I am not lonely [Mystrade]

CHAPTER 192 : You've got some mail

Molly considered herself a quite experimented pathologist and was not  usually easily disgusted by the image of a dead body but as she pressed  play on the video she just had been sent by Sally Donovan, she  instantly felt a severe uneasiness. The first few seconds showed an  unknown man, tied up to a chair, filmed by someone apparently walking  around him, gently humming a childlike music but the young woman didn't  even have the time to realize the weirdness of the situation as a cut  intervened. A two-second black later, the image of the tied up man had  changed to show him still sat on the chair but now slain and livid.

Molly  was quite used, sadly, to seeing the result of gruesome murders, and  she didn't even blink at the vision of the butchered young man. She,  although, was not that at ease with the fact that the killer had  apparently taken a great lot of fun filming his victim and editing the  video. Who in their right mind would want to leave such an obvious proof  and at the same time would have so little soul that not only could they  kill but also they would want to keep a trace of it ?

As she was  trying to understand the killers profile, they said man suddenly  appeared in front of the now stabilized camera. Countered to what could  have been expected of him, his face was not masked in anyway, and he  didn't really try to avoid showing it to the camera, inversely, he  seemed to be used to those and was always trying to show his best  profile to the camera. He then got hold of a knife and fork on a table  in the back of the room and then approached the body with a wicked  little smirk.

The video was short, just over ten minutes but as  the pathologist came to its end, she had the clear feeling that part of  her soul would never be the same again. If she had thought that the  sticking and the apparent cannibalism were already gruesome enough, she  had not expected the rape, mutilation and dismemberment that had  followed. Still shaken to her foundation she grabbed her phone and  composed her detective colleague's number.

"Oh, hello Molly." Sally answered on the second ring, expecting the call.

"Where the hell is this video coming from ?" Hooper wondered, the images she had just seen still haunting her.

"It's  been posted on a Norwegian website during the night apparently. Greg  just entered the room, I'm putting you on speaker." the woman explained  as her boss appeared.

"How do you know that the guy is British ?" the pathologist questioned nervously.

"There was quite an extensive description enclose with the video giving out the name of a certain Joseph Burk and his nationality.  We don't yet know which one of the two is supposed to be Burk or  British but our colleague from Oslo who detected the video thought that  it might interest us." the policeman indicated, taking a look at his  notes. "The first question I wanted to ask you was : do you think that  it is a genuine video or a montage of any sorts ?"

"It would be a  very complex montage if it is one." Molly retorted, not even wanting to  think about who could ever want to o such a montage. "The body is  really realistic from what I can see and his reactions to the blades and  such are really natural too. Added to that the fact that the killer  spin around his victim and move from before to behind pretty much  constantly I would say that there is a good ninety percent chances that  it is, sadly, a genuine video."

Twelve hours and countless  watches of the video later, the detectives at Scotland Yard were both  sick and lost. All their attempt to identify the killer and the victim  of the video had stayed vain, and they were starting to wonder if any of  them were even British. As they were starting to think about going back  home one of the constable from the call centre burst into the crime's  open space, out of breath of having run up the four floors between the  two places.