Short storyHe lay there, his body beaten and torn. There was a moment of silence as Detective David Whittle and I looked at the body. I didn't understand how this happened. It had been a fairly uneventful day at the station until I received a phone call from a mother in distress, begging us to help her. Her voice was hard to understand as she was crying so hard. I traced the call to a small village just on the edge of Brighton, called Linden, where a Miss Hutton lived. I had visited Linden before because an old friend of mine lived there. It was a quiet little town, nothing special. It wasn't a far drive but I didn't understand why we were going there because the screaming woman didn't explain anything to us. We arrived at the scene after fifteen minutes, still very confused. The house was old, with dark red bricks, and it stood distinctly at the end of the road. As we approached, we could see that the grass on the lawn was overgrown and unkempt and that the rusty green gate leading to the house was swaying menacingly in the wind on its remaining hinge. We got out of our car and approached the house. The front door was left open. It looked like no one had lived there for years and it was a target for teenage vandals. There had recently been a car in front of the house that left deep skid marks. Suddenly we heard the sound of a woman in distress coming from upstairs. She lay there, clutching her daughter's battered body. She was a tall woman with black hair and beautiful brown eyes. She wore a long denim skirt that dragged on the floor, middle of paper......to remove evidence, destroying the cannabis and killing Victoria. He killed her with a bowling pin, which would explain the thud coming from above. They also found the blood-stained skittle in the back of his pickup truck. However, he was ultimately imprisoned not for a few years, but for the rest of his life. When I saw Miss Hutton she was devastated, she couldn't believe this had happened. She was distraught that a crazy drug addict had ended the life of her daughter who she had always been kind to and trusted. David and I were happy to have this case resolved so quickly. But we couldn't help but feel sad for Miss Hutton who lost her only daughter. We kept in touch with Miss Hutton and she decided after a few months to go and live with her mother in Dorset and we didn't hear from her after that...