Nine

Saul stared at the pictures in front of him, briefly wondering when the whole process would go entirely digital and he'd find himself scrolling through images on an iPad instead of deliberately working his way through these prints. DI Ash wasn't adverse to technology – some of the toughest cases he'd ever worked on owed their solutions to a mass of inert wires finding a path where he couldn't even see the wood for the trees. But it seemed to him that some things were still best in physical form. Like the images in front of him - pages and pages of missing children looking back as he turned each one. At least their likenesses were still physical, even if their bodies were now only theoretical.

He rubbed a hand over his eyes and reached for the coffee mug Leo Dalton had lent him. The Professor hadn't seemed to mind him making himself at home in the conference room while he waited for Doctor Alexander. It had promised to be more peaceful than the station, and so it had proved to be. There was something calming about the Lyall Centre – which was ironic, considering what went on in the basement.

The door opened and Nikki Alexander appeared, holding a sheaf of paper. "Sorry to keep you waiting," she said. "I checked my email when I got back and there was an answer from the mutilation expert I consulted over the torso. I thought you'd want to see."

"Great, thanks." He stood up as she approached the table, an old habit that he frequently kicked himself for, but seemed unable to break. "Anything useful?"

Nikki made a face as they settled themselves. "Well, she doesn't think it's a ritual death. Or at least, it doesn't match anything she recognises."

"Which is what we already suspected."

"Yes," she sighed. "But it opens up a whole new folder of questions, doesn't it? If it wasn't a ritual murder, why sever the limbs at all? And those lacerations around the ribcage, what were they about? They were deep, deliberate – almost surgical in their execution. If not for some ritual, then why?"

"It could be the murderer trying to put us off the scent. Making it look like a muti killing when it's actually something much simpler."

"Simpler?" Nikki repeated. "There's nothing simple about this boy's death."

Ash nodded, looking back down to the pile of photographs and forms in front of him. "I know. I won't lie, Doctor Alexander, this case is haunting me."

"Call me Nikki," she suggested. "What have you got there?"

"Files on missing persons that match the description of the torso."

"There are a lot."

"There are. I haven't finished going through them all."

"No match yet?"

Ash shook his head. "No. But then I chatted to the controller of the refugee centre down at Folkestone."

He watched her frown. "Didn't they have a breakout last month?"

"Exactly. And what he said sent a few alarm bells ringing, so I went down to check it out. He gave me another pile of files to add to the list. And among them were these five."

Saul pulled out the relevant files and spread them out in a line in front of them both. The pictures showed the faces of five boys. They stared at the camera with defiant faces, but troubled eyes.

Nikki reached out, touching one of the photographs. "Well, they're in our age range."

Ash nodded. "And that's not all." He moved the headshots out of the way, revealing another image for each file.

"Oh, God."

He watched as Nikki picked up each of the images in turn, a look of infinite sadness on her face. He wondered if she was aware that she was so expressive – it was a quality he wasn't used to experiencing in pathologists. Most of them closed everything off, he'd found, at least in public. Some were usually worried about prejudicing themselves, or an investigation, and later being held accountable for it. Others simply knew how to harden themselves to the emotional wrenching that went with the job. But Nikki Alexander – she was different. He could read just about everything that was in her head through her eyes, which were large, dark – and lingering in his thoughts far longer than Saul Ash found comfortable to admit, even to himself.

"They look like pretty similar whip patterns to me," he said, quietly.

She nodded. "They definitely look like the ones we found on the boy's torso." She looked up at him. "Did these boys all arrive at the centre together? Where had they come from?"

Ash picked up one of the headshots and contemplated it for a moment. How young, he thought, how young you are, to have such little hope left in your eyes. "From the Congo," he said, aloud. "They were claiming asylum as former child soldiers. They reported that they couldn't go home as their villages would kill them for what they had been forced to do. They had nothing and nowhere to go. I suppose they thought Britain could offer them a new start, somewhere they weren't known."

Nikki shook her head. "But what about the whip marks? Part of their militia training?"

"No… they were used as slave labour once the fighting had stopped. Another reason they were desperate to get out of the country – they wanted to be safe before the gang leaders caught up with them. They don't deal with 'deserters' kindly."

"Did you speak to any of these boys?" Nikki asked. "Was there another with them when they first arrived? Someone who got out in the break and didn't get caught, maybe?"

Ash placed the photograph he'd been holding back on the table. "They were all in the breakout. None of them have been found."

Nikki stared at him. "What, none of them? They've just vanished?"

"I'm afraid so."

"How does that even happen? How can five boys just disappear? They would have had nothing – no extra clothes, no money… It's winter, in a country they don't know. How would they even survive?"

"There's some suspicion that the breakout was orchestrated from outside. It's possible these boys had someone waiting somewhere for them."

She made a sound in her throat. "That's got to be rubbish, surely. How would these five have those kind of resources?"

Ash acknowledged the point. "Yes, but the area was thoroughly swept immediately and no trace of them was found. Without help, it's hard to see how they could have disappeared so quickly."

He watched as she looked back at the pictures. "So, one of these could be our body."

They were quiet for a moment, each taking in the faces of the five children in front of them, wondering how the wreck in the morgue could bear any relation to what they saw here. Then Nikki moved, reaching out to pull one of the pictures of the whip scars toward her. She hunched over it with a frown.

"What is it? Have you seen something?"

She rested a finger on the print. "Look – there. What does that look like to you?"

He squinted at it. "Another scar?"

Nikki pushed back her chair and stood, reaching for the scanner that stood on the end of the table. She placed the image inside, and Ash turned to watch as a much larger version of it flashed up on the screen. Nikki walked to it, studying the now-enlarged area.

"It's not a whip scar," she said. "It's a knife mark. And it's lying between the third and fourth ribs."

Ash stood up. "Like the cuts on our torso?"

"Yes – but they're not identical. This must be a longer cut that any of those on our victim, to be visible from this angle."

Something cold and intangible washed over Saul's shoulders. "But you think they're similar?"

She looked at him. "They could be. Is there anything else in their files about scarring, other than these photographs?"

Ash spun on his heel and flicked through the too-few slips of paper pertaining to each boy. He read for a moment, something in his chest constricting with each word. Eventually, he nodded. "It's listed here. They'd only had their initial assessment. Every one of them is noted to have what looks like knife scars along their ribcage. Four cuts on each boy."

Nikki moved back to him, looking at the notes. "But they weren't treated for knife wounds?"

"No – these are listed as already healed."

Nikki frowned. "But that wasn't the case with our body. Those wounds were definitely open, and recent."

Ash shook his head. "So our boy can't be one of these."

"It's too much of a coincidence, surely?"

"What other explanation can there be?"

She looked up at him. "I don't know. Maybe I missed something. With this case, I keep thinking I've missed something. I'm going to take another look at the body."

[TBC]