Tony Schumacher can still see the images of his first sudden death as a response officer: the soil handprints on the wall under the window looked like cave paintings, straining, reaching, grabbing across the brickwork, smeared mud from the flowerbed below.
This was Tony’s introduction to Merseyside’s first response team, those officers “who turn up first and deal with the screaming”.
Tony couldn’t tear his eyes from the prints. They spoke of the desperation of the man whose body lay in the shrub at his feet, who had died in freezing temperatures the night before, an alcoholic too comatose to find his keys, or make it through the window.
