Chapter 2

It all started with the terrified scream of a frightened woman. A scream pierce the winter morning like the air raid sirens did a few years before. It echoed through the terraced houses making the origin hard to pin-point. The first cries were undoubtedly terror, but not the shrill cries of a movie theatre, the cries of one with eyes locked wide and every muscle rigid. The next were of pain, garbling and pitiful. The boys found her, most of them taking off after the attacker without any luck.

We can never truly feel another's pain, but that scream of the young girl came close. It was the kind of scream that puts every other thought on hold and roots everyone close in the very same agony. There wasn't a person in a hundred feet that didn't come running, most of them with cell phones already out to dial for ambulance.

But she had not made it. The paramedics had tried saving her but it was already too late and when they had brought her to the hospital they had pronounced her dead on arrival. So like all other dead bodies she also turned to that same place where all other dead bodies did.

Jane had not been there to hear them, to hear her screams when she was being brutally attacked and slashed, but when the body had lay open in front of her in the morgue on the steel table she felt that the pain had racked through her body nonetheless. It was the kind which you could tell from just looking. No one could really feel anyone’s pain just by looking at it and now after working with the dead bodies like this for the past eleven years this should have been a lot easier but it did not.

After all it was not a clean kill. The one which you would know that the death had been instantaneous and there had been no pain involved at all. This was a kill which had been pre-mediated and then the torture had been done to take pleasure. The bastards who had done this to her were sick and Jane wanted to strangle them, but then again that would mean that they would die too soon and for a crime like this you deserved the maximum pain.

It was a pity that castration before life-long imprisonment for sexual abusers was not compulsory, and was not even on the plate. If it had been then a lot of crimes would have been under control.

Dr. Jane Diego wiped off her cheek with the back off her hand and then cut through the rest of the clothing whish she had on with the sterilized scissors. There was a tag on her naked toe stating that she was Jane Doe. And her identity would be probably be unknown till Jane matched her dental records. She doubted from the face of the girl that she would have any kind of record. She seemed to be have been a good girl who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Hey Jane! Started the work early?” asked her colleague Rachel who was so busy and caught up with her two kids that most of the time she had no time to look at her appearance in the mirror itself.

“Well since Greg is out of the town on the conference in Boston and I was feeling really alone so I figured that I would come by early and get caught up on the new cases. I have not touched any of yours though,’ said Jane with a smile. She was married to the love of her life Gregory who was also a Detective in the department so they did not have to be scared of not being able to speak in terms which would mean that they were divulging official secrets.

“Oh girl I know that you are not going to do that. And anyway you like to work with the girls and since I have no living men in my life I have to keep myself entertained with the dead ones themselves,” Said Rachel and then both grinned at the joke. It never got old. Rachel was a widow with two sons who were seven and eleven in their ages.

“You know you should go back out there and get to dating. You are too young to be living the way that you are really doing,” said Jane as she noticed abrasions, slight abrasions under the nose. This could only mean that she was drugged before she was taken. There were rope marks on her wrists as well which clearly depicted the horror she had faced. There were slash marks on her body, all over and also cigarette butt marks and Jane had to file the diameter so that it could be checked who was the one who had done this.

“She seems like a pretty little thing. What kind of beast would do that to her?” shuddered Rachel as she came and stood beside her. That was the exact same thing that Jane was thinking but she had an idea who it might be.

“It was not one beast Rach. As far as the injuries seem to me there were four people who did this to her. Four with four different kind of fascination indeed. Her left nipple is missing and has been sliced off cleanly and that can only mean that they are marking the girls. They are marking their kills. These are serial killers Rachel and they are doing it for the sheer fun of it,” said Jane.

“She was a strong girl,” said Rachel as she touched the flesh on the girl’s arm with her gloved hand and looked at Jane who nodded at her. The rigor mortis had not set in and clearly from the sign of the attack and the bruising there was no doubt that she had been tortured for hours and yet she had resisted which meant that her will to live was very strong.

There was a knock on the door of the cold room as both the women turned towards the man who was standing there with a cloth covering his face.

“Dr. Diego, Boss wants you now in his office,” said the man. He was a cop no doubt.

“I am working on the recent victim now. I am gonna be up there in an hour,” said Jane without looking back at him again. She hated to be dictated by the officials who could not understand the importance and gravity of her job.

“No Dr. Diego, you did not get my point. The Boss said that you were taken off from all other cases and now are going to be working with him in homicide till he wants you there,” said the man as he left the room.

As soon as the door closed, the scissors and scalpel fell from her hand with a clatter on the metal slab.

“What the fuck did just happen?” asked Rachel and looked at Jane in confusion.

“Well it seems that you have to do this one as well now. And do me a favour Rach, just take her blood samples and also do a semen check and see if you find a match. If you do tell me before telling anyone and I will tell you who will be the best one to handle this. They cannot control everything that goes around here, isn’t it?” asked Jane as she added,” She was drugged so I want to see how much she had been drugged as well and what are the drugs that have been used to bring her under control. If this is what it looks like then we are going to have a bigger problem on our hands.”

Rachel was not aware of the ongoing cases like Jane but she knew when she had to follow instructions and right at this moment that was all she could do.

Jane opened her gloves and her lab coat as she walked out of the morgue and felt sick to her stomach. She could not put out the face of the dead girl from her mind. She had been a doctor for a long time now and this should not affect her but a human life wasted in this way, that too a young one just because of the sickness of a few selected others, the sudden end of all the other kinds of possibilities that could have been the future of the girl who was now lying dead and sliced up on her table in the basement of this building.

She got of the elevator and entered the upper floor where she nodded at all the men who were her colleagues and also her husband’s.

“Hey Jane, did you get the girl we brought in today an hour ago? Nasty business!!” commented one of the fat cops who had four daughters and he hated serial abusers and rapists and was a happy man.

“I wish I had the chance to crush their balls and then electrocute them through their dick Ian,” said Jane as the man laughed out loud making his pot belly jiggle slightly and then he called out after her,” Still up for poker night on Thursday?”

“Count me in,” replied back Jane without pausing for a bit. If there was one thing that she knew best about getting married to a police in the department then it was like all the feminist comments and nasty jokes about the female parts and murder analogies suddenly stopped as if she was now an elite member amongst them. Jane did not like this one bit at all but she could not help it.

She knocked on the ace detective of the Yard who also happened to have taken her off every single file and body that she had been working on and waited.

“Come in,” came the voice from the inside and Jane took a deep breath in before going in.

“Good morning Nathan,” said Jane.

“It is definitely not a good morning at all Jane. Trust me, I wish every single day it was so that I would not have to wake up with the news of a crime but it is definitely not,” said Nathan as he grumbled and Jane could not help but smile. The man was too perfect. His smile was soft with a hint of femininity, his strong bone structure was all male. The man in front of her, perfection in denim. There was nothing else that could be said about him and it was too bad for all the single ladies out there that he was not up for grabs.

Although he was single, but he was definitely not interested in women either.

“So where are we going today? I mean, what is this thing and what is so important that you took me off all the cases that I was doing? You could have at least given two days before giving out the order so that I could finish up everything!!” said Jane indignantly. Looking at her anyone would think that she was talking to her girlfriends at lunch and not her boss.

“You know doll, if I you could wait then I would have but there was absolutely nothing about this that I can do because this is the second murder in a week and both are the daughters of the members of Parliament. It is a really nasty piece of work from what I have heard,” said Nathan with a grimace.

“Where are the bodies? I mean, why are they not on my slab till now?” asked Jane as her mouth was open in horror.

“Because both bodies have been found out today itself and not the other way round. One has been dead for seven days and one has been done away with last night. We need to leave now because the shit has already hit the fan and the media is crawling that place like flies on a piece of sweetmeat,” said Nathan and this time his face was grim. Jane knew that this was nothing to joke about and the situation was really out of control at the moment.