The Danger Within

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The man was clearly dead. He lay sprawled across the kitchen floor, face down, arms stretched out to each side, legs slightly apart, almost as he were trying to do the breast stroke through the partially congealed pool of dark blood which surrounded him.

DCI David Vogel, already appointed senior investigating officer and the first detective at the scene, could see no obvious signs of injury to the dead man’s back, so it seemed reasonable to assume that his attacker had struck from the front and, judging from the amount of blood, that he had been stabbed to death. Almost certainly a number of times. It was possible that he could have been shot, but there was no sign of any exit wounds, and gun crime remained rare in the UK.

In spite of more than twenty years as a police officer and having frequently been faced with extreme violence and its inevitable consequences, Vogel had never got used to it. Particularly when that violence resulted in the most extreme of consequences. All too often the sight of a dead body left him desperately fighting against nausea and even faintness. On this occasion, although his stomach had lurched involuntarily as soon as he saw the blood surrounding the corpse, Vogel had so far been spared a more extreme reaction because neither the victim’s face nor his wounds were visible.

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