The Killing Type

Chapter 1-3

“Due to bruises on the arms and lower legs of the victims consistent with those caused by prolonged restraint, it appears our killer ties them up before making the initial incision to the chest,” Hepburn rattles off. “Given the state of the crime scenes—always the last place each victim was seen alive—we can surmise that the killer doesn’t do their work on-location, but rather transports the bodies afterward. The direction of the incisions seems to suggest our killer is right-handed.”

Illson is tapping his fingers gently on his wrist, eyes glazed like he's keeping careful time to a melody in his brain. Caron went for a bathroom break fifteen minutes ago.

“The first cut made is a lateral incision with a thin blade, likely a scalpel,” Hepburn recites, “after which point the victims quickly bleed out, are cleaned off, and then bisected. It is unclear whether the ribs are broken by hand or using an implement.”

Graham appears to be writing something down, at least.

Vince leans toward him.

Ah. Just a grocery list, then.

“End of summation,” Hepburn finishes, words rolling out like slow wheels on gravel.

Vince casts about the long table. “Any thoughts?” he asks as Hepburn sits.

“Seeing as it's the same stuff we've been working with this whole time? No,” says Rubio. Her notebook page is nearly covered in spirals now.

Illson groans quietly, rubbing at his face. “We're sure there's no shared background between the victims?” he asks. It might be the hundredth time.

It feels like the hundredth time.

“No common age, s*x, race, ethnicity, orientation,” Caron says, striding back from the toilets to flop into a chair. Like Hepburn, she tends to extend her legs out under the table. Vince moves his feet to accommodate her stretch. “No common hobby. No common—favorite color, fuck.” A dull bang when her forehead hits the table. “Just nothing.”

Vince nods, dutiful. He knows all of this. They all do; he still can't afford any of his team missing details. Scarce as they are, this far out.

“Finn,” he says, “any word from the morgue? Anything weird? Or, like,” he blinks to clear his swimming vision under the cheap light fixtures, “new? At all?”

“Not last I checked,” Illson admits. He trades in tapping fingers for a bouncing leg. “They wanted to run some tests on the crawlies we found in the latest vic's chest, though, should be wrapping it up pretty shortly here.”

Rubio's frown deepens, pen digging that much harder into her paper as she scribbles random shapes. If he had to guess, Vince would say it helps her think. “Trying to nail down a location for the actual murder?” she asks.

“Among other things.”

Vince looks at his team, tired and beat down with no new information to sustain momentum. Summer light, wan but nevertheless golden, drapes on them through the tall, dirty windows. If they were different people, they’d be heading home right now.

The beep of the coffee maker topping off a fresh pot cuts through the silence. There are handfuls of harrowing crime scene photos and reports scattered down the middle of the table, a reminder of how very unlike other people they are.

It’s paltry material for an investigation of this size. For how richly the murders have sparked the imagination of the usual sensationalist rags, there’s a devastating lack of actual evidence to lead the team. Clues the Met’s brightest can’t seem to find, missteps their killer hasn’t made yet.

They’re six of the smartest people in this building, but that can’t spare them from stalemate with a murderer.

Stalemate is not a phrase they’re publicizing, not something Chief Inspector Hyde has shared with the voracious journalists who crowd their pressroom—let it never be said their supervisor doesn’t have a shrewd sense of image—yet it’s accurate, blaring in Vince’s mind.

Vince casts a look around the suite that the investigative team has commandeered to serve as their base of operations. Ramshackle setup for food in the corner, moldering old couches by the windows, a shelf of books that have collected here through an unconscious group effort over the last seven months. High ceilings that don’t hold nearly enough light with a central air system rattling on above them.

The detective is starting to know this space better than the walls of his own flat. He tries not to think about it. He tries to bring Alfie here, lately, on especially grueling days, so that the puppy isn’t left waiting for someone who stumbles through the door far too late with an aching body and spent mind and no ability left to show anything approaching affection.

Vince lines the edges of a photo stack up. His mind scans for ways to salvage the mood, earn his place leading this investigation in Hyde’s stead.

The solution is brilliant in its simplicity.

“Everyone go home,” he decides. A chair scrapes against the tile when Rubio jolts in her seat from the noise cutting through the exhausted stillness. Vince receives a few glances verifying that he isn’t joking. “I mean it, go be…not here.” A little exhale, not quite a sigh, falls from his lips as he rubs at his jaw. Sore. He must have been clenching it again. “Just be ready to look at this again in the morning.”

The shuffling to stand is cautious, like Vince might change his mind. He doesn’t. Leads by example instead, grabs his keys from his desk as he strides to the door. There’s a pause while he waits for Illson to retrieve his own scattered possessions and tuck them into the restrictively tight pockets of his jeans.

“Vinny,” Illson offers, nudging Vince’s shoulder with his own to get him to start moving.

“Finface,” Vince simpers.

They split off from the rest of the team, shouting a few goodbyes and jostling each other as they meander toward the bank of lifts that lead to the front of the building.

The street welcomes them with summer noise and summer heat, falling sun layered with city smells. Vince breathes deep, tries to hold onto a part of the day he so rarely gets to experience.

He breaks the easy silence to ask, “Yours or mine or the pub?” They shuffle off to the side for a gaggle of teenagers to pass in a cloud of mingling perfumes and colognes—endearingly revolting, Vince thinks, quirking a smile at the one lad who bothers to say excuse us.

“You know, usually I’d say the pub,” Finn muses, louder and a little more Yorkshire now that they’re not in the insular atmosphere of the office, “but I think that’s where the Sergeants were headed.”

Vince understands. “Let’s go to mine, yeah? Get that fried chicken from that place and play video games. Or something.”

“God, yes, please.” Finn kicks at a loose shard of the pavement, watches the cement skitter away from the toe of his trainer. “First one to bring up the investigation loses.”

They’re already in Vince’s car when the detective finally thinks to ask, “Loses what, though?”

“Their life,” Finn mutters darkly, glaring into the passenger side mirror.

And it’s easy, this, familiar and constant as so few things can be. Alfie reacts to Finn’s appearance the way he reacts to everything, excited circles around their feet, tongue lolling from his panting mouth.

“Baby’s gotten big,” Finn coos, scooping the puppy up. “Gonna be a right menace for your dad soon, little love?”

Vince drops his bag by the couch, shuffling into the kitchen to seek out the delivery menu he wants. “You wanna take him for a walk?”

“Wanna kiss his little eyebrows,” Finn offers nonsensically, voice still babyish. He drifts into the kitchen doorway, indeed kissing the little beast’s fluffy white eyebrows where he’s cradled to his chest.

Everyone is obsessed with the puppy. Vince doesn’t blame them, fell in love instantly with Alfie when the husky mutt belonging to the girl down the hall had a litter. Still, there’s a sting to the way the people in his life seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief when he announced Alf’s arrival. That’s Vince squared away then, they said without saying.

Which, he’d argue the point—he’s been a little f*****g busy to be dating, alright, he’s barely got time to breathe, let alone crave companionship—but hours after Finn leaves that night, Vince wakes up in a cold sweat. Before he’s even registered that he’s awake, he’s wiping at his temple, the dampness there. His eyes strain to check, make sure his fingers haven’t come back red.

In these half-real moments, it seems a very valid possibility.

And, Vince admits, it’s nice to be able to place a hand on the dog’s chest, feel his little body move up and down as he dozes. Signs of life, uninterrupted by violence and morbid deconstruction.

Alfie breathes; Vince breathes with him. Counts exhales until the sky turns blue and his eyes grow too dry and heavy to hold open.

There’s a phantom at the end of the bar. He’s in rather rough shape.

“What the hell happened?” Vince demands. He’d insisted on grabbing the next round of pints when Illson bet him he couldn’t carry all the glasses back to their table. Which was a dumb bet—their group isn't even large, just the half dozen unlucky sods Hyde’s appointed as the serial murder investigation’s core team.

Reza looks up slowly from the bar, indifference radiating like black light.

“Oh.” And in a blink, the boy’s gaze becomes warm, fully engaged when it meets Vince’s. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” Vince agrees, off-kilter. He crosses his arms. “What are you doing here?”

The kid smiles, blinding white against the bruise on his cheek. “What do people generally do at pubs?”

“What are you doing here,” Vince specifies. He'd have taken note of Reza's slender build and dark energy and apparently omnipresent leather jacket in the pub down the street from the Yard. “And what happened.”

With a shrug, Reza says, “Bit of an altercation with a…” he licks out over his busted lip, partially bruised with flecks of blood still clinging to it, “….larger fellow.”

“Altercation,” Vince repeats dumbly. There’s stains like rust on a few of Reza’s tapered fingers. “Larger fellow.”

Reza lifts a short glass of something the same honey as his eyes up to his ruined mouth. “Breadth and scope of it,” he murmurs, swallowing down an aggressive mouthful and making himself shudder.

“Were you—are you going to report it?” Vince fumbles. He's admittedly at a bit of a loss, standing at the bar with six draughts growing slippery with condensation by his hand and this young man carrying traces of gravel in his hair in front of him, appearing completely unbothered by it all. “Is that why—? The Met's up the way, you could—”

“Why would I report it?” Reza asks, tone curious. Sterile.

Vince purses his lips. “You're bleeding.”

“Funny thing, though. No one seems bothered but you,” Reza notes, quirking one of his thick brows reproachfully. He tips his glass back, draining it with another hearty swallow. “Best be getting back to your mates.” He stands.

Without his express input, Vince's hand lands on Reza's arm. It's the same spot he'd rubbed circles into that night barely a week ago, some attempt to soothe the boy who had stood there shaking from fear after a near-mugging.

The same one who stands before him now, haughty and indifferent with blood smearing his face.

Vince has a lot of questions.

“Do you have a safe way home?” is what comes out.

Reza smiles, placid and loose from liquor. “Do I look particularly interested in what's safe, Detective Inspector?” He pulls out of Vince's grip like silk through careless fingers.

He's slipped out the door before Vince’s got his bearings, before he thinks to ask the kid why. Why—any of it. The questions won’t coalesce, though, intangible as smoke, and they fade as the moment does.