One Eye On The Darkness

Chapter Two

"I just thought I'd give you a call to check you are okay after last night. I mean, you never get used to seeing that kind of shit."

There was a deep sigh on the end of the phone. "I should know. I've had to wallow in it for the last twenty years."

Frieda stifled a yawn as she combed her fingers through her tangle of auburn hair. She hadn't slept on the couch in ages. Now she knew why. She might as well have not slept at all.

"What time is it?" she asked blearily.

"A little after eight."

"And you want to know if I've had any revelations since I got home."

She smiled as the seasoned Kriminalpolizei detective, Tobias Schluter let out a snort. "Is that your psychic powers talking, Frau Lockner, or am I just so transparent?"

"Mm, no. And yes," chuckled Frieda. But her mirth was short lived as the image of the young girl's contorted body lying in the rubbish-filled alleyway behind Club Charlotte forced its way through her drowsiness.

"Nothing more," she said quietly, squeezing her eyes shut, but failing to diminish the power of the mutilated girl's staring eyes and bare-toothed grimace that was seared into her mind. "I'm sorry, Kriminalkommisar."

He was right. Nothing could ever inure a sane human being to that sort of horror.

What had Father Derrick once reminded her? That when Satan fell, he took a third of the host of heaven with him, so we should hardly be surprised if we bump into some of his infernal minions now and again. Frieda could readily believe that one such diabolical entity had been the artist of that horrific scene.

Schluter sighed, his disappointment evident.

"Do you think we are dealing with the same culprit?" asked Frieda.

"That's what I was hoping you might help shed some light on, Frau Lockner. At first glance, I'd say no. Our cellar boy was strung up for a week before he died, as you're aware. The killer sliced chunks off him throughout before putting the poor bastard out of his misery. Meanwhile, our girl last night was strangled and then apparently cut up postmortem by the murderer."

Frieda closed her eyes and mentally transported herself back to the rear of Club Charlotte. Once more she could hear the distant throb of the dance music pulsating in the chilly air. Had the nauseating smell of rotten food and stale urine threatening to make her heave all the more as she stood beside the lifeless body lit up by the cold white glare of crime scene lamps.

The girl was no older than nineteen, maybe twenty. Her body was twisted, asymmetric; the legs wrenched at impossible angles as though the killer had twisted them in the sockets like the limbs of a doll. One arm was flung outwards at ninety degrees, one finger pointing to the other arm that had been crudely severed and discarded about two metres from the rest of the naked corpse.

Meanwhile those eyes, and that horrific grin of exquisite terror were framed by blood-matted dark hair that had been peeled back from the skull, the scalp flayed jaggedly from the white bone with all the precision of a wolf tearing at prey.

The first impressions hit Frieda in the gut as she revisited the scene. But her gift was to move beyond them. What could she hear above the tumult of such vivid visceral horror?

Pain, despair, and loss, always loss. These were always the prominent echoes, deafening at times, but usually not so that other imprints could not be recognised in the background static caused by the snuffing out of an existence. As Frieda recollected that moment, she tried once more to make sense of it, identify any kind of coherent signature within the melee of confusion.