Detective Constable Jenny Lord - Wessex Police

Chapter 2 The Unthinkable

(WARNING; Note: this chapter and the next will have some gruesome details of multiple rapes and murders)

Monday Morning started out just like the past week for Jenny, up at 5AM, shower, dressed, and fix breakfast. Today Jenny decided to treat herself and have Banana Pancakes, her favorite, she deserved it after a week of assisting grumpy DCI Hardy. She expected today would be no different than the past week, his sullenness and her boredom. She really wished something exciting would happen, but I guess Jenny never heard the old adage never wish for something because it might come true. Today Jenny's wish would come true and the Unthinkable would happen.

Jenny pulled out of her parking space onto the busy highway in front of her apartment and then into the left lane to make the U-turn to go pick up Hardy. It was half-past 6, plenty of time to make the 10-minute drive to his place. Right after Jenny made the turn a man stepped into the road screaming and yelling and waving his hands, she had to step on the brakes to keep from hitting him. Jenny rolled down her window and yelled at him to get out of the road but he kept screaming "Their all dead." Jenny backed up and then pulled off the road to the gravel entrance to a holiday cottage so prevalent here in Broadchurch. She got out of the car and went up to the man and escorted him out of the road and back to her car.

"Sir, I'm DC Lord of the Wessex Police, what is going on, why did you run out into the road, you could have got yourself killed?

"They're dead, their all dead!".

"Calm down, Sir. take a deep breath, now who's dead, and what is your name?"

"The girls are dead, the ones I rented the cottage too. There's blood all over the place. God! Who could have done such a thing?"

Jenny's mind started racing with procedures and protocols. Step one, she thought, get a coherent story out of the man.

"Sir, is that your car over there?

White-faced and shaking the man talked a mile a minute, "Yes, I know you're not supposed to park here but I was only going to be a couple of minutes to check on my cottage and find the key. Then I saw the bodies."

Jenny's gaze went to the cottage off the road as she took hold of the man's arm, "Take a breath, Sir. Let's get you sitting down."

She gently led the man over to his car opened the door and helped him to sit down with his legs outside the car. She told him to put his head between his knees and just breath for a few minutes. When the color in his face returned to normal, she began,"Sir, what is your name?"

"Tim Dodd. My name is Tim Dodd,"

"Right, Mr. Dodd. You said, your cottage, Do you own this place and what girls? Tell me step by step what happen this morning."

"I own this and several other cottages in the area. I rent them out for the holiday season. Four university girls rented out this cottage for this past bank holiday. They picked up the keys on Thursday and said they would return them to my lockbox at my office on Sunday. I went in early this morning to go over my receipts and collect the keys. The key to this cottage was not there. I didn't think much about it, many of the renters just leave the keys in the post box instead of coming all the way down to my office. Since I was in early, I thought I would drive over and retrieve them".

Mr. Dodd was talking a mile a minute and Jenny had to remind him to take a breath and slow down.

" When I got here the front door was open, and I thought to myself that is shite, what if someone had stolen all the furniture in it. So I went in to check the place out and the first thing I saw was red paint graffiti on the front room walls. So now I was angry, the girls seemed really nice, how could they do that, so I went to check the rest of the cottage and that was when I found them in the bedrooms dead. Blood everywhere! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!