Catching Up With a Friend Over a Dead Body

Inspector Faiza Ahmed returns and the case gets even weirder.

Author’s note: This is Episode 3 of “The Agoraphobic Murderer” (temporary title). Here’s a link to the full index so you can catch up on the story so far. Enjoy!

(Image via Pexels/Edited on Canva)

You can’t legally walk into a crime scene. There are very strict laws about that sort of thing, and for most members of the general public, there’s no way around them. Fortunately, I have an old friend on the police force. Unfortunately, we were no longer on speaking terms.

As soon as June went to take a shower, I called that friend, Inspector Faiza Ahmed. She didn’t pick up. I tried again and got the same result. So I called the department and pretended to be her father, and they told me that Faiza was at the morgue. As expected, she was not happy to see me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” was the specific greeting she used. I explained the situation as quickly as I could, all the time adopting the manner of a puppy showing its belly. I’m generally good at that sort of thing, but it didn’t work on Faiza.

“You have some nerve,” she said. “What’s it been, six months? You don’t pick up my calls, you never text. Now you’re here asking for a favour, pulling that dying duck routine of yours. Who do you think you are, Grimm?”

It’s possible Faiza knows me too well. I decided to change tactics. Behind her was a body on a slab with its head smashed in. I asked her who it was.

“No,” Faiza warned. “Don’t you dare.”

I dared. “Caucasian, male, mid-40s,” I observed. “Gang tattoos, old bullet wounds, all suggest a criminal background. This must be the recently deceased drug kingpin Mickey Hill, the most hated man in the country.”

“You can’t just do that,” Faiza objected. “I know what you’re doing, Finn. You can’t just give me a lead and expect me to forgive you for ghosting me.”

“I wasn’t ghosting you,” I insisted. “But I am sorry. Now, what’s wrong with this case? Why are you here?”

I saw Faiza’s determination waver. The best friends are the ones you can just hit up after months of not talking, and it’s exactly the same as it’s always been.

“I hate you,” she swore. “Fine. We caught the Dope King here on money laundering and tax evasion if you can believe it. That business with the Seti Club, that’s what did it. Anyway, a few weeks ago, the prison doctor found cancer in his lungs. Said he’d be dead in a month. They moved him to a hospital, where he was then found in the state you now see him in.”

“Nobody saw who did it,” I guessed. “And the cameras were down, or damaged.”

“That’s right,” Faiza said with a frustrated groan. “Over a dozen sick people in that hospital. Twice as many people working there. But there isn’t a speck of evidence, and nobody saw or heard anything. How does that happen?”

“It doesn’t,” I said. I already knew what had happened of course (or at least, I thought I did). “I could help, you know. Give you some ideas.”

“I know you can,” she said. “And I also know that you’ll probably do it even if I don’t help you. You’re a compulsive mystery-solver, Finn. That’s your curse.”

She did have a point. Now, I didn’t know who exactly killed Mickey Hill but the how, that was obvious. How does someone kill a person in a packed hospital without getting caught on camera or being seen by any of the staff? Simple, you get the staff to help you. Faiza’s eyes lit up when I told her this, and I guessed it probably matched some of her suspicions.

“They must have been paid off,” Faiza said excitedly. “Somebody with a lot of money to spend. Probably one of Hill’s rivals, or a coup from within the gang. This is brilliant! You realise what this means, Finn?”

“You’ll get a promotion. Now, about my thing.”

“Fine, what’s the address?”

I told her, and she looked a little puzzled.

“I know that place,” she said. “Someone called in a murder there earlier. I was in the neighbourhood so I dropped in.”

“Was that 602?” I asked. “Did you see June’s aunt?”

“No, this was 601.” Faiza moved over to the drawers and opened one, pulling out a corpse on a stretcher. “We found this one stabbed to death with a kitchen knife.”

It was not Mr Adams if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a teenager, with pale white skin and the beginnings of a terrible moustache. From June’s description, I realised this must be Dick, the handyman.

“Did you find the guy who lived there?” I asked.

“Kenneth Adams, and no,” said Faiza. “He’s disappeared.”

(Image via Pexels/Edited on Canva)

In the end, Faiza agreed to let me see both crime scenes. I called June, who met us at the building, and after the introductions, all three of us headed up to the sixth floor. We stopped at 601 first.

The flat was cluttered with books and magazines. There were photos of the late Mrs Adams on the wall, with a very thin layer of dust on them. The body had been found in the living room, but I went through all the rooms anyway. I located the open window near the fire escape and found that it was actually broken.

Next, we headed to 602. A horrible stench hit us as soon as we entered. June looked like she would be sick.

“I’ll just wait outside,” she said. “I don’t… I shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, this isn’t my case,” said Faiza, stepping out with her.

Honestly, I didn’t want to be there either, but I had a secret weapon. I’ve said before that there’s nothing special about noticing details. It’s something anyone can manage, and not really a matter of pride for me. But there is something that, to the best of my knowledge, only I can do.

(Image via Pexels/Edited on Canva)

It is my firm belief that our brains are constantly collecting data about our environments, independent of conscious thought. This is where phenomena like precognition and intuition really come from. In situations like these, where there are external factors that make concentration difficult, I switch to what I think of as an alternative mode of cognition, allowing my senses to absorb all the information from the environment at the same time while “turning off” my conscious, rational self.

In this state, I dashed through the flat, heading from room to room, paying no mind to where I was going or what I was doing. Once I had done my rounds, I stepped out of the door and breathed deeply to clear my lungs. I had my answer.

“Call a forensic team,” I told Faiza. “There’s something in the bedroom.”

While Faiza was making the call, June and I headed up to the roof to clear our lungs. I steadied myself, taking in the view, which wasn’t half bad. It was mostly old residential buildings, but you could see the river in the distance, somewhat obstructed by a hospital.

“Mr Grimm, what’s happening?” June asked. I told her I needed a minute.

Synchronic Detection (as I call it) is, by definition, irrational and unpredictable. I don’t just see things or have random facts pop into my head. It’s more visceral; a series of feelings and hunches pointing at an as-yet-unglimpsed truth. But as my normal consciousness returned, the logic began to catch up.

“Dead people stink,” I told June. “It’s one of the things that make hiding a body so difficult. When people die, all the sphincters relax and… well, things come out. If our senses were sharper, like say a dog’s, we could probably pinpoint the exact place a person died, just from the smell. You know what I’m talking about, right? You smelled it in 601.”

“Yes, I did.” June nodded. “It was… bad. But Aunt Ivy’s was worse.”

“True, and that was the first clue,” I said. “It was strongest in the bedroom.”

“So that’s where she was killed?”

It wasn’t. There were signs of a struggle in the living room, which suggested Ivy was killed there. The murderer must have strangled her first, then moved the body to the bedroom. There was a knife missing from the kitchen, which he then used to cut her guts open. I pointed these things out to June and she instantly grasped what it all implied.

“Someone wanted to make it look like she died there,” she guessed. “That’s it, isn’t it? But why the bedroom? Why not just leave her in the living room?”

“We’ll make a Watson of you yet,” I joked. “He picked the bedroom because it has more places to hide.”

Just then, the door to the roof opened. It was Faiza, and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“There was a suitcase,” she told us. “In the bedroom, I mean. Stuffed under the bed. It had a body in it.”

“Do we know who it is?” I asked.

“Yeah, we do,” said Faiza. “We’ve been looking for him. It’s Kenneth Adams.”

To Be Continued.

Thank you for reading All My Dreams Are Red! This is a free-to-read, reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, please consider leaving a donation:

[Tip $5] [Tip $15] [Tip $50]