Chapter Twenty One

Detective Luke Sutton opened his eyes. His head was pounding and his mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton wool. He moved his head slowly from side to side and winced as his brain made a bungee leap inside his skull. Blearily he tried to focus on the bedside clock but gave up after a few seconds as the digits all blurred into one red light. He thought of getting up but his eyes began to close again. Soon he was fast asleep.

When he opened his eyes for the second time he looked at the clock again.

“Fuck!” he swore loudly, then froze as he felt movement in the bed next to him.

As quickly as his hangover would allow him, he turned over to a mass of platinum blonde hair and the evenings events rushed back.
‘Oh shit, Veronica…’ he thought, biting back a groan. Although Veronica wasn’t a suspect per se as no body had been found, there was an unwritten rule that you didn’t get involved with anyone on a case, not until after the case, and sometimes not even then.

He berated himself as he pushed back the quilt cover and swung his legs out of bed quietly, so as to not wake up Sleeping Beauty.

His phone started to vibrate loudly from it’s place on the wooden bedside table and he lunged for it, hissing at it to be quiet.

He grimaced as he looked at the message

Sutton, get your ass to the morgue asap. Another body has been found. CP

Oh was he in the shit or what? A text message from Captain Philips. He dressed in haste and crept out of the gothic crypt otherwise known as Veronica’s flat. He snicked the lock shut quietly. Veronica turned over in her sleep and slept on.


This was the part of the job he hated the most. Looking at the sad remains of once vibrant people, though looking at the track marks and grey puffed skin of the latest victim, Luke was sure she hadn’t been that vibrant in life. She lay naked under a sheet on a metal gurney, the bottom of which was moulded in order to catch the blood. The ‘V’ incision at the top of her chest indicated that the autopsy had already taken place but he wrinkled his nose to indicate he could still smell the rankness of the room.

“So Doc, what do we have?” he asked, clearing his throat to try and dislodge the stink of death that coated the back of his throat.

“You’re late, so I started without you,” Doctor Benson peered at the younger man over his half moon glasses, a wisp of greying hair peering out from under his surgical hat, “Female, late teens to early twenties, undernourished. The track marks would indicate some form of IV drug abuse, possibly heroin but the tox screen will tell us which drug. I’ve sent the samples off to the lab already.”
“Anything on cause of death?” Luke asked, bristling slightly at the rebuke on his lateness.

“Yes.” Dr Benson replied, pulling down the sheet.

Luke tried to look dispassionately, like a consummate professional as he viewed the malnourished, skeletally thin young woman, laid out on the slab, but couldn’t. Four slashes adorned her torso. He sighed. Another Slasher victim.

“Ah, the slash marks. Nasty yes, but not the cause of death, oh and they were inflicted pre-mortem so she would’ve felt every cut, poor thing.” Dr Benson looked at the young woman with a tenderness that Luke had never seen before.

“She reminds me of my grand daughter.”

Luke remained silent to give the old man a moment to recover.

“Anyway, as I was saying, the slash marks are not the cause of death.”

“then what is?”

“Patience, Luke patience. I’m getting to it.” the older man replied.

He bent over the body and lifting her left arm up, pointed to a long thin line along the side of the torso.

“That is your cause of death. A sharp thin blade into the liver. She would’ve bled out in minutes and the one thing about the liver is, if it’s cut it doesn’t stop bleeding, it has no clotting abilities. Even if she had been rushed into surgery there’s a good chance that she wouldn’t have been saved.”

“Any ideas on the murder weapon?” Luke asked, intrigued, in spite of himself.

“A long thin blade. A stiletto or a scalpel at a push, but I’ll tell you, this guy? He’s had medical training. It takes training to find the liver on the first try.”

“Have you got her belongings? We need to ID her.”

“Over there.” Benson indicated a small, sad pile of manky looking clothing.

Luke took a deep breath and rummaged through the smelly clothes. This was his second most hated job, rummaging through dead clothes. He gingerly pulled out a grubby canvas wallet and opened it carefully, not sure what he was going to find inside. Back when he’d been a rookie he’d opened a purse to find three used condoms and a used tampax. Since then he’d always been careful.

He pulled out a tattered, bent up library card with a faded name scrawled on the back. He peered at it and could just make out a name of sorts. Johnston…something Johnston…Miranda…no, maybe Matilda…no that wasn’t right, that was an e after the M. Melinda? Melissa?

Luke had a sudden light bulb moment. He looked back at the sad remains of the young woman. The junkie he’d interviewed on his missing persons case. Luke didn’t believe in co-incidences. He’d interviewed her about one case and then she turns up dead, in another case. But what was it that connected the two?