Even in death, there was still a glimmer of her appeal but it was quickly fading as she succumbed to the inevitability of her fate.

“Jesus Christ,” said Cael.

She lay sprawled on the concrete floor, her innards having spilled from inside her. Instead of a lower half, there was nothing. Her torso ended abruptly below her stomach. Her genitals and legs had been severed from her body. Dried blood that had seeped from her wounds lay in a trail from her body to the lake.

“What do you think?” asked Tyler.

“I think London has some seriously messed-up people.”

“Too right.”

“She wasn’t discovered like this, was she?”

“No,” said Tyler. “She was posed upright on the floor.”

“Like her bottom half was buried.”

“Yeah. Significant?” asked Tyler.

“Possibly. Some killers remove the genitals to express their intense love for a person. He might have struggled to remove the genitals alone, so took the easy route and cut off her entire bottom half.”

“The easy route?” asked Tyler. “Do you know how hard it is to slice a person in half?”

Ignoring his question, Cael stepped away from the body and looked out across the lake.

“Do we have any idea who she is?” asked Cael.

“Nope. Not yet. She’s going straight to the autopsy room after this so we might get a match there.”

Cael surveyed their surroundings. Everything around them had to be considered before they jumped to any conclusions. The environment, the disposal, the victim ology, the theatrics, and the mutilations – it was all necessary to form a complete picture of the culprit.

“This is a message,” said Cael. “But I’m not seeing one.”

“Come again?”

“Disposing of half a woman’s body in a public place is a way of sending a message. He could have discarded her anywhere. Hell, we’re right next to a lake. He could have just thrown her in there and kept her hidden for way longer. Plus, it would have been a forensics countermeasure. He’s foregone all that in favor of sending a message. He posed her here for a reason.”

“Attention, maybe?” offered Tyler.

“There’s more to it than that. This location is significant. We need to find out why.”

Behind them, forensics teams returned to the body. They announced to the surrounding officers that they would be transferring the victim to the Royal London Hospital for examination, and to stand back to avoid contaminating the body with DNA residue.

As two forensics officers leaned down to hoist the body off the ground, something fell beside them.

“Whoa,” said one of the officers. “Detectives. We got something.”

Cael and Tyler turned around.

“What is it?”

When the victim had been placed in a body bag, the officer leaned down to pick up the object. The detectives walked over to him.

“Is this the first time the body has been moved?” asked Cael.

“Yeah,” replied the forensics officer. “We haven’t touched her since we found her.” He handed the item to Cael.