Chapter Text
“He had things entirely under his control which leads me to think that this was not his first murder.”
Stella Gibson casts her gaze over to DCI Garrett Brink who is looking at her like something is beginning to occur to him but he can’t quite put his finger on what it might be. This is a look with which Stella has become intensely familiar. Something, perhaps some small detail, in this investigation reminds him of another - another victim killed in the same way, the same placement of the body, the same street, perhaps even the same word used by a witness to describe a retreating suspect.
“The pathologist reports extensive petechial haemorrhages,” she goes on, hoping to jog his memory now that he’s thinking along the same lines. She places the report in front of him and turns to the relevant page as she continues, “which suggests that the killer tightened and loosened his grip around her throat over a period of 45 minutes to an hour.”
She tries not to look as disgusted by this as she feels when she looks up at Brink again. He explains his involvement in another review three months ago where a similar observation was made. When he tells her that the victim had multiple boyfriends, there is a distinct lack of judgement in his voice which Stella finds refreshing. She decides then that she likes him.
Brink shows her the photograph of the crime scene and she sees that poor girl stuffed unceremoniously into a cupboard and her heart twinges in her chest.
“What was her name?” She asks, trying to commit her face to memory. She doesn’t want to forget this girl. She doesn’t want anybody to forget her.
“Fiona Gallagher.”
Fiona Gallagher.
In that moment, she makes her decision. She’s going to solve this. No matter how long it takes, she’s going to solve this.
~
When Dana Scully’s face appears on Stella’s laptop screen that night, she feels a weight in her chest completely dissolve. Scully is dressed in a pair of what look to be Stella’s pyjamas, short red hair pulled back into a messy bun. Curled strands of hair fall into her eyes and delicately frame her face.
“Hey,” Scully greets softly and there’s a rustle and blur of motion as she sits down on the bed and begins assembling a pile of pillows upon which she rests the laptop. “How’s Belfast?”
“Beautiful,” says Stella honestly. “We should visit properly sometime.”
“Mm, I’d love to visit the museums,” Scully agrees excitedly. “Belfast has so much history. And the Botanic Gardens sound gorgeous.”
“They do,” Stella agrees absently.
Scully cocks her head to the side and peers at Stella through the screen. “You’ve been swimming already?” She asks. “Rough journey?”
“Not exactly.”
Stella knows that she’s stalling and she’s pretty sure that Scully knows that too.
“Is it the case?” Scully asks quietly.
For a moment, Stella ponders what she should say. In a way, it is the case but probably not in the way Scully thinks. It’s not the murder itself but rather the implications of it now that Brink has confirmed a potential connection. The more the thought about it in the pool, the more obvious the connection seemed to make itself.
A serial killer; without a doubt.
“I don’t think this is the killer’s first murder,” Stella begins, intending to ease Scully into this as gently as she can. But, as it turns out, she doesn’t have to.
“You want to stay,” she says and neither her expression nor her voice give anything away. She is quiet for some time before she nods and says, “How long?”
Stella gives her a sympathetic grimace. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to the ACC yet but I plan to pay him a visit tomorrow.”
There’s a knock at the door before Scully can respond and Stella excuses herself to retrieve her UberEats delivery of a burger and chips from a local restaurant chain.
“Stella?”
Stella hums her acknowledgement through a mouthful of food.
“Just-” Scully takes a deep breath. “Promise you’ll talk to me before you offer to stay on for this investigation?”
“I will,” Stella says. And she truly does intend to keep this promise when they bid their goodbyes.
With Scully headed to bed, Stella pours herself a glass of wine from the room’s minibar and settles herself at the table to review the Fiona Gallagher case.
(When Stella wakes from a bittersweet dream that night, she is disappointed to find the other side of the bed empty.)
~
Stella leaves Jim’s house the next day thoroughly disillusioned with the institution to which she has dedicated her life. She calls Scully.
“Dr Scully.”
“I don’t want the two murders linked.”
There’s a confused moment of silence. “Stella?”
“He actually said that he didn’t ‘want’ the murders linked,” she fumes, glad that the drivers of these armoured cars are required to keep matters discussed in them confidential because she doesn’t feel much like censoring herself right now.
“Who did?” Scully asks, regaining herself.
“ACC Burns. As if his desire to avoid a serial killer investigation in Belfast changes the fact that these murders are almost definitely the work of a serial killer,” Stella huffs. “I knew he was more concerned about politics than police work but I didn’t think he’d willingly ignore evidence just to make his job less complicated.”
Scully says nothing and Stella is grateful for that. She needs to rant.
“Do you know what he said to me yesterday?” She imitates Jim’s accented voice when she continues. “‘Policing is political here, Stella.’ As though policing has ever been anything but political in London. He sat there in the car and told me they had nothing to go on and I bring him a new line of enquiry on a platter and refuses to consider it.” She takes a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s alright,” Scully says and Stella can hear her smiling. “Feel better?”
“Somewhat.”
“So he didn’t bite?”
Stella sighs, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Not even a nibble.”
“And you’re certain?”
“I can feel it in my gut, Dana,” she says.
Scully hums and Stella knows she understands. It means, yes . It means, I’m certain . If only Jim bloody Burns would take her seriously, they might be able to stop the killer before he attacks someone else.
“I didn’t sell it hard enough,” she sighs, feeling an overwhelming burden of guilt crash down on her. If - when - the killer strikes again, she’s going to feel painfully responsible.
“Stella,” Scully warns. “You can’t take this personally.”
Stella huffs out a humourless laugh. Of course she can. She’s had years of practice.
“You will though,” Scully goes on, sounding exasperated. A pause. “Do you want me to come out there?”
More than anything, Stella wants to say.
“No. The way things are going, it looks like I won’t get more than a 28-day-review,” she says with a sigh. “Besides, you need to work.”
“I could organise something,” Scully says vaguely and Stella hears another voice in the background. “I have to go. Code Blue.”
She’s gone before Stella can say goodbye.
~
Stella spends the rest of her day building the most airtight case she can with her limited resources. No matter what Scully says to placate her, this is already personal and she’ll never forgive herself if another woman dies because she didn’t advocate hard enough for their lives. She’s thoroughly exhausted by the time she decides she should head back to the hotel but, as always, there are a few things she has to take care of first so she goes to track down Mary to see if she can arrange to look at the exhibit store in the morning.
She gathers her things and steps out into the hallway, setting off in the direction of the reception desk. When she finds it empty, she retraces her steps and follows the sound of voices down another corridor to a break room. She pushes the door open and finds Mary playing foosball with a young PC.
Both men in the room stop to look at her as she enters. This is nothing she isn’t used to. Police stations have always been, in her experience, a place where women are expected to conform to a certain standard of masculinity, especially in the uniform division. She’s never quite been able to fit into that box even when she was trying.
Once she’s organised things with Mary, she says, “I’m going to need a lift back to the hotel.”
“We’re free, ma’am,” says the PC she’d clocked earlier, gesturing to her partner who is still shovelling food into his mouth. When he shoots his partner a pointed look, Stella suppresses a smile. She gets the impression that this young woman could be a force to be reckoned with, under the right circumstances.
“Good,” she says but then she takes pity on him. “Uh, no, finish your food. I’ll wait in reception.”
As she turns to leave, however, she hears a chair scraping behind her and starts turning around again when she recognises the other man in the room.
“Is it Glen?” She asks, trying not to be amused by his attempts to be prompt with his answer without speaking with his mouth full. “DCI McElroy is doing a violent crime analysis of the last five years. Could you ask him also to include break-ins where valuables were ignored but items of clothing, underwear - clean or soiled - were taken?”
“Underwear, yes, ma’am,” Glen responds quietly.
Stella catches the female PC’s eye. For a moment, she thinks she sees the same look in her eye that she saw in DCI Brink’s when they were discussing the Fiona Gallagher case but it quickly becomes something more like panic, like she’s just realised she’s forgotten to lock her front door.
So Stella doesn’t ask and returns to reception where she doesn’t even manage to sit down before the two PCs join her and lead her out to a patrol car. On the way back to the hotel, they pass a police cordon and the female PC sits upright.
“Stop,” she mutters.
Her partner glances over to her, clearly confused.
“Brian, stop!” She repeats, more urgently this time.
“Is that where…” her partner begins, trailing off when she begins getting out of the car.
Stella frowns. “What’s going on?”
The male PC - Brian - turns to her as his partner shuts the door. “Her mother live on this street.”
Stella feels herself grow pale. The poor girl. She can only hope things aren’t are grim as they must look right now.
Stella gets out of the car.
They catch up with the female PC as she reaches the cordon, catching the attention of an attractive man who looked to be in his early thirties. Stella casts her gaze over him. In another life, she thinks, he’d be exactly her type.
“What’s going on, Sergeant?”
“There’s been a shooting in a house about a mile away. A car was stopped just up along there,” he says, ducking under the tape to join them. “We found guns and arrested three men. Just waiting on the dogs.”
At this, Stella watches the PC visibly relax. She catches her eye and suddenly her entire demeanor shifts from relieved to apologetic.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” she says, ducking her head and scratching the back of her neck.
“Not at all,” Stella says, hoping to allow the girl some modicum of privacy. She extends a hand to the DS, noticing the PC pull out her phone once the attention has been diverted from her. Stella supposes she is texting her mother. “Detective Superintendent Gibson. I’m here to review the Alice Monroe investigation.”
“DS Olsen, ma’am,” he says, shaking her hand. He lingers too long. She doesn’t really mind.
Stella nods to the street behind him. “Explosives?” She asks, curiosity piqued.
“It’s drugs,” he replies. “The deceased was well known to us. Will the review take long?”
“A week,” Stella shrugs, watching the PC finish texting and shove her phone back into her pocket. She still looks rattled. “Maybe more. The PSNI was nice enough to put me up in the Hilton.”
“Very nice,” says Olsen, his eyes flicking briefly to her breasts.
“Jim!” Someone calls from behind the cordon.
As Olsen leaves, his gaze lingers on her. Stella holds it steadily until he turns his back. She turns to find the female PC taking a marked interest in her shoes.
“Alright?” She asks softly, trying to keep her stance non-threatening.
The PC looks up at her sheepishly. “I’m fine, ma’am. Sorry about that.”
Before Stella can say anything, the PC sets off back to the car and settles herself in the passenger seat. Her partner meets Stella’s eye and nods.
The rest of the drive is uneventful and Stella leaves without a word when they pull up outside her hotel. The entire atmosphere of the drive had been strange even before the incident at the cordon but it had been practically suffocating since then. If anything, she’s fairly certain her presence had been all but forgotten.
In fact, the rest of Stella’s evening is uneventful save for telling a reporter where he could shove his microphone. There is no call from Scully who had to work late so Stella retires after a quick meal and two glasses of wine in the hotel bar.
~
The following morning threatens to be similarly uneventful until ACC Jim Burns bursts into her office and throws a newspaper onto her desk. When she glances down and sees a photograph of herself sitting with the reporter from last night, it’s all she can do not to groan out loud. She picks up her paper with a roll of her eyes and sets about skimming for details while Jim helps himself to coffee.
“This was last night?” He asks accusingly and Stella sighs. She is absolutely not in the mood for this conversation and she refuses to give Jim anything to hang her with.
“I was at the hotel dining room, about to eat,” she explains patiently but succinctly. “Callan came in and sat down, uninvited, at my table. I didn’t see a photographer.”
“How did he know you were staying there?” Jim continues his interrogation despite her protestations that the picture is nothing more than an orchestration. “What did you say to him?”
“I asked him to leave,” she says. “More accurately, I told him to fuck off and leave me alone.”
Jim doesn’t react to her choice of language but she can tell he wants to and that’s enough. “You should have told me,” he berates her and she raises an eyebrow.
“Told you what?”
“All meetings with journalists have to be on the rec-”
“It wasn’t a meeting,” she interrupts, hoping her tone conveys that she doesn’t care for this accusation. She isn’t in the habit of fraternising with journalists behind the backs of her colleagues and Jim, of all people, ought to know that. “He doorstepped me and I told him to leave. There’s nothing in this. It’s just a photograph.”
“It’s never just a photograph,” Jim mutters under his breath as Stella tosses the paper aside. “What did he want with you?”
Stella sighs. Apparently this conversation is not over, as she had hoped. “He wanted to know about the review and the murder. I refused to discuss either,” she says bluntly.
Jim’s lip curls, clearly unimpressed with her answer. Frankly, she’s unimpressed with his attitude and sees no reason to coddle him about what will prove itself to be nothing more than an unsuccessful ambush.
“I’ve a meeting with the Independent Police Executive this morning,” he says and this is what Stella has been waiting for. She learned long ago that Jim doesn’t particularly care about the police force or the work it does for the people; he cares about himself and his career and Stella has never had much time for career officers. “This,” Jim goes on, picking up the paper again, “has done nothing to make my job easier.”
Stella wants to tell him that making his job easier is not why she’s been sent here but she isn’t in the mood to get into a battle of wills with him. He goes to leave before apparently thinking better of it and returning to toss the paper unceremoniously back onto Stella’s desk.
“Keep that,” he says, his tone telling her exactly what he thinks of her ability to garner media attention. “One for the archives.”
She is too stunned by his blatant rudeness to say anything. By the time she considers what she’d like to say to him, he’s closed the door behind him.
Bastard.
~
After watching Aaron Monroe’s interview tapes, Stella makes a note to ask Mary about drug use when they visit the exhibit store. Despite the plethora of prescription drugs, however, Mary confirms that they gathered no evidence of cocaine use. She recognises most of the prescription drug names bar one and pulls out her phone to shoot a quick text to Scully.
She’s surprised to find a media message waiting for her.
Dana:
i’m so sad
She’s attached a picture of her favourite mug, shattered in a pool of coffee. Stella bites back a smile.
Me:
This makes Christmas shopping much easier. Any idea what zolpidem is used for?
Dana:
it’s a short-term sedative. good for insomnia.
Me:
Thank you. I’ll buy you a new mug.
Dana:
<3
Stella tucks her phone back into her pocket and heads back to her office, feeling significantly lighter than before.
~
There’s a knock at her door. A young man she hasn’t met before pokes his head round the door.
“Ma’am,” he says grimly. “A young woman has just been found murdered in her home.”
Stella is on her feet before he can say anything else, throwing her coat haphazardly around her shoulders. As she heads to the crime scene with Brink, she tries to quiet the turmoil in her stomach. She feels responsible and she feels sick. More than anything, she wants to call Scully. Instead, she pulls out her phone and pretends to be engaged in business while she reads over their conversation from earlier in the day.
The little heart almost makes her want to cry.
When they arrive, she finds the first face she recognises - Brian, the PC who gave her a lift home last night - and finds that he and his partner - whose name she learns to be Ferrington - were the first attending officers. She spots Ferrington standing speaking with two other officers and calls her over.
“You’ve been in?” She asks and, at Ferrington’s confirmation, says, “tell me.”
“Suspected homicide,” is all she says.
But Stella knows what she’s looking for. “White professional female in her 30s?”
“Yes ma’am,” Ferrington confirms.
“Strangulation marks?”
Ferrington’s expression shifts from deer-caught-in-headlights to thoughtful. “I think so,” she says. It’s not definitive but Stella will see for herself soon enough.
“Where is the body located?”
“In the upstairs front bedroom. On the bed.”
“Covered or uncovered?”
This question seems to take Ferrington by surprise because she falters like she can’t remember. Stella tries not to be irritated with her. After all, it’s not like she’d been told what to look for. “Partly covered, I think,” she says eventually.
Stella thanks her and fully intends to move on when Ferrington says something that surprises her.
“She was a solicitor.”
It takes a moment for this to register. Stella looks back up at Ferrington who looks...shaken. “What? Was she known to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she says and she sounds breathless, like she’s trying to keep something inside. Stella understands that feeling. The guilt building in the pit of her stomach is going to take a long time to clear. Probably not until she’s caught him. Maybe not even then.
So Stella stays quiet and waits.
“On Friday evening, we responded to a report of an intruder. The caller said that someone had laid her underwear and vibrator out on her bed. When we arrived, she was the only one in the building.”
Stella barely breathes. “Was anything taken?”
Ferrington’s silence tells her that her suspicions are correct but she stays quiet to let the officer confirm it. “Underwear. Clean.”
Stella doesn’t bother telling her that she should have told her about this incident when she mentioned the importance of stolen underwear yesterday. She doesn’t tell her that timing is everything, that this murder may have been prevented if she’d come forward with this information. She doesn’t say this because she can see that Ferrington already knows this. It’s written all over her face, in the protective stance she assumes when she speaks. She’s expecting reprimand and she’s perfectly willing to accept it. But Stella isn’t in the right frame of mind to be sensitive so she says nothing.
“Thank you, Ferrington,” she says and calls Jim.
When she relays this information to him, he’s initially shocked and Stella thinks for a fleeting moment that she might be making progress. Until he speaks.
“Was she not advised to vacate the property while investigations were going on?” He asks, sounding furious. Stella is glad she didn’t give him the names of the officers.
“There were no investigations. The victim herself decided not to pursue it,” she says, disappointed but not surprised at the look in Jim’s face. The fleeting moment where he thinks so it’s not our fault makes her suddenly understand how someone could be capable of strangling another human being.
“Make me SIO.”
She says it before she’s thought it through. She promised Scully that they’d talk about this first.
“I have the rank,” she goes on, finding herself unable to back out now that she’s started her pitch. She wants this, she realises. She wants to catch him. “I have the experience. I’m here. And I could be made available.”
She says this last with Scully in mind.
(Jim says yes.)