The Killing Type

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1When they finally find her, victim number eight has been there for a while.

Her skin is marbled with burst blood vessels, laden with sunken blisters that show sickly green under the fluorescent lights. Bulgy eyes. Makeup that paints her orange against insistent decay. The lacquer on her nails shines red—doesn’t do a lot to offset the puffiness of her extremities. Rigor has taken its turn and leaves her limp, a puddle of meat and bone on gray carpeting.

Vince notices these things the way others, he suspects, notice the weather. Passive, unimportant. Side notes.

Really, it’s the abdomen that draws focus.

She’s like the others: flesh of her torso neatly parted, folded back and held in place with glasshead pins buried in tidy lines along her sides. Ribs cracked and pushed open to reveal the putrefying organs in her chest cavity.

One of them is missing.

Peters, head of Imaging Services, swoops close to where Vince kneels. She hums thoughtfully as she pulls her hair back, long tendrils up and off the shoulders of her button-down. She presses out dry little clicks from the camera, focus on the mottling organs. Like a butcher’s display, Vince thinks, spare and orderly, emphasizing the shape and robust weight of choice cuts.

“Guess our killer didn’t figure for the long weekend,” Peters says, mellifluous, breathing through her mouth.

Maybe there’s a response to that floating in the air between them, some snappy retort. Dry and a tad dark. Vince doesn’t really do those—doesn’t say much at all at crime scenes—too locked into his own observational headspace. Sight and smell and even touch, when called for. Not so much quippy one-liners.

They have a guy for that sort of thing.

“Weren’t penciling in a lot of barbecue invites, were they,” remarks Illson, who definitely is the guy. He crouches down on the opposite side of the body, nimble fingers covered in blue latex and hovering over the exposed organs. The sleeves of his button-down are cuffed, so his lean forearms are left bare. He’s been tanning. “Jess, you good?”

“One minute...” Peters hums. A few more rapid clicks of the extended lens, this time focused on the victim’s hands. She stands smoothly, camera bouncing against her sternum when she releases it. “Need air that doesn’t reek. Back in a sec.”

“Righto,” Illson mutters, setting to work. He pulls out the pins holding the victim’s bisected flesh one by one, dropping them into a baggie he’s already taken the time to properly label. His sandy hair has grown out over the summer and it hangs in his eyes—doesn’t slow him down, though.

Vince leaves him to it, lumbers up from his crouched position and begins examining the wider area around the victim for hair or tissue or a fiber from a cloth. Anything. “The killer might be penciling in barbecues,” he notes. “Could be a proper footie dad.”

“Could be a proper footie mum,” Illson adds, thin lips quirking into a grim smile. He finishes with the pins. “Eighteen total,” he murmurs into his shoulder. Presumably, the iPhone he’s secured to an arm mount catches it.

Vince hears their team working around them, sharp eyes critical on every inch of office space. The low-buzzing fluorescents are starting to give him a headache. It’s nothing new.

Nothing about this is new.

“Got her,” Graham calls from the other side of the room. Vince and Illson swivel their heads in unison, eyes finding the peroxide-blond Irishman when he peeks over the edge of a cubicle.

“And?” Illson asks. His eyes remain trained on Graham while his hand finds a pen peeking out of his trouser pocket.

“Natalie Lightfoot,” Graham recites, reading off something hidden behind the cubicle wall. “Twenty-six last February, apparently.”

A couple teammates tut. Someone sighs. The victim’s age always elicits a reaction.

Illson relays the information to his iPhone, scribbling down an additional note before beginning on an evidence report for the pins.

He’s lost to his work; Vince tries to follow suit. He spirals out from the body, gaze critical on the hard carpet, the oatmeal-colored cubicles, the worn swivel chairs, and tame personal mementos.

Positively mind-numbing.

When he reaches Graham, writing his own evidence reports hunched over a desk—the victim’s—Vince examines the space intensely.

It's a process that starts with the walls of the cubicle, blanketed with pictures of the woman. Some contain other people. Most do not.

None of them show any signs of holding trace biological evidence.

Still. “Jess been through?” Vince asks quietly.

Graham grunts an affirmative, still scribbling.

Vince pulls out one of the pins securing a photo. Not unlike the pins found on the body, except—ah, there it is. Different width at the head.

“Up for a pint tomorrow?”

Another small noise of assent from Graham, accompanied by a friendly hip-check from the slighter man that Vince sways with gently.

They work in companionable silence for a while. Vince does his best not to look at the eyes of the victim in her many, many photographs. Selfies. Pictures of her in swimsuits. Pictures of her in restaurants and at parks and attending what looks to be the theater. Pictures of her in hats and scarves and sunglasses that obscure nearly her entire face. Pictures of her with women, making peace signs, fingers busy with loud rings. Pictures of her with grinning men, jaws square and hands following the soft curve of her shoulder.

Someone will have to tell them all.

The photos from the cubicle walls go into a baggie labeled clinically with the where and when. Next is the desk itself, devoid of nearly anything but a standard Dell and a black pen cup. None of the pens are spangly or have fluffy toppers, which is nice.

Victim number three was wearing hot pink scrubs printed with little cats when they found her.

Peters is back from her breather before Vince thinks to look for her, working on the quadrant near the toilets with Lucas. Lucas is on loan to homicide for the night and is always twitchy at the worst of the crime scenes, but Vince watches him put on a brave face whenever he thinks Jess might be looking, expression slackening and gaze taking on a nonchalant air of boredom that really only works on Illson.

Which is probably where he learned it. Illson himself is preparing the body for transport and covering the extremities in plastic, seemingly unfazed by the swollen, gangrenous feet of the victim less than half a meter from his face.

“Vinny,” he calls, eyes slicing blue when they find Vince’s, “D’you have the clippers? Need to undo the—”

“Yeah,” Vince says quickly. He weaves back through the cubicle farm, pulling the tiny scissors out of his side pack as he goes.

“Can you just do it, actually?” Illson asks, distracted by securing all the victim’s hair inside the plastic bag that wraps her head. “Need to do the hands next. Those rings are going to be a nightmare this far along.”

It’s not really an excuse, but Vince crouches down next to the body anyway.

“Mason up for pints tomorrow?” Illson asks. He moves dutifully to the victim’s left hand, careful little tugs on her rings to ease them from the bloated flesh without ripping it from the bone.

“When is Mr. Mason Graham not up for a pint?” Vince retorts. He clips the twine wrapping the right hand at the cleanest point he can find, leaving the original knot undisturbed. It loosens enough to pry the object resting in her palm out from under the thin, stained rope.

“Heard that,” Graham calls, “and for the record, you’re completely right.”

Vince’s nose wrinkles while he takes in the object in his gloved hand. A quick glance confirms Illson’s agreement, expression nearly feline in its distaste as he reaches to his side sightlessly. Illson’s fingers search for a baggie to store the note card he's pulled from the victim’s left hand.

“How do you always get me to bag it?” Vince sighs, staring down at the heart in his hand. “Every time, you get me to bag it.”

With a pitying shake of his head, Illson says, “You’re just easy.” He finally gives up on finding a bag by feel, instead turning and locating one directly behind where he kneels. “Hey, do you wanna read this thing? Or are you saving it for later?”

“They’re usually fresher, at least,” Vince muses. To Illson, “Yeah, guess I should, shouldn't I?” He grabs one of his own bags, sliding the putrid organ inside, trying not to think about it. “It’s been waiting long enough.”

In truth, Vince hates that it's been waiting at all. Another thing to not think about.

Graham strides past and winces a little when he sees the gelatinous contents of the bag Vince’s placing gingerly in the cooler. “Let’s make it the last one, eh?” He c***s his hip against the side of a cubicle as Illson passes Vince the card—thick, cream-white card stock, unblemished by even a fleck of blood.

In delicate font, it reads: All my love to Detective Inspector Vincent Bennett. Thinking of you now and always.

Vince slips it into the evidence bag, fingers cold.

Nothing about this is new.

He begs off for a minute after that. No one seems to mind; Illson is busy coordinating transport of the body to the morgue, most of the scene has been swept, and it’s not like they have something higher priority than “serial murder” brewing at Scotland Yard, anyway.

There’s still a twinge when he pulls a fag from inside his jacket, slipping out the door of the office tower. Vince shakes his head at himself. No guilt for needing a stimulant at two in the morning on a Tuesday. Especially after something like the scene upstairs, the intersection of gruesome and mundane.

It’s been nearly a month since the last body. Vince supposes they should have been primed for it. Ready, on any level deeper than procedural.

He wraps his fingers around the lighter in his pocket and remembers the weight of the woman’s heart in his hands. The edges of the note, perfectly crisp like all the others.

Seven years into his career in homicide, he knows: it’s impossible to be ready for that sort of thing.

There’s a misting of rain when he steps onto the street, so he shuffles into an alcove near the corner of the building. In another life, it probably housed a phone booth. Now it sits empty and forgotten, with a scattering of cigarette butts that tell Vince he’s not the first person to have this notion. He takes in the quiet of the street, rare in London regardless of hour. The smell of diesel and damp pavement does wonders to clean the smell of decay from his nostrils.

He’s feeling the first good-bad drag of smoke fill his lungs when he hears the voices.

“…wouldn’t lie to me. So don’t f*****g lie to me—”

“Why would I lie? Why would—”

“I said gimme your f*****g—”

That’s all he needs. Groaning, he lets the cigarette slip through his fingers and steps into the alley next to the office tower. It’s narrow and dark as anything, this time of night, home to some industrial-sized bins and general grime.

It hosts a predictable scene.

“I really wouldn’t,” he says loudly.

The man in the filthy, patch-covered jacket jumps a little, knife twitching in his hand. The guy pinned to the side of the office tower scowls a little deeper in response. Which, really, strikes Vince as an understated reaction to the situation.

“Ain’t no concern of yours,” snaps the mugger. Now that Vince’s really looking, he seems twitchy in general. On something.

“’S definitely a concern of his, mate,” says the one pinned to the wall. His eyebrows raise like he’s letting the tweaker in on a secret. He indicates in Vince’s general direction with a minute twitch of his head, careful of the blade pressed to his skin. “Check it out.”

The tweaker turns, knife falling to his side when he takes in Vince’s solid stance and shiny badge, winking in the streetlight where it's pinned to his jacket.

“s**t,” the tweaker spits. His worn boots are moving underneath him before he’s decided which direction to run. Addled indecision costs him; he trips, spilling onto the ground and allowing the knife to clatter out of his grip.