Detective Sergeant Dexter Antoine looked over the COPEGS notes that’d been passed to him by the control room. As the only available sergeant in the area at that moment, the job of supervisor sign-off fell to him.
On the face of it, it seemed a pretty standard death: an elderly woman, presumably a heart attack, but in a rather inconveniently public place. But there was one thing that bothered him slightly.
He read the wording again, this time more carefully. He wanted to make sure he’d read it correctly. He had. The husband told PC MacLagan that Barbara Patchett had experienced involuntary urination before she’d died, and while she was still mobile and lucid. Dexter had known many examples of people losing control of their bodily functions shortly after death — that was perfectly natural — but he wasn’t aware of many cases where that’d happened before the person had died. If she’d had some form of stroke, it might have made sense. But that didn’t quite match up with the description of her having been on her feet and walking towards the exit of the church between then and collapsing.
There was probably nothing in it, but he had little else to do and the church was barely three hundred yards away, so he figured it made sense to go down and take a look.
It was shaping up to be a glorious day, so Dexter popped on his sunglasses and walked down to All Saints Church, glad he’d picked a light grey suit over a darker fabric. It was starting to look as if spring might already be starting to break into summer.
As soon as he’d crossed the road outside the police station and turned the corner into Church Street, he could see the commotion at the church. He showed his badge to the officer at the outer cordon and made his way towards PC MacLagan, who’d submitted the report.
‘Morning. Nice day for it,’ he said, employing his well-practised dark humour — something all police officers used to some extent, to deal with the unconventional pressures of the job.
‘Not bad,’ PC MacLagan replied. ‘Might want to get her in the chiller before too long, though.’
Dexter smiled and took off his sunglasses. ‘I got your COPEGS. Alright if I take a look?’
‘Sure. I wondered if you might.’
‘Oh?’ Dexter replied, quizzically.
‘Well, it couldn’t get much more local, could it? And I hear it’s been pretty quiet.’
Dexter raised an eyebrow at PC MacLagan. ‘Until you said that. That’ll have put the mockers on it.’
Dexter stepped into the church, followed by PC MacLagan. ‘Is it correct that she pissed herself before she collapsed?’ he asked.
‘Apparently so. Her husband said he spotted it and mentioned it to her, and that’s why she made to leave.’
‘Did any other witnesses spot it?’
‘No, but there weren’t many. Not who were sitting further back than her and would’ve had her in their eye-line.’
‘Maybe they’re just a decent bunch of god-fearing folk who wouldn’t dare look at a lady’s crotch,’ Dexter added.
‘Maybe. But by all accounts she hit the floor more or less as soon as she’d stepped out into the nave and turned towards the door, so there wouldn’t have been much chance for anyone to notice anything anyway.’
Dexter nodded. ‘That the husband over there?’ he asked, looking in the direction of a distraught-looking gentleman clutching on to a young girl Dexter assumed was the man’s granddaughter.
‘Him? No, he’s the witness who gave CPR. Saw the whole thing happen.’
‘So did the little girl, presumably?’
‘Yeah. Hell of a thing to see at that age.’
‘Have we got someone doing welfare bits?’ Dexter asked. In the case of a young child witnessing something as traumatic as a woman dying in front of her, there was a responsibility to ensure no long-term psychological damage was done.
‘I put the call in, but they can’t get anyone over that quick on a Sunday.’
Dexter sighed. It had never made sense to him that weekend staffing numbers were so often reduced in the police, much the same as they were in hospitals. It wasn’t as if crime took a day off at weekends, or people were less likely to fall ill or die.
‘I’ll do a quick check,’ he said, realising PC MacLagan had more than enough on his plate. ‘What’s his name?’
‘God knows,’ PC MacLagan replied, flicking through his notebook. ‘I’ve got it here somewhere, though. Fred, I think. Yeah, Fred Barton.’
Dexter smiled. He walked over to the man introduced himself.
‘Fred, isn’t it? I’m DS Antoine, from Rutland Police.’
‘Yes. Hello,’ the man replied, his voice quivering as he spoke.
‘And what’s your name, little lady?’
‘This is Tamsin, my granddaughter,’ the man replied, blinking heavily as he cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. We’re both a bit shaken.’
‘That’s fine. I completely understand. You’ve given a statement to my colleague, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. I said I’d give him a call if I remembered anything else, but it’s just been such a shock. Everything’s a bit of a muddle and a blur, but at the same time I can still see so much of it so clearly.’
‘It’ll take time to process,’ Dexter replied. ‘But please don’t worry. We’ve got a duty of care to you, and we’ll make sure you get to speak to someone so you can process what’s happened in the proper way.’
‘Thank you,’ the man replied. ‘I didn’t really know Barbara — only by name — but she seemed such a lovely woman. Always so keen to do the right thing. It doesn’t really make any sense.’
‘Sometimes these things don’t. I know that’ll be no consolation at the moment, but if it helps, it doesn’t sound as if she was in any prolonged pain or distress.’
The man nodded, and seemed to be a little more reassured.
Dexter spotted PC MacLagan walking a couple of metres away, and stopped him. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the man and girl, before turning to his colleague. ‘Can you show me the husband? I’ll need to speak with him.’
PC MacLagan led Dexter back outside and towards a bench, where Brian Patchett was sitting with a uniformed officer, who was starting to go through the traumatic but necessary procedure of completing a sudden death report.
‘Mr Patchett? DS Antoine, Rutland Police. My deepest condolences. I understand it’s a bad time, but would it be okay if I asked you a couple of quick questions?’
Brian blinked a few times and nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
The uniformed officer stood up and made way for Dexter to sit and talk to Brian in private.
‘First of all, I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss. I hear Barbara had been pretty fit and healthy? This must be a terrible shock.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is. I mean, she’d looked a bit peaky all morning, but I thought she was just getting flustered as usual. She mentioned feeling a bit sick and dizzy, but I put that down to her bolting her breakfast too quickly before we left the house.’
‘Could well be. Did she eat anything unusual?’
‘No, just her normal Sunday breakfast.’
Dexter nodded slowly, and tried his hardest not to raise an eyebrow. ‘Remind me…’
‘Two croissants, a black coffee and some grapefruit juice. She always says that’s enough to keep her going through the service, then we tend to pop off and grab an early lunch at the garden centre.’
‘Sounds like a lovely way to spend the day. My colleague said Barbara was on some medication, is that right?’
‘Yes. For her blood pressure.’
‘Okay,’ Dexter said, starting to piece two and two together. ‘Do you know what it’s called, out of interest?’
‘Ooh, now you ask me something. It’s got a funny name. I always poke fun at it… Slozem. That’s it. Slozem. I used to joke that it helps people’s blood pressure because it Slozem down.’
‘Very good,’ Dexter said, smiling. ‘Is it okay if I let my colleague complete the sudden death report with you? I’ll be about, and I’ll come back and chat with you in a bit.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Brian replied.
Dexter stood and walked a little further away before pulling out his mobile phone. He opened the web browser, and typed Slozem into the search bar.
He scrolled down until he found the first reputable-looking result that wasn’t trying to flog him some drugs online: a page on the NHS website entitled Diltiazem: a medicine used to treat high blood pressure. He tapped the link and quickly scanned through the information, before going back to the search bar and typing diltiazem grapefruit.
Although he didn’t know why or how it worked, he was aware of a common phenomenon whereby grapefruit juice was known to interact badly with lots of medicines, sometimes stopping them working or even leading to dangerous side effects.
One of the first search results was another page on the NHS website, this one entitled Does grapefruit affect my medicine? Before he’d even tapped on the link, he read the snippet of text Google had pulled from the website. Grapefruit juice does not affect diltiazem.
He tapped through to the website and read the section on calcium channel blockers. It listed eight which interacted poorly with grapefruit juice and could cause serious issues, but the sentence underneath the list was as clear as day. Grapefruit juice does not affect diltiazem.
That was one potential cause of death to cross of the list, at least. But something still niggled at the back of his mind. It was the involuntary urination. It just didn’t seem to make sense. It wasn’t something the paramedics had picked up and mentioned, but then again they’d only arrived a short while after Barbara had already collapsed and died, and they naturally hadn’t asked witnesses if she’d wet herself before dying. It’d be perfectly normal for them to assume it’d happened after she’d died, as it so often did.
‘You happy for me to call in the undertaker?’ PC MacLagan said, appearing at his side.
‘Almost,’ Dexter replied. ‘First of all I just need to make a quick phone call.’