The Killing Type

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2It's not boring, poking at corpses, except for when itis.

“Blunt force trauma,” Vince declares blandly. “I would bet, like. Twenty quid.”

“Spot on,” Illson murmurs, gloves barely ghosting over the purple indent in the victim's head. “Should've bet more.”

“Have to agree,” Durand says with a snap of his gum. Something spearmint.

Illson claps his gloved hands, which sends a percussive snap around the morgue. He begins prying his mobile out of the restrictive pockets of his trousers. Despite not technically being in the detective division, the man abuses the plain dress allowed to them like no one Vince has ever known. “There's this wee falafel place down the way that doesn't really deliver, but they—”

“Actually,” Durand says, turning to Illson, making the pathologist pause and go soft all over, “there's one more thing I was hoping to ask you about.”

Vince wants to groan like a dog. It’s one thing to visit the morgue on their lunch because Finn is pushy and gets obsessive over beautiful people with medical degrees; Durand should know better than anyone that there’s work to be done upstairs. Particularly since he himself used the maggots to narrow down where their last victim might have been taken apart and left out.

Which gave the team enough to start investigating potential locations of the murder. Vince isn’t sitting well in his own skin, feels restless where he’s tapping a staccato beat onto the edge of the long metal table.

Graham can handle running things for the time it’ll take them to wrap this up, Vince knows. It’s still not the same as being there.

“Give it to us, then,” Illson says in a way Vince will have talk to him about later.

“Last week this man suffering from senility keels over,” Durand explains. “Which—sad, yeah?”

“Yeah,” the pair echo—Illson a tad dreamily, the freak.

“Only…” Durand continues.

Not that he’s proud, but Vince mostly tunes it out.

It's not apathy—the detective isn't sure he knows how to do apathy, if he's honest—but he’s wrestling a detachment born of sleep deprivation and stress, a low buzz of gray all through his bones.

He feels like he sees Reza's slight figure everywhere. The other day, a woman in the grocery's dark pixie cut was the exact same shade of raven. Vince spent a truly depressing amount of time examining the way light bounced off the strands. This morning, his eyes followed the shape of a leather jacket—the wrong cut, on shoulders too broad—through two intersections while Alfie sniffed along and tested how much give Vince would allow on the lead.

Not ideal.

“We'll let you know, that's...weird,” Illson is saying, hand in his pocket so it’s near Durand hip.

Vince wants to tell them, churlishly, to get a goddamn room. He's on the verge of it when the text from Hyde comes through. It’s telling them to wrap up the impromptu visit to the catacomb.

A situation has arisen.

“Illson,” Vince says slowly. He reads the words on his mobile over again. “Finn, we gotta go.”

Finn’s eyebrows jump at Vince's change in demeanor. “What's up?”

“It happened again,” says Vince. “There’s another body.”

They find him behind the shipment center he presumably works—worked—in. A name tag dangles from his bloodied shirt that reads Samir, though underneath and close to the rip it appears he’d written in Sammy! in pen. Late summer heat is doing nothing for his exposed organs and the heart sitting heavy in his hand.

At least it's recent.

In the other hand he clutches a note, because they always have the f*****g note. Vince finishes his outward spiral of evidence collection and comes back to the body at the epicenter, grabbing the pristine note card before Illson has a chance to.

Dreaming of you, Detective Inspector Bennett. Please accept this token of my affection.

He'd been so sure he was past feeling sick over these.

“Haul him back, we'll check in after we finish up here,” Graham is directing the transport crew. “Josh, keep your mobile close for when we nail down a proper ID, yeah?”

Sammy, the poor bastard, looks only a handful of years older than Vince—can’t have cracked 40. He wonders if 'next of kin' means parents for him like it does for the DI, or if he has someone waiting at home. Children.

Hepburn comes to hover over him, taps the base of Vince's spine with her boot. “Do you need a minute?” she asks, quiet.

It’s the second body this month. “Need us to work double time,” Vince grunts, rising from where he kneels, “so we can nail this fucker to the wall.”

Urgency during scene closeout. Vince hasn't felt that in a while. It's never something to drag out, forensics so often a battle against time, but tonight Vince barrels through the last of the scene's processing. Dark energy, fingers on endless plastic bags, short descriptions on anything that could be useful.

The sun is dying behind the London skyline when the team piles into cars that'll take them back to the station. Work has just begun.

Vince texts ahead to ask Peters to turn on the kettle if she's already done with photos. Her reply chirps back on his mobile a moment later and he sinks into the door of the passenger side, some dense headspace between spent and determined.

After a long silence, Graham speaks. “Does it freak you out?”

Graham’s eyes don’t leave the street as he navigates, steady hands on the wheel a counterpoint to the hesitation in his tone.

Turmoil, turmoil, turmoil when the detective rasps, “Which part?”

“The notes, man.” Graham keeps the words level, steadying against the uptick of Vince's heartbeat at even the mention. “The little love notes.”

Vince meets Illson's eye in the rearview mirror briefly, watches them tighten.

“Don't know how they wouldn't freak a bloke out,” Illson interjects, leaning slightly forward into the gap between the front seats. “More than creepy, isn’t it.”

Vince nods a little by way of agreement, not quite up to opening his mouth and acknowledging the topic.

“You're not—” Graham begins, face pinching in. “It's not because of you, Vin. You know?” He shifts, maybe a little uncomfortable with how he’s extending himself. “They were…they were always gonna die. I know it sounds awful, but—the killer was going to kill them regardless. Those notes, the game they’re playing, they don't make this your fault.”

Vince finds himself a little light on agreement. The words token of my affection are still glowing in his skull, superimposed over eight earlier messages. He's still surprised Hyde put him on the case at all. Like maybe Vince will eventually notice something the others don't.

Like maybe he and the killer share a personal connection.

Only Vince doesn't make a habit of associating with serial killers, does he. The implication that he's in tune with the criminal psyche has begun to wear. Hell of an accusation, that, even unspoken.

By the time they reach Hyde’s office, he’s leaving. A generously sized room when left alone, Chief Inspector Hyde has chosen to cram a massive wooden table—lacquered dark cherry shined to an alarming polish—into the space that might otherwise host a bookshelf, a filing cabinet, and additional chairs, as well as, yes, a desk.

“Tell me you're making some headway.” Hyde slips into a dark, shapeless jacket and gathers his rucksack, attention only half on them. “And! If we can’t solve it, at least give me something to tell the media.”

“We’re getting there,” Graham says. “Still need to look over the latest vic.”

“We’ll be done analyzing important organic evidence soon,” Illson adds.

“What is it?” asks Hyde.

“It’s maggots.”

“Of course it is,” Hyde says absently. He’s squeezed past them, halfway out the door of his office, when he calls over his shoulder. “Bennett. Talk to me in the hall for a minute.”

Vince nods, a bit curt. Follows Hyde without giving himself a chance to stall.

The door clicks behind them, Illson and Graham walking slowly down the hall with their heads angled ever so slightly back. A different day and Vince would huff a laugh at how their ears are straining like a cat’s, even as they reluctantly shuffle away.

Hyde has his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. “They’re blowing smoke up my a*s, aren’t they. There’s no progress.”

Vince opens his mouth. Hesitates.

The expression on Hyde's face falls perceptibly. “Dammit, Bennett.”

“No, I know,” Vince begins, “I know how it looks.”

“It looks like nine dead bodies,” Hyde chastises, hand splayed out in front of him. “It looks like Jackson and the media breathing down my neck for answers.”

Vince waits to hear any mention of the nine families left grieving. Feels his spine prickle when none materializes. “We did pick up potential locations for the murders,” he reminds. “The morgue, we—it's not as if we've been doing nothing.”

Hyde waves it away. “They didn't want me to put you on this one, you know.”

The feeling like a mechanical failure is Vince's stuttering heart. “I'm aware.”

“Because of the notes.”

An exhale on a count of four. “I know.”

Hyde c***s his head, taking in the Detective Inspector in front of him. Vince can only imagine he looks how he feels: tired, paper-thin.

“You can imagine that there's a lot of glory to be gained if you c***k this,” Hyde says, grandiose with his quiet words. “But it's a hell of a thing to f**k up, too.”

Vince knows this. All of it. It doesn't change the fact that there's no defense he could give right now—months in and barely beginning to solve this thing—that wouldn't ring hollow in the cold corridor.

“I put some faith in you,” Hyde states, hitching his rucksack up further over his shoulder. “Vince. I want to see that repaid with results.”

“You will,” Vince assures him. “To the—the best of my ability, I can say that you will.”

Hyde hums a disbelieving note. He pairs it with a smile, disarming to drive the barb deeper. An expert of his craft.

“Evening, Bennett,” the man murmurs, and brushes past the detective.

When Vince’s seated back at his desk, rifling through one of the six piles of evidence he's had rotating—futilely—through their team, he sighs long and low and unsatisfied.

Graham might not be the only one to notice, but he’s the one to comment. “How’d that go, then?” he asks from behind his own pile of documents. He sounds like he knows.

Vince just stares at the fake wood grain of his desk. “Guess,” he encourages. “Take a...take a wild swing.”

“Does Mark know he’s case supervisor?” Caron chips in from the sofa across the room, adjusting the files piled in her lap. The others turn to look at her, bleary-eyed.

“Billie,” Vince rebukes. It’s half-hearted at best.

“No, you’re right. He’s done a stellar job,” Caron decides. “Not like it’s us who’ve been busting our asses since December or anything. It's a cake walk, really.”

“Tralala,” Illson agrees in a monotone over where he's got what looks to be a forensics report tipped upside down, “lalala...la.”

Vince groans, rotating his neck on his shoulders. He's holding the note from victim five in his hand, neat print and All my loving thoughts to the illustrious Inspector Bennett ringing cold between his ears. “Anyone have any personal assignments?”

A few noises that might mean yes.

“Work on them now,” Vince instructs. “Bank this for the next ninety minutes, we'll go back over interviews with friends and family then.”

It's as good a plan as any until they can examine potential locations of the murders in the morning, and the grumbling is only general and low-level as the team gathers things from their desks, off to make calls or peruse individual work.

Ever productive, Vince sits with his fingers pressed into his eyelids, only breathing.

He shouldn't be on this case. He shouldn't be within a kilometer of it. Policy on allowing an officer into an investigation that involves them, however obliquely, is clear. Or it’s—it’s meant to be, seems to grow murkier every time Vince thinks to question it.

Hyde always says: lack of precedent. And: exceptional circumstance. It doesn’t change the way the entire bleeding situation feels to Vince as though he’s been locked into a chair, Clockwork Orange style, eyes held open by unforgiving hands while gruesome images play across a screen to the soundtrack of your fault, your fault, all on you.