A/N:
Some TWs for this chapter, so do please heed. Homophobic language and violence (hinted at), graphic-ish descriptions of crime scenes (including descriptions of the bodies), reference to a true historical crime, manifestations of OCD, swearing.
The night congealed around him, the air thick with the sluggish hours, treacly and viscous. His duvet clung to him with the weight of all his forgotten dreams, the ones that tormented his mind with their half-formed abstract shapes. The ones where all he could recall was their presence, not their content. Joe was not entirely sure if he'd slept yet. He felt as though he had been lying awake forever – mountains could have risen and fallen in the time it had taken for him to give up on trying to be comfortable. He thought he may have dropped off once or twice, his body defeating his mind momentarily, before being dragged back into a peevish consciousness. In the still dark of trying to sleep there were blanker patches. Patchwork portions of time of which he had no memory. Without looking at the clock, he could not be sure, and at that dead hour of the night all was a void anyway. His mind wandered without aim. Hazy thoughts tripped around his mind, but when he tried to concentrate on them, to capture them, they slipped away leaving no trace. Like a hallucination in the peripheral vision, they were gone as soon as they were looked at directly.
At some point, Emerson had turned away from him so that all Joe could see of him was the back of his head and a thin crest of shoulder. The fingers of one hand curled around the lip of his ear, cradling its shell as a bird would care for its egg. Joe couldn't remember at what point in the night they had separated. He must have been asleep after all. They had started the night as they always did, with Emerson's head roosting on Joe's breastbone, their legs entwined. As Emerson had gradually sunk into a deep sleep, his body had grown heavier, the hand which had stroked, featherlike, upon Joe's collar stilled. Emerson had effectively pinned Joe to the bed, a second, warmer, more reassuring cover. Joe had almost imagined the world flying away, leaving them alone in their embrace, safe in their nest. But Joe's arms were empty now, as though they had been invaded by a cuckoo, stealing that which was most precious to him. The space between him and Emerson felt cold and barren, and he had no recollection of how it got that way. By contrast, his constricting sheets were hot and oppressive. Would he ever find the perfect, fairy-tale balance between too much and too little? He doubted it – he had always been a man of extremes, first pushing away too forcefully, then clinging on too tightly. Too hard, or too soft, never just right.
With a muffled snarl, Joe kicked his legs to free his feet and hoisted himself up onto one elbow to plump his pillow, which had sagged forlornly in the middle. He punched and pummelled it violently into shape, his knuckles sinking with some satisfaction into the bulbous and downy oblong. He closed his eyes, allowing the innocent headrest to bear the brunt of his frustration and dislocation. It felt good – the hostility bubbling down his arm, the crush and spring against his knuckles, the savage gratification at seeing the object bend to the force of his will. He had felt a similar spite when he had hit William Bousfield. It was all a bit of a blur, if he was honest, but he remembered the glow of something approaching pride when he had seen Bousfield's mug shot, his face swollen and purpled from Joe's handiwork. Joe had almost scared himself with his own viciousness, he was not used to such all-consuming anger, but how close Bousfield had come to taking Emerson away from him scared him more. He could not bring himself to regret his actions, not that one anyway.
Emerson moved in his sleep, rolling further over, dragging the duvet with him to enshroud his body more fully.
He rolled over like a little fucking bitch.
Bousfield's final words to him echoed, mocking, in Joe's head. He jerked suddenly, aghast and sickened at the turn his mind had taken against his will. His powerful ferocity crumbled, undermined by wheedling words and malicious memories. However much he might revel in the strength of his punches, he would always be defeated by Bousfield's taunting jeers. They connived their way into his head and sat malevolently, tainting all about him. That they could take root now, even in the sanctuary of his and Emerson's bed, repelled and horrified him. While they were there, Joe could not touch his husband, could hardly bear to look at him, or even think about him in the same thought. It was a defilement, a violation of their space to have Bousfield's cruel laugh resounding in his ears while he could also hear Emerson's soft somnolent breathing next to him. The two things didn't, couldn't, match.
He struggled out of bed, using his phone's torch to light his footsteps, and headed towards the bathroom to wash, to rinse his body and mind of all pollution. A dim, sickly light oozed through a small gap in the curtains as he passed the window. He pulled at the two edges of material, catching a glimpse of the sky outside. The heavens were veiled by a yellowish cloud, jaundiced with sodium. It seemed that the sky and all its stars had needed to take shelter, unable to bring themselves to shine any more, and had secreted themselves under the only covering they could find, no matter that it was filthy. Neither was the moon visible. Even had the skies been clear, Joe knew that at that time of night the moon would be hiding just above the horizon, safely concealed from view by office blocks, train tracks and warehouses. It was a dying moon, nearly at the end of its life, with no energy for illuminating anything beyond a thin sliver of itself. The very air felt dirty. But that was London for you, aged, creaking London, so grubby with the past that had never been fully cleaned away.
Joe swallowed a small wave of revulsion and tip-toed across the hall to the bathroom. Emerson had thought it strange at first, Joe knew, that he refused to sleep in the master bedroom – the one with the en-suite. He had understood that Joe needed there to be more than just a thin partition between the bathroom, and what happened in it, what his father had done in it, and the place where he would endeavour to relax, but he hadn't been able to hide a raised expression when Joe attempted to explain. When Emerson had first started staying over, he had slept in the master suite while Joe stayed in his own room, although within a couple of months they had taken to sharing a bed. Emerson had made no complaints about downgrading to be with Joe, but that didn't stop Joe from wondering whether he missed the convenience, the ease, of what he had had before. Far from it being Joe who had provided accommodation for Emerson when he moved in, it was Emerson, always Emerson, who accommodated him.
As he washed Bousfield's leering face down the sink, Joe gazed down at his bare skin, slightly clammy from his overheated bedsheets. A small portion of the air shifted, causing an unsettling chill to crawl down his back. He felt exposed, and not just because he was unclothed, but as though something or someone had unpeeled him and slipped beneath his naked skin. He shivered, and doused himself in the almost boiling water collected in the sink. He scrubbed with vigour at his arms, scraping them pink, scouring away the memory of William Bousfield. With every rub a little more was purged. While he was concentrating on that, Bousfield's face was not visible behind his eyes, his voice did not ring in his ears. And if he could scratch those into oblivion, then he need no longer worry that Emerson would get hurt again. He could rid himself of the anxiety that he, Joe, might somehow by association harm him because his mind had brought Bousfield into their home. If he could destroy Bousfield through the layers of his skin, then Emerson would be safe. One more rub should do it, and just one more, and just one more, and just one more.
He forced himself to pull out the plughole, and watched as the greying water gurgled away. If he listened hard enough, he could still hear Bousfield's callous laughter reverberating in the pipes. His hands, about to refill the sink, were halted in their progress by the shrill squawk of his phone's ringtone. Stirred by the vibrations, the handset nearly slid into the bath, but Joe caught it in time.
"DI Chandler," he said, holding it to his ear, the devices edges feeling severe and uncompromising. At that time of night, it could only really be one thing.
Sure enough, it was Miles' gruff voice that croaked down the line. "Boss? We've got a couple of bodies. Definitely suspicious, almost certainly murdered. Down by the old railway station on Leman Street." His voice was muffled through sleep and the erratic signal. "Riley and Mansell are on their way in. I'm just leaving home now. I'll meet you there as quick as I can so SOCOs can brief us."
Joe sighed. Well, if he was going to be awake anyway, at least now he had something useful to occupy his time. The thought immediately made him feel guilty as he considered the families of the victims, who might not even have been aware of their deaths yet. A murder investigation could not just be a way for him to stave off his inertia. But he was above all things a policeman, and that was what he did. Without murderers, without victims, he would have no purpose. That was what he had dreamt about, not admin, not paperwork, but the chance to set things straight. To avenge the dead and seek justice for the living. And perhaps to save lives along the way. He thought all detectives must have that within them. Miles had told him that it wasn't all car chases and saving the girl at the end, and it wasn't, of course it wasn't. But in Joe's experience, the officers who stopped believing in the possibility of that rarely stayed in CID. They all wanted to do, to make a difference, to count. But for them to avenge the dead, people had to die in the first place. It was all part of the terrible progression, cause and effect and result.
He had already washed everywhere he could and, tempted as he was to cleanse himself again, he pulled himself out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom to dress. Emerson, still deep in sleep, had rolled over again to face the inner part of the bed, towards where Joe had been lying, but facing away from where he now stood. His left arm extended out over both pillows as though seeking out Joe in the unmoving, cold darkness. Joe reached out to wake him, but his hand halted in mid-air. In the murky light, it looked more like a claw, wizened and crooked. He couldn't bring himself to rouse Emerson. He knew he should – they would need the whole team at the crime scene, and he couldn't be seen to be giving his husband any special treatment at work – but something stopped him, as though there was a barrier between him and Emerson, which kept him from laying his fingers on him. A barrier, or was it a shield?
Joe clothed himself secretively, leaving Emerson untouched and unspoiled. At least for the remainder of the night, his innocent sleep could be kept intact. He scribbled a note of explanation, an explanation which left out almost everything, leaving it where Emerson would be sure to find it and left the flat, extracting his spare overcoat from the wardrobe and locking the front door securely behind him.
Miles was waiting for him at the crime scene, rocking from foot to foot while his arms crossed, brushing kinetic warmth into each other. It wasn't exactly cold, the hibernal frosts remained at bay for the time being, and the nip in the air that Joe felt was more likely to be caused by lack of sleep and the early hour than the temperature on the thermometer. However, there was a distinct end of year feel in the air, a fresh staleness in the wind, which caught the back of his throat with a crisp jolt as he breathed in. Miles raised his eyebrows at Joe as he locked his car.
"What've you done with Kent, then?" he asked. "He's not riding that daft bike of his at this time of night is he?"
Joe pursed his lips and looked at the wet pavement. A small puddle had formed in the ridge between road and kerb, and Miles was partially reflected in it, his beige raincoat an eerie pale in the dark water.
"He's not coming," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the watery image of Miles, rather than looking at his friend directly.
"What d'you mean, not coming? Why, is he ill?"
"He's not coming," Joe repeated firmly. "He was sleeping."
"Of course he was sleeping," exclaimed Miles. "I was bloody sleeping as well. What else would you be doing at half three in the pissing morning?"
Joe dropped his car keys into his breast pocket. The jingle they made as they settled into the silk lining sounded louder than normal, a harsh high-pitched chorus cutting through all the other sounds, the whirr of cameras, the plod of feet, the murmur of voices. It punctuated the look of finality Joe hoped was being expressed on his face as he turned back to Miles. Miles threw him a look of his own – a familiar mien, both appraising and paternal – but said nothing.
"Would you care to tell me what we've got here, Miles?" said Joe, impatience sharpening his voice. He was keen to get on and do his job rather than debate why he had taken it upon himself to give one of their team some impromptu time off.
Miles' sideways glance lingered for a few seconds before he answered.
"Right, well," he said, beckoning for Joe to follow as he lifted up the cordon and started to walk towards the white scene of crime tent erected some feet away. "Couple of students walking home after a late night out spotted two bodies hanging from the railway bridge above the old station platform. Apparently they thought they were just early Hallowe'en decorations at first, but when they realised what they were, they called 999 at about two thirty this morning. Victims are two adult males, IC1 and IC3, both look to be in their late twenties or early thirties."
"And they'd been hanged? We're sure it's not just a double suicide?"
"It looks pretty unlikely to be self-inflicted. Go on, you'll see. I've got Riley and Mansell doing a detailed plan of the area. I was going to get Kent to take the statements from the kids who found the bodies, but I suppose one of the uniforms can do that."
Joe ignored the jab as he fastened himself within a forensic suit then ducked through the opening of the tent. Caroline Llewellyn stood with her back to him, assisting a SOCO officer in carrying something heavy to the floor. As they set it down, the object made a dull thump on the ground, a dark shadowy sound. In fact there were two thumps as one end of the object hit the pavement a moment before the other, like a muffled, percussive prologue.
"Give me a second," called Llewellyn over her shoulder. "We've just got the poor things down."
The tent was a large one, but it felt cramped and crowded, filled as it was by police and forensic officers, all vying for space. Amidst their jostling, however, they all seemed to know where they were going. They walked and stood with purpose, as though their every movement had been carefully choreographed. Each had their exits and entrances, as Shakespeare had put it, all bustling around for the sake of the two victims, who had barely reached their third age. None of the people here were novices to a crime scene – they all slipped comfortably into their roles like actors in a play. Only Joe felt like an understudy who had wandered onto the stage by mistake. Finally, Llewellyn directed Joe to the bodies, lying side by side, temporarily covered with sterile sheets. They looked completely out of place on the dark ground, white and still, while all around them was neon and blur, yet none of this activity would be there if they weren't. They were the central characters, but their parts were already over.
"Okay," said Llewellyn. "First things first, I've got IDs for you. Don't you love people who keep their driving licences in their trouser pockets? This one," she pointed at the taller body on the left, "is Paul Sage, aged 35. His companion here is Adam Snow, recently turned 32."
"And what happened to them?" asked Joe.
"Now you know I can't give you anything definitive until after the PM," said Llewellyn, a teasing twinkle in her eye. "But from my initial assessment, it looks like cause of death in both cases was spinal shock from a broken neck."
"Could that have been caused by them jumping from the bridge to hang themselves?"
"Well, if they'd done that, they probably would have broken their necks rather than asphyxiated, yes, but I don't think that's what happened in this case."
She lifted up the sheet covering Paul Sage's face. His skin was mottled, almost maroon in places, his neck swollen and horribly distended. His eyes were shut, Joe was thankful to see. It was always the eyes that haunted Joe the most, the way they looked without seeing. He had been ten years old the first time he had seen dead eyes. He had found a dying frog in their garden when he was out playing by himself. It had obviously got lost and wandered too far from the nearest water, dehydrated and disorientated. Joe knew there was nothing he could do to help it, and he had cradled it in his hands as it slowly passed away, the faint light in its eyes fading to grey. His mother had made him wash his hands five times before he was allowed back inside the house, but he still felt the dead weight of the small creature sitting within his hold. He had had bad dreams for several nights afterwards, in which he was the frog, being steadily crushed to death by two giant hands. His mind could not stop imagining what last things those little eyes saw before they glazed over. A month later, Joe saw that blank stare for the second time when his father died, and the nightmares had returned, only far worse. The frog had sat within his hands ever since.
"If they'd died from a drop hanging," continued Llewellyn, "then I'd expect a lot more bruising higher up the neck from the force of the rope. There are bruises, but not in my opinion consistent with that sort of injury. It's more like what you get with finger marks. I think they were killed first and hung up there afterwards."
"So they definitely didn't hang themselves?"
"Nothing's ever one hundred percent definite, but I would be very uncomfortable in saying that these were suicides. For one thing, I can't see how they would have got up there without help – there was no ladder or anything like that. There are also ligatures around their wrists and ankles, suggestive of having been tied up for some time, and that's not all."
Llewellyn knelt down between the two bodies and rolled down the sheets to their waists. Joe noticed her hands were steady, almost mechanical in their movement. They were in total contrast to his own, which were fidgeting in the air, fighting and fretting against it.
The upper parts of both men were revealed, shocking Joe into stillness. His fingers froze, while his left hand raced towards his mouth, the knuckles crushing into his lips as he swallowed bile. Both bodies had bare chests, without clothing or body hair, except for a small amount of fuzzy down around their navels. They could have been naturally hairless, or shaven, or even waxed, Joe did not have the experience to be able to tell. Apart from that similarity, however, their physiques were almost completely opposite. Paul Sage was darker-skinned, well-built and muscular, while Adam Snow was pallid and skinny. Paul's hair was short-cropped, his scalp shining through, Adam's curled like a whisper around his ears and draped floppily on the ground. The one distinguishing feature they shared, what stood out the most, was the thing Llewellyn was pointing at. On each of their chests, etched out in crimson, were the letters FAG carved into the flesh. The cuts were neat, and had evidently been made with sadistic care. There was very little blood on the bodies, Joe was surprised to see. The lack of blood made it worse, somehow. It was normal for a cut to bleed, and just a little normality would have been welcome. Without it, the marks shouted their message all the louder, their desecration all the plainer, coarse and violent.
But it wasn't that which was making Joe feel nauseous. He had seen far worse in his time in Whitechapel, seen at first hand the horror that one human body can wreak upon another, had experienced the worst that evil had to offer. No, it wasn't the disfiguring letters that upset him. He knew it was impossible, that it was just a horrible coincidence. His head told him not to believe the suggestion his eyes were making, or at least one half of his head did. The other half was screaming, screaming, blocking out almost all else, that he'd made a terrible mistake, and that this pale, lifeless body lying in front of him wasn't Adam Snow at all, but Emerson. He tugged at the tightly bound rubber cuff of the latex glove on his left hand, letting it snap back onto his skin, whipping a wince from his mouth. Llewellyn cocked her head at him curiously. He shook his head, his lips dragging towards his chin in a weighty, bulging frown. Forcing all of his panic downwards, so that it rested in his chest and stomach, showing no ripple on the surface, he looked again at the corpse. It wasn't Emerson, it wasn't, he knew that. And after the initial shock, he found he could catalogue the differences between them. The chin wasn't quite the right shape, and the incline of Emerson's shoulders and collarbone was altogether smoother, less angular. But the eyes, even closed, and the hair, down to the irregular shots of grey weaving through the curls, were strikingly similar. This body wasn't Emerson, or even his double, an imperfect imitation at best. But still… Joe clenched spasmodically, his fingers clamping into sharp squares, like a set of bony teeth grinding against each other. A fruitless wish pulsed through him, stronger with every seizured breath, that he had woken Emerson after Miles' phone call. Just so that he could put them side by side and confirm. At least then he could have been sure, beyond the cruellest, most persistent doubt.
He cleared his throat, his larynx vibrating painfully. There was a salty swollen tang growing somewhere in the region of his tonsils.
"How… how long have they been here?" he asked.
Llewellyn sucked her bottom lip and cocked her head to one side. "I'd say, given the rigor in their jaws, that they've been dead no more than four to six hours. And the lividity is all in their legs and feet, so they were moved here pretty quickly, probably within half an hour of the time of death. I reckon you're looking at a window roughly between ten last night and about one this morning."
The relief overcame Joe, covering him completely, like the sheets Llewellyn was replacing over Paul and Adam. He had been with Emerson all that time. He could personally vouch that he had still been breathing at half past three, well outside of the margin. And anyway, Emerson had still been in bed when Miles had rung, so he couldn't possibly have been hanging by his neck from a railway bridge. Nevertheless, it was reassuring to have it scientifically proven. Evidence and logic, clean and sharp and precise, that was all he needed. Wasn't it?
Something felt off as soon as Emerson became aware that he was awake. Before he had even opened his eyes he could sense that he was lying alone in a bed that usually had two occupants. The duvet covering him sat in a different way, heavy in all the wrong places, bunching constrictively around his feet but falling short at the top, leaving his shoulders bare and chilly. Cold air shot down his back with every breath he drew. It was one of his pet hates, a bedsheet that didn't perfectly conform to his contours, making him all the more aware that it was a separate entity, that there was a layer of thin space between it and him. He didn't notice it when Joe was there – they made it theirs together – but without him, it felt like a false covering. Like something alien that just didn't fit. Like lungs in a human body, it was simply much more effective and comfortable when there were two within it.
Nothing was quite as it should have been. The object Emerson held closely to him may have smelled like Joe, but it had no supportive shoulders or embracing arms, no warm skin flushed with sleep. Emerson clutched it closer to him, but it just squashed into itself submissively, not returning the embrace or giving back anything in affection at all. His eyes shot open to confirm that, yes, he was in fact cuddling Joe's pillow, the man himself nowhere to be seen. It wasn't unusual for Joe to be up before him, and on many mornings, Emerson would float into waking on the comforting sound of the shower pattering across the hall, or the low murmuring hum of the news bulletin from the living room. But that morning, there was nothing. No sounds, no dry savoury smell of gently toasting bread, no lingering warmth from Joe's side of the bed. Even the air was cold as though it was stood still, having not been touched or passed through for hours. There was only a dead, stale stillness in the flat.
Unlike Joe, Emerson had never lived alone. He had gone from his parents' house to university halls of residence to a flatshare, and from there to living with Joe. When he was younger, he couldn't have afforded London rents on his own, and by the time he could, he found he didn't want to. He liked having someone to come home to, someone to share life with, someone who would notice if he died in his sleep or didn't come home at all. That last point had seemed suddenly unpleasantly relevant after he had been striped, though he had laughed at himself later on for thinking it. It wasn't that he didn't value his privacy, but he had perfected the knack of being alone in a crowded room when he needed to be, and the rest of the time he enjoyed the company. Sharing a house, sharing mealtimes, sharing oxygen, sharing themselves. Their combined experiences, the things they told one another, even when they didn't speak, kept the house alive. He had nearly forgotten what an empty house felt like, deserted like a widow done out in weeds and cobwebs. An empty house was to him like a crime scene, abandoned and waiting to be discovered. There was not enough life in it to fill it, and so every corner became a dark grey hollow where silence filled the air like dust. It disconcerted him to wake from a dreamless sleep into such stagnancy, as though he himself were a corpse, forgotten and left behind. It was funny though, really, when he was alert enough to think about it. Joe could only have been gone a matter of hours at most. For the flat to feel so bereft so soon showed how great, or how small, an impression Joe made. Either he was so inconsequential that he was forgotten the moment he stepped out, or was so essential that even the smallest parting felt like a rent in the fabric of the universe. There was nothing in between.
Emerson felt a light sugary tickle at his nose and carefully plucked from the pillow a single golden strand of Joe's hair, proof that he had been there at one point. He twisted it tightly about his thumb, the colour of the hair showing up darker against his skin than it was when it grew, alive, from Joe's head. It was a thin, fragile filament, though with strength enough to alter the shape of Emerson's finger as it weaved like a chain around it. Centuries ago, people used to keep locks of hair as keepsakes, forget-me-nots. A remnant of the living person after they had died, plaited and fastened securely behind metal clasps. Emerson remembered a family heirloom that had belonged to his great-grandmother, a large lozenge-shaped ring containing a coil of her husband's jet black hair buried within crystal. It had always given him the creeps a bit, which was why it had been left to Erica. The hair, severed and imprisoned as it dulled, had reminded him too much of his own. Part of his own DNA would be coded in those strands that once were part of his great-grandfather, just as Emerson's DNA profile was recorded on the police database, just as it would probably be on file at the hospital since he'd had his skin graft following the striping. Hair, skin, when it came down to it, they were just data and dust. During life, they were shed every day without you noticing, regenerating and regrowing brand new, their detritus filling shelves and mantelpieces and forgotten places. After death, they were your autograph, left behind to identify or commemorate you.
But Joe wasn't dead, he'd presumably just gone into work early. And this strand of hair he had left behind him was just incidental, natural wastage. Emerson shook it from his hand onto the floor, watching it float in the morning light for a second before it disappeared into the carpet like a mirage. As Emerson stretched his limbs, pulsing out the energy of his mind to incite them to movement, his right leg brushed against something harder than the bedsheets. An object that relocated with a rustle down towards his feet with the movement of his shin. Like a dextrous but lazy monkey, Emerson picked it up with his toes and slid it up the bed towards his waist, too sluggish yet to move more. The small parcel delivered into his hands, he saw it was a small piece of lined notepaper, folded neatly but crumpled from its journey down and up the mattress. Joe's meticulous handwriting peeked reticently out of one corner.
Emerson,
I'm sorry. There was a call-out. I didn't want to wake you. Find me at work when you come in.
All my love,
Joe.
There was nothing else on the paper, the other side of the note as bare as Joe's side of the bed. Emerson swore loudly, knocking his phone off the bedside table in his hurry to get up. His vision blurred blackly, blood rushing like red full-foamed waves in his ears. The roaring in his ears seemed to provide the soundtrack to the morning sky outside as Emerson thrust open the curtains. The sun had only recently risen and the shadows were long. The firmament was rouged, like a face flushed in anger or humiliation. Thin clouds like fingertips scratched across it as though they were painting in the blood of the heavens, leaving their fleeting scars before they were blown away. Already they were scudding across the sky as directed by the wind rather than the force of their own will.
What the hell had Joe been thinking, leaving Emerson to sleep when he should have been working? Did he think that Emerson wasn't up to it, was that it? That he was still frail and vulnerable, an invalid? Invalidated? They hadn't had any very big cases since Joe had finally allowed Emerson back from sick leave, not since before. Emerson had been kept off any murders or violent cases for several weeks, and while he hadn't liked it, and had burned against the chains of his desk with more friction than even the bonds of his coma, he had understood. It had been procedure, due process, to ease him back in gently. But it was now six months on. He was fully certified as fit to work, and he would have thought that Joe, his own husband, would have understood his need to carry on as normal. But perhaps Joe had overheard him having a small coughing fit in the bathroom the other day and hadn't wanted to be burdened with someone who couldn't keep up on a cold, damp crime scene, where the early morning twists of fog might still cling to the pavement and clog up his damaged lungs with their choking vapour. What did Emerson have to do to prove that he was capable? If even Joe had doubts, what must the rest of them have thought?
He groaned, imagining the amount and variety of ways in which Mansell could use this to wind him up. He liked Mansell, he did, on the whole, but the man never missed an opportunity to try to get a rise from him, usually succeeding. And the others, would they think that he had been skiving and got Joe to cover for him? The only thing he could do now was to get himself to the office as soon as he could, well before the official start of the shift. The hour was still early – usually at this time, he and Joe would be enjoying a leisurely morning together. One of them might grab a shower while the other prepared breakfast. Or they might sip their tea curled up together on the sofa in their dressing-gowns, sleepily catching up on the news headlines or just silently breathing each other in. There was something wonderful about the way that Joe smelled in the morning, before he had washed. It was purer, an unblemished scented glimmer of the man beneath the soaps and balms. It delighted Emerson to think that he was probably the only person who was allowed to know it. Sometimes, they would stay in bed as late as they could get away with, simply because they could. But this morning was as far away from those tranquil togethered hours as it was possible to be. Emerson threw on his suit hurriedly (thankfully he had taken on Joe's habit of laying it out the night before), muttering curses when he realised he had done up his shirt wrong, leaving a spare buttonhole flopping uselessly in the top of his collar and an unrequited button hanging at the bottom. The whole shirt sat uneven and out of alignment. It was in such sharp contrast to the way Joe had fastened him up the previous morning, with fluent fingers and a kiss at the end. It was too reminiscent of the years he'd spent pining for Joe, as though his memories of the previous day, and night, were just one more vivid fantasy.
He paused for a moment, a tentative smile warming his face, remembering their closeness of the previous night. It had been a split-second decision, to instigate sex, and he had not been entirely sure that Joe would go along with it. Emerson had just wanted not to think for a while, to iron out the anxiety from Joe's face and in doing so, to pluck it free from his own spirit as well. For the two of them to be only bodies and not minds. It had worked too – he had drifted off into a warm soaked slumber with Joe still loosely inside him and for a time there was nothing else. Nothing but heat and breathing and tenderness. It had been so perfect, too perfect – maybe he had only imagined it?
His phone buzzed rudely from the floor, almost as if it could read the trail of Emerson's thoughts and was exasperated by them. Emerson was exasperated by them himself, if he was honest. He hated that Joe could still make him feel so insecure, just by a sudden and unexpected change to their routine. He dove across the room, hoping his phone might present a message from Joe, in explanation perhaps, or at least to say good morning. He pretended not to feel the surging, sagging disappointment in his chest when he realised that it was only one of those round robin updates from work, informing all teams about a missing 14 year old girl. He dutifully archived the message, though he never really expected to look at it again. She would only be his team's problem if she turned up dead.
Waiting beneath that was a text from Mansell, sent only a couple of minutes earlier.
[cant say i blame the boss 4 wantin u 2 keep his bed warm 4 him but bloody hell cld have dun with u there earlier skip sez 2 make urself useful & bring in a round of coffees when u get ere]
"For fuck's sake, he couldn't even wait half an hour," muttered Emerson. "And has he never heard of punctuation?"
He deleted the message with grim force – he'd remember the coffees without the prompt. And he could do without the reminder that Mansell had been at work, doing and getting on with things, while he, Emerson, had been tucked up obliviously in bed. He had never thought he would see the day when he was outperformed by Finlay Mansell, and it rankled. That thought annoyed him more than anything, though he couldn't say exactly why.
With the text gone, an earlier message from Erica, received about forty-five minutes before Mansell's, was revealed, standing visible and haughty on his home screen.
[Heard from your old friend Ollie yesterday. Wanted your address. I take it you haven't told Joe about what you two got up to at uni?]
Emerson froze mid-scroll, his fingers silhouetted against the bright phone screen. He waited a minute or two before replying. The tension in his fingers was such that he feared he might break the screen with the force of his typing. The screen was already cracked and in need of repair – a thin fissure, barely a hair's breadth, criss-crossed the screen like the string from a spider, waiting to be spun into a web.
[There's nothing to tell. Don't have time for this now Erica.] He jabbed firmly yet carefully at the screen, before slamming the phone down on the table so that he could finish getting dressed.
He ignored the intrusive ping of her reply that interrupted him as he was leaving the flat.
The burr of the ringing tone tolled loudly in Joe's ear – one, two, three… It was probably one of his least favourite sounds. When it was the other way around, if someone was telephoning him, it meant action, that he was needed and could be purposeful. He could answer, have the conversation and be done. But when he was the one making the call, all that sound meant was waiting. Waiting, not knowing whether the person on the other end wasn't answering because they weren't with their phone, or because it was on silent, or they were in an unpredictable signal area, or whether they were ignoring him, or worst of all, they were grievously injured and therefore incapable of answering. His imagination would torture him, dreaming up ever more improbable scenarios. The more he cared about the person, the worse it was. He tried to tell himself that he was being irrational, but on at least three occasions, reality had equalled or even surpassed his worst visions. Once, when Ed had been abducted, and twice when Emerson… Joe gripped his left hand around the receiver, a brutal but vain strangulation, and tried to sieve his mind of the images filling it. Seven, eight, nine… He had tried to tune it once, the ringing tone, to ascertain exactly which note of the scale it was that vibrated at him as he held. To catalogue and quantify and keep it fixed in place. He had held the telephone to one ear, and a tuning fork to the other (Emerson had still had one lying around at home from his singing days), and listened carefully. But of course it had been out of tune, the intonation somewhere between an A and an A flat, oscillating between the two but hitting neither. It had felt as though the microtones were laughing at him. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
He was just about to hang up, when there was a muffled crackling from the other end and a flustered sounding voice answered.
"Ah, Joe, hello," said the voice, breathlessly. "My apologies for not answering right away but I was just alighting my train, and a person whom I would hesitate to call a gentleman was quite deliberately blocking the carriageway with a suitcase of frankly ludicrous proportions. I very nearly had to raise my voice at him. My good man, I said…"
"Ed… Ed," interrupted Joe, knowing that the historian was fully capable of taking fifteen minutes to relate an event which lasted only thirty seconds. Every last detail was, to him, an event worth recording, which was what made him an excellent researcher, but a somewhat infuriating conversationalist. "We've got a double murder, so I can't be long. I was just hoping you might be able to help us with a precedent."
"Oh, well, of course. I have very few notes with me, but I'll be what help I can. Do you need me to return to the station?"
Joe smiled. "Oh no, Ed. Thank you for offering but I'm sure we'll manage a few days without you. You deserve to go on your conference."
"Very well. How can I be of assistance?" Joe had known Ed for many years, and recognised the various inflections of his voice. He thought that Ed sounded just a little bit put out at not being proven indispensable.
"What do you know about carvings on murder victims?"
"Carvings?"
"Yes. Made with a knife, or a blade of some sort. A word, perhaps, or letters, symbols, cut into the flesh."
"Oh, I see." Ed's voice hushed almost to a whisper, and Joe suddenly realised that the archivist was standing on a very public train having a conversation about the most gruesome aspect of a confidential case. That was how leaks happened.
"It doesn't matter," Joe said, quickly. "It can wait until you get back."
"No, no," replied Ed, "Let me just find somewhere a little more private."
There were a series of dense bass thumps, followed by a static rustling that reminded Joe of dusty newspapers. After a moment, Ed's voice, previously only heard as a distant "excuse me, thank you so much", returned to the line.
"Carvings, yes," he said. "As far as I can recall, there have been a number of cases where victims have been tortured and their bodies mutilated in that way. Often, the words carved on the victims had some meaning to the killer, perhaps as a way to explain the killing, or to define the victim according to how the killer saw them. There are cases of girls being branded as prostitutes, even when they weren't, to fit their killer's image of them, for example."
"So the victim would have known their killer?"
"I'd say more often than not, yes. But some of the carvings have never been explained, as the cases were not solved, so it's impossible to say for certain. In fact… yes, I do believe…"
Ed's voice trailed off in thought. Joe could hear the abrasive sound of the train announcement foretelling the stations Ed would be passing on his way to Edinburgh. If only crime investigations could be so clearly prophesied. Then again, having a strict timetable and sticking to it were two completely different things. The one thing that could be predicted with any sort of certainty was that, at some point, a breakdown or a signalling failure or the wrong kind of weather would throw you off course. And if you arrived at your destination at all, there was no guarantee that it would be as you had hoped or expected.
"Ed?" prompted Joe. "Have you thought of something?"
"Ye-es," said Ed, a reflective tilt in his accent, his pitch tumbling from the upper part of his vocal register to his lower notes within one slow word. As he recovered his speech, he became once more the showman, declaiming his narrative with dramatic pauses and a timbre designed to enthral.
"The year was 1947, the place Los Angeles, when a gruesome discovery was made. A woman walking down the street saw what she thought was a mannequin from a clothing store, lying in two parts on the road. It was only as she drew closer that she realised that it was the disfigured corpse of a young woman. She had been mutilated horribly, her face almost unrecognisable, and most ghastly of all, she had been completely severed in twain. The victim's name was Elizabeth Short, but she was also known by another name, a name which has gone down in modern legend – the Black Dahlia."
"The Black Dahlia?" said Joe, a hint of confused recognition shading his voice. "What has that case got to do with ours?"
"Well," replied Ed, "if I remember rightly, I have nothing here to refer to, you see, the letters BD were carved onto her thigh. BD for Black Dahlia, one assumes. There is some confusion as to when she acquired her pseudonym, whether it was in life or in death. The killer was never found so we will never know why he marked her with those characters, but I would hypothesise that it was a form of labelling, so that her identity would forevermore be the mutilated victim, Black Dahlia, rather than the vivacious young Elizabeth Short she once had been."
"He was making sure she was only seen in one way – through his eyes," said Joe, his breath soft and sinister. "He wanted to reduce her to a concept rather than a person."
"That's certainly one interpretation of the known facts," said Ed carefully. "I do know that there is a file on this case in my archive – you may benefit from seeking it out. I shall be returning to Whitechapel on Monday so do k…"
Ed's voice broke jerkily and disappeared into a dead silence, broken twice by jarring crackling, like the sound a firebrand might make when it was hurled into darkness. Even the best phone networks could still be defeated by tunnels and the remoter parts of the British landscape.
Joe replaced the receiver gently back into its cradle, taking care to position it precisely on his desk with the wires curved into two parallel lines, not a kink or a coil out of place. He had just refined its arrangement to his liking, when his startled elbow knocked it all off track with the sudden appearance of Miles at his office door.
"Miles," he grunted in irritation, reaching for his Tiger Balm, thankfully still in its proper position at the other end of the table. The relief of massaging the salve into his forehead was just a momentary top-up – his stress levels were not so high at that moment that it was a necessary rescue, as it often was. That did not mean that it was any less important. In fact, he knew that if he did not refresh the balm regularly, then he would crumple later. Like certain medication, or an addiction, it needed continuous use to have the desired effect.
Miles shuffled into the room. "Sorry sir, didn't mean to make you jump. Just had the initial report back from Llewellyn. The PMs are scheduled for this afternoon, but we've got enough to go on from this for now."
Joe raised his head briefly and gestured for Miles to continue. His eyes met his sergeant's for a second or two, just enough time to recognise the unwanted concern floating there. He scowled and looked away, rearranging the items on his desk once again. The telephone cable was refusing now to sit where Joe dictated.
Miles sat down creakily in the chair across from Joe. "Right," he said, "Llewellyn says that Paul and Adam were most likely to have been dead before they were strung up. Their necks were broken manually, with some force, and they were hung up under the bridge once they were dead."
Joe breathed heavily. "Yes, I know that. She said as much at the crime scene."
"Alright smarty-pants. I'm only repeating what she's just told me. Did she also tell you that the carvings were made ante-mortem, while they were still alive? They were pretty deep too. It must have been bloody agony for them."
"Jesus," whispered Joe. "But… the blood, there should have been more blood, shouldn't there?"
"It was all washed off with disinfectant by the killer," Miles explained. "Before and after death, Llewellyn reckons. Bastard wanted to make it as painful as possible for them before he finally put them out of their misery by snapping their necks."
Joe grimaced, as the loathing he felt for the telephone wire mingled with the horror of what Miles had told him. "Perhaps he also wanted to make the word he carved stand out more clearly. I've just spoken to Ed who thinks that the carving might be a way of labelling the bodies. To reduce their identities to a single concept. He's suggested a precedent. Might that give us a lead on motive?"
Miles blew through his lips with a thoughtful whistle. "FAG - well, there's one obvious possibility…"
"You… you think it might be homophobia?"
Miles shrugged. "I don't know. You were the one who suggested the word might be important. I doubt the killer was trying to advocate the benefits of cigarettes, that's for sure."
"Don't be flippant, Miles." A swell of something both sour and bitter surged through Joe. It wasn't quite anger, but he couldn't place the emotion either. It felt like a poisonous honey trickling down into his stomach. "I want to know if either Adam Snow or Paul Sage were gay, and if they'd ever encountered any discrimination or abuse."
"Okay, sir, we'll get right on it." Miles turned to leave, but paused after a quarter-turn. "Oh and sir, if it turns out they were, try not to take it too personally, alright?"
Joe frowned. "I don't know what you mean. Why would I?"
"No reason at all. Oh look, Kent's turned up." Miles gestured at the outer office, before pointing accusingly at Joe. "You can catch him up with the case."
Joe sat stubbornly at his desk for precisely four minutes (he kept one eye on his watch as it beat obliviously round the dial in its perfect circle over and over and over and over.) He didn't want to give Miles the satisfaction of following him straight out, so he sat and watched as Miles shouted to Emerson, "Hello sleepyhead. What time do you call this?"
He watched Emerson's flustered response as he battled with his belongings, distributing hot drinks among the team, his face flushed and tense. He watched as Emerson replied tersely to Riley's attempts at conversation, though his words were lost in the space between them. He watched as Emerson's eyes slid to meet his, though not with their usual bright gladness at seeing him, then as they sloped away to his computer screen while his fingers tapped their way into the desktop. The cheerful sound of the computer's logging in belied the hooded expression on Emerson's face.
Joe knew what time Emerson's alarm would have gone off, and he could make a fairly educated guess as to what time he would have gotten up and discovered the note. Emerson surely must have rushed more than was healthy to get into work an hour before the official start of the shift. He appeared to have been in such a hurry to leave the flat that he had forgotten his coat, which would now be hanging limply and empty from the hook in the hall, as Adam Snow's body had hung from the bridge. Without that additional layer protecting him, Emerson would have been at the mercy of every bleak breeze and dreary raindrop during his ride to work. A breathy rattle, like wet muddy gravel, emerged from him as he cleared his throat, and although his arms were extended towards his desk, his shoulders were tightly bound to his body, as if to lock in warmth. Well, Emerson would have no need to go outside again for a while, Joe could make sure of that.
Eventually, Joe could watch no longer, and he rose and stepped out into the main Incident Room and towards Emerson's desk, where he was pointedly looking away from Joe. His jaw ticked, pulsing visibly in his cheek in a beat just out of step with Joe's gait.
"We have a case, Kent," he said.
Emerson still didn't look at him, scrolling instead through his small library of unread emails. "Yeah, I'd kind of gathered that much, sir. I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner, no-one told me."
Emerson glared at Mansell, his eyes widening and chin clenching, though Joe suspected that the older DC was not the real object of Emerson's wrath.
"Yes, well," he faltered, unsure how to deal with his husband's sudden coldness. His DC, he was his DC, they weren't husbands here. "You're here now. I want you to read the initial report from the crime scene, familiarise yourself with the details, then I need you to locate a precedent in the archives. Ed thinks the Black Dahlia case from 1947 may give us some insight."
Emerson looked up at him then, his eyes wet with confusion. "Sir?"
"As you'll see in the report, the two victims were found in Leman Street with carvings on their bodies. I want you to focus on finding examples of this occurring in past cases, as a guide to what it might indicate."
"But… but, sir, surely…" Emerson stumbled over his speech. "Surely… isn't there something more inter… more useful… I can do? What about interviewing witnesses, background on the vics' families and friends, their work, CCTV?"
"Well someone needs to pop back to the crime scene to go over the site plan in daylight," piped up Miles. "We need to find which direction the killer might have come from, and finish the door-to-door. Might be useful for Kent to go seeing as he didn't get a chance to see it earlier?"
Joe swallowed down a whispery gasp of alarm at the thought of Emerson at the crime scene, alone, coatless, unprotected. His vision blurred, and an unbidden image of Emerson swinging from the bridge entered his head, conflating the man sat in front of him with one of the bodies now lying in the morgue. Bulging eyes stared at him, a thick flaccid tongue flopped in a hellish vernacular, in a horrid mimicry of the man he loved. Joe's fingers twitched as though they were throttling and constricting around an invisible neck.
"No!" he exclaimed, more quickly and more loudly than he had intended. He breathed deeply and spoke again at a calmer level. "No, Kent. I want this to be your priority. Mansell and Riley will be focussing on backgrounds. We can get one of the uniforms to go to the crime scene."
The apparition in front of him dissipated, like the looming night-time shadows, which turned a dressing-gown into a hovering corpse, would fade with the dawn. Even the hurt look on Emerson's face couldn't dampen Joe's relief. Not even the silence broken by the aggressive thump and screech, the sound reminiscent of the oppressive clunk of a cell door locking, as Emerson elevated himself from his desk could make Joe feel anything but reassured.
"Fine, whatever you want, sir," grumbled Emerson. "But I'm not a fucking librarian."
Joe watched the back of Emerson's head as he trudged out of the Incident Room, fixing on him like a beacon until he disappeared from view. In his peripheral vision, he could see Mansell and Riley looking uncertainly at him and at each other. A wave of irritation rose up from his chest and spewed out of his mouth.
"Well?" he said, spinning to face them. "You know what you have to get on with."
As his two DCs obediently set to their tasks, Miles fixed Joe with a stern look.
"Could I have a word with you, sir?" he said. "In private."
Joe wanted to protest, to argue that he had too much to do, but Miles had already started to advance towards Joe's office, practically commandeering Joe with him. He actually held the door open for Joe to walk through, and indicated for the DI to sit down, as though it was Miles' office and not Joe's. Miles calmly clicked the door shut behind him and took his seat, clasping his hands into a pyramid in front of him, while Joe backed warily into the corner of the small room. The fingernails on Miles' hand shone menacingly like sunrise on a battlefield.
Thirty seconds of silence, solid as a doorless wall, passed before Miles spoke. "Are you going to tell me then?"
"What?" mumbled Joe, peevishly.
"What it is that's bothering you."
Joe leaned forward, pressing his palms firmly downwards on the desk to launch him to his feet. "We're in the middle of an investigation, Miles. We can chit-chat later."
Miles raised his voice, not so that anyone outside of the office could hear, but, combined with the steel in his eyes, it left Joe in no doubt that the conversation was far from over. "Sit down, sir. Please. This is about the investigation."
"Well?" snapped Joe, sitting sullenly.
"We've all seen it, sir. Don't think we haven't. The only one who hasn't is Kent, and that's only because you didn't give him a chance to fully catch up before you sent him off."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I know who Adam Snow reminds you of." Miles' voice had decrescendoed once again, tiptoeing around itself, needling at every crack in Joe's raised barrier.
"I'm glad you think you can read my mind, Miles. It'll save a lot of pointless conversations like this in the future."
Miles sighed, a resonant huff like a wolfish attempt to blow down the wall.
"Look, I get it, I really do. You've both been through the mill this year. And to be faced with a case like this… I'm just trying to say that you can't keep him wrapped up in cotton wool forever. It was fine when he was still recovering, but you can't just shunt him off down to the archives to do Ed's job, when he's got his own stuff to do. We need him here doing what he's trained for, not fannying about with decades-old books."
"Look it's my team, not yours, to allocate as I see fit." Joe's voice was the one getting louder now, louder and harsher, a rallying cry against invasion. Only whom exactly he was calling upon for defence was unclear. Miles sat firmly between Joe and the rest of the team, a whole staircase and several floors now lay between him and Emerson, assuming that Emerson had gone where Joe had ordered. Usually, it would be Miles himself sitting at Joe's right hand, offering his unconditional support. Well, maybe not unconditional, perhaps, but not since Joe first came to Whitechapel had he felt that he and Miles were on opposite sides. Joe was alone and unaided, barricaded and trapped behind his desk.
"Yes it is," said Miles. "But that doesn't mean that you can't take advice. And they are my team as well, Joe, don't you forget it. I'm the one immediately responsible for them, for their welfare."
"Miles! could you just…" The words burst out of Joe like gunfire, over before they had begun. He didn't even know how he had planned to finish the sentence. Just what? Just get back to work? Back off? Stop being right?
Miles' half smile, a soft stretch at one side of his mouth, was, Joe was sure, intended to be sympathetic. "Look, no-one was happier than I was when the two of you got together. You're clearly made for each other and it's done you both the world of good. Some people might have said I shouldn't have encouraged it, a DI and one of his DCs, but I always knew you'd both keep it professional at work. But if something's changed, if that's no longer the case, then…"
Finally the frustration bubbling beneath the surface burst through. Who did Miles think he was, talking about Joe and Emerson as if he knew more about their relationship than they did? It was none of his business, and Joe was prepared to listen no longer.
"I'll just leave you with that thought, then, sir," were the last words Joe heard as he stormed out of the office.
