Jobs I hate

I get a feeling of foreboding when I am asked to enter a property where the resident is thought to be 'trapped behind a locked door'. You may remember an entry from last year when I discussed a job in which we searched a house with the police and the resident returned home. His dog had been left at home and so it was assumed that something was badly wrong as he never left home without him, allegedly. Most of our calls to persons trapped in their homes turn out to be nothing or next to nothing. The jobs I hate most are the ones that turn out to be something.

The call, as usual, was to a 'female possibly trapped behind a locked door'. I raced round to the address and the police arrived seconds later. We went up to the flat with a relative who had called because he was concerned about the lack of response when he knocked and, eventually, hammered at the front door. It turned out the resident was a male and that he would only leave home to go to certain places. His relative had checked all the usual haunts and had not found him in any of them. He had gone back to the flat and called us out. The man in question had not been seen for three days now.

The first thing I did was to look through the letterbox and have a sniff of the air inside at the same time. There was no unusual smell but a light was on in the front room. No sound though. The door was very well secured and the police officer had no luck trying to kick in in. There was, however, a piece of plywood up above the door, covering a small window where the glass had been broken by accident in the past. The relative unscrewed the board whilst one of the two police officers went to get the 'key' - a device used to force entry.

Once unscrewed, the female police officer climbed up and squeezed herself in through the gap. She dropped to the floor and immediately unlocked and opened the front door. I made my way in behind her and the relative followed. We checked each room and I was expecting to see a corpse in any one of them. Nothing. The relative sighed with relief and said "Thank God". He spoke too soon.

He noticed that the man's inhalers were still on the table among other personal effects that would normally be with him if he went out. He went ahead to the bedroom, which had yet to be checked and again I felt a gnawing persistence that all was not well. Again, the room was empty.

We were all heading out of the flat via the small hallway when I noticed the bathroom door ajar. I had assumed this room had been checked. I saw the man's body inside on the loo through the gap and I signalled to the police officer that I had found him. I also signalled that the relative should be kept back for a moment. I went in and there he was, slumped dead on the loo. I checked him and found that he was pulseless, cold and stiff. Definitely dead.

The relative pushed past me and fell apart. He cried all the way out of the flat and was still crying when I left him outside the premises. I felt sorry for him but I couldn't help him and I had nothing to offer him.

I did my paperwork confirming life extinct and left the scene.

I am used to all sorts of horror but I still get apprehensive when I walk into a place where I might find a dead body. Not that the body itself concerns me, it's the way the person may have died. I have a vivid recollection of a job I did 18 months ago where neighbours had called us for an elderly woman trapped behind her door. When I got there and we broke in she was lying semi-conscious in a pool of vomited blood. She also had a serious head wound, either from falling onto the door or something sinister had taken place (the police looked into it later). It was a terrible situation to go into and she was extremely difficult to remove. Her airway was a mess and she was covered in blood and faeces. She was hypothermic and her respiratory effort had all but ceased by the time we got her into the ambulance. I thought we had saved her life but she died of her injuries later in the day.

I hate jobs like that. They are expensive on the soul and they remind you of how useless you are at times.

Be safe.