One month ago...
Unknown Point of View
They sat in the snow, looking at the landscape. The Cairngorm Mountains were drowned in white and a snowstorm was taking place a bit farther away from them as they sat on the peak of a slope overlooking the wooden cabins. There was a tele cabin going from up the hill, above them, running parallel with the slope.
Tay was very familiar with this place... He's lived some many moments here. He looked over at his girlfriend, all flustered, her cheeks reddened from the cold and her black hair tucked in her fluffy black cap and ski goggles as she sang softly. She had those cold, decided eyes that he knew no one could thwart.
He was the special one, and he liked to think he had the power, but in reality she did. His blue eyes that seemed to contain the whole ocean within them travelled the landscape and they landed on the few wooden cabins.
He looked over at her. She seemed exhausted. What they were about to do though, took some more strength and energy.
And he knew, it took her entire being. He was destroying her and somehow, helping her destroy herself. But she has consented to this, and was, even then, aware he wouldn't mind her stepping back even after everything they'd done. What they were about to do would change the country, forever. The world, even.
"How'd you think this is gonna end?" She made a slashing gesture with her ski pole in the snow. Her tone was wavering but her face was cold.
"This is gonna end the way you want it to," he assured her. He didn't want her in pain but he knew very well there was probably no way from saving her from herself.
*
One year ago...
A week later
Ariana felt the cold wind and snowflakes flow against her face as her hair flew in all directions, up on the mountain. She was then in Scotland, the Cairngorm mountains, Keith Mostafa's subordinate on his team of Scottish detectives. She had skied in these mountains in the past and wasn't exactly unfamiliar with this part of the world, but still new.
She and Joseph were housed in a really nice villa up on the slope, having a decent apartment with a good view to themselves. He also brought his cat, The Mistress along.
Right there, in the snow, skis in her hands, she felt her detective life was really beginning.
She would solve this case. She would catch this criminal... All while skiing and being in a winter wonderland vacation.
"What reason do you think the murderer would have to kill all those VELLA people?" a fellow detective on Mostafa's team, Damien, asked her, testing her.
She was new there and she was a blonde, so they had their doubts.
She again thought of how she knew nothing about this killer or the serial killer, and thus she couldn't tell his motivations.
Ariana looked at her new colleague Damien, a blond guy who was thirty. He had his skis in his hands too. Right there in the heaps of snow they were looking for evidence and other signs of VELLA and the murderer. Damien also loved skiing, and was good at it just like her, so they both decided to investigate like that.
Most people assumed the VELLA murderer didn't belong to the organization but somehow had history with it. Ariana though he could as well have belonged to VELLA in the past and now he was taking revenge.
"This killer seems to wear the trademark of the Big Bucharest serial killer. He kills the same way, except for the parade. And each person seems to have been killed individually while they were in different spots throughout the building."
Damien looked over at her with a thoughtful frown.
"Hmm. So you think so... But couldn't they be a different person that was instigated by the cases in your town, by your serial killer? Seeing as you cops do a lousy job and are incapable of catching the criminal..." Damien smiled to her, his voice dripping melted sarcasm. Indeed, they failed to catch the serial murderer successfully, and they deserved that reputation.
"He could. But two new active serial killers within one year? Really?" Ariana frowned.
"This one isn't technically a serial killer yet... He's a mass murderer." Damien argued.
"There's again no evidence. Only the Big. B murders killer does stuff this smoothly..." Ariana narrowed her eyes and will at him. Such a polemic.
"What's clear is clear. People name their kids better up in Scotland than in your little town," Damien smirked at her and turned around on his skis.
"What does that even-"
"Alert! We've found a lot of forensic evidence!" Cop forces shouted from down below the hill. Ariana widened her eyes. Forensic evidence? That's a bad thing, if this killer is the same from the Big Bucharest murders...
So Ariana and Damien rushed to the scene: the infirmary of the local medical institute.
The Cairngorm Medical Institute housed people troubled by a variety of neurological disorders treated by a variety of experienced professionals and staff, but it also served as medical preparation institute for nurses in training.
This new victim was a man in his early thirties named Memna McCoy.
"This new scene smells ugly," Damien commented as he walked in with Ariana. Their superior, inspector detective Keith Mostafa was already there with the cops.
"Oh, you two finally arrive. Come, come," Mostafa gestured. Ariana couldn't get it out of her mind how much the scene looked as if it had been painted by the Big B. Serial killer.
The room was in distress. There were three lonely beds in disorder, a broken laptop on the edge of a desk filled to the brim with messy papers, the curtains looked miserly, pillows were streaked on the floor. It looked like people fought here.
The cops were taking forensic evidence. They said they collected blood of two different DNA's, not just the victim's. As for the victim, his body was all covered up.
"May I see the body?" Ariana raised a hand.
"Go ahead," an officer gestured as he said and Ariana tiptoed through the room, after wrapping her boots with nylon. Damien followed too. The officer unpeeled the foils in which the body was covered, showing Ariana the victim.
Menma McCoy. Ariana's face displayed pure shock and terror as she looked at him. It was him for sure, she knew. He was the man who drove her into the barn that night up in Lincolnshire, called her 'bitch' and kicked her brains in the snow leaving her there for dead.
"I know what you did. I know everything," he muttered, his eyes furious and furrowing.
"No, don't say anything bitch," the man emphasized the last word with so much hatred that Ariana wondered what did she do to deserve it. "Stop meddling or I will drive you up to such circumstances you won't survive next time."
She couldn't see his warm brown eyes now because they were shut, but she was sure it was him. He was dead now. Deep inside she was panicking because she felt this was really bad...
The serial killer killing the smaller evils...Why?
Was this guy, Menma McCoy, even the real white tow truck driver or a stunt actor? Maybe he was the mastermind serial killer's dog.
She was shivering.
"Who could've done this..." She found herself murmuring senselessly.
"We have the killer!" A lady bearing glasses came in suddenly, excited. "Yass! The DNA matches exactly that of a woman who was incarcerated in Inverness for allegedly killing her husband ten years ago. She was released subsequently after the evidence in her process had been declared unconvincing and now here she appears on the radar again," the woman was shaking her head.
Ariana couldn't believe it. Was someone innocent going to suffer at the hand of this criminal again? Like Webster Robinson who killed himself?
"Is this for real?" Ariana questioned the lady forensic analyst, but her mind wasn't really there.
"Yes," the lady screeched, somehow conceited at Ariana, with hands dipped in her hips. "It seems we have a Mary Ann Cotton here."
Aha. Ariana thought, finding it senseless to word it. The question stood on her mind for too long now and she was slowly growing desperate for the answer...
What does this criminal want? Why is he doing this? Is this revenge? He can't simply be doing this for fun, right? It was too random to be done for fun.
Ariana had studied the cases of many popular serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy... They murdered people, mostly, for the sadistic satisfaction and the thrill they got out of it, they didn't have a reason- and they all acted in a way specific to them: like for example, they targeted victims of one sex, like Ted Bundy who killed only females, and Jeffrey Dahmer who killed only males, they did it because they morbidly enjoyed it, she was aware. But this serial killer killed people at random, both sexes, random ages and walks of life... Why?
Since he expends so much energy to execute his murders so perfectly, only to slip sometimes and leave evidence intentionally like this time, he has to have a reason...
Tonight she wanted to understand him. Tonight, she will become this serial killer's most intimate friend and understand his motives.
Maybe only then is she allowed to find him. This slip happened once before so it was high time that she took the cue.
"This happened once before..." Ariana muttered.
"What happened?" Mostafa and the officer asked simultaneously, all of them giving her suspicious glances.
"I know you don't believe me, nobody ever does, but I'm sure the Cairngorm murders culprit and the Big B. serial killer are the same person," Ariana fidgeted nervously.
"Go on," Mostafa folded his arms while narrowing his eyes and frowning at her. Well, he at least seemed more willing to listen to her theories than old Michael.
"This serial killer let evidence slip like this once before and pinned the crime on a man named Webster Robinson."
Thinking about it Ariana didn't insist or investigate too much Webster Robinson's case back then... She just let it slip...
She had to go back to it. There surely was something she had missed...
"So I think there's something there... I want to find out why he or she is doing this," Ariana looked insistently towards Mostafa. The inspector frowned at her while wistfully rubbing his chin. "I need you to allow me to speak to this woman. What is her name by the way?"
"Alina Petrova."
She was a woman in her early forties. Her husband was found dead ten years ago in their house because of supposed drug intoxication, but she was rumored to have poisoned him.
Ariana found the woman in her holding cell in the Inverness police HQ. The woman was thin, almost sickly, but her slimness was concealed by the jumpsuit she was wearing.
Ariana gave her a slight smile as she introduced herself once they were inside the interrogation room. The woman looked too docile to have committed murder, but she knew very well not to run into conclusions because of thin stuff like appearances. Petite, frail women were capable of murder too, and there had been atrocious murderesses who looked like this.
In any case, this would be her first time interrogating a criminal. She didn't know if the woman across from her was a criminal, though. Everyone is innocent until the judge passes the verdict, even if there's abounding evidence.
Ariana decided to be smart about it and ignored the typical questions. She wanted to know about the woman's past. Only there she would find the answer.
"Miss Petrova. What can you tell me about your childhood?" Ariana started on a perky tone as she was pouring coffee from a kettle she explicitly asked for.
Alina Petrova blinked her eyes at her, as if she didn't understand the question.
"You're asking about my childhood. Why?" she spoke almost robotically.
"It's for a really good cause, trust me." Ariana smiled, her eyes creaking as she pushed a smoldering cup of coffee towards Alina.
"What does this mean? Aren't I here for Menma McCoy's case?"
"Yeah," Ariana said. "But to be honest I don't care about that... For all I know, you might just be framed like this guy," suddenly, unexpectedly she flashed a picture of Webster Robinson before Alina's eyes.
Her eyes widened twice their size, suddenly telling Ariana enough to smile knowingly.
She had, beforehand, told the officers that she'll try a slightly unconventional interrogation method with this woman, asking them for permission. They agreed not to interfere while she agreed not to harm the woman.
"You know him?" Ariana pushed. She looked at the woman as her hands trembled as if she was way older, her eyes bloodshot, carefully registering the reaction. She didn't expect this.
"That's-" the woman's hand was shaking towards the picture, "That's my ex-husband!" She stuttered. She seemed horrified.
"The one who died ten years ago?"
"Yes! It's him, Webster! O-only looks older... I-I thought he was dead-"
"Are you sure this man is your ex-husband? His name is Webster Robinson and he was framed for the murder of George Tomlinson in the Big B. cases. He committed suicide in his prison cell a few months ago."
Ariana watched the woman break down.
She didn't have a lot of time to prepare beforehand, but she checked the woman's past before coming her and found something eerie about her husband...
"W-why, who did this..."
"There's a serial killer on the loose... You possibly heard about him. He's the one that got your husband. The big question now is why? Why did he do it? What is his motive that he keeps killing people?" Ariana made circles in the air, "The bottom line is...I need to understand him in order to catch him. To do that, I need you to tell me about your past and your ex-husband... The Webster from ten years ago."
The woman shielded her eyes away.
"I already know it must be something big since you accepted being framed back then when he disappeared...And you accept being framed now. History repeats itself," Ariana held her hand on her hands with a small smile.
Alina was petrified. She knew she was in danger for doing so, yet, after some more convincing on Ariana's side, she started telling the story that started ten years ago:
"When I married my husband I was twenty-five, or so. Back then he worked as an engineer. He was three years older than me,'' the woman took some breaths and looked around the room and up at the ceiling before pursuing on, as though an omnipresent force was watching her. It made Ariana wonder, as that didn't miss her quick eyes. The woman continued:
''Everything was going well for us at first, until he got this job at this company that is now the top... Johnson's Electronics I think?"
Ariana's heart skipped a beat...
"From then on he became very worried, anxious and overworked. I couldn't speak to him anymore- we didn't see eye to eye anymore and we always argued. Soon then, he became violent,'' the woman spoke slowly, as though something impeded her speech or she was processing her past and it was foggy. ''He wasn't violent for a few years into our marriage. One night he came home disturbed as if-as if he'd committed a crime."
The woman's lips trembled. She went on, shaking her head: "Until one night when he didn't come home at all... And then they've delivered this body to my front doorsteps and it- it looked just like him... I thought it was him and alerted the authorities and somehow I was blamed for the crime..."
Ariana was taking notes vividly. Johnson's Electronics, huh? Her father's company...
"What else do you know about Johnson's Electronics?" Ariana inquired.
The woman told her everything she knew. Why was she so able to stay framed for all these years? Ariana wondered. Even though Alina Petrova hadn't served time in prison, a lot of people still thought she had done it and had shunned her. She had lived her life like a pariah...
If Ariana were ever framed for anything, she'd fight back.
"I've heard about this V-VELLA organization even from before these cases..." The woman looked down at the table as if she wanted to drown into the metal, "I believe they have something to do with Johnson's Electronics."
Ariana tried her best to stay impassive and not take it personally... Even if it was her father and late mother's company, so what?
She slept next to Joseph for a while that night, in their newfound apartment, up in the mountains; and then she woke up at 2 a.m. again, went to their smal living room, and locked the door.
There was this thought haunting her...
She wrote all the names of all the victims from both Big Bucharest and Cairngorms on her white board, numbering them. There were 24 in total now, Webster Robinson and Derek Brown who both ''committed suicide'' included. She included late detective Archie Carolan too and the four victims who survived.
She drew rectangles under each name, in order to write glaring things there while looking into their pasts. There surely was something she didn't pay attention to...
She started with Amèlie LaLiberte. Immigrated town ten years ago with her mother. But who was her father?
She scoured the databases. Since she worked with the London and Scotland police, she had access to databases like Tracers and central records now, which she could access right from her laptop, which would make her quest easier. It was good that all the 24 victims had complete records now, with confidential information like marriage licenses, family background added, ever since the crimes and kidnappings happened- this was the time for her to hunt through them.
What does the killer desire?
Amèlie's father, oh, Ariana finally found something on him. She read through the report which was dated 1st of September 2016. It was added a few months ago to the database, after they found the four survivors.
Amèlie's father was not French like her mother. His name was Julio Smith and he was born in Big Bucharest. Julio Smith... Why does that name sound as if she's heard it years ago, in her childhood?
Well, Julio Smith used to work at Johnson's Electronics before 2006. The wretched year her mother died. Eleven years ago. She wrote it down.
Julio Smith left the town with his wife and daughter, and moved to Ireland. There he reportedly died because of lung cancer. Nothing glowering at her there, yet.
Haron Ride... The guitarist guy who was killed in an especially gruesome way. Who were his parents? Why did the killer despise him so much?
Haron Ride lost his father and younger brother in an arson incident ten years ago, in London; The criminal wasn't captured. Could it be the same criminal? Ariana wondered.
He subsequently moved with his mother to Big Bucharest; His mother still lives, the sole survivor of her family. It must have been painful for her to lose both of her sons and her husband, especially in such gruesome ways. What are they paying for?
Haron Ride's father, too, worked for Johnson's Electronics as a secretary.
Ariana then found with trepidation that all the other Big Bucharest victims had relatives that used to work for Johnson's Electronics before 2006.
The VELLA ten victims, too, worked for Johnson's Electronics as agents because VELLA was controlled by her father...
What does VELLA even mean?
Ariana's head went around and around. All these victims were paying for something, for a sin of their families or themselves...
Archie Carolan. What was he paying for? What was he looking for in the Cairngorm Mountains? Did he somehow know the truth?
Virgo Styles too... Could he still be alive?
Derek Brown, Dominique's husband... Why was he in this too?
The real serial killer is after Johnson's Electronics, Ariana knew now.
She looked at herself in the mirror across the room and watched snow fall outside, peacefully. She gulped.
The serial killer wants revenge on Johnson's Electronics.