Loved by Mr. Night

Chapter 8

Adriel said,” The trouble with all this is we know what he does and how he does it but we don’t know why he does it. We have not got the first clue to why he does any of these murders, and even who this is. We need some kind of picture in our minds of this man. What kind of man is this? What is his age? What kind of race does he belong to? What is the age group…A profile in some way to narrow down what we are searching for. Is he educated? Is he a professional man? Is he married? Does he have s****l or psychological problems? He kills only at weekends, does that mean he is a working professional? Does he have family with who he is engaged all through out the week?”

He remembered his father’s counsel when he was younger.

The answer always lies in the detail.

And Aria also said one thing which came back to him,” It is in the detail that you will find the devil.” But right now he could not think about her. Thinking about Aria was only going to make him lose focus. There were ot a lot of things in this world which could make him lose his focus but it seemed like the gorgeous dark-haired woman was one of them.

“He is clever,” Adriel went on.” All these girls advertised on the personal columns of their magazines. They all gave their email addresses and their cellphone numbers. But he never mailed them. We would have found those mails on the girls’ computers and then we would have back tracked our way to him. He was aware of that. And he knew that we could check the mobile phone records. That’s why the only calls that he made were from those prepaid sim cards which could be trashed at any point of time. He is one step ahead of us every step.”

They did not have a single eye-witness. Adriel was certain that the killer had not chosen the areas where he killed by chance. He must have been aware that he was at a strategically far better chance in the places where there would be no CCTV cameras. It was an area with four-star and five-star bars and hotels and lobbies. It had a transient population of embassy workers and tourists.

The murderer probably met his victims in the lobbies where people were coming and going all the time and it was not going to be possible for them to identify him if he was careful. Losing cameras was a very easy task, that too for the people who knew how to do it. Moreover the girls would have felt comfortable with him meeting at a public place and then going somewhere else. And no one would think twice about a couple making rendezvous and heading out for the night.

Afterwards their faces were so disfigured, either because of being choked or being slashed, that in the case of the latest victim, brutally slashed, that by the time the police had obtained the photo of the victim and by the time police had distributed and got them in the hotels, the killer had already erased all his tracks. The chances that anyone who might have seen them would have already checked out.

“We are still running DNA checks on all the known s*x-offenders,” Mishra said. And he shrugged,” Nothing yet, though.”

A slow, laborious time consuming process, that Adriel was certain that it would lead them to nowhere. But it was the process. It had to be done.

“Can I read you something?”

They looked around all in surprise. It was his second speaking. He self consciously sat there clutching his book that he had taken from his bag. Adriel saw several coloured strips of paper marking various pages in it.

“I swear by my ancestors I never knew that you could even read,” Mishra said and the entire room erupted in laughter.” You have been taking literacy lessons, boss?”

But his deputy did not smile. There was something very odd an doff about his manner. And he was pale, as if all the blood had been drained from his face. The laughter quickly subsided, and the faces of dead girls looked down at them reproachefully.

“On you go, then,” Adriel said.

He started flipping through the pages to his first marker. “ I just wondered that if this might sound familiar,” he said. He found his place and then started reading. Smoke arose from the cigarettes as he read in absolute silence.

“There were twenty-two stab wounds to the trunk. The left lung was penetrated in five places and the right lung in two places. Otherwise the lungs were perfectly healthy. The heart was rather fatty, and was penetrated in one place but there was otherwise nothing in her heart to cause her death, although there was some blood in the pericardium. The liver was healthy, but was penetrated in five places, the spleen was perfectly healthy, and was penetrated in two places, both the kidneys were perfectly healthy, the stomach was also perfectly healthy, but was penetrated in six places, the intestines were healthy so were all the other organs. The lower portion of the body was penetrated in one place, the wound being three inches in length and one in depth. There was a deal of blood between the legs which were separated. Death was due to haemorrhage and loss of blood.”

In silence, he began to flicker through the pages once again to his marker and began reading again.

“Her throat had been cut from left to right, two distinct cuts being on the left side, the windpipe, gullet and spinal cord being cut through. A bruise apparently of a thumb being on the right lower jaw, also one on the left cheek; the abdomen had been cut open from the centre of bottom of ribs along the right side, under pelvis to the left of stomach, there the wound was jagged. The omentum or the coating of the stomach was also cut in several places, and two small stabs on the private parts; apparently done with a strong bladed knife. Supposed to have been done by a left handed person. The death being almost instantaneous.”

Someone muttered ‘s**t’ under their breath, like the sound of a pin dropping. And they all heard it. Pages rustling as his deputy moved on to a third passage.

“Examination of the body showed that the throat was severed deeply, an incision jagged. Removed from but attached to the body, and placed above the right shoulder, were a flap of the wall of the belly, the whole of the small intestines and attachments. Two other portions of wall of belly and ‘pubes’ were placed above left shoulder in a large quantity of blood. The following parts were missing:- theupper part of v****a an dthe greater part of bladder.”

“In the name of Holy mother Mary,” Mishra said.” These ssound like pathology reports on the first three murders.”

Adriel was on his feet. His eyes were blazing.

“What the hell are you reading from?”

His deputy gradually closed the book and looked up at his boss.” Detective Mishra is right.” He said.” They are the extracts from police and pathology reports. From nearly one hundred and twenty years ago.”

Every eye in the room was on him and every detective struggling to make sense of what he was actually saying.

“I read a review of a book published after quite some time in London. Even from the review I was struck by the similarities. So I went out first thing in the morning and bought it. And it became clear to me very quickly that I was looking at something which could be far more and is far more than a coincidence.” He held up the book for everyone to see.

“The Murders of Jack the Ripper.” He said,” The world’s first documented killer, not only that the term serial killer was coined for him. He may have murdered as many as seven women in the streets of London, in the fall of 1888. And someone is replicating those murders in exact detail, right here in London again, one hundred and fifteen years on.”

Adriel felt the hairs on the back of his neck arise. And his phone started vibrating in his pocket. The spell was broken. He took it out to see that it was Aria calling. And without even thinking there was ghost of a smile on his face.

“I need to take this.”

He went out of the investigative room and received the call.

“I did not know that you were back in town yet,” he said.

“I am not. But Rob has already put me on task with the new serial killing case. We need to meet and discuss this, Adriel. You know that I would not have left that way if things were not very important,” said Aria. The sound of her voice made blood rush through his veins causing his heart to pump a lot faster that it already did.

“I am not holding that against you, Aria. I know, and we can talk when we meet. Drinks today evening?” he asked.

“Our usual place?”

“Of course,” Adriel replied.

“I shall be there at seven,” she replied and he could hear the satisfaction in her voice.

“I am looking forward to seeing you, Aria,” said Adriel and she said,” I am looking forward to it to, and even though there are reports of this eye-witness who has gone missing, I am telling you that it might be probably false. And you need to check out the Ripper murders. I have been doing some digging and it seems that he is imitating that bastard.”

“You should be in my position and leading the investigation. You know? We have been looking at this for so many weeks and you still cracked it faster than us. I don’t know how you do it, Aria, but…fine…we will talk today evening.”

Adriel disconnected the call and then sighed out loud. He did not want to go back in there. He wanted to go to the woman who had just hung up and kiss her senseless like the last time that they had been together. In all these years of being friends never ever had Adriel felt such a rush of emotions coursing through him which were befuddling his senses. Finally he knew that it was no point in thinking or taking it that way and all he needed to do was to stay calm.

Aria was kind of like him only whereas she had another motive of letting people know the truth, this quest that she had came from some kind of fie within her which Adriel knew but they had never spoken about their past. It was like an unspoken rule between them which had ultimately cemented their bond. The recklessness that came from her was something that he had always feared. As a detective and the Chief of the section of Scotland Yard he knew that he should have been the one who was reckless and mad when so many lives were at stake. But he worked in a different way than her.

He entered back in the room and said,” The reporters of The Post and The Sun are working faster than us. What the hell are we doing?”

Mishra looked at him and so did all the other detectives.

“What do you mean Boss?”

“It means that I got a call from the editor of the Post that the news that we had leaked about the missing eye-witness is nothing but fake. And she even told me that I need to check the Ripper murders….” Said Adriel. His voice was louder than usual which made all of them get on the edge of their seats.

“Please find me something good….this is not looking good….not good at all,” said Adriel, muttering under his breath.