Chapter 1
The worn VHS tape, its label blank, felt impossibly heavy in Sarah Hammond's gloved hand, its plastic edges cold even through the thin latex. Across the scarred desk, David Norton, looking like he'd been wrestling with a particularly stubborn demon all night, was already hunched, his gaze distant but unnervingly sharp, fixed on the tape as if X-raying its contents. "Well, don't just stare at it, lass. Slot it in," he muttered, a low, impatient rumble that cut through the silence. The air in the cramped, stale office was thick with the scent of cheap, strong coffee, stale cigarette smoke that clung to his rumpled clothes, and something else indefinable - perhaps the residue of a mind constantly working, constantly on the edge.
Sarah, the new detective, impeccably dressed as always despite the ludicrously early hour, didn't argue. Her own stomach already a tight knot of apprehension, she slid the tape into the station's ancient VCR, the mechanism groaning in protest. The television flickered to life, bathing the grimy room in an unsettling blue glow. The static, a blizzard of white noise, gave way to a grainy, shaky image.
A bare room. Concrete walls. And then, the focal point of the dread: a young woman, terrified, bound to a chair. Sarah felt her breath hitch, a cold dread seeping into her bones. She instinctively wanted to look away, but couldn't. This was it. This was the job, in its raw, unflinching, terrifying reality. She heard David shift, a restless, almost imperceptible movement beside her.
"Morning, hope you like blood," David drawled, his voice a low, almost bored rasp, as he picked up the crudely scrawled note that had accompanied the tape. His gaze, usually clouded by what Sarah now suspected was a perpetual struggle with inner demons, sharpened on the screen with an almost unsettling, predatory clarity. The balaclava-clad figure entered the frame, a glint of cold metal in his gloved hand. Sarah gasped, a small, choked sound that felt torn from her chest. Her mind screamed for the image to stop, but her professional training, her need to observe every detail - not just of the screen, but of David's chilling stillness beside her - held her captive.
The screen went black, then flickered back to static, the sudden silence deafening after the silent brutality. David leaned forward, elbows on the desk, his long fingers steepled, his expression one of profound, almost impatient thought, rather than simple horror. "Right then, Hammond. Welcome to East London." The words weren't a greeting, but a bleak, almost clinical pronouncement, delivered with a detached certainty that chilled Sarah more than any explicit shock. She swallowed hard, the taste of bitter, stale coffee in her mouth. This was the world she was now in, and this man was her guide.
For the next few hours, Sarah lost herself in the grim annals of unsolved crimes, the stale air of the records room pressing in on her, smelling of old paper and neglect. She sifted through databases, pulling up reports of anything that remotely resembled the brutality they'd just witnessed. Most were dead ends, cold files left to gather dust, but a few, particularly older cases, had a sickening resonance. She focused on anything involving unusual communication from a killer, especially taunting notes or recordings. The hours blurred, fueled by lukewarm station coffee, as she meticulously pieced together fragments of forgotten horrors, noting every anomaly, every pattern, every minute detail she knew David would expect her to have. She felt the weight of each case, a quiet hum of silent victims waiting for justice.
Later, Sarah sat opposite David in the cramped incident room, the air thick with the smell of stale coffee and his own distinct, disquieting aroma - a mixture of old paper, something faintly metallic, and intense, singular focus. She had meticulously organized the initial findings, each piece of evidence in a clear plastic sleeve, a testament to her methodical nature, a quiet counterpoint to his barely contained chaos. David, meanwhile, was already on his second cup, a crumpled newspaper lying forgotten beside his elbow, his eyes distant, clearly still processing the horror of the tape, but in a way that suggested a rapid, almost unsettling analysis, not just revulsion.
"No immediate hits on the victim in the video," Sarah stated, her voice crisp and professional, cutting through the heavy silence. "No missing persons matching her description in the last six months across London. We're circulating her image from the video, but it's low quality." She watched David, bracing herself for his inevitable, surgically precise question.
He grunted, swirling the bitter liquid in his mug, a sharp, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist. "Of course, it's low quality. Would it dare be easy, Hammond? Where's the sport in that?" He leaned back, the cheap suit groaning in protest, his gaze sweeping over the various reports Sarah had laid out, taking in everything at once, missing nothing. "What about the… stylistic choices? Anything like this before?"
Sarah nodded, pushing a tablet across the desk. "That's what I've been looking into. The method of restraint, the specific type of video recording - VHS, mind you - and the note's tone. It's… distinctive." She paused, a frown creasing her brow, seeing his eyes already darting across the screen, picking up the crucial details before she could even articulate them. "I found a cold case from 1999. South London. Unsolved. The victim was a young woman, and a VHS tape was sent to the police."
David's eyes, which had seemed half-lidded with fatigue moments ago, snapped open, suddenly sharp, intense, alight with a terrifying, almost gleeful intelligence. "Ninety-nine? Fascinating. What about a note?" The word was a whisper, almost to himself, a man on the verge of a profound, exhilarating discovery.
"Almost identical in its morbid phrasing," Sarah confirmed, her fingers flying across the tablet, pulling up the old file, trying to keep pace with his accelerating thoughts, feeling a surge of adrenaline at his reaction. "The victim, a twenty-three-year-old named Tracey Davies, was found in a derelict warehouse. The tape, just like ours, showed the last moments of her life, filmed by the killer. Same balaclava, same silent brutality."
He snatched the tablet, his rough fingers scrolling through the old case file with astonishing speed, absorbing details Sarah knew would take her hours. "So, our bloke's either a copycat with an almost pathological devotion to detail, or he's been at it for a very long time. A long, bloody while." He looked at her, his expression a rare mix of intense, cold calculation and a flicker of something akin to genuine, albeit fleeting, appreciation for her thoroughness. "Excellent work, Hammond. Now, let's dig. Everything on Tracey Davies. And see if there are any other unsolveds from around that time, similar M.O. Don't care how thin the connection is. The devil, as they say, is in the unexamined detail."
Sarah felt a surge of satisfaction, a quiet thrill of purpose. This was it. This was where she proved herself, where her methodical nature would underpin his startling leaps of logic. "Right away, sir."
"Right, Hammond," David declared, pushing himself up from his chair, a slight stiffness in his movements that bespoke hours hunched over. "Tracey Davies. First things first: get the old case files down from records. All of them. Every single scrap of paper. Then, we need to talk to the original SIO, if he's still breathing. I want to know everything the original investigation failed to consider." He paused, rubbing his temples, not in weariness, but in the friction of immense concentration.
Sarah was already on her feet, pulling up the police database, her movements efficient and practiced. "Detective Inspector Malcolm Davies. Retired in 2005. Lives out in Kent, according to his pension records."
"Figures," David grumbled, shaking his head, a dismissive flick of his hand. "Old school. Probably focused on the what, not the why. Still, worth a shot. You handle that. See if he kept anything off the books, any irregular observations that never made it into a report. Sometimes the conventional mind overlooks the most revealing anomalies." He pointed a finger, not quite at Sarah, but at a stack of evidence bags from their current case, sitting on a separate table. "In the meantime, I want to get the contents of this new VHS tape and the note to forensics, along with the actual tape itself. See what modern science can wring out of it. Any fibres, DNA, even a stray fingerprint from the packaging. Anything at all." He paused, his gaze fixed on the blank TV screen, his eyes alight with a cold, almost detached scientific curiosity. "And I mean anything. Even if it's just the dust on the tape itself, see if it matches anything from the old case. Patterns, Hammond, are rarely coincidental; they are the murderer's signature, writ large."
Sarah meticulously made notes, translating his rapid-fire, often abstract instructions into a coherent, actionable plan. "So, for the Tracey Davies case: review all original files, attempt to re-interview key witnesses, especially the initial responding officers and anyone who knew her well, specifically looking for unconventional observations. And for our current case: full forensic analysis of the VHS and the note, cross-referencing with any existing data from the 1999 murder, seeking any trace, no matter how minute, that corroborates a pattern."
David nodded, already pulling on his cheap, rumpled coat, his mind clearly on the next step, already several moves ahead. "Exactly. We're chasing a ghost, Hammond. But even ghosts leave traces, if one only knows how to find them. And we will find them." He headed for the door, leaving Sarah alone in the incident room, the faint scent of old paper and an almost palpable intellectual energy hanging in the air, a silent promise of the long, incredibly demanding, and utterly fascinating road ahead. This was going to be a long one.