forth with the pole in hand, beginning to look quite menacing for the first time, “I know it wasn’t an accident, because I did it.” Peters was open-mouthed. But just as he was hit by that shock, moments later another hit followed, as his partner smacked him over the head with the pole.
Lying face down on the floor, Peters locked eyes with the victim. The blood trickled out of his head, taking with it Peters’ last thought: “I hope my eyes look that good when I’m dead.”
Owen White was an illustrator and artist from the North West based in Leeds. Check out his work.