The alley smelled of blood and fear, the stench and signs of death spread all over the red brick. It was a backstreet in Chelsea, a barely passable gap that wouldn’t have qualified as an alley in America. A car might have been able to squeeze through, but only one of the smaller models that were popular in London.
London. Again. I’d wanted to come back, but not like this.
I took another sniff of the smells drifting through the alley. Blood was the easiest to identify. I had a lot of experience with blood. I had a lot of experience with fear, too, but the smell of fear I scented here was different. The sort of thing you’d catch in a toilet, if you get my meaning. Each step I took, my heavy boots thumped on the cobblestones.
I passed under the yellow crime scene tape as though it was something I did every day. It wasn’t, but I had done it enough to not even feel the thrill of unease or anticipation anymore. From just the smell of this place, I could tell it was going to be messier than the stuff I was usually called in to consult on.
I rounded the corner into a narrower space, a dark offshoot of the alley that was even smaller and more foreboding than the one I’d followed thus far. There was a man waiting for me just around the corner, wearing a tan trench coat to protect him against the April chill. He had a mess of light brown hair that was styled in such a way that I knew he had either spent an abundance of time on it or almost none at all.
