Human Remains

woman standing a few paces behind him, with a huge camera dangling by its strap from her wrist. I didn’t open the door.
    Despite three showers and washing all my clothes, I kept sniffing the air, the smell in my nostrils still. Maybe it was my imagination. The cat had curled up on the sofa, tucked into an indignant ball, her back to me and the room. It would probably be some time before she felt ready to look me in the eye again.
     
     
    It was nearly ten o’clock already and I’d hardly achieved anything useful. But I still couldn’t face starting the Tactical Assessment, so I opened up the despatch system and searched for my name and address. This was, strictly speaking, against the rules, but if anyone asked I could probably argue a legitimate business interest for looking.
    CALLER STATES THERE IS A BODY NEXT DOOR
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THERE IS NO ONE LIVING THERE
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CALLER STATES THE CAT HAS COME IN SMELLING OF SOMETHING BAD AND HAS A SUBSTANCE ON HER FUR
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CORRECTION: THIS IS INFTS CAT NOT THE NEIGHBOURS CAT
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PATROLS: AT55 UNAVAILABLE AZ31 UNAVAILABLE AL22 IN CUSTODY
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INFORMED INFT THAT PATROLS WILL BE SENT AS SOON AS FREE REQUEST
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INFT STATES SHE WILL WAIT UP FOR PATROLS
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FROM VOTERS: RESIDENT SHOWN AS SHELLEY LOUISE BURTON
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PLEASE CALL IF FURTHER DEV
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2032 AL22 AT PREMISES
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NO ANSWER TO DOOR
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REQUEST MAJ CRIME ATTENDANCE – DET INSP PRESTON ON CALL
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KEYHOLDER ADVICE, NO KEYHOLDER ON RECORD FOR THIS PREMS
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REFER TO INTEL TO ADD TO LIST
     
    It went on beyond that for several pages. Various teams were called out, according to the protocol. The efforts to locate a next of kin for Shelley Burton were dutifully recorded; eventually they found an elderly aunt in Norfolk. No mention was made of the partner, Graham, if indeed I’d remembered his name correctly.
    ‘Did you see the Chief’s Summary?’ I said. ‘There’s been another one.’
    ‘Another what?’ Kate asked, peering over the top of her computer screen at me.
    ‘Another decomposed corpse. Only forty-three years old.’
    Kate tutted at me. She always glossed over those ones, since technically there wasn’t any crime. Bodies found in the comfort of their own homes with no apparent suspicious circumstances weren’t our concern. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’d found the latest one, I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought either. But there was something else that had been nagging away at the back of my mind – that Major Crime guy had queried what I’d said about the light being on. Clearly, when they’d gone into the house, the light had been off. This in itself wasn’t what was worrying me – after all, maybe I did turn it off without thinking when I left, or maybe the first patrol had turned it off, or maybe the bulb had finally blown. But I remembered how I’d thought there had been someone in the house. I’d felt something – a presence – and at the time I’d put the feeling down to there being a person in the armchair, and any noises I heard as being the cat. But what if there had been someone else there all the time?
    ‘I just think it’s a shame,’ I said. ‘Lying there all that time, and nobody even notices you’re gone.’
    ‘Mmm,’ Kate said, but she wasn’t really listening.
    ‘I wonder how many there’ve been this year?’
    No answer at all this time. I wasn’t really expecting one. Kate was pretending to be engrossed in writing the bi-weekly report that we’d have to present to the management team on Wednesday, although what she was actually doing was updating her Facebook status on her phone.
    What the hell – I wasn’t busy. I set up a search to look for all calls and incidents where a body had been found since the start of the year. I added the wildcard search terms: ‘decomposed’ or ‘decomposition’. Surely there couldn’t be that many, I thought.
    But I was wrong.
    ‘Twenty-four,’ I announced.
    ‘Twenty-four what?’
    ‘Bodies. Twenty-four since January. In Briarstone borough.’
    Kate sighed and put down her phone. She craned her neck round the edge of her screen and regarded me steadily. ‘What bodies? What are you on about?’
    ‘All bodies found inside a property in a state of decomposition.’
    ‘What are you looking at that for? We’re supposed to have this finished by lunchtime.’
    ‘And,’ I said, pausing for an inaudible drum roll, ‘guess how many there were in the whole of last year?’
    She shrugged. ‘Twenty? Ten?’
    ‘Four.’
    She stared at me for a