Massacre

The way it started was ordinary enough… it was just like any other case, and, as it began, I had other things on my mind. I wasn't focussing; I didn't see the things that were staring me in the face. I should have, but I didn't. Sometimes, I feel like I could have stopped it before it even began, but I'd be lying if I said that was true…

No one could have stopped it. No one.

*

"Right," Leo said, crossing into the main offices of the lab and interrupting an apparently hilarious conversation between Harry and Nikki, "I have a case for you." He paused for a second, watching as they turned from him, to each other, and he laughed as he saw them mentally vying for it – they'd both been inside, doing paperwork, for most of the week, and a crime scene was just what both of them wanted. They thought that, as usual, they would have to fight for it. Leo smiled, adding "for both of you…"

"Both of us?" Harry asked, unnerved. Scenes requiring the two of them tended to be… unpleasant. Or vast.

"Yup." Leo confirmed, "we definitely need the pair of you down there. We've… there's… we have seven bodies, in a garage in Islington."

"Seven bodies?" Harry asked:

"In a garage?" Nikki added:

"On Valentine's day?" Harry added, dryly.

Leo smiled; they'd realised the significance. He'd wondered whether either of them would know, but he supposed that they were forensic pathologists, and that they were also clever and shrewd… and that almost everyone knew about the St. Valentine's day massacre of 1929, anyway.

"You see," Leo smiled, "this scene is definitely going to require two of you. And, there will be heavy police presence all around, too; it's… it seems a little bit unlikely that this is a coincidence."

"You're telling me…" Harry laughed, rolling his eyes and moving to turn his computer off, ready to head out.

"Are you worried, Leo?" Nikki asked, picking up on what Harry had missed; namely the way that Leo was shaking slightly, and the way that his voice was faltering as he spoke.

He nodded; "anyone out to copy the Valentine's Day Massacre is serious. It's not something that I would personally choose to be involved in."

"And so you're sending us." Harry confirmed, oddly cheerfully.

"I don't have a choice; we definitely need to send two experienced pathologists, and I am absolutely snowed under with this last case at the moment. It has to be the pair of you. There's no one else."

"We'll be fine, Leo." Nikki smiled, crossing to him and gently placing a hand on his shoulder, "don't you worry about us."

"Mmmm." Harry echoed; "we're big kids. One day, we may even act our ages."

"I should be so lucky…" Leo sighed, nodding slightly. He was over-reacting; Nikki and Harry would be fine. They'd examine the bodies, speak to some detectives and bring the bodies back, the way they always did. There was nothing more to it. It would be fine. They would be protected.

*

"What," Harry asked, "is a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Harry," Nikki sighed, glancing up at him from where she was kneeling down on the other side of the garage, "please stop talking to the mutilated corpses."

"They're not very attractive, are they?"

"On the whole, no. But," Nikki laughed, noting down a detail of the blood-stained body in front of her, "I never did go for the 'riddled-with-bullets' type…"

"How boring of you…" Harry laughed, moving from one corpse to the next.

Seven bodies, riddled with bullets and drenched in their own blood, lay against the back wall of the garage. No one had heard the shootings – there was no doubt that they were shootings, though – and no one had noticed that the bodies were there until well into the afternoon… Nikki and Harry, though, guessed that their charges had probably been shot around mid-morning… not only because of the scientific factors, but also because Nikki knew that the original Valentine's Day Massacre victims had been shot at 10:30am.

"What do you think happened?" was the first thing that the police had asked them. Harry and Nikki had merely rolled their eyes, and told them to Google the 'St Valentine's Day Massacre'. When the detective had come back to them twenty minutes later, he'd asked what kind of a weapon he should be looking for. Nikki, again, rolled her eyes, and said "Well, I'm thinking that Thompson Submachine guns are probably a little old-hat these days, but…"

"This is a copy-cat crime, DI Malone," Harry had added, trying to be a little bit more serious than his colleague. For once. "The likelihood is that the weapon used was as close a modern replica of the original as possible."

"Who would do this, though?" the DI had asked.

"Well," Nikki had replied, dryly, again, "I'm guessing that we're not dealing with Chicago mobsters this time around."

"No," Harry had confirmed, "that would just be silly."

"It is fascinating, though, isn't it?" Nikki asked Harry, later on that afternoon, as they zipped up the last body bags, "that people would repeat this kind of thing…"

"Mmm. Fascinating." Harry nodded, sounding anything but fascinated.

"What?" Nikki asked.

"Why," Harry wanted to know, "is it always us, eh?"

"What do you mean?" Nikki asked, again, falling into step behind Harry, and pulling off her latex gloves as they made their way back to his car.

"Well, why is it always us who has to deal with things like this? Why can't we ever just have a normal day at the office? Why, for that matter, do we both have to work on Sundays?" The momentum of what he was saying was steadily building, and Nikki could tell that it was going to come to a climax pretty soon; rather than interrupting him, she just let him rant it all out. From experience, she knew that this was the easiest, least confrontational option. "Why can't we have a normal Valentine's day?" Harry concluded, his fists balling up. He looked angry – or, more than angry, even. He looked furious. Irrationally furious, but furious never the less.

"Ah." Nikki commented, once he'd finished, "so, that's what's bugging you. Well, Harry, there are two reasons for the fact that we can't have an ordinary Valentine's day."

"And they are…?" he asked, without glancing at her. He was staring furiously ahead of him, even as they approached his car. Nikki was staring at Harry, as she replied, and so neither of them noticed the way that the police officer nearest them was staring at the so intently that he could have been painting a picture.

"Well," Nikki continued, "firstly, that normal Valentine's days are boring,"

"Clearly," Harry interrupted, "you would know. Because I'm sure that you've had many…" he was being sarcastic; something which Nikki chose to ignore. She didn't know the root of his sudden fury, and nor did she want to. She nodded, and said "I've had one or two" noncommittally before continuing with her point; "and the second, even more blindingly obvious reason that we can't have a normal Valentine's day, Harry, is that neither of us have partners to share a normal Valentine's day with."

"Hmmmff." Harry nodded, kicking the ground. He swore; apparently the ground was rather harder than expected.


A/N: Sorry for the shortness of the chapter; I seem to slowly be killing my two best reviewers, and so I thought that a short update was probably better than no update! (:

Happy V-day, for tomorrow, by the way :)