The Killing Type

Chapter 1-4

When the detective returns to the table, thoughts foggy and muddled, Illson is holding court.

“And then he looks at me, right, and we both start laughing, 'cause the muffin's in the wall—”

“Is that a northern euphemism?” Vince interjects, setting down the sweating pints one at a time as he loosens his fingers from around them. He slides in beside Illson. “Y'owe me a fiver.”

“f**k o—” Finn begins, but he closes his mouth and shakes his head instead, fishing into his pocket for the cash. “Point is: if I hadn't been so lazy, I would have eaten it and put that s**t in my body. Preservatives are basically black magic.”

Everyone laughs. Vince has clearly missed something. The strange, dreamlike moment at the bar has him wondering if that's not a recurring problem.

The topic has moved on to general teasing when Illson's elbow hits Vince just under his ribcage.

He answers Vince's glare with, “What was that? With the bloke with the bruises.”

His voice is quiet, an undertone just for them. Vince's been working with Illson the entirety of his time with the Met. He'll never understand how someone who spends most of their day wrist-deep in human remains can be so perceptive of the living. It’s certainly not a trait many of Illson’s coworkers share.

“That was...” Vince begins, just as low. He pivots in his mind for the right word. “Confusing.”

Illson snorts. “Need to stop letting you hang with Durand,” he mutters into the lip of his glass. “Makes you cryptic.”

Vince's brow pinches. He shakes his head slowly and sips from his own glass. “Dunno what else to call it.”

“You acted like you knew him,” Illson notes.

Sort of a leading comment. Vince considers.

The shaken student huddled into himself on the sidewalk a few days ago. The disaffected man at the bar, blood drying on his lips.

It's not a lie when Vince says, “I don't.” Soft, sleepy eyes. Blank, burning stare. “I really do not.”

Vince shepherds the group back to the Met after they finish the round. They end up going in a circle around the table, coming up with new angles for the investigation as the day dies outside the windows.

They burn out somewhere between a suggestion that they analyze the font preferences of different socioeconomic brackets and a proposal that they hold an open call for new medical staff specializing in dissections.

“Okay,” Vince concedes over his own rumble of dark laughter. He rubs at his forehead as he says, “Caron, Rubio and Hepburn, you're free to go. We start again tomorrow at eight sharp; text me if you think of anything. Graham,” he turns to the man next to him. Graham sits with his face resting on the heel of his hand, gaze spacey. His eyes are the color of the sky at noon and just as distant. They focus back in on Vince as he speaks. “You're coming with me to the catacomb.”

Everyone begins packing up, stretching and chatting quietly.

Illson is the exception. “So what, I just hover in stasis until tomorrow? Schrödinger's forensics specialist?”

Vince rolls his eyes, gathering his belongings. “Figured you'd tag along. As usual.”

“I don't do that,” Finn denies.

“You do that so hard,” Graham accuses, but there's a smile lighting his eyes.

“I don't do that, and—Mason, shut up—and actually, Detective Inspectors, I have more reason to be there than either of you,” Finn says with a sniff and shrugs into a gray hoodie, sleeves immediately pushed up his forearms.

“Harassing the medical examiner isn't a legitimate reason,” Caron calls over her shoulder, ridiculous stork legs taking her out of the building and onto her evening faster than any of them.

“Billie's got a point,” Mason decides.

Finn pushes his messy fringe out of his face with blunt nails. “I'm a f*****g pathologist,” he mutters defensively, but lets it drop.

The morgue—the catacomb, as their team has come to call it—is roughly a million floors down from the investigation’s office at the Yard. Vince leans up against the wall of the lift, keeps half an ear to Finn and Mason's chatter as they descend. They’re all close and the sound of them is nearly soothing, how the detective remembers the brook by his childhood home being.

“So you're saying you wouldn't bend him over.”

Well. Soothing. Bit of a strong word.

“I'm saying that this conversation is over, Graham,” Finn retorts.

“And I'm saying you both need to be on your A-game for a minute, alright?” Vince insists.

“Finn, this being your playing field and all, I need your eyes keen on whatever they have for us. Mind sharp. You know.”

Finn does. He nods and keeps silent, flicking Mason only once under the eye as they exit the lift and sidle past the sliding glass door of the morgue. Mason squawks, grabbing indignantly for the fingers that are quick to move away.

The morgue at Scotland Yard is chilly and oppressively clean and, despite being a couple levels down from his own personal office, one of Illson's favorite places in the building. It hadn't taken anyone who'd been down to the catacomb very long to figure out why.

“Heyyyy,” calls the medical examiner from where he's looking over—something, held in a pair of silver tweezers. As they stride into the room in a cluster, Vince squints at it. Semi-translucent, tiny and curved and sickly white.

“That a maggot?” Illson chirps, already delighted.

Graham shakes his head at Vince's side.

“Pulled off your stiff, yeah,” the examiner confirms in a low drawl. He looks up to smile at Illson, soft, and waves with one gloved hand when he notices Vince and Graham hovering a safe distance away. “Vince. Mason.”

“Durand,” Vince greets. He looks at the spread of Petri dishes, shades of brown and green and burgundy staining them. “Anything good?”

“Kind of relative, good and bad,” Durand waffles, setting the maggot down on a sterile pad with intense care, “but, like. Yeah.”

Vince's scowl is more habitual than anything. He doesn't mind Casper Durand, really, doesn't know much of his background—Illson might, but if so guards that information jealously—just that he's smart enough to do what he does and sociable enough to make it easier when their paths cross.

An inevitable occurrence, cops and corpses having the relationship they do.

“What've you got?” Graham asks. He has his notebook out, eyeing Durand’s spread of sample dishes inquisitively.

Good man, Graham. Diligent.

“Oh,” Illson murmurs, eyebrow arching as he stares down at one of the redder dishes. “Oh.”

“Right?” Durand says, arm brushing the pathologist's when he leans into him. “Had to run it five times before I was sure, the—”

“The cold, yeah,” Illson cuts in. His leg bumps Durand's, overly familiar. “How'd you get it to—?

“Gents?” Graham interjects. “Care to share with the class?”

“Speak it like they're five, Cas,” Illson says in an undertone.

Durand opens his mouth. His features are strange under the unforgiving light, eyes bright and green against skin made pale by long hours in the lab. “The maggots in your corpse's body came from flies.”

“Imagine that,” Vince says dryly.

“Yeah, well, the flies were attracted by decay, obviously,” Durand continues, tone methodical and unbothered. He's toying with the top of his blue latex glove, gaze sweeping over the row of samples in front of him. “This is the first body you've brought me that was in such an advanced state.”

“Found her in her office building,” Illson explains. “Custodian did, rather. Long weekend.”

Durand winces. “That'd do it.” He looks back up, meets Vince's eye and then Graham's. “What's funny about the particular genus of fly that lays—” he taps the pad with the maggot on it “—these little fellows, is that they only show up after the first...let's say 32 hours of decomposition.”

“Funny,” Graham agrees gamely. “And then what?”

“They lay eggs,” Illson pipes up, “just a bunch of nasty little babies everywhere.” He flickers his eyes between them. “And then the babies eat.”

Gross, but not revolutionary. “I'm not sure why that's… I mean...” The pair of medical professionals stare at Vince with twin expressions, slate-blank. “So?”

“So when they eat,” Durand says, tone indicating he's trying very hard to speak on their level, “they eat the decomposing flesh. And whatever's in it.”

“Right,” Graham agrees. “Still not—”

“Our bodies hold a lot of hidden chemistry,” Illson supplies. He pokes at the agar on one of the Petri dishes with a pinky. Durand softly slaps him away, hand lingering over top of his. “So, for example, when a vic eats a lot of potassium-rich food, we can trace that in their bodies later.”

“Only, some chemical signatures take time to form, and some dissipate—pretty rapidly, really. Sometimes just a few hours,” Durand mumbles, strange eyes already back on his maggots and samples.

Someone hurries a cart by on the other side of the morgue's doors, a bad wheel squeaking as it goes. It's the only sound while Illson and Durand wait for the Detective Inspectors to put it together.

“So, the maggots...” Graham trails in. His fair brow is creased as he stares hard at the line of samples. “They eat those chemicals that would otherwise...disappear.”

“Dissipate, yeah,” Illson says.

Oh. “So they're like a record of the chemicals decomp would otherwise erase,” Vince surmises.

“Exactly,” Durand agrees, beaming when he looks at Vince. His smile carves a devastating crater of a dimple into his cheek, a compliment to the dark scrollwork of curls that brush his jaw.

So maybe Vince kind of gets Finn's thing with him.

“Alright then. What showed up?” Graham asks, pen poised over paper once more.

Illson's canines are sharp when he smiles. “You're gonna like this.”

“Smoking dulls mental capability, by the way.”

Vince leans his head back against the wall, exhaling a plume of nicotine. He's supposed to be further from the doors of the Met, ordinances say, but it's late in the evening and who, exactly, is meant to enforce that? Him?

“What a game-changing piece of information.” He inhales another long drag, the cherry of the cigarette burning bright, and doesn't give in to the impulse to look toward the already-familiar voice. “I'd no idea.”

“Mouthy,” Reza murmurs, sidling up until their arms almost touch. He mirrors Vince, leaning back against the concrete.

“What are you doing here?” Vince asks on an exhale. Why do you keep showing up?

“Out for a walk,” Reza returns easily. “Not actually all that far from campus, y'know.”

Vince is still deciding whether he thinks that's the truth when Reza says, “I shouldn't have let you see me the other day. With the—” his hand waves in front of his face. A week later, the bruise marring his jaw seems to have cleared, though the murky lighting makes it hard for Vince to tell. “That was irresponsible.” His face shows no contrition when he says, “I apologize.”

“You—okay,” Vince stumbles. “Apologize for what?”

He senses more than sees Reza's eye roll. “Showing up in your neighborhood. Making you feel responsible for what I get up to.”

A little disarming, how completely Reza managed to read that moment at the pub days earlier. Did he do it all at once? Did he piece it together and come here once he had?

Has it been running through his brain the way Vince can’t seem to stop it from running through his?

“Do you go around picking fights?” Vince asks, voicing a conclusion all his own. He turns fully to Reza, clad in a Henley that hints at dark inked designs on his collarbones. “Is that a thing for you?”

Reza’s brow wrinkles. “A thing,” he muses with the ghost of a smile. “Could be.”

Vince's eyes close against the admission, frustrated breath coming through his nose in a hot stream. “Why?” he asks. “Why were you so shaken up by that mugger, then?”

Reza's head tilts a little, half gravity and half carelessness. “You're not asking what you really want to know.”

He's so slight where he leans, compact in a way Vince associates with vipers. With pistols.

Lethality contained, but only just.

“You're studying for a...what, a dual doctorate in the sciences, but you're not bright enough to know you should avoid picking fights in alleyways.” Vince means it to be offhand and conversational, but it’s betrayed by the rough timbre of his voice. Disapproval and curiosity, both.

Reza notices. He would. Vince can tell by the twist of his full mouth, a crooked smirk on glass-cut features. “One can boast a high intelligence quotient and still need a bit of a kick. You know.”

The words burn somewhere in Vince's sternum. “Wouldn't argue 'needing a bit of a kick' is a good indicator of intelligence,” he observes. He drags in another measure of smoke, showy about it for the way it makes Reza’s expression narrow. “Curious how much your parents had to shell out to make it worth the uni's while for a menace like you.” Vince is a little meaner than he needs to be. Today has been tiring.

Durand is still analyzing soil samples from different areas along the Thames—whatever type of maggot he found on their corpse, it apparently favors river systems—and trying to narrow down possible points along its stretch where the latest victim may have had her life ended, then stayed. It’s slow going, a lead that’s literally bug-sized. It’s not much to give Hyde when he calls Vince up to his office so he can feel involved. Not much to combat the disapproval in his gaze.

And last night was—bad, images of note cards wedged into exposed brain matter jolting Vince awake, so the detective isn’t in the best place for this, another strange interaction with Reza that on a good day would still only feel half real.

Reza laughs, though, delight in the squeeze of his large eyes when he tilts his head back slightly, and Vince doesn't find himself regretting the bite of his words.

“You're fun,” Reza says, voice still lit with amusement. “No, though.”

“No?”

“My parents didn't spend a pound,” Reza elaborates. He tilts his head toward him where they're staring each other down, still leaning side by side on the wall of the Yard. “Full scholarship, stipend included.” He pulls at his earlobe, the black stud of an earring there, and adds, a touch smug, “Someone thinks I'm worth the hassle.”

“Stipend not afford you cab fare, then?” Vince asks.

There's something satisfying in the way Reza's expression twists. The way his lips edge toward a pout, not quite getting there before he reigns it back in. “That’d be a waste,” Reza mutters, eyes dark and not meeting Vince's own.

“Why am I always the one who finds you?” Vince asks, abrupt like the way he thought it.

Reza’s expression, still indirect, holds a sudden effervescence that shines dark. “What makes you think you're the only one who ever finds me?”

As Vince processes the words, there's a tug of—something, in his chest, seething and hot. He rolls his wrists to dispel the tension in the sinew.

This conversation is a lot of things, intriguing and maddening, addictive in its circular flow, but it’s hardly productive. Vince snubs his fag against the wall behind him, dropping the butt.

“I've got something to get back to,” he mutters, shoulder blades taking the brunt of his weight as he pushes off the wall. “Please don't indulge your—thing, when you head back to campus.”

He's within paces of the entrance when he hears Reza's response. “Would it bother you if I did?”

Vince wheels, agitated beyond reason. “I'm a cop, mate, so yes.” Then, when all Reza does is smirk knowingly, “What do you want?” He realizes, belatedly, that he sounds more intrigued than annoyed. There's not much for it.

“Just to see you,” Reza replies, eyes honey-clear. “I'm simple like that.”

There's no mistaking the flash of heat in Vince's gut this time. “Go study something,” he manages.

“It's summer, Detective Inspector,” Reza mocks quietly, but he's backing down the street, hypnotic and slow.

Vipers. Pistols. Vince always has been big on metaphors.

Back inside, Rubio looks up from a series of crime scene photos and frowns hard at him. “I might be pointing out the obvious here, but I don't think smoking agrees with you, Bennett,” she says. Her eyes flicker back to the images under her splayed hands. “You look peaky.”

“Bad habit,” Vince says absently, drifting toward his own pile of evidence. He feels half blind. “Really, really f*****g deadly habit.”