The Dying Streets

by Amy Cross

  As the minutes tick past, I start to wonder if maybe I'm on a hiding to nothing. I'm confident that my research is accurate, but it was never an absolute certainty that the guy would come here tonight; it was more of an educated guess, and I'm secure enough in my abilities to accept when I've got something wrong. Besides, it's a cold night and there are lots of reasons why the guy might have been unable to stick to his usual routine. This is a big city and people don't usually run like clockwork. I guess it's just a matter of waiting a little longer and then working out when it's time to give up and go back to my usual spot.

  Eventually, once the bells of a distant church have begun to chime midnight, I realize that I'm wasting my time.

  Climbing down from the ledge, I make my way as quietly as possible through the bushes. I don't want to attract any more attention that is strictly necessary, and I know from bitter experience that a lone teenage girl might as well have a target painted on her back. Just because I live on the streets, people usually assume that I'm a drunk, or a drug addict, or a prostitute, or all three of those things and more. I'm not, of course, although there have certainly been opportunities. I have to work hard every day to avoid temptation.

  "Spare some change?" a voice calls out suddenly.

  Looking to my left, I spot a familiar figure sitting cross-legged against the wall.

  "It's me," I say, not stopping.

  "Sorry, Ophelia," Lofty replies. "You alright?"

  "Fine," I mutter, although I doubt he can hear me since I'm already several feet away by now.

  "Hey!" he shouts after me. "Where you off to?"

  As I hurry along the path, I spot a figure up ahead, coming the other way. I instantly tense up a little, which is my standard reaction to coming close to anyone I don't know, but I quickly remind myself that it's dark and I'm unlikely to run into any trouble. Besides, a moment later the figure takes a left turn, making his way through the path that leads between the gallery and a block of apartments. I glance at him, and suddenly I notice something drop from his hand, landing on the floor.

  Stopping, I stare at the object.

  The figure keeps walking, not looking back.

  My heart is racing as I step over and pick up the object, which turns out to be a crumpled five pound note.

  Up ahead, the figure keeps walking, but after a couple of seconds I spot something else fall from his hand. He walks away, and since I can see him and I'm certain he can't grab me, I hurry after him and find that there's another crumpled note on the floor. Picking it up, I can't help wondering if this is the guy I'm looking for. After all, some of the witnesses said he dropped money, and that this was how he lured his victims and got them to follow. I watch as he continues to walk away, and finally he heads around the next corner; as he does so, another crumpled note falls from his pocket.

  I stand completely still.

  This is him.

  It has to be him.

  Cursing myself for not having a camera, I step forward cautiously. I'm a pretty good runner so I'm confident I can outrun this guy if he tries to grab me, but I still need to be careful. Poised to turn and bolt at the first sign of trouble, I make my way toward the third note. Just as I'm about to pick it up, however, I see that the guy has stopped walking and is now standing just around the corner with his back to me. There's still several feet between us, so I pick up the note and then back off.

  Silence.

  Finally, he drops another note, but this time it lands right by his feet and he doesn't move away. It's like a challenge; he wants me to move closer, to pick it up.

  Silence.

  "Don't you want it?" he asks suddenly. His voice sounds older than I expected, with a hint of grit and perhaps even pain.

  "Don't you want it?" I reply, trying not to sound scared.

  "Some people like to share their largesse," he says, still with his back to me. "It makes them good to give money to those who are less fortunate. After all, what's the point in having money if you can't give it to those who need it? If you ask me, there's something very wrong with the world if charity is viewed with suspicion."

  I stare at the note on the floor. It's tempting, but I'm not stupid.

  "Here," he says, turning and kicking the crumpled note toward me. "I have more. How much do you need? I'm not talking about a few notes here and there. How much do you really need in order to get off the streets and start your life again?"

  "I'm good, thanks," I say calmly, while resisting the urge to reach down and pick up the note. I'm convinced that he'll strike as soon as he thinks I'm distracted, and I know the only smart thing to do is to keep my distance, learn as much as possible, and then run at the first opportunity. As long as I've got him in my sights, I'm confident I can outrun him. Then again, I'm also very much aware that over-confidence can be a killer.

  "You're naturally suspicious," he continues. "I can relate. When life batters you down, eventually you have to find ways to survive. You come to see everything as a potential threat, even the kindest of acts. Tell me, how long have you been on the streets?"

  I take a deep breath, determined not to let him trick me. He sounds so calm and confident, I'm certain he's got some kind of trick that he thinks is going to make me let my guard down. I guess he has no way of knowing that I'm smarter than most other people.

  "Maybe we should start with an easier question," he continues. "What's your name?"

  I pause, trying to work out what to do next.

  "Don't you want to tell me?" he asks. "What's so bad about telling me your name? It can't hurt, can it?"

  "Why do you want to know?" I reply.

  "I'm just being polite."

  "Kelly," I say, figuring I should lie.

  "And how long have you been on the streets, Kelly?"

  "I don't know," I tell him. "Long enough to know how to look after myself."

  "And life's hard, isn't it? I assume you have to beg, and maybe steal food from the bins? The worst thing must be the lack of hope. Do you really think you can turn your life around?"

  "I get by."

  He takes a step toward me.

  I immediately take a step back.

  "You're scared," he says after a moment. "You're also smarter than most people in your situation. You're not putting up a front." He pauses. "Come on, love, I'm only trying to help. What's the world coming to, when a good Samaritan gets scorned like this? No wonder no-one ever helps anyone out anymore. You end up getting treated like a goddamn leper. I'm just trying to help you."

  "Don't come any closer," I tell him, as I get ready to run.

  "I don't need to," he replies.

  "Why -"

  Before I can finish, someone grabs me from behind, clamping a hand over my mouth while wrapping an arm around my neck and squeezing tight. I try to get free, as the first figure steps closer and pulls something from under his coat. After a moment, I realize that he's holding some kind of large metal hook, and when he reaches me he grabs my shirt and pulls it up to expose my bare belly. He runs the tip of the hook against my skin for a moment before moving it up to my neck. I can feel the metal pushing against my skin, threatening to break through at any moment.

  "Gentle," whispers a voice from behind me.

  Forcing myself to stop struggling for a moment, I try to work out what to do next. Finally, with no other options, I slam myself back against whoever's holding me, forcing him against the wall with such force that he lets go. Lunging forward, I grab the first guy's arm and try to drag him down to the floor, but he manages to ram his knee into the side of his face, sending me spinning down to the ground. I get up just as he kicks the back of my neck, but I manage to twist around and grab his leg, hauling him down while grabbing his arm at the same time. He lets out a grunt and I realize I've got one hand on his hook. Panicking, I slam my elbow into his face before pulling the hook out of his hands and stumbling to my feet.

  The other guy is still dazed, and I'm easily able to get out of his way as I turn and run back
the way I came. I don't have time to look over my shoulder to see if they're chasing me, so I just keep going until finally, completely out of breath, I almost collapse against the side of a shuttered sandwich bar.

  After a moment, I force myself to keep running. I race across an empty street and then down an alley that leads between two buildings, and eventually I duck into a doorway and allow myself a moment to get my breath back.

  Two of them.

  There were two.

  How did I not anticipate that? I assumed the guy was working alone. I swear to God, I'm smart enough to be able to anticipate potential problems, but I let myself develop a blind spot.

  "Dumb," I mutter, punching myself hard in the shoulder. "Dumb idiot! Dumb, fucking, stupid..."

  After a moment, I look down at my right hand and see that without even planning it, I kept hold of the thick metal hook that the guy was going to use on me. I turn it around a few times, to get a better look at it, before finally a wave of shock hits me. I just came way too close to being killed, and it's a miracle that I was able to get away at all.

  Figuring that I'm probably still not safe, I lean out of the doorway and check that there's no-one nearby, before turning and running.

  Chapter Nine

  Laura

  "We called you 'cause Greenwell said you were covering a similar case," Tim explains as he leads me through the park. "Normally, we'd have just carted the poor bastard off and left it at that, you know? I mean, it's not exactly a high-priority case."

  It's 8am and after receiving a phone call a couple of hours ago, my journey into work has resulted in this diversion to the gardens at Victoria Embankment, where a street-cleaner discovered a dead body at first light. It's another gray day, with hints of rain already in the air, and I haven't even had a chance to get my first tea of the morning; in other words, I feel like crap and I need caffeine.

  "How do you manage it?" I ask wearily.

  "Manage what?"

  "To be so offensively perky in the mornings."

  "Late night?" he asks.

  "Something like that," I mutter. The truth is, I was up until the early hours, flirting with people online. All things considered, I'd rather let people think I was getting drunk.

  "We haven't got a lead on a name yet," Tim continues, "but from his clothes, we're pretty sure he was a vagrant. We're running his prints now to see if we get a match, but I'm not expecting much. I think this one might end up being filed under John Doe. Great way to end, huh? Face down in a park, and no-one knows your name. Some lives just really go over the edge of a cliff."

  I smile politely as he lifts a line of police tape and I duck under. Nearby, a couple of people are standing and staring, but dead bodies don't often draw much of a crowd these days. People are too accustomed to this kind of thing to do much more than bat an eyelid. Only tourists stop for this kind of thing, often taking photos as the body is moved. It's as if witnessing a murder scene is just like a trip to Buckingham Palace or the London Eye. All part of London's rich tapestry.

  "Got no questions?" Tim asks as we reach the spot where two specialists are examining a muddy corpse.

  "Questions?" I reply, trying to shake myself out of this malaise. There's a coffee shop nearby, and I'm tempted to excuse myself so I can run over and get something to drink. A shot of caffeine, straight to the vein, might do the trick.

  "You've barely said a word since you got out of the car," he continues. "What's wrong? This case not really grabbing you? Sorry we can't be more entertaining at eight in the morning, but you know what murder victims are like. They've got their own priorities."

  Sighing, I step past him and take a look at the dead body. It's a white male, late twenties or early thirties, and it's pretty clear from the state of his clothing that he's been living on the streets. Leaning closer, I see a thick patch of drying blood around his mouth and chin, and his eyes are half-open, peering down at the mud with a muted rictus of resignation at his own fate. He doesn't even look that shocked.

  "It's the wounds to the jaw that made us call you," Tim continues. "It looks like some kind of implement, possibly a hook, was inserted into the mouth and then driven through the tongue before emerging at the top of the neck. There's significant damage to the jawbone on the left-hand side, and obviously a great deal of blood-loss. Beyond that, we're looking at some deep incisions around the abdomen as well as the removal of the intestines. Before you get too focused on the idea of a trophy-hunter, I should tell you that we found the intestines a few meters away, discarded in a rose bush."

  "Huh," I mutter, finally starting to feel as if this case might be worth bothering with after all. "All the intestines, or just most of them?"

  "All," he replies. "Most. Hard to tell right now. Does it matter?"

  Glancing over toward the wall, I finally spot the man's intestines draped around a rose bush, with thorns digging into the exposed pink flesh. I'm not revolted by the sight, but I have to admit that it's one of the more unusual things I've seen lately. At the same time, it's too neat.

  "Do you think it's a message?" Tim asks after a moment.

  "Could be," I mutter. "Or maybe he just pulled them out and tossed them away, and they happened to land like that." Looking back down at the body, I watch as the officers roll him over. Tim was right: the entire abdomen area has been sliced open, leaving a massive patch of blood to congeal in the poor bastard's clothes. Assuming that the hook was inserted into his mouth first, it seems most likely that he was gutted while he was still alive, in which case he must have suffered one of the most painful deaths imaginable, and all without anyone in the area noticing a damn thing.

  "There's nothing else to do here," Tim continues. "The scene's been checked and we're ready to take him to the morgue. I just thought you should see him in situ in case you think it's got anything to do with that other one you're working on. Do you want -"

  "Yeah," I say, interrupting him. "I'll take this one, you can put it on my tab. They might be linked." Taking a step back, I look around at the muddy soil.

  Nearby, a train rattles across the bridge and starts to slow as it pulls into Charing Cross.

  "Any drug paraphernalia?" I ask.

  "Nothing that seems to be linked to the body. Just the usual stuff you find in the average London park."

  "Any sign of footprints?"

  "Doubt it. There was just enough rain last night to wash anything useful away. Whoever did this, they waited until the weather was on their side. Either that or they had good luck."

  "Not luck," I reply, turning to him. "This is a busy part of town. We're less than a hundred meters from one of London's biggest train stations and even at three or four in the morning, there'd be people around." I glance across the park and see that the last on the onlookers has wandered away. "What's this park like at night?" I ask. "Is it popular with junkies?"

  "Mildly," he replies. "I'm not really sure. It's kind of open and exposed, so I think they mostly go elsewhere. Then again, there are benches, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few old lads take a kip here from time to time, but they're probably too far gone to be any use. Why? You wanna round 'em up and ask if they saw anything?"

  Turning to him, I realize that he's grinning.

  "Would that be such a bad idea?" I ask.

  "Not really," he says with a smile, "except that most of 'em probably couldn't even tell you whether they were here last night or not. You're not exactly dealing with the sharpest members of society, Laura. There's a reason they end up on the streets. They're fucked in the head. I was on a case once where we tried to ask this old guy a few questions, and he didn't have a clue. He kept going on about his ex-wife. We knew he'd witnessed something going down, but it was useless. They're out of their minds."

  "Not all of them," I point out.

  "Ninety-nine out of a hundred," he replies. "If a survey of the local bums is your best idea, it might be worth just tossing this one. You'd have more luck asking the squirrels if they saw anything. I
mean, Jesus, even if you got anything useful out of one of 'em, can you imagine sticking a tramp on the witness stand at the Old Bailey?"

  I smile politely, although it's clear that he's already got this case marked down as a dead-end.

  "So you think we shouldn't bother investigating?" I ask eventually.

  "I didn't say that," he continues. "Not officially, anyway. It's just... No-one's gonna have seen anything, and it's not like there's gonna be any pressure to get results. This is a text-book example of a case where you run the paperwork, make sure you pull down a few expenses, and then file it away. I've seen this kind of thing a hundred times, and you're never gonna get anywhere. No-one notices these people, so no-one's ever gonna be able to tell you what he was up to in the hours before he disappeared. Anyway, he was homeless, so he disappeared a long time ago, at least as far as society's concerned. This is just him being finished off and it's harsh but no-one really gives a damn."

  "But if it's linked to other cases," I reply, "then we might be dealing with a serial killer."

  "Or just someone who likes killing a few bums here and there."

  "Do serial killers not count unless their victims are important?" I ask. "Sorry, I never got that memo."

  I pause for a moment, and for the first time in a few years, I actually feel a little angry. Sure, the victims in these cases are basically just a group of vagrants who could disappear from the face of the planet without anyone raising a fuss, but they were still human beings and if someone's hunting them down, I don't see that we can just turn the other cheek. I wasn't particularly enamored of this case to begin with, but Tim's blatant coldness has perhaps shocked me into taking an interest.

  "I'm not saying you should ignore it," he continues, clearly determined to reduce our workload as much as possible. "Do the paperwork and poke around a bit. We'll do a basic autopsy, check the prints to see if we can get a name, and do everything by the book. Just don't bust a nut on it, that's all I'm saying. There's no point breaking a sweat, and anyway, couldn't you use a bit of a rest?"