A Professional Relationship with Death

Being a police officer for so long, on the front line of crime in the UK, has caused me to develop a strong relationship with death. I almost consider death a colleague with whom I work hand in hand.

I've spent more time than I care to think about around death. I have seen many dead bodies. Normally lying in the same position as when they took their final breath. I have broken the news to the loved ones of people who have passed too many times. The task of delivering such news is called a 'death message' and despite the various horrendous tasks police officers undertake, this is often considered the least desirable. It is certainly my least favourite item to deal with.

I've seen people die. I've heard the infamous 'death rattle'.

After a while I became familiar with death and the circumstances that surround it. I suppose it is a defence mechanism that I now consider death a colleague.

The most apparent and immediate consequence of death's presence is the smell. To describe it as a smell is actually misleading. However 'smell' is the closest and easiest description for the atmosphere in a place where death has been at work. In actual fact you do not even need to breath to be completely enveloped by the aroma and stale air that follows death. For those uninitiated in the ways of death, the best description of this 'smell' is to compare it to the smell of cannabis. Once a person is familiar with the smell of cannabis they recognise it easily, and do not tend to mistake it with anything else. It is such a distinctive smell, completley unique, that once a person knows the smell, they always recognise it. The same is to be said about the smell of death. The smell can linger in your throat or on your clothes for days like no other smell I have ever encountered.

Long ago a colleague and I forced our way into a flat where a man had not been seen for weeks. Before the door was open we knew he was dead inside, and had been so for a while. We could smell death. Sure enough, the man lay on his bed and the smell was absolutely horrendous. He was a white man but his skin had turned completely black. He had been there for weeks. I looked down to his stomach, which appeared to be moving. It was. A mass of maggots had turned his stomach into a living, moving lump of decaying flesh. My colleague pushed me into the room and held the door shut so I couldn't escape. Dark humour such as that is difficult to understand but a way that police officers deal with such horror.

There is another case where a woman was found sat in her armchair. Her television was on. She had obviously been there for months and had largely melted away into her carpet. On her lap was a TV guide which had rotted along with her. It was late December. The TV guide was just about eligible and open to the previous Christmas Eve, over a year ago.

More often we find the elderly relatively 'fresh' in their homes. Once there was an elderly chap who had died in the night at home. His flat was adorned with anniversary cards between himself and his wife. Pictures of his wife were everywhere and it was obvious that he missed her dearly. She had died a few years before. Before the undertakers took the man away I removed a coin from his wallet with an inscription on the back from his wife (he had obviously carried it around with him for most of his life). I placed it in his pocket to accompany him on his final journey. (Please note that we are required to search people's homes and wallets etc for high value items and large quantities of cash so that they are not left unattended and vulnerable, I was not leafing through his wallet out of curiosity!).

People tend to be curious about death. I have seen enough to satisfy any curiosity that I may have had. The curse is that when those close to you die, you know exactly what they looked like as they lay waiting to be found.

Anonymous Bobby