What Lies in the Dark

by CM Thompson

  Fletcher doesn’t go home. He spends the day interviewing potential eyewitnesses who have seen nothing, but are still eager to talk. Eyewitnesses who in turn are trying to discover more details from him. They are trying to find out everything he knows. “Was she, like, mutilated?” “Yeh, I heard ’bout her. Bloke kicked the shit outta her right?” Questions like that are asked to encourage Fletcher to reply, correcting their guesses, in a superior I know more than you sort of way. Fletcher isn’t that stupid but knows that replies like, “I am not prepared to discuss that with you,” are magically turned into “Yes, that’s what happened.” Denials are always taken as encouragements. Questions like, “Have you noticed anyone behaving suspiciously lately?” are always met with a flurry of answers, this is the bad part of the city, almost every customer is suspicious. Some customers were suspicious just because they acted polite or because they didn’t smoke. Fletcher had several pages of notes and reluctantly handed over video footage of the suspicious people, people he suspects are probably just eccentric rather than suspicious. Other interviewing teams will bring in similar characters; each one has to be checked thoroughly. Bullface has been shadowing him on these interviews and is equally depressed. They both sit, watching the video feed that caught Stella’s last smoke before disappearing down the dark alleyway. Over and over on a loop, she goes in and dies. The assailant had entered and left via another alleyway, into the maze of a city, avoiding the cameras. Their shift is nearly over but overtime is beckoning.

  “He could be anyone. Stella was known to take on any …” Fletcher pauses while deciding on the best way to phrase this, “… client. No one saw anyone wearing blood-stained clothes, he could have dumped them.”

  “I had a team collect all the bins within the mile radius. They are going through the contents at the moment. I am going over to supervise.”

  Fletcher is hit by a tidal wave of stench as he follows Bullface into the room. The fumes of sickly sweet cans of fizzy drinks are battling against decomposing foods with just a few hints of cigarettes. One of the older officers looks up and grimly welcomes them to hell. They had collected twelve overflowing bags and two officers are still on the scene, going through a rotting skip. Afterwards, those two officers will be met with sprays of air fresheners wherever they go. Each bag’s location and time of collection has been recorded and the unlucky officers pull evidence out of the Pandora’s Box of rubbish, while others record the contents. So far one bloody tissue has been recovered, four bloody needles and two suspiciously smelling packages. The officers’ jokes are best left unsaid, particularly the one about Constable Tichan’s mother.

  Kain has just lit the fifth cigarette of the day. That’s how times passes, cigarettes and orc deaths. Kain hasn’t even moved for four hours, keeping eyes firmly fixed on the door. Waiting and watching.

  The teenager just feels like walking, he has been walking for days now. Sure he feels a little thirsty, but there is bound to be water somewhere. Sure he feels a little hungry but it just doesn’t matter. He is outside! Outside where he belongs, out in the fields, in the woods and he can walk forever! Elation fills his every vein as he runs, hollering through an empty field. Laughing and shouting at the sky. It is only out here that he feels free; he thinks he should just quit, quit living with his mother, quit begging for work and just live out here. The Earth will take care of him. It will be all right, it will be. His eyes stray across the field, attracted to the dark mass that lies there. The Earth has decided to give him the girl of his dreams. He lets out a big cry of happiness and begins to run toward her. Here is another person, a girl, someone else who also likes being outside. Someone who feels the same way!

  From a distance she looks pretty, just lying in the sun. He runs closer, intrigued, until he realises she isn’t moving. He can hear a peculiar sound, a sound which comes from thousands of maggots feasting as one, a mushy pit of rice munching swiftly at her face, arms and stomach. He stares frozen at the carnage. He wants to kick off every last one of those maggots but dares not touch, dares not move. Her mouth is frozen open in a death scream, choked back by squirming white grubs.

  He had found his dream girl three days after she had died. He will be with the police soon, still shaking. His mouth permanently fixed in a choke. He will cry all through the interviews, cry as they take his prints. Then it will really hit, and he will start screaming. Crying and screaming for days as he is signed in “for observation”. He will still be crying four months later.

  Just hours after the body was abandoned, the insects multiply, encouraged by the beautiful warm day. Attracted by the aroma of blood they lay eggs into unprotesting festering wounds. These eggs take a day to hatch, then release squiggles of white flesh which start their migration into the decomposing body. As maggots cannot chew through skin and because the victim is found with a small colony feasting on her left hand, it suggests that she has another number. However, the cuts could have been inflicted by animals, they could be defensive wounds torn open by feasting flies. She had cuts across her stomach and arms, also filled with frenzied banqueting bugs, none of the other victims so far had shown such mutilations. She cannot be linked to the murders of Fran Lizzie Taylor or Stella McQam just yet. The victim’s small purse was found, carefully tucked into place underneath a red lacy bra. The purse is empty, except for one Polaroid. The victim’s money is currently being exchanged for a round at the local pub, as he treats several off-duty policemen to a pint of their choice. Her credit cards and driving licence are carefully locked in his safe.

  The Polaroid is of a young woman, lying naked on the ground. The woman is covered in bruises and deep interlacing cuts, twisted jagged lines slashed across her throat. Her hands have been carefully placed across her chest, the palms face down so that the number two so cautiously carved, can be clearly seen. The young woman clearly isn’t the same victim. The image is why Fletcher and Bullface have been called.

  “Right, what do we know?”

  “No ID, the victim is still a Jane Doe. Michaels is going through the missing persons lists. The victim was most likely killed here.”

  Fletcher eyes up the landscape, it looks too beautiful here. The fields are beaming serenely as the August sun begins to set, casting a brilliant orange glare over the postcard image. Fletcher stands alert, his hairs on end as his ears tell him that this scene is too quiet, too eerie, it is as if the nearby forest is eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “Something the matter?” Bullface asks, with little actual concern in her voice.

  “Just wondering what she was doing out here. This is a very secluded area.” Bullface shrugs, as if to say if we knew why she was out here, we wouldn’t be out here.

  “Do you think she is connected to Fran Taylor and Stella McQam?” Fletcher asks quietly.

  “Right now we don’t even know if Fran and Stella are connected. There is a possibility though as the victim sustained trauma to her left hand, insect damage has made it impossible to tell if she also had a number carved into her hand. But then that picture …” her voice trails off before quietly stating, “… there is a possibility they are connected, the victim in the photo had a number 2, Fran a 22, and Stella a 28. If the photograph was left by the same killer, then he is not just carving their ages. But without knowing what number had been carved into this victim’s hand …” another pause, there are some things Bullface just doesn’t feel like spelling out to Fletcher. She wants to know he is capable of doing his job “You do know what this could mean, don’t you?”

  “What?” Maybe Fletcher does know, but he doesn’t want to say, saying it out loud could make it true.

  “There could be another twenty-four victims already.”

  “Shit.”

  There seems little to do now, the night shift is slowly taking over, Michaels is still ploughing through Missings, and the victim would not be autopsied until the morning. Both officers are tired, tomorrow morning is already beckoning with more work. Fletcher heads home, but Bull
face, well Bullface doesn’t head home, there seems little point. At home there will be a husband more interested in the television than her, and two sons who are usually absent. On the rare occasions they are home, the house is rocked with blaring music and arguments. She can stand them on most nights but tonight, for a while, she needs silence. She needs to think.

  Instead Bullface goes to her second home. She and her husband buy several old houses a year, slowly reviving them for rent or resale. Her husband retired a few years ago and it seems to keep him occupied. He plasters, she paints.

  Usually Bullface likes painting, an activity that allows her to be perfect and precise, allows her mind to wander, time to run through her active cases, looking for mistakes, missed leads and time to reanalyse actions. Tonight is different. She can feel the eyes watching her again, eyes of so many female ghosts hiding just out of sight. Every brush stroke echoes the same question in her head. What is the point? Splat! What is the point? What is the point? Until she gives up, wearily sitting down on the dust sheets, head lying in paint splattered hands, just trying to go on.

  The night brings forth whispers, stronger allegations against The Krill. Fran Lizzie has been brought back to life by gossip. The police phone lines are again jammed with anxious relatives and journalists eager for more insight. The focus is on the mutilated victim apparently found in a church graveyard/skip/forest/lake rather than on the prostitute Stella McQam. Fear has returned, wives refuse to walk to work alone in the morning, mothers argue with daughters, the restriction for protection always misunderstood and always ending in door slams.

  The morning brings an identity for Jane Doe. Michaels has spent most of her night going through page after page of smiling vacant faces on her screen contrasting them against a close up of Jane’s decomposing features. Michaels was rarely bothered by these images, she’d been injured two years ago and was now desk bound, so most of the missing came to her. It was something for her to do, just a job. At first, the Missings’ smiling faces had bothered her but now she is used to it. The decomposing face however, that is something she wants to get off her desk as soon as possible. But now Michaels is owed gratitude because thanks to her, the numberless nameless victim can be identified as Adelina Sasha.

  Adelina’s husband Jack Sasha will confirm her identity. Jack, Adelina’s widower, but he will always call himself her husband. Later on, much later, ten years later he will still say he is married. He will rarely add “But she is dead now,” not wanting to see the gleam of sadness, pity or even hope in the questioner’s eyes. Not wanting to encourage a, “How did she die?” Or an, “I am sorry.” Or even an, “Are you seeing anyone now?” asked playfully, while thrusting shrivelled breasts forward, as if to encourage the asking of a phone number.

  The morgue assistants try to be tactful. They have been careful not to show him anything other than her face, but the sight of her lying there, eyes closed, sparks a flame. Jack has spent his life as an angry man, in some ways the passionate anger was what had made Adelina originally fall for him. Maybe she considered cheating on him just to reignite that dying flame, but even she would have known to move away very quickly when that vein throbs on his temple, when the left eyebrow twitches. Unfortunately no one around him now knows those warning signs, but they will learn. Jack is led into an interview room, to become someone else’s problem.

  Fletcher offers him a drink, offers to call someone for Jack, but such offerings are barely acknowledged. Jack sits, forcefully holding himself down to the chair, shaking slightly. Fletcher gives Jack silence and time, time to realise what is going on. Fletcher is also a little impatient, time cannot be wasted. Finally, he breaks the sullen silence, announces the time and date of the interview into the awaiting video camera and begins.

  “I am Detective Sergeant Aaron Fletcher and this is my partner Detective Sergeant Victoria Bull … rush.” Fletcher quickly continues before Bullface notices the pause. “We will be investigating your wife’s case. We need to ask you a few questions.” Fletcher pauses uncertainly, Jack still barely acknowledges his existence. His anger slowly deflating second by second, leaving behind an empty hollow man.

  “How long were you and Adelina married?”

  “Thirteen years.” A defeated mumble.

  “Were you having any problems in your marriage?”

  Jack’s eyebrow twitches again, “No.”

  Fletcher thinks this may be a sensitive subject for him, rarely did someone answer so abruptly.

  Jack’s posture hints that he might be waiting for the right moment to strike.

  “OK, let’s talk a little bit about the day she disappeared.” Fletcher hopes to calm Jack down before coming back to his previous marital issues. There is nothing on record to say that they had an unhappy marriage, no charges of assault, no divorce pending, but still, there are always some secrets hidden away. He chooses to use words such as ‘disappeared’ rather than ‘left’ as it implied she had wanted to leave. Little points to try and reassure Jack Sasha that, at the moment, Fletcher is on his side.

  “The morning she disappeared, do you remember what had happened?”

  Silence.

  “Mr Sasha?”

  Silence.

  “Was she getting ready to go to work?”

  “My wife takes Fridays off, so she didn’t have to go to work. She still got up with me and we had breakfast together.”

  “What did she have to eat?”

  “Grapefruit.” Evidently Jack Sasha is a man of few grunts.

  “What was she wearing?”

  “She was still in her nightgown.”

  “What time was this?”

  “’Bout eight, eight fifteen.”

  “Had she told you what she planned to do that day?”

  “She was going to clean and then meet a friend for lunch – like I said in the Missings’ Report.”

  “Had she said who she was meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Did she usually go out for lunch on her own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had she seemed emotional that morning?”

  “She was an emotional person,” Jack Sasha does not want to relinquish the last private memories of her, doesn’t want another man to see the emotions she always showed him in the morning. Jack half sighs, half chokes an unwanted tear before continuing. “She was happy. She liked the mornings.”

  “So she was in a good mood? She didn’t seem tearful or upset?”

  “No!” a whisper of anger is laced in that line, Jack Sasha’s eyes meet with Fletcher’s in a flash of venom, not liking what Fletcher could be implying.

  “Where did your wife like to spend her time?”

  “She is at work five days a week, she works Sunday to Thursday. She usually comes straight home, most nights she will go out for a jog, Fridays she meets up with her friends, Saturdays she spends with me.” He talks mechanically, Jack is giving Fletcher the I-don’t-like-you-but-I-will-answer-your-questions look.

  “Did she have any reason to be out in the countryside?”

  “No.”

  “Not even to go jogging?”

  “I don’t know her jogging route.”

  “Are any of her items missing? Like her toothbrush or any of her favourite clothes?”

  “She wasn’t going to leave me.” Jack snaps.

  “Please answer the question.”

  “No, the only thing missing is her car.” The police have already been alerted about Adelina Sasha’s missing car. Michaels is contacting the breakdown companies.

  “When did you realise she was missing?”

  “She wasn’t there when I got home at six. She is always home before me.”

  “Even on her days off?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I phoned some of her friends and family, made sure she wasn’t running late. Tried her mobile too but that went straight to voice mail.”

  “Did anyone say where she was?”

  �
��No.”

  “When did you contact the police?”

  “The next morning, when she still hadn’t come home.” Jack’s voice is shaky now, it is beginning to hit him that his wife would never be coming home.

  “Who was your wife particularly close to? We would also like to interview them, if possible.”

  Jack hesitates, his grief-infused mind can only recall Adelina’s face not her friends. It takes a few silent minutes while his face visibly works for a name.

  “Who is she close to in her family?” Fletcher decides to help him a little.

  “Her mother, Adelina is an only child. She and her mother are pretty close.”

  “Is she close to anyone at work?”

  “I don’t … I don’t think she is.”

  “Any of her friends?”

  “Anna.”

  “What’s Anna’s last name?”

  “Stevenson.”

  After a few moments of silence, Fletcher asks, “Did your wife know Fran Lizzie Taylor?”

  “I … I don’t know, my wife has many friends.”

  There is a swish as Bullface pulls out a photo of the living Fran Lizzie.

  Jack barely glances at it before replying. “I don’t recognise her.”

  “What were you doing on March 9th?”

  “I don’t remember, how is this important?”

  “It was a Friday night. Please try to think.”