Kiss and Hell (DI Olivia Austin Book 3)

by Nic Roberts

Whoever had killed this woman had made quick work of it; she was barely five metres into the small hall of the hotel room. Perhaps he’d waited until she was leaving to kill her—or he had blitzed her as soon as she entered.

  Their victim’s body was barely recognisable as human. Her head had been bashed in, making the thought of IDing her based on her image nearly impossible. Was it rage or concealment that caused him to batter her like this? Olivia wondered to herself before taking a moment to look away from her.

  Count to five, then you can look again, she assured herself. She felt okay when she closed her eyes, despite the overwhelming smell of death in the room. It was mainly the sight of their victim, lifeless on the ground, that made her stomach churn.

  Her internal count done, Olivia let herself examine the body once more. She crouched down next to the woman, noticing that aside from her head trauma, there were several spots in her dress that were torn.

  There are pieces of her missing underneath too, Olivia noticed, covering her mouth with the back of her latex-covered wrist.

  Collin’s had warned them earlier about the injuries this poor woman had suffered. There hadn’t been many photos yet, just some of the bites she’d endured. Crouched beside their victim, Liv was horrified by the full extent of wide-open cavities in Jane Doe’s abdomen, thighs, breasts, and arms.

  What the hell was wrong with some people?

  The hardest part for Olivia was the sheer amount of blood. It was everywhere—under the woman, spattered on the walls, smeared from the doorway to the chest of drawers.

  “Did she die from blood loss or trauma?” Olivia exhaled as she stood up, her tongue coated in the coppery tinge of the scent from the victim’s body.

  “Unsure yet,” a man said with a sigh, entering her view from the other side of the room. He startled her, tall, lean, and alien-looking in his forensic suit. Her question had been more rhetorical than anything, but after the initial fright of realising there was another living, breathing person in the room aside from her, relief flooded her veins.

  Dr. Elliot James gave her a sad smile as he stepped closer to her, the wrinkle of his suit punctuating the silence.

  “Elliot,” she half laughed. “I didn’t know you were in here.” Unbidden butterflies added to her already potent cocktail of nerves swimming around her chest. Don’t give yourself a heart attack, she chided herself. Dr. James always gave her a sense of security, but with it came a sense of excitement that—while normally welcomed—made Olivia’s current anxiety skyrocket.

  “It’s good to see you, Olivia,” he replied, the twinkle of a smile in his eyes. How they could hold even an ounce of joy after seeing the crime scene before them, she didn’t know. Still, his reassuring gaze helped calm her in the midst of the massacre.

  “I wish it were under different circumstances,” she replied regretfully, trying not to immediately delve on the fact that she had, in other words, just admitted to Elliot she wanted to see him outside of work.

  “Agreed,” he sighed, picking his way over to her. She counted at least seventeen evidence markers already scattered throughout the scene.

  “Gosh, this is a lot.” She laughed, because what else could she do? Cry? Vomit?

  “Hey,” Elliot offered, gently placing a hand on Olivia’s elbow as he arrived by her side. An innocent move, she was certain. “I can’t deny it’s an intense scene. Poor woman. One of my colleagues had to leave after a minute.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Olivia agreed.

  He stopped to look at her.

  “Let’s pop out for a bit,” Dr. James offered. “I need a break from this room anyway.” He used her elbow to guide her gently away from the crumpled body of Jane Doe and out into the hallway.

  4

  Olivia immediately felt relief upon exiting the room; the acrid taste on her tongue from the sheer amount of blood dissipated almost immediately, and it was as if the world, once slightly tilted, had once righted itself again.

  Elliot gave her elbow a quick squeeze before letting go to grab some water from the SOCOs down the hall.

  Lawrence was standing with his back against the wall, his head tipped back to look at the ceiling, his legs splayed out at almost a 45-degree angle from the wall. He had an open bottle of water in one of his hands. He took a sip as she approached him.

  “Well,” she sighed, swinging her arms at her side.

  “‘Well,’ is fucking right,” he groaned, shaking his head against the wall. His dark curls slightly bounced with each shake.

  Olivia regularly forgot how young Lawrence was; he was probably the second youngest detective on the team, once she thought about it. At 30 years old, it wasn’t as though he was fresh out of Uni, but he still had a certain naivety that only age could scrape away at.

  She gave herself a moment to mourn the innocence they had both slowly relinquished in short bursts and gruelling cases, chipped away without a choice.

  Alex’s disappearance. The Oxford Street Terror Attacks. The kidnapping of Ella Hebden. Francesca Atkinson. They all weighed on Olivia, and she knew the latter two weighed d heavily on Dean, too. She had no doubt he had his own ghosts that she was yet to see besides whispers of reactions here and there.

  It was a shame that they’d just added this poor woman to their lists; Olivia already knew that her nightmares would see the woman’s dismembered body more than a few times in the months and years to come.

  “Wanna talk about it?” she offered, leaning beside her partner against the wall. She turned her face up toward the ceiling. Warm lights lined the hallway, ornamental swipes of gold providing much needed decoration.

  “Not really,” Lawrence winced. “I think I’m ready to focus on work again.”

  “Only if you’re sure,” Olivia replied. “It gets more… tolerable the longer you’re in there, but that doesn’t make it pleasant.”

  “You can say that again,” Lawrence huffed. Olivia could practically hear his eyes rolling. She let a chuckle escape her lips before glancing over to him. He was already looking at her, innocence and hardness fighting each other in his eyes.

  “Pretty gruesome,” she winced. They stared at each other for a moment, studying each other’s faces for any cracks or doubts.

  “I’m okay,” he assured her, launching himself off of the wall with a gentle push of his shoulders.

  “Me too,” she replied, twisting her lips to one side in an almost smile.

  “Dr. James,” Lawrence called out, raising his voice.

  The medical examiner returned from his chat with the officers, setting himself in front of both detectives.

  The wind from his arrival sent the smell from the room in their direction.

  “I think it’s probably best if we chat out here first,” Elliot explained, “and then we can examine the body and scene together.”

  Both Olivia and Lawrence nodded, Olivia grateful that Elliot took pity on their sensitive stomachs.

  Dr. James shook the chest of his forensic suit to let a little air into it.

  “I’d put her time of death around 1 or 2 a.m., based on her body temperature,” he started. “The jury is still out on whether the killer is male or female. The crime suggests male, but there’s no solid evidence of that. Either way, our victim was bludgeoned in the head, blunt force trauma, bitten numerous times on her arms, thighs, and torso, and then she was carved into to retrieve several of her organs, including her heart, kidney, liver, and intestines.” He paused to sigh at the audacity of everything he was saying. “I mean, based on my observations, her head was then bludgeoned some more post-mortem. I cannot conclude this yet, though, but I suspect that she was still alive when the killer started carving into her.”

  Olivia shook her head, her nose curling up in disgust.

  “Fuck,” Lawrence muttered. “That’s barbaric.”

  “Agreed,” Dr. James sighed. “The cuts are sure, clinical. Based off of that, I’d say you’re looking for someone who’s skilled with a knife and capable wi
th anatomy. A surgeon, maybe a hunter. Someone with medical training.”

  “That’s interesting,” Olivia thought aloud. “A scene with that much overkill, I’d expect someone disorganised. Hopefully, that will help in narrowing down suspects, though.”

  “One would hope so,” Lawrence answered. “A pyscho surgeon running loose in Cornwall is really the last thing we need on our hands. It could be any one of them.”

  Olivia had to agree with him. In London, she’d worked on a case with Rhys where the sadistic murderer had been the dutiful, pleasant family man that nobody would have suspected. Those types were the hardest to track down.

  But, despite all of that, there had to be something that had lured the poor woman all the way up here. If the woman knew her killer, had they argued beforehand? Fallen out sometime in the day, maybe? Strangers? An escort?

  She turned to Dr. James. A dark question nagged at the back of her head; she hated that she needed to voice it.

  “Any sign of sexual trauma?” she asked.

  Elliot shifted back and forth on his feet as he prepared to debrief the detectives.

  “None so far,” he answered, keeping his expression serious. “Although I’ll be able to tell more conclusively when I do the autopsy. Her ovaries and uterus are intact as well. Not sure what that means, but I thought it important to note.”

  Interesting.

  Olivia jotted down the information. If the motive hadn’t been sexual, then that painted an even darker picture, providing they were strangers, of course.

  If it’d been a domestic incident—maybe a husband angry that his wife had been having an affair—surely hitting her over the head would have sufficed. But to eat her also? It was unimaginable. No. To be that depraved, whoever she was, she had to have meant so very little to her killer.

  She wrote the stranger in her notepad and circled it before turning back to the medical examiner.

  “It certainly is helpful, Elliot. Thank you,” she replied, making sure to emphasise how grateful she was. It wasn’t an easy crime scene, and she couldn’t imagine how long he’d already been in there, observing, photographing, documenting.

  “Is there anything else of note?” Lawrence asked, staring holes into his own notepad.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Elliot sighed.

  The tone of his voice alone made Olivia’s stomach plummet. What more can there be? she wanted to demand.

  “The dining room table…” Elliot explained darkly. “Half of her liver is on it... on a plate next to a finished glass of what appears to be red wine.”

  “Jesus wept.” Lawrence practically spat out the words. “What’s wrong with people?” he demanded, shaking his head.

  “Whoever this was is clearly psychotic and dangerous,” Elliot responded, taking a deep breath as he detailed the scene. “Our killer left a note on the pairing of liver and Bordeaux. Apparently, it worked well, but he wanted to try a Cabernet ‘next time.’”

  “So, they have plans to kill again?” Olivia trailed, eyes wide as she connected the dots.

  “Definitely not good,” Lawrence muttered. “I wonder if Collins has since been made aware of that note? Also, if we have a would-be serial killer on our hands, we’ll have to work with the communications team to see if it’s best to publicise this or keep it under wraps.”

  Olivia groaned. She’d only worked on one serial killer case in the past, but she knew from her training that public hysteria usually hindered investigations and, if anything, got more people killed.

  “Let’s focus on our Jane Doe for now,” she offered. “See what we’ve got to go on, and hopefully we catch them before they have any interest in killing again.”

  She felt for the Jane Doe; slaughtered and left alone to slowly decay until a maid found her. What kind of end was that?

  “And how are we sure that he was actually eating her liver?” Lawrence asked, his face paler than it had been a minute prior. “How do we know this wasn’t all for show? To throw us off track?”

  He wiped gathering beads of sweat from his forehead.

  “Unfortunately, there are clear incisor marks on the liver,” Elliot sighed in response, and even though he still had a protective mask on as part of his forensic suit, Olivia could hear the weariness in his voice.

  “Damnit,” she hissed, shaking her head.

  The medical examiner glanced briefly up the hall to where the SOCOs were, gave them a thumbs up, and turned back to the detectives.

  “One last sick detail and then I promise I’ll be out of them for the time being.” Elliot’s voice was dark; Olivia found herself wanting to reach out to him, to comfort him.

  He had guided her out the hotel room so skilfully when he could tell that she was unwell at the sight of the heavily mutilated body, but he had no one to do the same for him, to assure him it would all be okay. She realised he always wore a brave face; it was something that she was coming to admire about him.

  “As I mentioned before,” Elliot continued. “The other organs. They’re, well, they’re missing.” His statement held a weight to it that Olivia didn’t quite understand.

  “Sorry, I’m a little slow on the uptake,” Lawrence interjected, clearly in a similar boat as Olivia. “Can’t we just assume that he, or she for that matter, uh… dined on them already? Maybe he was too full to finish the liver?”

  Dr James hummed his response.

  “I see what you’re saying,” he acknowledged. “But a heart is massive. Same with intestines. If our victim in there has only been dead approximately eight hours, there’s no way our killer could have eaten that much mass.”

  Realisation spread across Olivia’s face as she processed what the medical examiner was saying.

  “So he took them,” she deadpanned, disbelief furrowing her eyebrows. “Fucking hell!” she swore, her neck twitching in anger.

  “Based on what I’ve found so far… yes.” Dr. James answered.

  Renewed horror washed over Olivia. Not only had the sicko blitzed this woman and then carved her up like a Christmas turkey, he’d then stolen her remains too!

  “How sick of a bastard do you have to be to do something like that?” Lawrence glanced between Olivia and Elliot, searching for answers that they could never know. “And as public a place as a hotel?”

  Olivia let her eyes roll shut; it was too much to take in all at once. The sheer terror this woman would have known in her final moments was beyond words.

  “We have our own Hannibal the Cannibal it seems.” She exhaled with a shake of her head. “Bold, twisted, and ruthless. Dr. James—”

  “Elliot,” he interjected, reminding her to address him with his first name.

  “Elliot,” she corrected herself. “Are you able to look at our Jane Doe’s teeth and maybe find dental records? Or maybe her fingerprints are in the system.”

  “As soon as I get back to my lab, I’ll be racing as quickly as possible to find out who she is. I have a dentist that will aide me also,” Elliot assured her, and Olivia could tell he was being genuine.

  “And do you think…” Olivia found it hard to find the words to ask the question. “Do you think you’ll be able to get a mould of our killer’s teeth from the liver? It could be the start of building a profile.”

  Lawrence pointed at her with recognition for what she asked.

  “That’s the one,” he added. “We’ll have to start somewhere.”

  Elliot looked between them both.

  “I’ll do my best,” he replied.

  He was just as eager to catch the killer as she and Dean were. It only made sense. Why else would he have joined this rather gruesome sector of the medical field? Still, Olivia hadn’t given it much thought before. Why had Dr. James been so compelled to work as a medical examiner? The more she saw him, there more it intrigued her. Aside from prodding dead bodies and pulling them apart, he seemed like a perfectly nice man. It wasn’t a question to bring up now, however, but Olivia gently tucked it away to further investigate at a la
ter date.

  “Right, well I suppose we should go ahead and examine the body.” Lawrence sighed, reluctance evident in his voice.

  “Indeed,” Olivia agreed, attempting—and miserably failing—to sound a bit more enthusiastic. She was just about to open the hotel room door when her mobile rang. The noise made her jump.

  She looked at the number and felt her stomach drop. Collins.

  “Sorry, I—I have to answer this.” Olivia spoke quickly, looking back to Elliot and Lawrence. They both nodded, encouragement on their faces. Does Elliot know, too? she wondered. He was at this crime scene, which meant he couldn’t be working on the autopsy for the old remains. She paced down the hall toward the lifts to get some privacy.

  “Detective Inspector Austin,” Olivia answered, her throat drier than she remembered it feeling a minute ago.

  “This is Detective Superintendent Collins.” Her boss’s voice boomed through her phone’s speaker, making her heart beat like thunder.

  “Uh, hello,” Olivia replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “Is it him? Tell me.”

  She heard him sigh heavily.

  “Not yet,” he answered. “But the office called to let me know they’re close. I wanted to keep you updated.”

  Her heart continued to hammer, thudding heavy in her chest and up into her throat. All the death, blood, and horror of the murder around her had made sure her mind had been well and truly distracted, but now, all she could see was her brother’s face slowly dying in a makeshift ditch.

  “I’ve sent an officer to the hotel to pick you up,” her boss continued, dissipating the image instantly. “Go and be with your family, Olivia.” His last sentence was almost soft.

  “Sir, I—”

  “That’s an order, Inspector,” Collins concluded before Olivia could finish talking.

  She paused, letting her eyes shut as a million thoughts raced through her mind. This could mean closure finally—but was closure what she wanted? Did she want to have to bury the boy she’d often fantasised was living it up on a fifteen-year travel across East Asia? She’d often imagined him at a full moon party on a remote beach in Thailand or married somewhere in Japan with two young children. Anything had to be better than the image she got now of his pleading eyes dying alone and knowing that his family would be looking for him for the rest of their lives.