“Hello, you’re through to Chief Constable Browning. It’s now 1:12am on Saturday the 4th of June, which is my day-off. I’m not even going to ask if this is important, it better be… now, what’s up?”
+++++“Hi Boss, it’s Chief Superintendent Leyland here, and I’m very sorry to bother you, but, we have a situation… umm, quite unlike anything which I have ever encountered, or heard of before.”
+++++“Really? So there’s bodies, fire, mayhem? Look, I’m walking about up on the landing, I’m going to go downstairs, now that I know that this is a genuine call, and put the kettle on for some coffee. Why don’t you start at the beginning and give me all that you’ve got. I’ll only interrupt if I need something clarified, okay.”
+++++“Okay… well, we received a 999 call in at 10:27pm, which was technically last night, from two distressed females. The main talker informed us of a dwelling burglary which had taken place half hour before, and was committed by these two actual females. There was a resident at home during the crime taking place, a scuffle ensued, resulting in the resident getting panned from behind by one of these females. The victim was prostrate, bleeding heavily, and unconscious. We obtained the address of the aforementioned burglary and dispatched an ambulance, with two boys in blue as an accompaniment to the premises, immediately. Keeping the females on the phone line whilst this was being executed, we managed to find out that they were both still within the premises, had no intention of bolting, but were in fact awaiting our presence, and that the wounds upon the victim could be described as ‘Maybe Above GBH Level’.”
+++++“… can you remind me why I’m being bothered, at this time of the morning, about an ‘Aggravated Dwelling’, seriously?”
+++++“… I was going to get to the ‘Torture Chamber and Serial Killer Paraphernalia’ found in the property in due course, sir, but if you want me to jump straight to it?”
+++++“… oh, I see. No-no, as you were.”
+++++“… right you are. The women in question are a miss Laura Stackenbrock aged 19, and a Tammie Willowsend aged 21. Both grew up in the System’s Residential Care Homes. On the streets from 16, they eventually met up in a Homeless Camp down by the river just over a year ago and paired-up, being apart from brief Prison-stays, inseparable ever since. Both are heroin addicts. Between them, they have established quite a list of criminal misbehaviour, the usual crap that young homeless people get up to, shoplifting, aggressive begging, public order offences and the like. The only notable exception was a mugging at knife-point upon two Swedish Tourists, last summer… Tammie was the knife-wielder, and she took the rap solely, and ended up doing 6 weeks out of a 3 month stretch in Eastwood Park.
+++++“They entered the building via an open toilet window. Tammie went searching for money and other valuables, whilst Laura looked for medication. Laura found a cabinet full of a massive assortment of opiates and barbiturates in the kitchen area, and literally squealed out loud. Upon hearing Laura squeal, Tammie started to make her way back towards her. It was just then that the resident had appeared, grabbing Laura around the throat from behind whilst growling loudly, ‘My Breath Upon The Back Of Your Neck, WHORE!’
+++++“He proceeded to squeeze and throttle, in a manner leaving no doubt whatsoever in Laura’s mind that he was going to kill her. Before this could happen, Tammie appeared, and after momentarily taking in the situation, grabbed a heavy cast-iron skillet off the worktop and brought it down, with as much force as she could muster, three times upon the top and side of his head. He collapsed onto the floor in a heap, and had not moved nor made a peep until the medics arrived and carted him off.
+++++“Around fifteen minutes or so had elapsed between the panning and the women calling us. They spent these fifteen minutes looking over the premises and discussing whether it was in their best interests to bolt, or to report the violent incident.
+++++“After a brandy each in the living room, which had a TV and DVD playing a sadistic porn movie with the volume muted, they found a utility room with a stairs down to a basement.
+++++“The basement had a heavy metal door, not unlike a cell door, but without a spyhole. It happened to be unlocked, so they entered, turned on the light, which was a dazzling bluish/white, a bit like a hospital light. There they found a full mortuary dissecting table, which took up the middle of the room, the entire floor was a tiled, wet-room. A countertop ran along one wall, which had various surgical equipment laid out upon it. Besides these items, there was a medieval mace, and various everyday household tools, screwdrivers, claw hammers, chisels and the like. Along another wall were three, human sized, cages, all fitted with manacles.
+++++“There was a door in the furthest wall which opened up into an office, of sorts. It was in here that the resident, whose name we now know as Barry Probert, had made detailed plans of future torture and murder. I say future, because there was a calendar hanging up on the wall of this office which had the first abductions booked in to take place in just five days time.”
+++++“Jesus Christ!”
+++++“I know, this is almost like an act of God. Anyway, after seeing all of this, the women were unsure whether there was an accomplice or not? They obviously realised the seriousness of what they had discovered, yet were completely unable to know if there were already victims?
+++++“They went back and checked upon him, found him still breathing but unconscious and got straight on the blower to us. Besides wanting to now help us, Tammie admitted to much rather facing a GBH charge than a Murder charge, so the quicker that Medics arrived the better, as far as she was concerned.
+++++“Although he’s unconscious, well, it’s a coma actually, the office room tells us all that we need to know. There was an A4 diary upon the desk, and after having a brief flick through it, one of the Officers who were there to box and bring the entire contents of that room back to the Station, saw that he had not yet killed, but was very much enthusiastically counting down the days until he would kill.
+++++“It looks like this is a culmination of a road rage incident from a year back. In five days time, it will be a twelve month exactly since he got dragged out of his car outside of the train station and battered by, in his own words ‘A Butch, Martial Arts Dyke’ with a ‘When God Created Man She Was Only Joking’ bumper sticker, and humiliated in front of around thirty odd people in the middle of the day.
+++++“There was a map pinned to the wall, along with photos of three women, a divorcee and her two late teen daughters who live three streets away from him. They were to be his first victims, and he’d been secretly filming, photographing and generally stalking them for the last couple of months. We sent two Detectives around there to knock them up, and they were completely unaware of any of this, when showed a photo of Barry Probert they claimed to have never seen him before.
+++++“It’s absolutely vile, sir. There are diagrams and descriptions of what he intended to do to these poor women. For example, there are pig intestines in the freezer, along with bags of dog shit, and horse vomit. But, we’ve got him… and, like I said earlier, it’s almost an act of God.
+++++“He’s in Intensive Care, I’ve spoken in depth to the Head Trauma Specialist, and she reckons that he won’t make it to noon of today, she claimed that if she was a betting woman that she’d put everything she owned on him never regaining consciousness before actual time of death occurs.”

***

We have both Tammie and Laura in a holding cell at the nick. We’re not treating them as actual ‘Criminal Prisoners’, we’ve let them share a cell, with the door open…”
+++++“Good.”
+++++“…we’ve given them a radio to listen to, and we’ve all chipped in and bought them chinese takeaways, and chocolates, sweets and pop from the 24 hour garage. We refused them alcohol, but we did get them cigarettes, and a PC takes them out back whenever they want one.
+++++“That’s it, really. We’re unsure whether to charge them with anything or let them go? Obviously, with a warning that it’s not okay to burgle other people’s properties (potential killers or not). But, to leave it as a verbal warning, and put nothing to paper, so to speak… they get a clean slate (on this case, anyway) and we get to have stopped an atrocious crime-spree from happening.”
+++++“Yes, I agree, slapped wrists with a thank you all ‘round. And if he doesn’t recover, I don’t see why we can’t approach the Media ourselves and take full credit for stopping this maniac before he actually got his hands dirty. He obviously fell down a concrete stairs or off a roof whilst trying to evade capture, or something just as daft but believable. It would be nice to see us as ‘Good Guys’ again, for a change… but, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s see what noon brings with the patient. I’m going to have a shower and come in. I’d love a little rummage around through his psycho-ramblings whilst we wait on word from the hospital. I think I might just treat those two fine ladies to bacon and egg sarnies outta me own pocket this morning. Thanks for letting me know about all of this, I’ll be seeing you very soon.”

[Image Credit : Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash]

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Paul Tristram

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres. He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel Crazy Like Emotion, published by Close To The Bone Publishing is available to purchase right here Amazon Storepage.

Latest posts by Paul Tristram (see all)

• My Breath Upon The Back Of Your Neck, WHORE! - November 19, 2024