Disclaimer: I do not own Waking the Dead or any of its episodes or characters. I'm just borrowing them for a trip down the pub- I promise I'll return them (sober!) in time for work tomorrow.
Spoilers: Let's say up to and including series 6, just to be on the safe side
Rating: T
Synopsis: When SO19 mess up an operation and raid the wrong lock-up, an abandoned freezer provides the CCU with a particularly disturbing case. Warning- contains potentially disturbing concepts and themes.
Notes: My first WtD case-fic, so constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Also, please let me know if you think I've rated it correctly.
Warning: This fic deals with some gruesome descriptions and upsetting concepts, and will possibly include scenes of a violent nature. If this bothers you, read at your own discretion. If you're squeamish, you might want to look away in this part.
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Detective Superintendent Rachel Bennet inserted the master key into the lock-up door, making sure her team were covering her. A brave woman, even she felt her mouth go dry at the thought that were anyone in the lock-up, they were most likely armed to the teeth and dangerous as hell. The lock clicked open, and she tucked the key into a pocket and switched her gun back into her right hand. She glanced round at the team, and nodded.
"Now!"
Swinging the door rapidly open, she yelled authoritatively as she did so:
"Armed police! Stay where you are! Don't move!"
To her relief the lock-up was empty. Almost literally- the only thing in it was a lonely freezer stood over by the back wall.
"Collins, reckon you can make a freezer into a bomb?" she demanded of her sergeant, who raised an eyebrow.
"Not when it's plugged in and working, Ma'am," he replied. "All that ice, the explosives would never work."
"Are you sure this is the right one?" Detective Constable Burns cut in suddenly. "Was it the third along from the left or from the right? I thought it was the third from the left, but this is the third from the right."
DSI Bennet turned slowly.
"Christ, Sophie, you're right! We're in the wrong one!" She glanced at the freezer again.
"Ma'am? Shouldn't we be moving next door?" Collins questioned, his face creased into a frown.
Bennet nodded slowly. "Yes, I suppose we'd better."
The trio trooped outside to join the rest of the unit and repeated the same drill with the adjacent lock-up. This one was also empty of people; but the amount of classified chemicals lying around proved it to be the right one this time. The junior officers of the unit immediately set to work combing the scene. DS Collins, meanwhile, stared at his boss. She seemed distracted, and it wasn't like her at all. Usually she was first there to start accumulating evidence.
"Anything the matter?" he enquired quietly.
Bennet frowned. "Neil, I'm just going to pop back to the lock-up next door. I'm convinced there's something fishy about it. Who keeps a freezer- just one freezer- in a lock-up, and keeps it running?"
Collins nodded in understanding. "Alright. I'll keep an eye on this lot."
The rest of the unit exchanged curious glances, but said nothing as their boss quit the lock-up. They thought nothing more of the matter until a shocked exclamation ripped through the quiet air a few moments later.
"Shit!"
Collins was the first to move, dashing next door like lightning. In the adjacent lock-up he found his boss staring into the open freezer- which contained miscellaneous chunks of what looked like human flesh.
~ * ~ * ~
"So what is this case?" DI Spencer Jordan demanded, staring around at the scene. It was a jumble of police officers. A team of forensic officers stood patiently waiting by their van. In the third lock-up from the left, the SO19 officers were calmly continuing with their own task under the watchful eye of DS Neil Collins. In the third lock-up from the right, DSI Rachel Bennet of SO19 stood in the doorway talking to DSI Peter Boyd of the Cold Case Unit. Inside the lock-up, Dr Eve Lockheart was giving the freezer a preliminary examination, watched by DC Stella Goodman. Dr Grace Foley, the CCU's Forensic Pathologist, stood a little way into the lock-up, listening to the conversation that Boyd now broke off in order to answer his DI.
"It's a body in a freezer, Spence. Though calling it a body is being generous- it's a jigsaw of human flesh. And there are pieces missing."
"Boyd!" Grace protested, frowning distastefully at Boyd's candid explanation.
Spencer glanced at the freezer and gave a low whistle.
"Now that's what I call a cold case!" He turned back to Boyd, ignoring Grace's protest of "Spence!"
"I take it it's an old jigsaw then?"
Boyd shrugged. "Eve?"
Eve turned round from her preliminary examination. "Hard to tell, Boyd. She wasn't killed yesterday, anyhow. Rough guess is she's been dead between ten and twenty years. Probably not less than twelve- this is a Mason and King freezer, and the company folded in 1997."
"But that doesn't mean she was killed before 1997," Stella protested. "The age of the freezer should have nothing to do with the age of the body."
"True," Eve agreed. "But let's say you want to hide and preserve a body. You're not going to use an old freezer if you can possibly help it- there's a greater chance of it breaking. You'd try to use as new a freezer as possible."
The DC shrugged. "Ok, you have a point there. You are our expert on preserving bodies..."
Ignoring the jibe about her body farm, Eve stood up and shut the freezer.
"Okay, I want this back at the lab, Boyd. Just take the whole thing, I'll take her out and get a proper look there."
"Ok," Boyd nodded, turning to beckon the forensic officers. Something on the front of the freezer caught Spence's eye.
"What's that?"
A frown crossed Eve's brow and she opened her mouth, but it was DSI Rachel Bennet that answered.
"It's a one-way ticket to Hell."
~ * ~ * ~
"Right, so far we have... One deserted lock-up in Lewisham..." Boyd scribbled the fact down on the glass board.
"One Mason and King freezer; built circa 1992, according to our resident freezer expert." This landed beneath the lock-up on the glass.
"One mutilated body, female, missing a few key parts. We'll find out exactly which when Eve's got her laid out on a slab." He slapped a picture of the open freezer onto the board. Grace winced. It was not a pretty sight. Oblivious to this, Boyd continued his summing up.
"And one single direction train ticket to Hell." He wrote this on the board beneath the freezer, then turned to stare at the team.
"Anyone know where Hell is?"
Spence raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, a few miles south of purgatory," he muttered sardonically. Stella glared at him.
"It's in Norway."
"It's in Norway..." Boyd repeated to himself as he added the word 'Norway' in block capitals to his note on the ticket.
"So," he continued, "we have one single-direction train ticket to Hell- which is in Norway- purchased on the 18th of June 1993. It was unclipped- so it hasn't been used. This looks like one for you, Grace- why does a killer stick an unused train ticket to Hell on the freezer where he's stored a body?"
Grace considered. "Well there could be several reasons. It smacks of a personal knowledge of the victim- he might know of some wrongdoing on her part, and be trying to direct her soul to hell. He might be sending a message to whoever finds her, telling them to leave well alone, or 'go to hell', if you like. It could be a place of special significance to him, maybe somewhere that they've visited together. Maybe they were supposed to go there together and she let him down. Maybe it's a direction to where the rest of her body is."
Boyd looked long and hard at his psychologist. "Or maybe he's just a nutter who sees it all as some kind of sick joke."
Wincing again at Boyd's candid speech, Grace nodded. "Or maybe he's just a psychopath who sees it all as some kind of sick joke. I don't know, Boyd. A one-way ticket to Hell is not a lot to go on. I can probably tell you more when Eve gets back to us about the body."
As if on cue, the phone on Stella's desk rang. She hastened to answer.
"Hello?... Oh, hi Eve. You're ready to talk us through the body?... Alright, we'll be right there." She put the phone down.
"Eve's ready for us to..." she started, stopping when she realised she was talking to empty air. Sighing to herself, the young DC hurried to the lab.
~ * ~ * ~
In the lab, Eve stared with the slightest hint of satisfaction at her handiwork. The body was laid out on a table, and it was clear to see which bits were missing. She just hoped that the others had strong stomachs.
"Ok, what you got, Eve?" Boyd's demand tore her from her thoughts, and she wandered back to the table as she waited for Stella to arrive. As the young redhead stepped through into the lab, pulling on a white coat as she walked, Eve began her explanation, her sharp eyes not missing Grace's unconscious step closer to Boyd as she flinched at the sight of the remains on the table before her.
"Ok, what we have is a young woman in her early twenties; killed around twelve to seventeen years ago. No sign of sexual assault. Almost certainly murdered- for starters, you don't hack up the body of someone who's died of natural causes or by accident, not unless you're a psychopath. Cause of death- difficult to determine. No bullet entry or exit wounds, no visible sign of poison. Most likely instance is she bled to death, and was therefore killed with the blade used to dissect her. It's a semi-professional job, done with a sharp blade, non-serrated. As you can see, her head, feet and hands have been cut off, and the appendages are missing. All her organs are present, save one- her heart. And that's the gruesome bit. I couldn't say for sure until I've done a few more tests, but I'd say her heart was cut out when she was still alive."
It was quite possibly the first time Eve had ever seen Boyd rendered speechless. In spite of the information she had just given them, it surprised her. What didn't was the fact that Grace had gravitated so close to Boyd the pair were almost touching. The psychologist was the first to speak.
"That's horrible. The poor, poor girl."
"Who would do a thing like that?" Stella asked. She looked rather pale.
"Are we moving on DNA yet, Eve?" Boyd demanded. The pathologist could sense that the DSI, and indeed the whole team, shared her eagerness to find out who was responsible for the death of this poor girl.
"Of course, it's being processed as we speak. But you know it takes 24 hours, Boyd- I can't make the machine work any faster. So don't ask me again at least until tomorrow, alright? I'll let you know when I get anything else."
This was clearly a dismissal, and the rest of the team trooped back to the main office, Spence and Stella leading the way. They both looked quiet and subdued- it was not a nice case to be working on. Boyd glanced down at Grace as the profiler walked mutely by his side. He'd sensed her moving closer as they looked at the body, and recognised her distress. Mentally he resolved to flout the unit's guidelines and not stick up any pictures of the body. The case was upsetting enough without having to look at that every day.
"You ok?" he murmured as the door to the main office swung shut behind Spence and Stella. Grace looked up at him in mild astonishment, touched by his unexpected concern. She tried a laugh. It was undeniably strained.
"I'll live. Unlike that poor girl."
Knowing exactly how she felt, Boyd pushed open the door to the main office just in time to here Spence ask the same question of Stella, and see the redhead nod slowly. 'Time to get to work', the DSI thought grimly.
"Right, Spence, trace the owner of that lock-up. I want a name and an address, and I want to know how long they've been renting it. Stella, go through missing persons from 1991 to 1997- make a list of all the women in their early twenties."
Stella gasped. "What, you want me to look through seven years of missing persons, Sir?"
Boyd nodded calmly. "Yep. That train ticket isn't going to get us anywhere right now, so the lock-up and what Eve's told us about the body are all we have to go on so far. Spence's checking out the lock-up, so you can look at missing persons. Got a problem with that?"
Stella looked sulky. "No, Sir."
"Good. Get on with it then. Grace, start thinking about what kind of nutter chops his victims up and sticks train tickets on freezers." He got up and headed for his office. The other three set to work without delay, sensing that this was not the time to cross Boyd. The atmosphere in the office was bleak.