You Might Need An Adult To Help You With This Bit...

I've just been reading a post on a blog called Purple Plus that reminded me of a job I went to a couple of years ago.

The radio message from control room was "Male assaulted by group of youths. They've attacked him with a knife and cut his finger off!"

So, fairly nasty job. We all (four of us) went shooting round there. I asked the area car to go and see him whilst one officer did house to house enquiries in the block of flats. Meanwhile, I took one for the team and did an area search for this guy's finger. He'd said that it happened near some shops close to his flat. It was cold and windy and I was crawling through hedges and all sorts with my torch looking for the missing digit.

Finding nothing, I started following the route back to his place, still looking for the finger. Still no sign and, strangely, no trail of blood.

The officers with the male were updating me that they weren't sure about his story. He was also giving the paramedics a bit of a hard time. He just wasn't acting very "victim". The Police officers thought that, perhaps, he wasn't being entirely straightforward with the truth.

By the time I got to his flat, the ambulance had taken him off to hospital followed by one of the Police officers. I walked in and immediately was hit by the stench of rotten food. His kitchen was piled up with half eaten meals and piles of cat poo.

His pet cat, a scraggly looking thing, was limping around the flat bumping into things. Poor thing looked like it was on it's last legs.

I went into the lounge and there was even more mess. The guy was clearly not great at looking after himself. Worryingly, there was also a lot of military stuff lying around, including knives. Lots of knives.

There was some blood on the sofa and coffee table, but not huge amounts. However, there was also a copy of Jamie Oliver's cook book there too. And that had bloody hand prints on it. As well as marks that looked an awful lot like they'd been made by knives cutting something.

On a hunch, and holding my nose to help with the smell, we started searching through the flat. There was no blood near the front door, but there was a trail of blood leading from the bedroom to the lounge.

Now, if the kitchen was a bit unpleasant the bedroom was even worse. I won't go into too much detail, as I write this I've just had my breakfast, but let's just say there were a few times that he clearly couldn't be bothered walking to the toilet when he'd been caught short in the night.

There was more blood in the bedroom, particularly on and around the bed. Oh, and more knives. But still no finger! Though I've got to admit that when I was poking around the poo stained clothes that perhaps I might have looked a bit closer.

I followed the trail of blood back to the sofa in the lounge. Next to the cookery book there was another, really evil looking knife, and a pair of small gardening sheers. Both had what looked to my non-CSI eye like blood on them.

I was with one of the bobbies on my team, Justin, and we looked at each other still a bit confused. We looked under the cushions on the sofa and, though there was some more blood, his sodding digit still hadn't turned up.

I checked in with the officer at the hospital. I asked him to make sure this guy's finger wasn't hiding in one of his pockets. But no, still no trace. He did update me, though, that the exact details the victim was giving kept changing. He couldn't remember anything about the people who did this, or where it happened. He was also still very agressive in the way that he was speaking to people. I told him I'd come down as soon as I could.

I looked down at the floor next to the table and there seemed to be more blood pooled there than anywhere else. Justin and I got down on our hands and knees and lifted up the sofa. I got my torch and stuck my head under and there was the guy's finger, now about three inches from the end of my nose!

After I'd run around screaming and swearing for a few seconds, we wrapped the finger in the cleanest thing we could find (which, to be honest, wasn't that clean) and then popped it in a bag of frozen chips.) Justin took it down to the hospital for me whilst I went outside for a calming cigarette.

So, no signs of a struggle outside. Nothing heard by the neighbours. No blood anywhere outside the flat or near the front door (including around the handle). No sign of forced entry and the finger was under the guy's sofa. And he lives alone. He'll have done it himself then. He cut his own finger off with one of his knvies using the cookery book as a chopping block. Then he snipped off any straggly ends with the gardening sheers.

I updated the officer at the hospital about what we'd found and the fact that we were bringing his finger down to the guy so they could be reunited.

When we pointed out to the bloke that he'd clearly done this himself he said, "well, yeah. But I didn't want to get into trouble so I thought I'd better say somebody else did it to me".

I asked him why he did it in the first place. His reply: "I didn't like it any more".

Riigghhht. I disappeared and went off to arrange a visit from the hospital psychiatrist.

Oh, and the surgeons couldn't reattach the finger. Too badly damaged. So, if you're at the shops in Mytown and the bloke stood just behind you smells a bit pooey, has a strange look in his eyes and has difficulty picking his nose, my advice is to take three big steps backwards. And don't give him anything sharp.