Page 29

BODY IN THE FOUNTAIN

Blake

Raindrops ran in rivulets down Blake’s black golf umbrella, dripping on his shoe as he watched the uniformed officers hurrying to protect the body.

A shock of red blood across a white T-shirt drew Blake’s gaze, and he stared at the victim sprawled across the cobbles next to the fountain.

The smell of ozone was thick, giving the air a humid quality.

“Well, shit. Another fucking alpha,” Mark said, huddled under his Barbour jacket whilst water dripped down his nose. He’d tried to muscle under Blake’s umbrella several times, but Blake had stuck out his elbow and given him a dirty look. Mark gave up eventually.

Early morning shifters were still being ushered out from between the pine trees, each of them extremely unhappy about having their routine interrupted.

“They’re saying the poor fucker had his fangs knocked out,” Mark continued.

Blake sighed, glancing down at the clipboard that he’d rather ingeniously secured inside a clear evidence bag. Mark had taken no such precaution, and furiously shook his bundle of sodden papers.

“Sarge?” a voice called, making Blake look up.

An equally sodden response officer stood in front of him, exhaling heavily, making Blake draw back from the mist she created.

“Yes?”

“Do you want a cordon on the whole park, or just in the immediate vicinity?”

She tugged at her hood, making the rain drip onto her unprotected radio. Rookie mistake. Blake’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the edge of the shifter park. It would be light soon, and the people of High Enfield would begin their morning commutes.

“Place an outer cordon on all entrances and exits,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket. “I’d like an inner cordon around the treeline.”

“Yes, Sarge. And the log?” She clutched a bright red booklet to her chest with the words MAJOR INCIDENT SCENE LOG stamped in black letters.

Blake smirked as he took the thick document from her gloved hands and scribbled Mark’s details on the inner page.

“There you are, DS Matthews,” he said, slapping it against his chest. “Make yourself useful.”

“Thank you,” the officer said, turning to leave. Blake caught her sleeve.

“Here,” he said, pulling another evidence bag out of his pocket and placing it over her radio. “Shit day to get a cake fine.”

She looked down at her chest, then back up at Blake. “Oh! Thanks. Yeah… I’m still wiped out from crashing the car into a victim’s wheelie bin. The fuckers made me buy biscuits for the entire shift.”

Blake chuckled. “Not even custard slices? Uniform must be getting soft.”

She shrugged. “Not soft. Just poor.”

With that, she jogged towards another officer who was trying to wrangle the scene tape into submission. There was nothing else to be said as they watched the third murder victim disappear underneath the white forensic tent.

Johnny and Tay were busy hammering tacks into the grass, bickering constantly as a gust of wind threatened to send the tent flying into the air.

Blake was about to hand his umbrella to Mark and help wrestle the thing back down, but they got a hold of it before further intervention was needed.

Eventually, everything was in place and they had the beginnings of a crime scene.

“Yo, Smithy,” Mark called. “When’s the boss getting here?”

Blake’s eyebrow twitched. “On his way with Cait.”

“Reckon I’ve time for a cig?” Mark replied, popping the lid on his lighter.

Blake’s jaw ticked, and he could already feel his blood pressure starting to rise. “No.”

“Oh, come on. Just take over for a?—”

“No.”

Mark grumbled. “Miserable fucker.”

People were beginning to gather around the periphery of the field—joggers, dog walkers, commuters, more people trying to get in an early morning shift to beat the rush. The blue lights and uniforms really had an uncanny way of attracting the general public.

It had to be there . It just had to be there , in the High Enfield Community Shifter Park.

A place where people sunbathed, packs ran together and children played long into the summer evenings.

There was a playpark and a string of restaurants overlooking the grassy field.

None of that would ever be the same. Not when there had been a body discovered in the middle of the fountain, its blood staining the water a muddy brown.

Blake knew full well there were copper pennies lining the bottom of the fountain—his omega father had taken him there multiple times after school to buy an ice cream from the musical van. Now somebody would probably sell those pennies on eBay as a sick token of a murder scene.

They’d called him at 5:00 am and said another body had appeared.

Another alpha. Another murder. He’d been sceptical at first, because uniform just loved to pull the ‘suspicious death’ card to get CID out of bed, but now, having seen the sorry state of the victim, it couldn’t be construed as anything else.

“Heads up. Forensics are here,” Mark said, shaking his pen whilst trying to fill in the wet scene log.

Blake watched as several white vans pulled up, their bright Crime Scene Investigation signs drawing the attention of the crowd at the other end of the park. The people moved, a few of them breaking into a jog as they scrambled to get closer to the vans. Journalists. Fucking death chasers.

Blake abandoned his umbrella and jogged across the wet grass. His leather shoes were sodden, and he was beginning to regret not putting on his combat boots and blacks.

Pember, Wallace, Duncan and Maya were just climbing out of the van when the group of journalists rounded the corner and hurtled down the road towards them. Blake snarled as he ducked under the scene tape.

“Back up,” he snapped, just as one of them shoved a recording device in Pember’s face.

“Young man! Anything to say about the incident? Who was the victim? How many stab wounds this time?”

Pember looked up at him like a rabbit in headlights, but Blake waved his clipboard and shooed them back up the road.

“Put the tape around the fucking van,” he snarled at a nearby officer. The poor bastard looked like he was about to shit himself. “And, you . Make sure these idiots don’t cross the cordon,” he shouted at another.

Duncan slid out the overhead canopy attached to the side of the van, giving them some respite from the rain.

Pember said nothing as he pulled on his scene suit, pushed his hair back and snapped an elastic around a little ponytail at the back of his head.

It suited him, and when he puffed out his cheeks with a look of anxiety, it made Blake want to reach out and touch him.

They’d ended the previous evening with an abrupt goodbye, neither of them making formal plans for the following day. Nor had Pember appeared on his patio the following morning.

“Morning, Sarge,” Wallace said, noisily pulling a metal briefcase out of the van. “Lovely day for it.”

Blake squinted up at the sky, the rain making his glasses foggy and wet. It was grey, unusually overcast for April, making it an absolutely abysmal day for a murder. Forensic integrity? Gone. Any hope of accurately establishing the time of death? Washed into the fucking fountain.

“Your Majesty,” Duncan said, giving a mock bow as he handed Blake another stack of papers. “It’s the forensic strategy. Well… not that we have much of a strategy, given that the rain’s probably washed away most of our evidence.”

A round of excited gasps came from the journalists, and Maya slapped his arm. “Keep your fucking voice down. The vultures are out.”

They kitted up quickly, which Blake found slightly amusing given that the officers who were first on scene may as well have wiped their own arses across the grass for all the forensic consideration they’d had. Still, they’d tried to save his life, which was something.

Pember lugged a huge metal briefcase case from the back of the van that had Water Examination Kit pressed into the aluminium. He was struggling to lift it off the shelf, so Blake reached up and slid it free.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching for the case, but Blake held it back.

“I’ve got it,” he replied, giving the omega a small smile.

“Oh, cheers, Sarge,” Maya said, hefting her own case into Blake’s hand.

“Right,” Wallace said, handing Pember a set of waders. “Pem, you’re working on the body with Dunny. Maya, you’re with me on the periphery.”

Maya let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, come on, Wal. Seriously?”

Wallace shrugged and handed her a camera. “What? The lad’s got to get exposure somehow.”

The noise outside evaporated as they stepped into the forensic tent.

The body, the fountain and the discarded vent-aid kits all looked like they’d been laid out in a really shit version of a whodunit.

It was a strange feeling, standing in the same space as a dead man, and although Blake had seen many a corpse, the surreality of it never changed.

Everyone remembered their first body—how it felt walking into the same room as death for the first time.

The extraordinary made ordinary in the context of the job.

Blake’s had been during his second ever shift as a uniformed officer.

He’d still been in his probation period, and he recalled just how appalled he was at his mentor for sitting and having a cup of tea with a woman who had just become a widow.

All that would have been fine— normal , even—except the widow’s recently deceased husband was sitting in between them with his cock out, death erection on full display.

He’d discovered porn at the ripe old age of seventy-three, and the poor widow had found him the next morning following a wank-induced heart attack.

Blake had tried to cover the man’s modesty with a tea-towel, but death erections were persistent bastards, even in the elderly.

Nothing had really changed in the twelve years he’d been doing the job, and as he gazed down at the body of the recently deceased alpha, even he looked like a wax exhibit in Madame Tussauds.