The Art of Dying

by Amy Cross

  It's fear. I'm scared because I know what I have to do next.

  Chapter Four

  Laura

  “This case is already getting a lot of media interest,” Halveston says as we make our way toward my office. “All the news channels are covering it and we're already getting requests for comment.”

  “People are sharing videos via social media sites,” Tricia adds. “The body was left in just about the most public place in all of London, almost as if the killer wanted it to go viral. Which, to be fair, might well be the case. We're going to hit the six-hour mark soon and we need something to offer the press.”

  “The six-hour mark?” I ask.

  “Once a story has been top of the headlines for six hours,” she continues, “we need to be able to offer something new to the news channels, or they'll start questioning whether we're making any progress. It's mainly because they struggle to endlessly recycle the same bullshit for too much longer than that. Can you imagine how much easier our jobs would be if the news was just on a couple of times a day, like it was in the past?”

  “Six hours?” I reply. “That doesn't seem like -”

  “Hold up,” Halveston says, as we stop for a moment. “I'm not going to have this case driven by the demands of a bunch of reporters.” He turns to me. “You're on a real roll, Laura. Since the Longhouse murders a year ago, you've managed to get back on track as this department's rising star. That's been great, but what I need from you here is an extra push. This is the first time you've had a really high-profile case since Natasha Simonsen and Daniel Gregory, so the spotlight's on you. I know you won't let me down, but I need you to learn from past mistakes and pull out all the stops.”

  “Absolutely,” I reply, even though I can already feel the dead weight of pressure in my chest.

  “How's the autopsy coming along?” he asks.

  “I'm on my way down there now,” I tell him. “I want to be present when Dr. Marshall gets to work. We still don't know exactly how many bodies are stitched together, but it's at least four and I'm expecting there'll be more.”

  “Any luck identifying any of them?”

  “It's early days, but I'm already getting a team together to go through the Missing Persons Database with a fine-toothed comb. We might not identify them all on the first sweep, but we have to be able to get a few.”

  “Keep me up to date,” he replies. “It seems like you're already on top of this, but I want to know every lead you follow. No surprises, please. Even if it's bad news, I want to be warned in advance. And now, if you don't mind, I have to go and talk to my boss.”

  As he walks away, I take a deep breath and try to mentally reset myself. I know he's trying to help, but Halveston never fails to set me on edge, even when he's trying to give me more confidence. He always seems to go out of his way to tell me that he trusts me, which only makes me feel that he doesn't. I can't shake the feeling that behind the scenes he constantly has to defend me when he's talking to other people in the department.

  “You okay?” Tricia asks.

  I nod.

  “It's like the Daniel Gregory case all over again,” she continues. “High-profile, a media sensation, and all the pressure on your shoulders...” She pauses. “Sorry, that probably isn't really helping, is it?”

  I smile politely.

  “If you need a drink,” she adds, “a bunch of us are -”

  “I'll be fine,” I reply, turning and heading toward the elevators. The truth, though, is that I'm starting to panic. Tricia's right when she says that this is like the Daniel Gregory case. The problem is, the Daniel Gregory case was a disaster and I screwed it up royally. It's taken me a year to regain my confidence and the respect of other people around here, and now there's nowhere left to hide. If I mess things up again, I'm out of here.

  ***

  “I've seen some sights over the years,” Tim says as we stand in the exam room, “but this...”

  He doesn't finish the sentence, but I know exactly what he means.

  On the table in front of us, the body has finally been cut out of the ill-fitting suit it was wearing, and the full extent of the horror is plain for us to see: the head of a white male has been stitched onto the torso of a black female, while two completely different arms have been attached at the shoulders; similarly, the legs and feet don't match, and it's clear that this corpse is in fact a patchwork creation, made up of body parts from at least eight different victims, all held together with thick metal staples. It's a nightmarish sight, like Frankenstein's monster but real.

  “It's almost...” he starts to say.

  I wait for him to finish.

  “No,” he says quietly. “Forget it.”

  “Almost what?” I ask.

  “You'll think I'm weird.”

  “I already think you're weird.”

  “I was just gonna say...” He pauses again. “It's almost beautiful, in a sick and grotesque kind of way. It's like something from a horror movie.”

  “I wouldn't call this beautiful,” I reply, staring at the thick, stitched-together wound that runs down the front of the torso. “Whoever did this, I think we're dealing with a very disturbed individual. These eight people weren't murdered because of anything they'd done. They were murdered because the killer simply needed bits of their bodies for some kind of sick project. It's almost as if he or she just saw these people as spare parts.”

  “You getting anywhere with the surveillance footage from Trafalgar Square?”

  “It's being brought in,” I tell him. “I refuse to believe that someone could get this thing up on the plinth without being spotted. It must have been done at night, but still...”

  We stand in silence for a moment. It's almost as if, in the absence of religion, we nevertheless both feel the need to somehow mark the moment.

  “So are you going to get started?” I ask eventually.

  “Let's see what we're dealing with,” he replies, making his way over to the counter and selecting a scalpel before heading to the table. “There's already an incision running vertically down the chest. There are staples, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why the killer would have made this particular incision. I mean, obviously he had to cut and stitch the edges where he attached different body parts to each other, but the chest incision is different. It stands out, don't you think? Compared to everything else, it seems almost unnecessary. Almost like he wanted to help me get the autopsy started.”

  “Open it up,” I reply uneasily.

  Using the scalpel, he starts cutting each of the staples loose. It's a slow process and each staple makes a clicking sound as it's removed, but I can't stop staring. Lately, I feel as if I'm drawn more and more to watch such things. Even as the lead detective on this case, I could be up in my office right now, and I could restrict myself to just seeing photographs of the autopsy. But no, here I am, down on the shop floor. At first I thought I was simply becoming desensitized, but now I've started to think that it's something else: it's almost as if I actually want to watch, as if I find the entire process fascinating. Taking a step forward, I can't help but keep my gaze focused on the staples as they're torn out of the corpse's thick, leathery skin. Damn it, there's even a part of me that wants to ask Tim if I can do the honors.

  Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me.

  “Okay,” he says once the last of the staples has been removed. “Want to make a bet about the cause of death? There are no obvious injuries on any of the body parts, but the torso should offer some clues.” He slips his fingers into the wound and starts pulling it apart, although the edges are partially stuck together. “It won't surprise you to learn,” he continues, “that there's no evidence of healing here. The torso had been dead for quite some time when it was opened up, and then it was re-sealed. You'll also note that the work is quite neat and tidy. Not surgically neat, but this was clearly done by someone who cared about the appearance of the finished project.”

  He pulls the skin apart to
reveal the rib-cage.

  “Look here,” he continues, pointing at part of the bone. “The killer broke the ribs and then put them back in place. He must have wanted access to the cavity for some reason. Maybe he took the heart or another organ. If we're dealing with someone who takes trophies, it'll be very useful to see exactly how they were removed. There are a million different ways to cut out a heart, for example, and they each say something about the person who was wielding the scalpel. Can you fetch the saw from over there?”

  I make my way over to the bench and find that there are half a dozen different saws, each a slightly different size and shape.

  “Which one?” I ask.

  “The one with -”

  I wait for him to finish. After a few seconds, I turn to see that he's staring at the ribs with a strangely blank on his face, and he suddenly looks noticeably pale.

  “Tim? Which one?”

  He opens his mouth, but no words come out. It's almost as if he's frozen in place. In all the years I've known Tim Marshall, I've never seen him like this.

  “Tim?”

  Silence.

  Making my way back over to him, I hold the saw out for him, but he doesn't even seem to notice. Just as I'm about to ask what's wrong, he takes a step back, almost knocking one of the trolleys over in the process. A metal tray crashes to the ground, spilling an assortment of metal objects all over the floor.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, before looking down at the ribs. At first I don't see anything unusual, but after a moment I realize that I can see something deeper, something beneath the ribs.

  Telling myself that it can't be what it looks like, I lean closer.

  Staring back at me, trapped inside the corpse's rib-cage, there's the face of a little boy, his eyes wide with terror.

  Chapter Five

  Ophelia

  Trying to ignore the sense of fear in my chest, I lean over the railing and stare down at the water below. I don't really know what I was expecting to see, but I need to scope out the area properly before I implement the final part of today's plan.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a small stone and start attaching a length of string around its narrowest part. It takes a moment, but finally I'm ready and I dangle the stone over the edge and lower it to the water's surface far below the railing. The drop looks to be about ten feet, but I need to be absolutely certain since even the slightest error in my calculations could be catastrophic.

  As soon as the stone has reached the water, I make a mark on the string and then pull it back up. Once I've measured the height of the railing above the water's surface, I find that it's exactly 10.5 feet, which is still within the acceptable range. I scribble a few extra calculations in my notebook, but after a moment I become aware of footsteps coming closer. Looking up, my heart skips a beat as I see that I've attracted the attention of two police patrol officers.

  “You okay here, love?” one of them asks.

  “Yeah,” I reply, trying not to seem suspicious. I always get tense whenever I have to talk to the police, and as I gather my stuff up I can tell that they're curious about what I'm doing. Bored police are the worst type of police, because they tend to ask a lot of dumb questions. Sometimes I think that there must be something about me that attracts their attention.

  “Can I ask what exactly you're up to?” he asks.

  “Not much.”

  I turn to leave, but he puts a hand out and stops me. As soon as I feel his touch, I instinctively pull away.

  “I'm going to have to ask you to tell me what you're doing,” he continues.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Under the powers of the Terrorism Act, I'm entitled to -”

  “Terrorism Act?” I reply, genuinely shocked that he's trying to pull this line on me. “Seriously, do I look like a terrorist to you?”

  “I don't know what a terrorist looks like,” he replies humorlessly. “Besides, this bridge is part of the city's infrastructure, which means that it's a viable target.”

  “It's a shitty old bridge that no-one cares about,” I tell him.

  “I'm not going to ask you again,” he replies. “You can either tell me what you're doing, or you can come to the station and sit in a cell while you reconsider your decision.”

  “I was measuring it,” I tell him.

  He raises a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Online sources gave its height as 10.4 feet,” I continue, “but I measured it and given the current height of the river, it's actually 10.5 feet. I needed to know for certain.”

  “And why's that?”

  “Because it was bugging me.”

  He stares at me, clearly not buying my explanation. My best bet in this kind of situation is just to hope that he writes me off as being weird but harmless. It's an act that I've perfected over the years.

  “Come on,” the other officer says after a moment, “she's just some homeless kid.”

  “You got anywhere to stay tonight, love?” his colleague asks.

  I nod.

  “Where?”

  “A shelter,” I lie.

  “See that you get there, okay?” he continues. “It's gonna be a cold one. Wouldn't wanna find you shivering on some park bench, would we?”

  “I wouldn't like that either,” I tell him, figuring that I might as well add some politeness to the mix. “Thank you very much for your concern, but I'll be fine.”

  Turning, I walk away, and this time he doesn't stop me. My heart's racing, but fortunately it's starting to look as if they've decided that I'm not worth the bother. By the time I get to the street, I allow myself to glance over my shoulder, and I see that they've already moved on. Breathing a sigh of relief, I open my notebook and take another look at my calculations. I read them a few times over before realizing that I'm just delaying the inevitable.

  All my preparations are complete.

  It's party time.

  Chapter Six

  Laura

  “Are you sure you want to be here for this?” asks Dr. Maitland, the relief medical examiner, as he reaches into the chest cavity.

  “Sure,” I tell him, forcing myself to stay calm. “Let's just get it over with.”

  Without replying, he puts both his hands into the cavity and works for a moment to get the child's body free. Finally, slowly, he lifts the head and shoulders out, causing a creaking, cracking sound in the process as the dead child is raised from its macabre womb. With his eyes and mouth wide open, the boy was clearly terrified when he died, and as he emerges into the bright light of the lab, it becomes clear that the child's skin has turned a kind of pale cream color, probably from being jammed so tight into another decaying corpse. Part of me wants to turn and walk out, but I know I have to stay.

  “I don't mind telling you,” Maitland continues, “that in all my years in this job, I have never seen anything as horrific as this.” He pauses for a moment. “Do you happen to know how Dr. Marshall is doing?”

  “I think he's still getting some air,” I reply, even though I know that it's more serious than that. Tim ran out of the exam room a while back, and Maitland had to step in and take his place.

  “This boy was seven or eight years old,” Maitland explains. “I don't see any obvious cause of death, but...” He lifts the dead child a little further and then, as he moves around behind him, he pauses. “Scratch that,” he adds. “There's a knife wound in the lower back. Looks like several entry points. Whoever did this, Laura, they stabbed a child in the back.”

  “And then stuffed him in a suit made of other corpses,” I reply.

  “It's inventive,” Maitland mutters. “Seems pretty symbolic, too, so I imagine it was carefully planned. The child was returned to a womb inside a body that has literally been sewn together from other corpses, both male and female. I mean, there are plenty of different ways to interpret this, aren't there? The psych team's going to have a field day.”

  “Children don't just go missing without anyone noticing,” I reply. “Get me
all the details you can on him as soon as possible, and I'll run him through the databases. And then I need you to start picking open the other body-parts and see what we can learn about them. The rest of the victims' bodies must be out there somewhere, and...” I pause as I realize that this whole situation feels completely unreal, as if I've wandered into the middle of some kind of grotesque medieval scene. “Just get me every detail you can,” I continue. “Whoever did this, I want them in a cell within twenty-four hours.”

  “This one's going to go down in the history books,” Maitland replies, still holding the dead child up. “London has always been a macabre city, Laura, but even so... This one is definitely not going to be forgotten in a hurry.”

  ***

  “How's he doing?” Tricia asks as she comes to join me in the corridor. In the distance, Tim can be heard still throwing up in one of the nearby bathrooms.

  “About how you'd expect,” I reply, “for someone who just found a dead child stuffed inside a bunch of other body parts.”

  “We live in a sick world,” she mutters. “You got a photo?”

  “Sorry,” I reply through gritted teeth.

  “So how exactly -”

  “It was a young male,” I continue, having already anticipated the question, “around seven or eight years old. His body was intact, although a few of his bones had been broken in order to squeeze him into such a tight space. The legs of the main corpse had been hollowed out, and the boy's legs had been pushed down into them like a glove. The rest of the boy's body was squeezed inside the torso, and his face was staring out between the ribs.”

  We sit in silence for a moment, before Tim starts vomiting again in the distance.

  “I've never heard him do that before,” Tricia says eventually. “I thought that guy had guts of steel. I mean, he's always cracking jokes.”

  “I think this time might be different,” I point out. “It's a kid, for one thing, and for another...” I pause as I think back to those dead eyes, staring up at me from behind the ribs. “You didn't see it,” I add. “It was like something from the worst nightmare you could ever experience.”