by Ben Hopkin
A profiler’s work was never done.
CHAPTER 8
Nicole sat in the storage room, her temper rising in direct proportion to the amount of damage the chemicals in here were doing to her nasal passages. And if she could feel the irritation in her sinuses, she could just bet the fumes were damaging her hair at the same time. If she ended up with split ends from this, Kent was going to pay.
As if conjured by her thought, her phone vibrated. Paggie’s number. What the hell was Paggie doing, calling Nicole on her honeymoon? She swiped the screen to answer, and Kent’s voice came through the line, the distinctive delay caused by trying to use a US phone abroad tugging at Nicole’s senses.
Now it all made sense. How could Kent avoid international charges and still manage to piss off the most people humanly possible? Steal the cell phone of Ruben’s fiancée, of course.
“How are you doing?” he asked, breathless.
Why was Kent breathless? Oh, and another thing. The breathlessness sounded… weird.
Whatever. Regardless of where she was supposed to be, the truth was she was now in a British government office building where she wasn’t supposed to be, hovering over half a dead body.
“Um… I’m not sure how to answer that,” she finally replied.
“Where are you?”
“The basement floor of the Norman Shaw North Building. In the cleaning supplies storage room.” Nicole cleared her throat. “Oh, and there’s something else--”
Kent’s voice rang out with purpose. “We’ll be right there.”
And then the line went dead. Nicole even glanced at the screen to make sure she hadn’t just lost connectivity for a moment. Nope. Four bars.
Um. This was awkward.
If Kent said that he’d be there, he’d be there, but Nicole didn’t really want to have to wait for him to find his way over to this building. She only had about ten or fifteen minutes before her cart would show up as missing. And she was standing near the partial corpse of the latest victim in a string of serial murders.
Plus, according to her schedule, she was supposed to be visiting the British Museum right now. This sucked on so many levels. And as far as she was concerned, it was all Kent’s fault.
He was going to have a lot of making up to do.
* * *
Kyra could still feel the press of Kent’s body against hers. The action had been necessary to distract the tourist away from sounding an alarm, but Kyra would be lying if she said she hadn’t already been contemplating pressing the profiler up against a wall.
The problem was, she now couldn’t get her mind off of it.
She wasn’t used to having reactions like this. Utter control of all of her emotions at all times and in all places. Not getting flushed every time a man glanced her way. In her defense, this wasn’t just any man. It was Kent.
At least they were busy moving through the Norman Shaw North Building. That helped somewhat, although she was currently treated to a somewhat distracting view of Kent’s posterior.
How did he manage to move so fast while still appearing like he was doing nothing more than sauntering along? Analyzing Kent’s movements, Kyra picked up the pace of her stride once more to try to catch up with the profiler.
“Where did she say she was?” Kyra asked, trying not to sound out of breath. She was in perfect shape, in the prime of her youth. How did Kent manage to outpace her so easily?
“Down on the bottom floor,” Kent said, and then paused. It looked as if some thought had crossed his mind. Whatever it was, he shook it off a moment later as he moved toward the elevators and hit the down button. “She’s in the janitorial closet.”
That sounded like it was par for the course today. Why wouldn’t Kent’s wife be down in the basement floor of the very building they happened to be in, surrounded by cleaning supplies? Made perfect sense.
But even more interesting than the locale of Kent’s bride, was the reaction Kent seemed to be having. It wasn’t much, and Kyra suspected that no one but her would be able to see it, but something about Kent was subtly different.
If she didn’t know better, Kyra would say that Kent was… nervous.
That couldn’t be. First, Kent didn’t get nervous. Second, if by some strange happenstance, he were to experience that emotion, it wouldn’t be around his spouse. Certainly not.
Nevertheless, Kyra couldn’t help but notice that his eyes that were slightly dilated, that his breathing had quickened, and that there was a bit of tightening around his mouth. Something was going on with the profiler, and it certainly seemed to be related to his wife being in the building.
When the door to the elevator opened, Kent was out and around the corner before Kyra had a chance to blink. That man was fast.
By the time Kyra caught up to him again, Kent had found the janitorial supply room and was jimmying the lock open. Why was the door still locked? Why wasn’t his wife opening it? Didn’t she know they were coming?
But then the door was open, and Kent was through. Kyra followed right on his heels, but then came to a stop once she was inside.
There was nothing there.
The lights were on as they entered the glorified closet filled with chemical cleaning agents, but there was clearly no one home. Had they gone to the wrong place by mistake?
Kent stooped to look at something in the middle of the space. A white rectangle with one thing drawn on it… a large curved arrow that appeared to be pointing around behind the shelving. There was a space in the corner back there.
“What is this?” she asked.
“This,” Kent answered, “is my wife.”
Glancing at the profiler’s face, Kyra was disconcerted to find a grin creeping onto the man’s face. Something about this whole situation was amusing him.
Kyra pulled out a small penlight that she kept in her pocket as she and Kent moved as one toward the far left corner of the room. There was a washroom area back behind the shelving, but before Kyra could take in anything more than the fact that there was a sink set into the floor, Kent had discovered another note.
This one had another arrow pointing back behind the shelf, but included a message. ALL YOURS, it stated in block letters. SEE YOU AT 11.
That had to have been left by Nicole. But what did that say about their relationship, that she wouldn’t even wait for three minutes for her new husband to show up? There had to be something seriously wrong here.
And what did she mean by ALL YOURS?
Then Kent started to laugh.
* * *
It was funny, Kent had to admit.
He should have known that Nicole wasn’t going to stick around to get sucked into this case. Knowing her, she had a strict sightseeing schedule to keep, and was probably all kinds of pissed off that she’d already made a side trip.
That also meant that Kent would have to pay tonight, but usually that kind of payment would be something he would enjoy as well. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to envision what that might entail, but the ideas were way too distracting and mostly involved strange food items and various types of fishermen’s knots.
Plus, there was clearly something down here. When he and Kyra had first boarded the elevator, a thought had struck him. It was an idea that he’d immediately dismissed because it didn’t make any sense, but that thought was now worming its way back into his consciousness.
The cellar of New Scotland Yard. Not the Scotland Yard of today, but the one of many, many years back. During the time of Jack the Ripper.
“I know what’s here,” he breathed.
“What?” Kyra asked, hovering right behind him. That was his girl. Eager and engaged, ready to dive headlong into whatever the case threw at them.
At least, Kent hoped so, because if he was right, this case had just thrown them a slider.
He held his hand back toward his protégé, and was rewarded with the cool, slick feel of the penlight in his palm. Kyra hadn’t needed any other explanation than the gesture. The
simpático that existed between the two of them was a vibration that Kent could feel in his chest.
When he shone the light back behind the shelf, he was unsurprised to find the severed torso of what he knew to be a young woman. But the gasp behind him indicated that Kyra hadn’t seen this coming.
To be honest, neither had he. If it hadn’t been for the clue in the new Ripper letter and Nicole’s note to him, Kent would have been as blindsided as Kyra was now. Not that she had to know that.
“Things just got a bit more complicated,” he said, staring down at the victim covered in plastic and chemicals.
Kyra made a noncommittal noise in her throat but didn’t turn away from the sight. It was pretty gruesome, but Kent was less concerned with the body and more with what the body represented. So many of the conclusions he had made about this case were now called into question.
“The torso murders,” Kyra uttered behind him. “They were Jack’s?”
“Changes things a bit,” he agreed.
More than a bit, if Kent was being straightforward. This killing didn’t fit the timeline they had established for the original Jack. Which meant that the copycat had gone off the reservation.
Whether that applied only to the “non-canonical” murders, or all of them from here on out, Kent had no idea. Was it possible that this had been a simple crime of convenience for Jack, and that their copycat was now just replicating once more?
Everything about the torso murders was different. The MO, the place, even the victims. Where the Ripper had focused on prostitutes, the torso murders appeared to have been middle or upper class women. Their hands had been examined and showed no signs of the kinds of weathering that anyone in the lower classes should demonstrate.
And if the torso murders were part of the Ripper’s work, what other murders that Kent had passed over might end up being included. Where was the pattern?
For the first time since starting the case, Kent wasn’t sure he could meet that 11pm deadline.
* * *
Nicole approached the British Museum, its Neo Grecian façade grand and impressive. The British could be so ostentatious when they wanted to be. And she was more than okay with that.
Over the years, the museum had come under fire for not returning artifacts to the countries from which they came. The Rosetta Stone, as one example. Egypt had been fighting with them for ages, trying to force the return of the landmark discovery, with no success.
But with typical British superiority, the museum claimed that their stewardship of the pieces was indisputable, and that the artifacts were better off where they were. In theory, Nicole might disagree with their stance. But she’d always been more grounded in practical application, and it was hard to argue with the practical application here. There were over thirteen million pieces claimed by the British Museum. It was one of the most impressive collections in the world.
And Nicole was going to want to see all of it.
Especially because she may never get another chance. Besides the fact Kent was conveniently pre-occupied with the Ripper murders, when was that going to come along again? Within the year, she’d have another tiny human to take care of. One that probably wouldn’t appreciate strolling down the aisles of the British Museum for hours at a time.
That was an impossibility at the best of times, and right now, with her having wasted so much time on that corpse, it was not the best of times. The likelihood was that she wouldn’t be able to see more than a quarter. Hell, even that was overestimating, in all probability.
To be honest, the whole thing was a bit overwhelming.
Overwhelming… Nicole’s mind drifted back to the body tucked away in the cellar of the old Scotland Yard building. How was Kent going to deal with the present she had left him?
She shook her head. That wasn’t what she was here for. Besides, who was she kidding? Knowing her husband, Kent probably wouldn’t deal with it at all.
The museum was free to enter, with only some of the outside exhibits costing money, but Nicole threw some pound notes into the collection box and scooped up a map of the place from a stack beside the box. She wasn’t one to take such an amazing place like this for granted.
“Okay, so…” Nicole murmured to herself, staring up at the entrance toward which she was approaching. There were Ionic columns that stretched up to a triangular frieze above. The whole place smacked of fake antiquity, and while there was a part of Nicole that chuckled a bit at the pretention there, it was impossible to deny that it was impressive.
That, in a nutshell, was the British Empire. And while that dream of the colonies upon which the sun never set had finally gone down past the horizon, the remnants of that superiority still remained.
Nicole was jostled a bit by one of the other tourists. The man was clearly a foreigner, as the British were meticulous about maintaining their personal space.
The entryway opened up into the Great Court, a newer addition to the museum that had occurred back when all of the books and manuscripts that had been a part of the collections here had been moved over to the British Library. The Queen Elizabeth II Court had then been built, the largest covered square in Europe.
It was huge. The expanse of space stretched out and up, the ceiling a collection of triangular glass windows forming a curve that swooped up from the walls of the court and then back down toward the cylindrical reading room situated in the center.
Nicole gasped, her eyes wide. Even Kent, with his distaste for touristy things, would have been impressed with this. The shadows cast by the triangular frames played over her body as she moved into the space, the sounds from the crowd mingling and warping in the cavernous space.
Pulling out her map of the museum, Nicole realized that she was going to need a plan of attack. There was simply too much for her to just wander around. Peering into the middle of the court, where the reading room sat, she allowed herself to feel for the first time that day how tired her feet were. Time to sit for a moment. Just a moment, though.
As she moved toward the center of the court, her mind drifted back to the torso. There was no way it wasn’t connected to what Kent was working on. But how would that fit it to his timeline? There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason to it.
Nicole forced her attention away from the murder. That was not what she was here in London for. Not at all.
It was when she entered the reading room that the actual size of the court was made manifest. The court itself made the reading room appear small in the center, but once inside, it was clear how much space there was.
There was a circular array of counter space in the very center, with long rectangular tables radiating outward in a wagon-wheel fashion. People sat around at those tables reading, writing, and working on their laptops. For such a large space, it was remarkably silent. Just the hum of quiet whispering, causing the room to feel as if it were breathing somehow.
Moving toward a grouping of chairs, Nicole sat down and looked around, watching for a moment all the other people who had chosen to take a break inside this cylinder to read or rest. There was something powerful about this space that had been set aside for the public to come in to read. Around the walls, bookshelves were full to the brim with reading material enough for several lifetimes, even if she were to read around the clock.
Spreading out her map on the table in front of her, Nicole gazed over the many sections of the museum, trying to decide where her time would best be spent. It would take the rest of the day to even come close to what she wanted to see. She felt her irritation at her new husband mounting with each section she mentally crossed off her mental “to-see” list.
As she pondered the map, Nicole became aware of an older woman who had just seated herself a few chairs down from her, carrying a thick novel. It looked like it might be Jane Austen’s Emma. Was there a better cliché? The only thing needed to complete the picture would be a pair of reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
Almost as if conjured by the thought, the wo
man moved the book back and forth, apparently trying to focus on the page, and then placed a pair of spectacles on the bridge of her nose, from which hung a gossamer gold necklace. Priceless.
Becoming aware of the scrutiny, the older woman looked up at Nicole and smiled. Blushing, Nicole dropped her gaze, not wanting to intrude. But before she could even think about moving to another chair, the woman scooted over to the chair just to Nicole’s right side.
“Are you here on holiday, dear?” she asked, her accent the most polished and proper one Nicole had heard all day. It almost felt like she was being addressed by the Queen.
“That obvious?” Nicole answered, chagrined.
“Well, it wasn’t much of a puzzler, dear, not with that tee-shirt and the map of the museum.”
Oh, of course. Nicole blushed again, wondering what it was about this woman that made her feel both uncouth and perfectly comfortable all at once. It must be the combination of her posh accent and her grandmotherly air.
“Right,” Nicole said. “The tee-shirt might have been a mistake.”
“Not at all,” she responded, reaching out to pat Nicole’s arm with a gentle hand. “You’re young and beautiful. Why not show off a bit, I say.” The woman looked down at herself. “Get to be my age and they all stop looking, dear.”
“That might be nice, actually,” Nicole murmured, then realized what she had said. “I mean… no, that’s not--”
“Oh, now. You just stop it,” the woman chided her. “I know I’m still striking for my age. But once you’re past 50, men don’t see a woman, they see their mother. Or worse, their grandmother.” She shuddered, then paused and cocked her head at Nicole. “But what’s happened to you, my dear?”
For a moment, Nicole considered giving a polite excuse and slinking away. But there was something so soothing about this woman, that in spite of herself, Nicole found herself detailing her experiences today with her stalker. She left out any mention of the body, as that seemed a bit much to include at the moment.
After Nicole finished with her description of the lad in question, the older woman clucked her tongue. “I’m sure that must have been frightening.” Then her face brightened in a mischievous grin. “But I must say… You don’t know how much you’ll miss the attention, once you’re my age.”