The Sun hovered high in the sky now. The rays of heat burst forth from its surface with such strength that they travelled effortlessly through millions of miles of void, pouring down onto Battersea Park and melting this sombre mood.

Deacon removed his hat and scratched his white hair, attempting to stare at the sun before his eyes ached from the glare. I sat at his feet in a crumpled mess of sorts, lost in my mind – spinning around my brain and searching for answers to which there were none.
Moments before the girl’s thawing body had been removed and taken away in an ambulance to the morgue for an autopsy that was to be carried out on 27th. With the police tent now taken away too, only the ripped up earth suggested signs of any sort of struggle. The grass that had been around the body was bruised a dark red colour – stained by the entire blood content of her body draining away.

As I sat on the damp grass watching others scurry about their business, I worried about my capabilities as a detective. How the hell would I possibly find the monster that did this? Where would I even start? Was it even a monster I was looking for? Perhaps it was merely a man.

Deacon stood above me, surveying the scene calmly. Occasionally he would flick open his notepad and make some notes, but otherwise all the processing was done in his head.

“How do you feel about sitting in on the autopsy?” He asked suddenly.

I was shocked. This wasn’t my first dead body, you understand. I had seen a few of them – but none of them had been this young and certainly not torn to shreds with organs removed. When her body was finally covered up and taken away a part of me was relieved to live soundly in the knowledge that I would never lay eyes upon her again. So you can understand that the idea of seeing her taken apart forced me to take out my packet of cigarettes.

“You know those things’ll kill you.” Deacon said without looking down.

“Yeah? And crossing the road without looking will too, but I do it anway.” I replied. My system had been so shocked and jarred by this whole event that I had lost my capacity to care. I couldn’t have given a toss. But yet a part of me still wanted to beat the hell out of the guy who did this. Like that would make it better – I had so much to learn.

“Any idea who did this?” Deacon asked, this time looking down at me. I shook my head. “I’ll bet you twenty quid that he’s not English.” He said. I was angry by this initial comment and stunned at the same time.

“You can’t say that Rob!” I gasped, choking on my cigarette.

“I can say what I bloody well want, this is my country.” Came the stubborn reply.

It was then that I realised the gulf between my generation and his. I was still too stunned to even think about race, sex or even a motive. And yet Deacon had already drawn up a mental image of the ‘man’ who had done this.

As I did when faced with the same remarks from a drunk in a pub, I refused to comment and add fuel to the fire that was clearly already burning deep within Deacon. It was this moment that I jumped to my feet and told him that would take the case and even though I felt sick about doing it, I would witness the autopsy too.

I decided that since there was no more for me to do until the day after Boxing Day, I would leave Deacon while he was stuck in this damaged frame of mind of his. I still fail to understand the inner-workings of a normally logical man (and Robert Deacon was certainly that) when it came to matters of gender and race.

I spent that afternoon wandering the empty side streets of Oxford Street, convinced at one point that the dead girl was following me. I found myself walking around Picadilly coming to a stop outside Green Park where I sat and watched the sun roll across the sky until it started to sink toward the horizon.

After receiving a text from my girlfriend Claire, telling me that she was finally home, I rushed across town to get home as quickly as possible. On my way I stopped to buy an evening edition of the paper – in which there was no mention of the terrible fate of an un-named girl in Battersea Park. Knowing what the press were going to be like when this story hit, I was somewhat relieved to know that Boxing Day should be uninterupted.

I returned home to find Claire slumped over the kitchen table in tears. A terrible car crash in the night had turned A&E into a walking morgue and those still alive were screaming. I had not the chance to tell her about the horror I had witnessed or indeed warn her of the pain that was possibly to come. I held her in my arms as she told me about the elderly couple killed when a lorry rolled over their car.
Both of our hearts had been broken by the events of the day.

The sadness became too much for me and for the first time since I was a small boy I cried with her. I cried not for the people on the motorway, but for the unknown girl lying alone in a freezer waiting for a surgeons knife when she should have been enjoying Christmas dinner with her family.

A part of me hoped beyond hope that she would suddenly awake on Boxing Day and be a walking miracle. I had heard of similar stories before. But alas they were just stories.

As the hours ticked over wine and vodka numbed our moods until the witching hour came and we retired to bed and made love before sinking into a deep yet troubled sleep.

RDK