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IT IS ALL so slow. All so fucking slow. Bishop barks orders at the uniforms, who arrive in dribs and drabs. It’s been a busy night in town, resources are sparse. The SOCOs are here, but the park is too big. He squints at his phone in the darkness, looking at the map: there are five paths in, numerous places this man could hide if he’s still here. And Adam doubts that very much.
The cordon is up, blue and white ribbons flapping in the freezing wind. Quinn gets off the phone, where she’s been relaying Adam’s orders back to the station.
“Scouring CCTV as we speak, Boss,” she tells him. Her shoulders are hunched, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her coat.
“Good. And the couple that found the body?” Adam asks.
“Fairly useless. Traumatized and tired. They’ve taken them back to do a formal statement, but preliminary questions seem to indicate they didn’t see anyone around.” Ellie looks over to where the body is still lying, now covered in a large blue plastic tent. “This guy will be obvious, right, Boss?”
Adam nods. He knows what she’s saying. From the state of the body, the offender would be covered in blood. Over his clothes, his hands, his face. He’d be noticed.
And what of his state of mind? Someone couldn’t do that to a human being—the stabbing, the damage, the sheer amount of violence—and walk away calmly. They’d be frantic, panicked, desperate.
Adam turns to Ellie. “Where would you go?” he asks.
Ellie looks at him, big green eyes disbelieving. “What? If I’d just brutally slaughtered a woman in a park?”
“Yes.”
Ellie frowns. “I guess I would go where I feel safe. Home, somewhere familiar.”
“Right.”
“Or. If I was screwed up in the head, and this was my thing …” Ellie stops for a moment. “I’d go looking for another victim.”
Adam frowns. “Let’s hope it’s the former.”
* * *
Adam sends Ellie and DC Lee back to the station. He stays at the park, watching Mags with her team. A slickly oiled machine, movements so familiar it seems almost choreographed. It brings Adam little relief. His toes are numb, his fingers painful with the cold; he masochistically half enjoys it, a penance as the bodies stack up around him.
A tent has been constructed around what’s left of the body. Adam walks across to the edge of the cordon, slowly puts on the white protective suit, gloves, and mask, and pushes up the flap.
The scene inside is strange. The blue polythene casts a surreal glow; Adam feels disconnected from what’s in front of him, numb from having seen so much devastation over the last few days. The blood looks black, the lights turning her skin to white rubber. Dr. Ross is kneeling next to the body while a SOCO takes swabs from under the woman’s fingernails.
“I don’t hold out much hope for that,” Ross says in a flat tone. “Our victim barely had time to blink.” He stands up, rolling his neck side to side and stretching before he faces Adam. “Two penetrative injuries to the back, then however you want to describe what happened to the front.”
Adam crouches down to the body, peering closely for the first time at the victim’s torso. The edges are torn and uneven, skin flaps wetly around the ragged gore.
“Do you think …” Adam feels his voice falter slightly and gathers himself before he speaks again. “Do you think this is the same perp?”
Ross nods grimly. “I hope so. You don’t want two people running around inflicting this sort of violence. Knife. Or something similar. I’ll see if I can narrow it down at the mortuary. We’ll take swabs, same as before. Hope the guy cut himself in the process. He wasn’t exactly being precise.”
But before Adam can thank him, he hears commotion from outside. Voices, shouting. People he recognizes. He ducks out of the tent and heads toward the noise.
Jamie’s standing at the edge of the cordon, Romilly by his side.
“Adam!” he shouts, desolate, when he sees him. “Is it her?”
“No. No, mate, it’s not.” Jamie’s body sags, and Romilly puts her arms around him. Adam called him the moment he made the confirmation, but Jamie seems reluctant to believe him. Adam sees press hovering at the edges of the cordon, and he moves them away.
“I was with Jamie,” Romilly explains. “When you phoned.”
“I told you not to come down here,” Adam replies. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“But it’s the same guy?”
“We think so, yes.”
