Loved by Mr. Night

Chapter 10

The perfume of the post-mortem was a haunting scent. Usually it took hours for Adriel to get the smell of it from his nostrils. Blood and the decay, the smell of the rotting food from the stomach, the stink of the faeces from an open intestine, the almost sweet smell of the burning bone as the oscillating saw cut through the skull. Today he barely even noticed.

He had brought Aria along with him and even she was silent. She was probably the only reporter who had direct access to the mortuary and the post-mortem reports from the source. In this way they were not guilty of passing information at all. Adriel was affected a lot more than Aria and he did not know why. Adriel had always chalked it up to her strong disposition but today Aria also looked visibly shaken.

The mutilated corpse of the latest victim lay on the autopsy table empty of all her vital organs, chest prised open, the last of her body fluids trickling away through the drainage channels and collecting into a bucket.

It was cold enough in the autopsy room for his breath to cloud in front of him. But the chill that racked his bones had nothing to do with the temperature.

“You do understand that if anyone ever opens their mouth about this arrangement that we have then I am going to lose my job,” said Adriel and Aria nodded. She could not even form a coherent reply. She had been a witness to violence from her very childhood in different forms but this was something inconceivable.

When they arrived, Pathologist Wang had finished with the body and was breadloafing the brain. It was routine stuff. He had already finished with the body and examined the organs that the killer had left him. Shorty he was going to start dictating and his assistant would start reassembling the body as best as they could, stitch it up with twine and then deliver it to the morgue for cold storage. There was no doubt about the cause of death.

Adriel looked at the young girl’s horribly slashed features and he looked at Aria. She watched as the nose was almost missing from her face. And she asked,” Can you not do anything about the face?”

Wang raised an eyebrow and said,” Why?”

“She is right though. The victim needs to be formally identified and I would not even deem that in such a condition she would be recognizable by anyone,” said Adriel.

“I cannot even imagine how it must feel for a parent to look down upon his or her child in such a state. I don’t want to imagine it,” said Aria with a quivering note in her voice.

“I can try, but there is not a lot that I can do about it,” said Wang, and he turned to slice through another half-inch section of the brain.

Adriel had discarded his quilted jacket, and since they had arrived late he did not bother to don the protective gear. It was regulation but everyone knew that Adriel and Aria they both never bothered too much about regulations. Aria wore a heavy long coat which reached well below her knees. Adriel had left the collar of his jacket turned up against the cold. It had big pockets and he listed the flap of one and took out something from his pocket.

“Before you start dictating your notes,” said Adriel to Wang,” I would like you to hear something.”

“What is it boss? Something literary? I bet it is something from your uncle’s notes,” said Wang with a grin but Adriel did not smile at the common joke that they shared between them every time.

“It is even older than that,” said Aria in a dry voice. Adriel opened the page of the book that he had folded over and started reading. It was the same passage that his deputy had read out to them in the morning. When he finished reading the passage he looked up and found that Wang was watching him open mouthed.

Aria said,” You will catch flies.”

Wang shut his mouth and his lips folded in a grim line and said,” You had someone eavesdropping my autopsy.”

“Wait,” Adriel put up his finger and then turned over to another page and started reading again.

“The skin was serrated through the whole of the cut in the abdomen, but the vessels were not clotted. Nor had there been any appreciable bleeding from the vessels. I draw the conclusion that the cut was made after the death, and that there would not be much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on the right side of the body, kneeling below the middle of the body. The intestines had been detached by a large extent from the mesentery. About two feet of the colon was cut away. The sigmoid flexure was invaginated into the rectum very tightly.”

He looked up and said,” I am going to skip a bit here.” And then he continued.

“The peritoneal lining was cut very tightly through the left side and the left kidney taken out and removed. The left renal artery was also cut through. I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it. The lining membrane over the uterus was cut through. The wound was cut horizontally, leaving a stump of three quarters of an inch. The rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments. The v****a and cervix of the womb was uninjured.”

“Is that how this was? Is this what you found during the autopsy?” asked Adriel as Aria waited with bated breath and as Wang looked at them with shock etched on his face.

“What the f**k is this, Boss?” asked Wang. He almost never swore but that would only mean that he was extremely agitated. It made it all the more shocking when he did.” Did you have someone else looking at the body before me?”

Aria pointed at the book and said,” This autopsy was carried out by a physician, English one called Doctor Frederick Gordon Brown. He was just reading out an excerpt from the deposition he gave to an inquest into the murder of a forty-six year old prostitute called Catharine Eddowes in London in 1888.”

Wang shook his head in disbelief.” That’s not possible.”

“Jack the Ripper,” said Adriel as if trying to clear out his confusion.” We all have read about him but it was such an old case that we never even thought that somebody would be copycatting his killings in the same manner almost a century later on in the same London.”

Wang looked thoughtful for a moment and said,” I have read about him. When I was in medical school I even remember that I had attended a talk by an expert on the subject and now I had completely forgotten all about it. I never made the connection though. It is funny how detail escapes you.”

He looked at Adriel and Aria in wonder,” And yet I had the strangest sense of déjà vu about these girls. I mean how did you find out?”

“We can discuss all about that later on. Now we know something about the killer. He has studied these in meticulous detail and is trying to emulate a niche for him by killing in the same way that Jack the Ripper did,” said Adriel and Aria nodded at him.

“There is one thing that I remember now from that talk though, Boss,” said Wang.

“What is it?” asked Adriel. Wang was quiet and it was a few more moments that he could even bring himself to speak again.

“It gets worse,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Aria asked with a shaky breath.

“The mutilation,” Wang replied,” His next victim. It gets even worse.” He looked at the table and then said,” After this one. You would not even want to read what he did to the girl. Let alone see what he did to that girl.” He looked very directly at Adriel,” You have got to catch this killer before he does it again, Boss.”

Adriel felt the almost unbearable burden of responsibility pressing down on him. Where did they begin? He did not have one single concrete evidence to go on.

Wang said,” The pathologist was right though.”

Adriel looked at him and asked,” What do you mean?”

“What was it he said? That there would not be much blood on the murderer. Okay so most of the mutilation took place after the death. But you cannot hack someone like that. Take out the kidney and the uterus and not get some kind of blood on himself. You would get a lot of blood. And by that I mean, quite a lot of it.”

Adriel said thoughtfully,” So unless he lives all by himself, all alone, someone must know who he is. Because he is going to be coming home covered in a lot of blood.” Aria nodded and Wan also nodded his head in acknowledgement.

In the car park, Adriel sat behind the wheel of his ride and opened up his laptop on his knees. He plugged in his cell phone and got it to dial him into the police database from its memory. On the passenger side, Aria was still flicking forwards and backwards through the book on Ripper. She stopped suddenly and said,” You know, what I don’t understand is why anyone would cover up for someone doing stuff like this..”

Adriel shrugged and tapped in the relevant details into the vacant fields.” The history of serial killers is full of loved ones turning to a blind eye. Wives, lovers, mothers. More denial than cover-up. Even when confronted with all evidence, they don’t want to admit it. Even to themselves.”

He hit the keyboard and returned to the screen again and several moments later the screen flashed up with the particulars of the latest victim. It was said here that she lived with her grandfather and her mother. Her father was mentioned as deceased. Her photograph was on the top right corner of the screen. A black and white image of not particularly good quality. Adriel could not tell how good it was going to be of a likeliness but it was better than nothing.

He took a note of the address and then shut down the machine.

“Has the family been told yet?” asked Aria. This was something that no one wanted to face.

“The detectives told me that they have sent some one a short while ago to break the news to the family,” said Adriel and he found the look of discontent on Aria’s face.” What happened?”

“I think that you should go. I won’t accompany you if you don’t want but you should personally go and speak to the family. I don’t know what condition her family is but if a twenty year old girl is on the streets then they must not be well off and maybe their only source of income is gone. They are going to be heart broken at the moment. And if I know anything then that is this, that your detectives from Scotland Yard are anything but empathetic or even sympathetic,” said Aria with a distaste on her face.

“What about me?” Adriel asked as he looked at her in the darkness of the car.

“You are one of those rare species which is Red listed because they are almost on the verge of extinction. Why do you think I am with you?” asked Aria with a smile and Adriel started the car.