DC Harris stared at his boss across the desks of the incident room, his expression a perfect mixture of loyalty and utter confusion. "Guv… what do you mean, 'who are they missing'?"
Miles Corbin took a deep, steadying breath. He knew how it sounded. "Look, Harris. Forget traditional links for a minute. Stop looking for a shared pub or a secret lover. I want you to look for a shared void. A hole in the world that all five of them were, in their own way, trying to fill."
Seeing the blank look persist, Miles elaborated. "Look at their charity work. Donations to hospices, fundraising for medical research, volunteer hours. Look for who they were trying to help. The case has been about what was taken from them. I want to know what they gave."
Harris, though still bewildered, nodded slowly. He was a good copper. He trusted the Guv'nor, even when the orders sounded like something from a fantasy novel. He turned back to his terminal and began the search.
The day was punctuated by a formal progress meeting with DCS Davies that went about as well as Miles expected.
"I'm getting calls from the Home Office, Miles," Davies said, his voice dangerously calm in the crowded briefing room. "The media are running wild. And what do I have to tell them? That my lead inspector is chasing… symbolism?" He threw a file down on the table. "I need tangible leads. I need suspects. I need arrests. This 'showcase' theory of yours is going to get you taken off this case if you don't produce something solid. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly," Miles said, his jaw tight. The threat was clear. The clock was now ticking on his career as well as on the next victim's life.
He spent the rest of the day in a state of quiet desperation, the pressure from above making the strange, esoteric hunt feel all the more urgent. It was nearly seven o'clock when Harris called him over.
"Guv," he said, his voice hushed. He looked pale.
Miles walked over to his desk. On the screen was a collage of logos, donation pages, and news clippings. "You were right," Harris began. "They were all trying to help. All five of them, at different times and in different ways, were major supporters of a single place: The Oakhaven Hospice for Young Adults, just outside Braintree."
He started pulling up the evidence, his clicks sharp and precise in the quiet room.
"Alani Costa, the swimmer. She organised a twenty-four-hour sponsored swim two years ago. Raised over ten thousand quid for them.
Here's the article in the Essex Chronicle."
He switched screens. "Chloe Sterling, the influencer. She did a big Christmas charity drive for them last year. Visited the patients, posted it all over her Instagram. We found the donation records in her accounts."
Another click. "Ben Carter's company chose Oakhaven as their charity of the year. He ran the London Marathon for them. Here's his JustGiving page."
Another. "Jack Thorne, our doctor. Did a three-month clinical placement there during his training. We found it on his CV."
Harris paused, then looked at Miles. "And Arthur Pendelton, the headmaster… he was a volunteer. He went every Tuesday afternoon for the past five years to read to the patients who couldn't read for themselves."
Corbin felt a cold wave wash over him. It was the link. It was real. "Was there a specific patient?" he asked, his voice low. "Someone they all had contact with?"
"That's the thing, Guv," Harris said, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "They all, in their visitor logs or donation notes, mentioned one name."
He pulled up a final file. It was a patient record, complete with a photograph. It showed a young man of about nineteen, with bright, intelligent eyes and a creative spark about him.
"Julian Croft," Harris read. "A gifted artist and musician. At nineteen, he was in a car accident. Left him in a Persistent Vegetative State. PVS. No perception, no identity, no will. His body was kept alive by machines. He was the perfect… empty chair."
Corbin stared at the photo of the young man, so full of life, and then at the clinical diagnosis. The vessel.
"Where is he now?" Miles demanded.
Harris scrolled to the bottom of the page. "He passed away, Guv. His system finally gave out. Six months ago."
The air went out of the room. A dead end. They were six months too late. The killers had gathered all the components to pour into a vessel that no longer existed. It made no sense.
Unless…
Miles stared at the vibrant face of Julian Croft, the boy who had everything ahead of him, and then at the cold, clinical list of what he had lost. Perception. Structure. Instinct. Identity. Will. All the things the killers had harvested.
He turned to Harris, his mind reeling with a new, even more terrifying question.
"They gathered all the parts," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "But their vessel is broken." He looked at his young DC, his eyes filled with a fresh horror. "So what the hell are they building it in?"