This is my first attempt at writing for the Silent Witness fandom so I really hope I can do it justice. Just a few warnings before you read, this story contains relatively heavy themes of sexual assault and violence and will get really quite dark at times, so if that's not your thing then this isn't a good fic for you. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it!
It had gone dark by the time Clare exited the motorway, flicking a lever at the side of the wheel to turn up the brightness of her headlights. She huffed in frustration and shuffled in her seat to make out the road ahead of her as she struggled to adjust to the newfound darkness of the country lane. For years she had been writing to the council about the frankly dangerous lack of streetlights on this road in particular and they had responded with an unsurprising lack of enthusiasm, blaming the economic climate of course.
The radio crackled at her above the hum of the engine, distorting the solemn chords of the song it was playing. Clare frowned, the sound offensive to her ears, and slowed her pace a little as she punched a button to turn it off. An almost-silence consumed the vehicle, pervasive and oppressive as the blackness it was surrounded by.
She sighed in relief, pressing down on the accelerator once more. The lane was narrowing considerably and she dreaded meeting another vehicle coming from the opposite direction, as one of them would invariably be forced to reverse back in the dark. After the long day she'd had, it was highly unlikely that said person would be her.
Clare had barely finished that thought when a light broke through the darkness ahead, scattering into an illuminated cloud of particles in the thick air. She squinted, slowing the car in caution. The light split into two distinct sources, staring unblinkingly at her out of the blackness of the night. They seemed to be unmoving, only growing in size and intensity as she slowly approached.
"What the hell," Clare muttered as the light source took shape, appearing to her as a silhouetted mass save for the reflection of her own headlights in its glossy metal exterior. It was obstructing her path completely from what she could make out, and so she braked, shielding her eyes from the lights of what she took to be another vehicle.
There was an eerie stillness, broken only by the hair in front of her face as it was stirred by her own exhalations, and then the sound of heavy footsteps broke through the silence, gradually getting louder as the owner of the vehicle approached. Clare rolled down her window, heart thrumming in her chest, to address him.
"You're gonna have to reverse, mate. Or turn down those headlights so I have a chance at it." Her voice cut through the atmosphere unnaturally, and she had to consciously restrain herself from shrinking back.
A moment passed, too long for the conventional rules of conversation to apply; there was no reply. The footsteps stopped next to the car door, and Clare squinted against the harsh light to make out the figure.
Before she had time to speak again, a gloved hand reached inside of the car and clasped around her wrist. Clare cried out in surprise and pain, trying to jerk it away, and then the world span out of focus as a heavy object collided with her head. The headlights ahead of her were the last thing she vaguely registered as everything went black.
The sound of Nikki's phone ringing punctured the early morning silence.
She exhaled, savouring the last moments of comfort in bed before sitting up to answer it. The cool air hit her skin and she shivered, drawing up her knees to her chest.
"Nikki Alexander," she spoke at last, silently impressed at her ability to mask vocally the lack of sleep she was suffering from.
"Dr. Alexander," a male voice greeted her. "DS Pritchard. We have a body for you. Fallowbrook road; I'm texting you the full address now."
Nikki glanced at the clock and winced, fingers brushing across her forehead. "On my way," she said, shuffling her legs out from beneath the covers and searching blindly with her feet for her slippers. "I'll be twenty minutes."
"Thanks," came the response, now decidedly less professional and more relieved, she thought with a sardonic smile. "See you then."
"See you." She tapped the screen of her phone to hang up and slid from her bed, making her way across the room to tug back the curtains. Dewy early light broke from above the skyline and spilled into the space, touching the interior with a soft golden hue. She saw it bouncing from her lashes, gilding the edges of her vision. It felt wrong though, to admire for too long the sunrise when somewhere a person was lying dead, waiting for her to deduce the circumstances of their demise, and so Nikki turned away from it to get ready.
She had just about finished in the bathroom and was in the process of drying her face when her phone rang for the second time. Placing the towel back on the rack, she made her way back over to the dressing table. Jack's name illuminated the screen. An involuntary smile touched her lips and she reached to answer it, tapping the speaker button so that she could tie up her hair whilst she spoke to him.
"Jack, hi," she called.
"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," he teased. Nikki rolled her eyes, scraping back her hair and twisting it into a bun.
"I'll be ten minutes. Apologise to the body for me."
"Yes, about that," his tone grew a little more serious. "Might I suggest skipping breakfast for this one?"
Nikki had placed hair grips in between her teeth whilst she tugged at a few stubborn blonde locks, and mumbled around them to speak. "Is it that bad?"
"It's not pretty. She's been badly mutilated."
"Sexually motivated?"
"Quite probably. They're suggesting an ex or unrequited lover as the likely suspect." He sounded doubtful.
"You're not so sure?" Nikki queried, grabbing her bag and taking the phone off speaker to hold it to her ear as she exited the bedroom.
"I don't want to make assumptions just yet. They're throwing statistics around, but... Well, just get here and see for yourself."
"Yes, sir," she mocked lightly, retrieving the car keys from the kitchen unit. "I'll see you in a few minutes."
"I look forward to it."
She shook her head with a wry smile, shoving her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and wrestling with the door of her flat for a few moments to open and successfully close it around her. Trust Jack to make the prospect of a 5AM call-out seem even remotely enjoyable. She couldn't fault his comic timing; gallows humour came with the trade of course, but he and Clarissa seemed to take it to a new level entirely sometimes. It was needed most on days like this though, when the transgressive nature of the crime made it impossible to deal with in complete seriousness, and she was immensely grateful to the both of them for providing it. As much as she liked and admired Thomas, his ability to lighten a situation was lacking to say the least.
The journey took only slightly longer than expected, and it was nearing half past six when she eventually arrived on scene. She clambered hastily into her scrub suit before approaching the group of officials nearby. A tall, dark-haired man in a suit, whom she took to be the detective, turned to acknowledge her.
"Dr Alexander," the man spoke, extending an arm to her. "I'm DS Pritchard - we spoke on the phone."
Nikki nodded, shaking his hand. "Nice to meet you. Where's the body?"
"This way," he directed with a brush of his hand against the small of her back. "We've got no positive identification as of yet, but we've got her car so we're going to run the registration past the DVLA."
"When was she found?"
"About two hours ago. Her vehicle was obstructing the road." He stopped purposefully and pointed to the vehicle in question. "She's just behind there. Your colleague is with her."
"Thanks," Nikki said, tugging on a pair of gloves and following the line of his arm to observe the car for a moment. "Do you want gloves?"
DS Pritchard's face paled somewhat and he shook his head abruptly. "Uh, no thanks. I've got a call to make."
"Right," Nikki glanced back, resisting the urge to frown at him. A squeamish detective was the last thing they needed. Instead, she turned and picked her way around the vehicle, noting with a shiver that the driver's door was wide open. A familiar flash of dark blue caught her eye through the windscreen; Jack was squatting by the side of the road, camera in hand, frowning into the space before him, which was concealed by a white forensics tent.
She stopped a few metres away from him, peering through the tent entrance to take in the scene. The woman lay on the wet ground, curled up like a foetus on her side, one arm curled defensively around her head and the other circling her legs as she held them to her chest. She looked like a burns victim, a combination of blood and mud crusting almost protectively over her bruised skin and shielding it from view.
Nikki approached and stooped to get a proper look at the woman's visage from behind her arm, recoiling slightly as she did. It had been repeatedly slashed in multiple directions to completely obscure her facial features, the puckered edges of the broken skin forming valleys across her cheeks, dipping into the hollows of her eyes and rising to meet the swells of her lips and her nose. One jagged cut extended up to her hairline, and Nikki furrowed her brow to note that a section of hair there had been cut. She raised her camera to her face to capture the image of the truncated blonde locks, lowering it slowly and meeting Jack's gaze as she did.
"They took a trophy," she murmured and he nodded, lips pressed together.
"We reckon she's got the same injuries around her genitalia; you can see the slashes extending to her abdomen, but we didn't want to move her to have a look until you got here."
Nikki nodded, snapping another few photos and then prising aside one knee of the victim with an apologetic gloved hand to inspect the groin area. The movement felt voyeuristic, a feeling which intensified as she was met with the sight of multiple criss-crossed lacerations. She flinched a little and nodded to Jack.
"There appears to be significant vaginal trauma, and some discolouration, but I'll need to have a closer look in the lab. Rigor has set in."
Jack nodded, rising from his squatted position and moving to stand behind her. "Time of death?"
"Livor mortis suggests three to six hours ago," she said, raising the woman's hand from where it rested on one knee and furrowing her brow. "There are what look to be dark fibres caught in the fingernails," she added, reaching into her case to withdraw plastic bags and tape and begin the process of bagging the hands. "Most probably from her attacker. Bruises on the arms and neck suggest she was held down with considerable force. I'm not seeing any ligature marks though."
"There are drag marks in the ground leading from where her car is, and a second set of tyre tracks leading away," Jack added. "No sign of any blood in her car, so my guess is she was abused and killed here, or possibly in the attacker's vehicle before being dumped in this spot. It's difficult to say which."
The sound of squelching footsteps behind them alerted them both to the reappearance of Pritchard, who cast his eyes briefly and reluctantly over the body before addressing Nikki. "We've heard back from the DVLA. Her name's Clare Eastwood, forty two years old, works as a legal secretary. She lives nearby with her husband and three kids."
"Jesus," Jack muttered, shaking his head. Nikki pursed her lips.
"Any sign of her clothes or a bag or something?" She asked the detective. Pritchard shook his head.
"They were one of the first things we looked for but there's absolutely no sign of any belongings anywhere, except for the car."
"Why would the killer take her clothes?" Nikki wondered aloud, studying the body again.
"It all points to it being a personal attack," Pritchard supplied with a meaningful glance at Jack, whose jaw clenched in frustration.
"Maybe they're in his vehicle," he pointed out.
"And he took her bag too? Was the aim to remove all possibility of identification?"
"He did disfigure her face, so that's a possibility. But then why would he leave the car?" Nikki mused. "Maybe the bag's a second trophy. I mean, he took the hair too."
Jack nodded vaguely beside her, but Pritchard didn't look convinced.
"That's what serial killers do, isn't it? Take trophies?"
"Usually yes," Nikki supplied, "but it isn't a practice exclusive to serial killers. This could still be a personal attack."
"What, so we're just going to have to wait and see if anyone else drops dead?" he snapped.
"It's early days yet," she replied defensively. "We need to get her back to the lab and look for any DNA which might identify her killer. I think we're done here."
"I'll follow you back to the lab," Jack said. "I just want to take some soil samples first."
Nikki nodded to him before addressing Pritchard again. "You're welcome to watch the autopsy if you like." There was a noticeable pause, and she bit back a satisfied smile as his panicked gaze flitted between her and the body. Finally, he shook his head.
"No, uh, no thanks. I have paperwork to file. Give me a call once you're done, won't you?"
She muttered an 'of course', tugging off her bloodstained gloves and turning on her heel to head back along the path.
Jack's awestruck grin followed her all the way to the car.