AN:
moska: Thank you very much for the comment and kind words! Jane is one of my favourite characters so I am glad I have gotten her down in your opinion. The British characters are in fact all Original Characters, I hope that's not too off putting to you and that you continue to read. As for where the case is going, you'll have to watch this space! Bwahaha I shall reveal nothing... ;D
-RN
Burned at the Edge
by Rusty Nail
Chapter Four: Theories and Conjecture
Dinah's was a motorway restaurant crammed into the middle of London; it looked completely out of place one hundred percent of the time and it was a hub of police dining in the city, uniformed or otherwise. Harrie drove again, tapping her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel, the morning traffic was already horrendous and it was only just past six.
She pulled into the one remaining space and they got out. Once inside they were enveloped by a familiar smell, hot cooking food, coffee and the musty body odour of all night diners. They took a booth by the window, sitting opposite each other. They didn't even look at the menus; Ed undid the cap of his flask and poured himself a cup of tea.
"What the hell is that?" Harrie demanded, watching him.
"Green tea."
"Green... you don't drink green tea."
Ed shrugged, "Mel says it's better for you than black tea; something to do with the caffeine."
Harrie looked like the end of the world had just been announced, "Please don't tell me she's still on her health kick? I though she gave up all that last week."
"Nah, are you kidding? She just eased off because of our caseload."
They were interrupted by a middle aged brunette and name sake of the establishment, Dinah Richards. She smiled at both of them in turn, ignoring Ed's flask, where most places would tell their customers that outside beverages were not allowed to be consumed on the premises Dinah took a much more motherly approached, she treated everyone who came in as friends and they could drink whatever they wanted as long as they ordered something to eat.
"Mornin' Inspectors. What can I get you?" she beamed.
Harrie returned her warm smile, "I'll have a Full English please Dinah, plain toast instead of fried bread and extra baked beans and can I have a tea with-"
"Milk and one sugar, got it. Eddie?"
"Uh, what cereal do you have?"
Dinah raised an eyebrow, "Is that wife of yours still hounding you?" Ed looked sheepish and Harrie laughed, "I'll put you down for the same as Harrie, tomatoes instead of baked beans and no bacon, alright?"
"Thanks, Dee." Ed replied, sipping his green tea darkly, "I blame you Harrie..."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you."
She snorted and Dinah bustled off into the kitchen with her pad of paper and her pen. Harrie turned her head to stare out of the window, thoughtfully. Eddie shuffled out of his coat and leant back while they waited for their meal.
They had been partners for nearly six years and had not liked each other at all to begin with, in his mind she was entirely too emotional when it came to her cases and he was fairly certain she hated his 'by-the-book or not at all' mantra. Six years on they were close friends as well as colleagues and CIDs best team by a hairs breadth, their cases to convictions ratio was extremely high. Someone must have been thinking clearly when they had paired the two of them off.
"I know that look, Harrie." Ed said carefully.
Harrie brought her gaze away from the window, "I don't like this case already, that's all. I'm going to lose sleep over it and I hate losing sleep...I find it hard enough to find as it is..."
She looked down at her mobile phone as her sentence trailed away darkly; she had set it on the table next to the ketchup so it was at hand when it rang. She changed gears,
"You sure you want to eat right before the autopsies?"
"Yeah," Ed replied, "Dr. Creepy won't be ready for at least another two hours, you know that. 'Sides I'm starving."
Harrie nodded. Dinah brought their breakfasts over and she suddenly realised she was completely famished too, they ate in relative silence, Harrie added more sugar to her already saturated tea and Ed grimaced at her as she asked for a refill halfway through her scrambled eggs she made a face at him, hypocrite, she thought sharply, noticing that Ed had caved and had a mug of black tea in lew of his flask.
She was on her third cup; both of them had finished eating, when her mobile phone finally rang. It was the coroner, Dr. Oliver; she held a clipped conversation with him and then hung up. Ed watched her with his mug halfway to his lips.
"Grab your coat." She said to Ed, slipping her wallet out of her jacket pocket and setting down a twenty pound note to cover the breakfast, she gave Dinah a wave as she started out of the doorway. Ed was at her heels.
Dr. Oliver was, as Ed described, creepy. He was small and mouse like, with narrow eyes and a thin mouth that had trouble hiding his teeth, he was a nice enough man but his affinity for all things deceased gave Ed Stone the creeps. He stood next to Harrie in the mortuary, over one of the dead females; he could see the man and the other two girls over Oliver's shoulder.
"All three girls were raped." Oliver began dismally, pulling no punches as usual, " I have sent three sexual assault kits for analysis but I suspect that our deceased male friend over there will be a match. All three girls were bound at the wrists and ankles, I would make a guess at nylon rope, I collected some fibres from the bodies, and they went to the lab along with the rape kits."
I have yet to start the full autopsies, COD in all cases seems evidentially gunshots to the frontal lobe; though our mystery man over there had five bullets inside him in total, which accounts for the acute lack of blood."
"Five?" Harrie unfolded her arms; Ed looked across at her as she spoke, "Five bullets?"
"Hrm. One through the frontal lobe, as with the girls; the rest were in his crotch and abdomen."
Ed looked suspiciously green but Harrie forged onwards, "What aren't you telling us Oliver?" she asked knowingly, seeming unconcerned by the revelation of the high bullet count, though Ed knew she had merely filed the information away.
"I found a boiled sweet in the male victim's throat, I know what you're thinking and no, it does not seem to relate to the 'Candyman Killings', this was to do with the victim's severe halitosis." Oliver sounded excited.
"Bad breath?" Ed interjected.
"In the extreme, his tooth decay, swollen gums and highly acidic saliva point to a severe case of Gum Disease, only about 5 of the worlds population suffers from it this extreme, it's genetic you see but entirely treatable by a dentist."
Ed made a disgusted face, "Well, why didn't he just have it treated?"
"Detective Stone, that would be your department."
"How old were the girls?" Harrie asked suddenly,
"I'd estimate about sixteen to nineteen," Oliver nodded, "I take it you found no identification with them?"
Ed shook his head, "Not a shred."
A sigh, Oliver had two assistants with him, which explained the speed with which he completed the initial analysis, one of them brought over a chart and he looked down at it, reading as he spoke. The only man alive with the ability to multi-task, in Ed's mind,
"Well, I have prints from all of them, blood samples, photos, the bullets, everything is over there," he indicated a table that had several clear bags on it, each with its own label listing the contents, "I imagined you would want to have a look at them, Harriet, so if you would do the honours of taking them along to the labs you, you can get a look at the evidence. If you would like to be present for the autopsies; then by all means come along, standing room only."
Harrie grimaced, she hated her name with a passion, and Oliver just couldn't seem to bring himself to use her universal nickname. She crossed to the table and picked up a bag,
"Thanks, Doc." She said tartly, turning to leave.
Ed grabbed the remaining two bags and gave Oliver a small nod before he followed Harrie's sweeping exit. He caught up with her in the corridor,
"Going to maintain there's nothing wrong? Usually I'm the one that can't wait to get out of Dr Creepy's Lair..."
"God, Ed, just drop it." Harrie snapped, "You want to know what's wrong? What's wrong is some sick son of a bitch raping then murdering three innocent girls and someone getting to him before me..."
"Come on Harrie, we'll figure it out, just be patient, yeah?"
She made no reply.
Ed sighed, watching her unlock her car door from three feet away. Something was eating at his partner and he had a good idea of what it was. For the last six months he, Harrie and several Detective Constables assigned to them had been on a Sex Trafficking case, the biggest to hit London in thirty years. They had been close to a result too, as close as they could hope to get at least, when their main link to the 'Big Fish' had up and disappeared without a trace.
Harrie was still sore about it, Ed knew she hated the fact that one of the biggest cases of the past ten years had slipped through her fingers, and she was tetchy about anything that reminded her of that case, such as rape. Not a great handicap for a London detective...
Ed shuffled through the photos on his lap whole she drove, putting thoughts of their past cases out of his mind. If they solved this one, maybe Harrie would lighten up a bit. He tried to get her theorising with him,
"So he raped them, he shot the, and someone shot him, doesn't make much sense. There's no trace of the second killer from what I saw...hey," he held up a plastic wallet, "a plane ticket jacket, for International Airlines, looks like our boy was planning an escape..."
"The ticket in there?" Harrie asked.
Ed drew a pair of sterile gloves from his pocket, Harrie made him carry them around at all times, he investigated carefully but came out empty handed, "Who carries around a ticket jacket and no ticket?"
Harrie slowed, jammed in traffic, her lips pursed. This was where her history in forensic science came into play, this was why Oliver had given the evidence he had collected to her, and she knew what to look for.
"You have a theory don't you?"
She looked at Ed, waiting for the green light, "I have conjecture." She said.
That seemed to be the end of the conversation. Ed rubbed his eyes, his mind wandering back to the case they had essentially had to leave to collect dust two months ago as they crawled through the morning rush hour traffic. Harrie blamed herself for letting their informant go into a deal without a wire, Ed thought it was justified, a wire compromised the little runt's safety and if his bosses caught wind they'd kill him then and there. But he'd bolted. Harrie had been disciplined for a 'bad call', though Tallentire had done his best to diffuse the situation and took most of the heat.
He watched her surreptitiously; maybe it was something else bothering her. Her slender shoulders were tight, her lips pressed together. Her focus seemed compromised.
"Something happened with Geoff?"
Harrie's neck snapped to the left, "What makes you ask that?"
"Yes, then."
He looked at the scarf, now discarded on the backseat, "If this is one case too many you should talk to Tallentire. You and Geoff could-"
"Don't say it, Ed, whatever it is, just don't say it, please."
He shut his mouth the whole way back to the Met, it was evident she did not want his input. They made their way up to the Offices, dropped off the crime scene photos at their desks and then Harrie said something about taking the blood down to the lab, when she came back almost half an hour later she was completely different, a twinkle in her grey eyes,
"The second shooter was already there. There were six bullets recovered by the CSUs, all from the same gun," She said triumphantly, "all .40 calibre Smith and Wesson's, probably discharged from a Glock, judging by the muzzle burns on the girls I'd say a 22 or a 17, they're nearly identical, both have a slide frame so IDing the murder weapon is going to be tough unless we trip over it,"
"You went to the Ballistics Lab, I take it?"
Harrie grinned, "They called me, alright?"
"Right, so why do you say it's going to be tough?"
"The Glock 22 is a standard side arm for police forces, worldwide, they're a dime a dozen in the crimnal underworld. Now we've got seven bullets from the scene, one in each of our girls, four in the rapist--"
"You don't know that he's the rapist yet,"
Harrie raised an eyebrow, "Call it a hunch, Ed. Four in the rapist which leaves eight unaccounted for if the gun had a full magazine to begin with, I think that the second shooter was one of the girls,"
"You ... what?"
"I think one there were four girls and that one of them got free, think about it. She's been raped, bound, probably beaten around, she sees the three girls before her shot in the forehead, and she takes the gun in the struggle with the guys, turns it against him. There's nothing stronger than the will to survive, Ed. Nothing."
Ed shook his head, "Yeah, but Harrie, what evidence do you have? Tallentire won't buy that unless you have solid forensic-bloody-evidence."
"I know that. That's why we're going back to Deviate, I have a theory."
"Oh, now you have a theory."
"Yes, I need to look at the blood spatter, besides, what else can we do until the blood tests come back? Grab the crime scene photos would you?" she asked, tossing him the keys too. Ed caught them with ease and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he heaved himself out of his chair.
It was going to be a long day.
To Be Continued
