Virgins, bad boys and photos

20 June 2012

What a silly game!  I have at long last managed to get the contact details of   Virgin Media.  The legal team handling the sale of this house need it because we have a Virgin comms pack in use in here.  Finally I got to speak to a really real alive sitting and breathing person - with a very broad Scots accent too - who did give me the details after a 10 minute fight.  Talk about blood from a stone!  Why are they so reluctant to give people these details?  Strange that methinks.

Jan is off down town on the scooter with a number of little jobs to sort out.  First stop will be Coventry Building Society to arrange contents insurance for the flat from the 27th.  Next she is going to have a look at the cost of a small upright freezer seeing as we don't have room for our large chest freezer.  Next will be calling in to a couple of travel agents to pick up a few holiday mags so we can have a dream.  Finally she will call into the local pets hop and arrange for the budgies to be keep for a few days over nest weeks move days.  She will then no doubt call into the Christian book shop and cafe and have a hot chocolate and slice of lemon drizzle cake.  That lass cost me a fortune ;-)))

The News carries two stories today of criminals being sentenced.  One of them was caught shoplifting from Debenhams. The story says that the man has an extensive criminal record and that he needs to be taught a lesson.  And that lesson is?  Four weeks in nick!  Makes you sick dunit?  Three years might have of some use.  I favour the American three strikes rule.  Time we used it here!  The second case was of a man with a history of violence who was in court for attacking another guy with a base ball bat.  Yet again, a long sentence was called for, he got three months.  Mamby pamby judges and magistrates, they are causing more harm by light sentences than the crims themselves!

Front page story is about the Dorktown Local Plan which is being delayed yet again.  The lack of a local plan leaves the town exposed to developers who want to build new houses in every place there is lots of green grass, hedges on display thereby putting wildlife at risk.  And guess what?  The local elected council muppets are arguing over whose fault it is.  Bloody typical that eh?

While I was in town yesterday I bought four new paper backs, two Peter James, one Ian Rankin and one by a new writer to me.  At the moment I'm reading a Peter James book called Dean Man's Grip.  It's not bad at all although perhaps a little bitty compared with the other's I've read.  I'll soon have all his Roy Grace books.  I've been wondering ... how many of you have pre-order the new J K Rowling book? I haven't, I'll wait for paperback version or a hardback in a charity shop.  and talking about writing, here the first chapter of Photo Finish that I am current working on ...

 Chapter 1

April 1995 - 99

An unknown man was lying on his back in the dry grass and leaves; he was as dead as dead could be.  Detective Sergeant Marty Jayne looked down at the brutally mutilated body in front of him.  Jayne had entered the scene carefully, taking note of everything that lay around and taking care not to disturb anything within the crime scene.  This man was older that the other victims had been, may he was around 50 at the most.  In every other way the victim had been laid out in the same way the others had been.  His jeans and underpants were pulled down around his ankles, his shirt was pulled up to his chest.  His penis and scrotum had been cut off and were lying in the middle of his chest.  Jayne just shook his head at the senseless brutality of it.

Marty Jayne was a local man.  He had actually lived not far from the woods he was now standing in.  The school he had attended, Alderman Smith High School was even closer.  At times the cross country run route had gone partway through these same woods.  He had happy memories of these woods.  He had loved the cross country runs, but he had loved the quieter times later when he and his first girl friend went to these woods for some peace, quiet and privacy.  Now he had horrendous new memories that wiped away all the happy ones for that moment at least. 

Jayne was not a big man really at only 5 foot 10 inches tall.  He was built in proportion to his height which gave him a balanced look.  Indeed, everything about him was balanced.  His head was square-shaped; hair was not long but not short either, neatly trimmed with a square neck; his eyes were large and grey with flecks of hazel brown in them; his nose was large however and had been broken on more than one occasion, mostly from playing rugby and his attempt at boxing.  Even so his nose wasn't out of balance with the rest of his face.  His one out of balance feature was his mouth and teeth.  Although in balance with each other, they were really too small in comparison to the rest of his head and face.  Jayne preferred to dress smart casual rather than smart formal.  That way he could wear slacks, blazers or sports coats but always with a smart shirt and tie, the only allowance he made to being formal.          

The police surgeon arrived and confirm death and also that there was a large head wound at the rear of the head, enough to stun the man but not kill him.  Doctor Frank Crossman was not a home office pathologist so at that point he was finished, but he didn't leave the scene.  "You need to get a pathologist out to this one as well.  I can only say the man is dead.  I don't even have to say anything about how he died, that looks to be obvious.  Has he called one in yet?"

"I won't know until he gets here.  We've had three different ones so far.  I'm hoping he is going to insist that we get one of those three so we can have some continuity in it.  But there's only eleven of them covering the West Midlands, London and the South East.  We just have to take who we get.  They are all very busy people and there's no guarantee as to who we can get."        

Jayne now called it in as a fifth victim of the series.  Having gone through the victim's pockets the doctor handed a wallet over to Jayne.  Inside he saw a drivers licence in the name of Barry Clay, with an address in Coventry.  His age was 46.  A few of the photos in the wallet also suggested he might be gay, just as all the others were.  There were also two membership cards of gay clubs in Birmingham and Leicester, which of course deepened the thought he was gay. 

Now they had to go through the whole same old game yet again. He couldn't understand why some people gay or not, didn't take the warnings to be careful.  They had seen the same problem with working street girls as they were now with gay men.  It seems that both groups knew the risks but were willing to accept them to earn a bob or two, or to get their fun.  There were men and women who would take advantage of the needs of these people, but the warnings were all ignored.  Male prostitution was now a growing problem too.  As DS Jayne stood waiting for the photographer to arrive he saw his DCI walking towards him. 

DCI Murray was a big brash Geordie who he hated gays with a passion.  He was the opposite of  is Jayne in just about every way.  He was a big man.  Tall, 6 foot 4 inches and built like a huge brick wall.  His dark hair was cropped short to stubble; his mouth was large too and he used it continually; his teeth were brown and dirty from the time he was a heavy smoker.  He didn't worry about how he looked and that day he was wearing a creased suit, and shirt with his tie hanging loosely at his neck.  However, as well as hating gay people, he also hated sexual predators with an equal passion, no matter who the victim might be.  Being just as careful as Jayne had been he also entered the crime scene careful not to disturb anything.  Looking at the body he saw that they did indeed have another grisly sex crime to deal with.

"Well then bonny lad, this is number five isn't it?  Anything different with this one can you see?" Murray asked.

"Well, there's two that I can see," replied Jayne.  "The body is laid out just the same as the others.  But this one is older than the others, he's 46 years old according to his driving license.  The other difference is that there is little effort made to hide the body and it is a lot closer to the road.  Maybe he's getting carless now.  That's it really.  No evidence other than the body and the lack of blood within the scene, just like the other four."

"I shouldn't bank on him getting carless Marty.  He's too bloody clever for that.  How are you doing in tracing the bloke from the flat in Nuneaton anyway?  Any luck yet?"

"No, nothing at all yet. The council said his rent and rates had been paid in full and up to date.  He turned up at the council one day and gave them the required notice he would vacate his flat in four weeks and handed in the keys there and then.  The forwarding address he gave was his mother's house but she hasn't seen him for years and his ex-wife said the same when we found her in Yorkshire.  None of the other residents in the block know where he’s gone either.  His utility bills were all paid up to date too.  He's just disappeared.  I was wondering about doing a trace on his National Insurance number.  If he's claiming any dole or whatever they might be able to point us in his direction."

"Not very good is it?  If he is our man then he's still local and I want him found!  Run the NI check and see what you can come up with."

"Either local or very mobile gov.  He’s also fairly strong too seeing as he has had to carry the body from the road.  It's going to be a sod to catch him though either way.  I bet he gets picked up by a PC Plod on his rounds!  Anyway, here's the Soco team and the van.  We can leave this to them now can't we?"

"Whatever, we've still got to find out who this poor sod is and a where he died. Without a name we can't do much at all really, unless we get lucky and he has a record. Then we can make some progress." Seeing that he was about to be challenged the DI spoke again.  "I know we have a name from the licence but until it has been checked we can't be sure.  Is he going to be another poofter do you think?  All the others were weren't they?  That's why we need to find the man from the flats."

 

"I know all that and I know about the other names checking out.  This might not be the guy from the flats you know?  Yes, he did hate the gays across the road from him, but he may have moved just to get away from there. We'll catch a break soon enough." Quietly however he didn't think they would. This would become one that would go on for years, ending just as he said before by a sharp eyed PC Plod being in the right place at the right time. What neither of them expected was that this one would be the last one for quite some time.

 

With no more dead and mutilated bodies turning up within Warwickshire, the case went cold.  The check on the National Insurance number did help in tracing the man from the flats though.  He was interviewed but he had come out clear of suspicion.  DI Murray left Nuneaton and returned to Newcastle, ''Away from all the southern poofters," as he put it when he got back home. As it was Warwickshire police were pleased to see him go. The Police service was changing, slowly perhaps, but still changing and Murray's out spoken dislike of homosexuals was now at odds with the new image the service was trying to portray.

 

D S Jayne moved from Nuneaton to Stratford where for two years he worked hard and made the right impressions with the right people and in 1995 he was moved back to Nuneaton as a Detective Inspector. Every so often he looked over the files for the five murders that were still outstanding. Nothing new had ever been added to the files and that was how things would continue he thought. No bright PC Plod had happen by just as their man was dropping off a body. No-one had been arrested and had coughed to them. Jayne didn't spend all that much time on the file because he had plenty of new jobs to attend to.

 

Jayne was a local history buff.  He had picked up a book called Warwickshire Murders in WH Smiths and he had hadn't laughed so much at a book in years.  It was so full of mistakes and errors.  In fact there were so many errors in it that he was puzzled as to how the writer was allowed to get away with it.  For example, the writer claimed that the murdered girl in one  story had been buried in the grave yard attached to the church she attended.  However, Jayne had attended the church pictured as a young boy.  He already knew that the church had never had its own grave yard.  He just hoped that no historian would depend on that book as a useful source.  Likewise in his professional life he knew that police officers had to be absolutely 100% sure and clear as to everything they did in their work.  Jayne had little time for those who weren't up to that standard, perhaps one of his character flaws. 

 

Two years after returning to Nuneaton he was called out to a wooded area just off the B4102, about three miles from Nuneaton town centre.  It was close to Seeswood Pool, the same area where five dead gay men had been found before.  The wood was also called Sees Wood. He arrived at the scene and changed from his shoes into wellies.  He and his DS made the same approach to where the body was waiting for them.  It lay in a slight clearing some distance off the road.  Seeing the body and how it was laid out Jayne was taken back to the previous five bodies that he had attended here abouts years earlier.  His DS, Donna Andrews saw him shake his head.  "You've seen this before haven't you boss?" she asked.

 

"Yes, five times before.  Well, twice just here.  The others were over that way," he replied pointing forward and to the right.  "There's a difference here though.  This guy has been partially hidden, or least it looks like it.  All the others were just left without any attempt to cover them.  You've read the file on those five I take it?"  Seeing a nod he continued.  "When it stopped four years ago we were hoping that was the end of it.  Doesn't look like it now does it?  I hope we get lucky this time round."

 

"There's no blood about is there boss?  He died elsewhere and was dumped here.  So I take you didn't find out where the other's had died either?"

 

"No.  All we found was the bodies laid out just like this man.  All the victims turned out to be gay and the only suspect we had really was a man who kept reporting the gays using the old Harcourt pub in Dugdale Street.  But he disappeared before the killings started so Murray wanted an all-out search for him.  Mind you, he'd have probably shock his hand if it had turned out to be him.  That man really did hate gays."

 

"So I heard.  So where do we start with this one then boss?"

 

"We set up a search grid again around this immediate scene, check for tyre prints and so on.  Then we wait for the post mortem report.  There's nothing at all for us here is there, other than a dead male minus his genitals - again.  Going back to the guy in the flat though; from what I remember he wasn't so much worried or bothered about them being gay in the pub.  It was just the way they behaved.  Considering he lived in a third floor flat which over looked the pub garden he couldn't really get away from it could he?  He was also worried that one of his neighbours had grandkids visit and she kept her curtains closed the whole time they were there.  No, I was sure at the time that he wasn't our man and I still think he's in the clear.  We finally traced him through his NI number and he was interviewed.  He was in the clear."  Jayne went quiet and stood looking around.  There was nothing at all for them here.  "Come on.  Let's have another look at those files see if we missed anything.  We'll go and have a word with Hutson again if he's still living at the same place."

And so to a photo ... 

which I got up in the Welsh hills somewhere or other.

And today's funny ...

Don't ask too many questions?????..
After a long night of making love, he notices a photo of another man on her nightstand by the bed.  He begins to worry. Is this your husband? he asks nervously.
No, silly, she replies, snuggling up to him.
Your boyfriend, then? he continues.
No, not at all, She says, nibbling away at his ear.
Is it your Dad or your brother? he enquires, hoping to be re-assured.
No, no, no! she answers.
Well, who in the hell is he, then? he demands.
That's me before the surgery.