by Alex Pitt
When I’d woken that morning to hear someone breathing under the covers, I’d wondered for a split-second if it had all been a very long and very painful dream. Maybe she was lying next to me in bed, and we were about to make love and then get up and go about our day.
That’s how it used to be, but seeing April under the covers had reminded me once again of my mistakes. There was no excuse for infidelity, and doing it with someone she was so close to was horrible. There was no saving our marriage. Instead, I’d turned to drinking and smoking to try and ease the pain, but it hadn’t worked. I’d had plenty of women in my bed the past few years, but none of them could ever replace my wife.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” April asked, placing a finger under my chin and lifting my face up to lock eyes with me. She kissed my cheek, a long, wet, oddly satisfying kiss, and then looked in my irises, awaiting my answer.
“Nothing,” I muttered, untangling myself from her legs and moving away before she saw the single tear streaking down my face. “Please get dressed. I’ll drop you home.”
“Don’t bother with the tea,” she said, hopping down off the counter and pulling on her clothes. “And I can walk home, thanks. It’s not far from here.”
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble to run you back.”
“I’m fine,” she nodded. “Have a good day.”
She had finally put all of her clothes back on and pulled open the door to the bungalow, but I moved around to where she was standing and put a hand on her arm.
“I’m not saying this is going to happen again, but let me give you my number. Just in case, you know?”
I pulled a scrunched-up piece of paper out of my pocket and picked a pen up off the table, jotting my digits down. I handed it to her and she studied it for a moment, not sure whether to accept it. Then, she placed it in her pocket and smiled at me. She truly was a beauty.
“One more question,” I said, and she looked at me quizzically. “Where did we meet?”
There was no hesitation, none whatsoever.
“The strip club. I work there,” and she looked away quickly, afraid to lock eyes.
I laughed at this, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. I was disappointed. “So, I didn’t hook up with a prozzie, but I did hook up with a stripper?”
“No, you didn’t,” she snapped, anger in her eyes. “I’m a barmaid there. But I’m so used to guys thinking they can touch me and treat me any way they like, so I might as well be a stripper, or a bloody prostitute.” She paused for a moment, catching her breath. Then, “Thanks for the number.”
With that, she closed the door firmly behind her and I stood there for a few minutes, thinking things over, before finally returning to the kitchen. There, I made the cup of tea I’d been promising myself since I woke, and got dressed properly to head to the station, the image of April still burnt clearly into my brain.
Chapter Six
Becky
I hung up the phone, angry. Maybe part of it was the fact that I hadn’t slept all night, but I couldn’t believe Richard had gotten himself in such a mess, tangled up with a girl that he didn’t even know. I think I’d surprised him by using his first name, but it’s how I think of him in my head. He’s always Richard in here, and ‘Detective’ out there.
“Is he coming?” Davies asked, peering around the corner. I told him he was, and Davies nodded approval. “Good. I’m sure he’ll know what to make of this shit-show.” He paused for a second, studying the board with black and white photos and pins and string attached to it, then nodded once more and carried on down the corridor.
I’d decided I wasn’t going to tell Davies about the mess Richard had got himself in. It was quite comical to be honest, but it had nothing to do with the case. Davies would probably get annoyed with Rich which wouldn’t help the case at all, and I was determined to crack this one. I was determined to crack every case, but the horrific nature the girl had been left in made me even more anxious to find the killer.
I studied the board again, for the eight-thousandth time since the photos had been brought in last night. I wasn’t actually at the scene, and the first I heard about it was when Davies had brought the folder of photos into my office and slammed it down on the table, stating that all of the details were in there and that I wasn’t allowed to go home until I’d sorted it all out.
I didn’t know why the people who were actually at the case couldn’t try and work it out for themselves, but Davies is the one paying the bills, so I do what he tells me. Maybe he needed an expert, and I like to think I’m pretty good at what I do.
When morning came and I still had no answer, he told me to call the Detective. I knew who he meant when he said that. This would be the fifteenth case we’d given him. He was bloody brilliant at most things, but keeping his privates in his pants didn’t seem to be one of them.
The first photo was in the top left corner. It was a knife, and this was simple. It was the murder weapon. Strange why it had been left at the crime scene though. Wiped clean of finger prints, of course. The second photo was a trail of blood smeared along the wall. Next, another weapon, this time a pipe. Again, there were no fingerprints on it, but it was covered in blood. This linked to the knife and so a thin piece of white string was joining the two photos together.
Next, the victim, and this was the most crucial piece of the puzzle. As soon as Richard arrived, I’d ask Davies if we could go out there to examine her closer. She was a young girl by the name of Rachel, and she would have been extremely beautiful if it wasn’t for the blood smeared across her face, the two holes in her neck, and her deformed legs, looking as if they’d been run over.
In fact, I was pretty certain that they had been run over, because the final photo was of a car. A pretty shitty car, I think, but I can’t say that that’s my area of expertise. The car had blood on the bumper and an extremely large dent in it. It had hit something at full velocity, and the windshield was also broken. The glass was littered around the front tyres.
Now, if you take those five photos and examine them, it may seem like an ordinary murder case. Someone, perhaps a jealous lover, wanted to get rid of the girl, so he had killed her. But it wasn’t that simple. There were three weapons involved, the knife, the pole, and the car, but it was the last one that disturbed me the most. What had caused the dent? Why was all of the glass broken? And, more importantly, why had the killer felt the need to use three weapons to kill the girl? She didn’t look like she would have put up a fight, but something had happened in that disused garage last night. Something that had justified the use of all three devices, and I hoped the Detective would be able to figure it out for me.
There were also holes in her hands, one in her left, and one in her right. I didn’t know what this meant, but I supposed he must have used the knife there as well. I couldn’t see anything else in the photos that would have done that to her.
I was used to seeing corpses, but none that had been mutilated as badly as this one. It’s no wonder the nurses had panicked over her yesterday afternoon, rushing to the scene, only to find the dead body. They must have thought there was something they could have done to save her, and the story going around the police department was that they were driving so fast that they kept alarming pedestrians by skidding around the corners. I bet that gave the college kids a fright.
The Detective arrived a few minutes before nine, surprisingly early, and I let him into my office and suggested a cup of tea. He shook his head and I didn’t blame him. The pictures on the board were enough to make anyone’s stomach churn.
“It’s obvious what’s happened here,” the Detective said, after studying the photos for no more than a minute, a thoughtful hand rested on his chin.
“Is it?” I said, a dubious tone in my voice.
“Of course. Well, no not really, but let’s start with the obvious. She’s been stabbed twice in the neck,” he said, pointing to the photo. “It was done with a knife, right?”
“Yes, or another sharp object,�
�� I nodded.
“Trust me, Cooper, it was a knife. More specifically, it was this knife.” Rich pointed to the picture of the knife, tracing his finger along the 2D blade. “If you look closely, you can see fragments of skin on the blade that didn’t come off when he wiped it over. Just little flakes, here and there.”
“But why would he have left the knife behind?” I pressed. “It makes no sense.”
“Put yourself in his shoes for a second, Cooper. Why would you leave the murder weapon lying around?”
I pondered this for a moment, but I couldn’t come up with an answer, so I shrugged.
“To throw us off. It’s the only explanation. The killer, whoever he is, is confident. He’s left it there to show that he isn’t afraid. He doesn’t think we’ll be able to catch him, but oh-my-fucking-GOD, he’s got another thing coming.”
Rich turned away from the board and slammed his hands on the table as he spoke. He was clearly disgusted by the sight, just as I’d been, but I had a feeling it was about to get worse. In order to properly launch an investigation, we had to visit the crime scene. There was no other way around it.
Davies came in a few minutes later, to ask how we were getting on. I told him everything the Detective had said, and then the question came up of why the killer had run over the girl. The natural order of weapons to use in this situation would be the pole to knock her out, the knife to stab her neck, and then the car to run her over. But surely the pole and two stabs in the neck would have finished the girl off. There would be no surviving that, and the killer would have known she wouldn’t make it. So why run her over as well? It seemed a bit extreme. I voiced this to Richard, and he agreed with me.
“We’re gonna have to go out there, Davies. I trust your forensics team, but there may be something they missed. It can’t hurt to have another set of eyes on the scene, and it will help to put things into perspective.” Davies nodded and was about to leave, when Richard stopped him. “A word please? Outside?”
I was intrigued by this, and Davies held the door open for Richard and himself to leave. I could see them discussing something for a minute, really wishing I was a fly on the wall, and then the Detective came back into the office. He didn’t look happy at all.
“What was that about?” I demanded. If he had something to say, it could be said in front of me.
“Nothing. It’s just a theory I had, but I could be completely wrong. Shall we go?”
All this did was peak my interest some more, but I nodded and shuffled my way out of the room, throwing a jacket over my shoulders. Despite being the middle of May, I found that crime scenes could be eerily chilly, as if the ghost of the corpses were hanging over our heads, watching our every move.
We took Richards car to the scene, just the two of us. Davies could have come as well, but he tended to keep his nose out of the actual case work. He just liked to look important and tell people what to do.
I broke the silence after a while by asking, “What happened with that girl? The naked one?”
Richard grunted, and I’m not sure he wanted to talk about it. I was starting to regret bringing it up, deciding that the silence was better than this sharp, sincere, longing awkwardness.
Then he chuckled softly and said, “She works at the strip club. Trust me to end up with someone like that.”
“She’s a stripper?” I exclaimed, fighting the urge to laugh. It was difficult, and a thin smile crept into the corner of my lips.
“No, she’s not a stripper. She’s a barmaid.”
“Well, that’s alright then. Not that I have anything against strippers,” I added, completely serious. Anyone is entitled to do anything they want, providing it’s legal, and I wouldn’t deny having being down there once or twice in my life.
The journey wasn’t long, ten minutes at the most, but I was nervous. I got this way with most big cases, but the butterflies were really starting to come alive today. The murder had happened in a disused garage, tucked away on a quiet road. I think the killer had planned it so that no one would find the body for a while, but a man walking his dog in the countryside had heard the screaming and been to investigate. The killer had already fled and the girl was mortally wounded by the time he reached the site and phoned the ambulance, but he’d done everything he could have done.
There were some absolutely vile pieces of shit in the world, and the man who’d taken this girl’s life was one of them. I keep calling him a man, but he could be a woman for all we know. The thing that concerned me, the thing that I didn’t want to bring up but that I was sure everyone was thinking, was what if he strikes again? In my limited experience with murder investigations, it seemed that most murderers have just one person in mind to kill. They offed one person, and then left it at that. They were almost always caught, though, and many of them seemed to expect it. They hated someone so much that they would rather spend their life behind bars, than let their victim see another sunrise.
My instincts were telling me that this man would strike again. It was just a feeling I had, for leaving the weapons behind. This man, whoever he was, was playing us. I’d heard about past cases in which the killer left clues for the cops, and our killer this time had left the weapons lying around, which made me think I was right. He was playing us.
“Jesus Mary and fucking Joseph,” Richard said, as we passed the ‘crime scene’ banners and examined the girl’s body.
It was exactly how it looked in the photos, the girl mutilated, the blood smeared up the walls, and the weapons lying around on the floor. The car was also close to where we were standing, and the Detective went over to peer inside. It was quite-run down, and the leather seats were worn out, but it wasn’t dirty. It was surprisingly clean.
Richard spent half an hour looking around the building, studying the scene, scouting for any clues they may have missed. Then, he returned to where I was standing and gave a big sigh. I don’t think he’d found anything.
“Did anyone check the pockets?” he asked, addressing this to the two men standing a few feet away, dressed in white overalls, with clipboards in their hands.
One of the men shrugged, and the other shook his head.
“Come on, guys. Do your jobs, yeah?” he shouted at them, and it was a fair point. Checking the pockets was standard procedure.
The Detective drew a glove from his own pocket and slapped it on his right hand, not wanting to become mixed up in the evidence. Bending down, he grabbed the girl’s coat and rifled through the pockets. There was nothing in the first one, and a folded scrap of paper in the second.
I sighed, disappointed. I thought that was it. I thought we wouldn’t have a single lead on the case at all. Sure, we had the weapons, but they had been wiped clean and so we really had nothing at all to go on. Then, Richard unfolded the piece of paper. It was an advert for the Venus Nightclub.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me…” I heard Richard mutter, and I had to stifle a laugh, this being a professional case and all.
“What’s the matter, honey?” I joked, and Richard gave me a stern look. He didn’t find this funny.
With no other leads to go on, visiting the Venus club was our only option. I guess he got to see his naked stripper-that-wasn’t-really-a-stripper again so soon. This clearly wasn’t a prospect he was happy in, and he crumpled the page in his hand.
“Hey, that’s evidence. You can’t do that,” I told him. He didn’t care. “Besides, what’s wrong with seeing her again? You clearly thought she was OK last night.”
“Nothing’s wrong with seeing her. In fact, I gave her my number. I just thought that maybe we’d leave it a couple of weeks before coming face-to-face again. Get rid of some of the awkwardness.”
“This is going to be brilliant,” I laughed at last, not being able to keep it in anymore.
“Hold it together, Cooper. We’re on a case, yeah? My personal life should never cross into this.”
“You’re right,” I said, ceasing my laugh but unable to
stop a small smile from seeping through.
We were just about to head back to the car, when we heard gravel outside the building and the screech of a vehicle coming to a stop. Just as a door slammed, Richard and I jogged outside to see who had interrupted us, figuring it was a passing tourist, in which case we would tell them to clear off.
It wasn’t a tourist. It was Davies. And he was the bearer of bad news.
“Alright, Cooper? Detective?” And we nodded roughly. “I needed to speak to you both urgently. This had to be done face-to-face, and I didn’t know if you’d start chasing any leads that you found here.”
“Yes, we-” Cooper started, but Davies held up a firm hand, silencing her.
“I’ve just got the reports back, Detective. You know the ones you wanted me to chase up?”
I could see in his eyes that he knew where this was going, and I didn’t think it would be peaches and roses. He looked deadly worried, and that scared me.
“There was a reason why this girl’s legs were run over. There is a probable reason why the murder happened in the first place. I can’t be sure of that, but this definitely points it in that direction. The young girl, Rachel,” and he paused a for a second. Just a second. “She was six weeks pregnant.”
And that made my face fall in utter, abysmal horror.
Chapter Seven
There was a smash. Then a crash. Then a flood. The water came pouring down the alleyways, tearing through the cracks, covering everything and everyone in its path. They were all completely soaked, and it was about to get worse. Before entering the dark cavern, the strangest thing happened. It started snowing. And then, just as all hope seemed lost, a strange device fell from the sky and scooped them up. They had been saved, they thought. And that hope lasted for about half a second, before they entered into the dark abyss and got crushed up until there was nothing left of them.