Chapter Nine Perfectly Broken
Chapter nine
Perfectly Broken
Newport Police Station looked more like a post office than the centre of an active murder investigation.
Built in the seventies and never quite updated, brick facade chipped, the signage dull, at least the front entrance flanked with two wheezing potted trees wrapped in tired tinsel was trying to be welcoming.
Along with the sagging “Merry Christmas from the IOW Police” banner hung above the reception desk inside, its cheerful Comic Sans font doing little to distract from the smell of instant coffee and institutional carpet.
All police stations were the same.
All murder investigations, too.
Kenny signed in, then followed the civilian desk officer through the tiled corridor.
The halls were narrow, the walls plastered in laminated posters—Domestic Violence Doesn’t Always Leave a Mark, Keep Your Body Cam On, Shift Calendar: December-January—and somewhere down the corridor, Mariah Carey’s voice bled faintly from a radio in a back office.
“Second on the left, Dr Lyons. She’s waiting for you.”
DS Imogen Parry stood from behind a desk as he entered the small meeting room. She wore a plain black jumper, ID clipped to the pocket, and a Santa pin incongruously blinking red on her lapel.
“Dr Lyons.” She gestured to the chair opposite. “Thanks for coming in.”
Kenny sat. “I assume there’s more than what we saw at the scene?”
Parry nodded, sliding a thick folder across the table bearing a red corner tab and CONFIDENTIAL – ACTIVE HOMICIDE stamped across the front. The first page was clipped with a yellow sticky note stating Forensic Psych Consultation Copy.
Kenny hesitated before opening it.
Because once he opened that, he knew he’d have a hard time closing it.
Parry tapped her fingers onto the tabletop then stilled.
“Name was Luke Wells. Seventeen. No fixed address. The shelter confirmed he drifted in and out over the past few weeks. Kept his head down. Quiet. Last confirmed sighting was around six-thirty p.m., two nights ago. He was loitering near the market square in Newport.”
She slid a grainy CCTV still across the table. The image showed a thin, pale boy hunched beneath a battered parka, hood up, posture defensive, outside the charity shop beneath the broken security light, barely illuminated by the flickering glow.
“Camera timestamp reads six-forty-two,” she said. “Before the carousel turns off for the night.”
Kenny leaned in. “How far from the body?”
“About a twenty-five-minute walk. If you cut through the river path, it’s isolated. No traffic, no witnesses.”
He didn’t react outwardly, but he logged it. A place someone might choose. Or lead someone to. Quiet enough to disappear.
Parry flipped to the next image. “This is where it gets a little… surreal. The only person caught approaching him was Santa.”
Kenny raised an eyebrow. “Santa?”
She nodded grimly and turned the image around.
A second figure approached the boy. Bulkier. Taller. Dressed head to toe in red velvet and fur trim. White beard. Black boots. Kenny picked up the photo. Studied it.
It wasn’t a disguise.
It was a role.
And whoever was playing it had done so with intention.
His thoughts spiralled, brain already piecing together the shape of something ritualistic, symbolic.
“Santa.” Kenny almost tutted. “Of course it is.”
“As there’s no sign of struggle and his body was clean, it suggests an approach, not an abduction.” Parry waited for Kenny to look up. “There’s… some suggestion he might’ve been engaging in survival sex work.”
Kenny raised a brow. “Confirmed?”
“Not directly. The shelter had concerns. Staff said he disappeared then returned and there’d be bruises.”
“Could be drugs?”
“Could be. But the shelter said he’d been seen with older men.”
“So…gay?”
“We don’t know. Not officially. But… maybe. What they did say was he seemed… careful about how he moved. How he talked. Like he’d learned to edit himself.”
Kenny’s stomach curled. A boy who didn’t make noise. Didn’t ask for help. And got good at being invisible…
“But there’s no evidence of struggle or defensive wounds,” Parry continued. “Pathology report is pending, but early signs suggest a fast-acting sedative might have been used. Possibly in a drink. Possibly ingested voluntarily.”
Kenny flipped to the pathology report, reading the summary.
Asphyxiation by ligature. Time of death placed somewhere between seven thirty and eight p.m., give or take half an hour.
Long enough for the body to cool in the winter air.
Long enough for the lights on the Ventnor green to blink across his face like a parody of peace.
Ligature marks at the neck. Fine-gauge wire or possibly strong synthetic cord.
Something deliberate. Quiet. Not a belt or scarf or blunt trauma in panic.
No, this was calculated. Methodical. Intimate.
Kenny inhaled sharply.
There were no defensive wounds. Not a scratch on his knuckles.
No skin under the nails. Nothing to suggest he’d fought his attacker.
Which could mean sedation. Compliance. Or maybe a submission that came not from trust, but exhaustion.
Boys like Luke knew when resistance meant nothing.
There was bruising on his upper arms. Not aggressive.
No finger indentations. No dislocation or swelling.
Pressured. He’d been held. Lifted, probably. Arranged.
Of course he had.
The suit told Kenny that.
A novelty Santa costume, zipped up post-mortem, cut for a larger man’s body, supermarket grade. The fabric fibres matched a cheap plastic bag from the Co-op recycling bin two streets over. A stray thread of synthetic white trim had been recovered from his hair. A red velvet smear clung to his palm.
That same palm had held a peppermint sweet.
Kenny stared at that detail longer than he meant to.
That was interesting.
A token. A signature left like a calling card, but more intimate. It wasn’t about announcing oneself. It was about finishing the performance. Rewarding him. Marking him as complete.
He parked that. Read on.
There were no signs of recent sexual activity.
No semen, no tearing, no abrasion. No overt suggestion of assault.
Killer wasn’t doing this to get off. It was to make a point.
And that was worse. Because people who killed for power wore their pathology differently.
They dressed it up in stories, wrapped it in paper-thin morality, convinced themselves they were correcting something, fixing something broken.
This wasn’t about desire. Not in the traditional sense.
It was about control.
About seeing someone like Luke and deciding he needed to be repurposed. Dressed up. Made festive. Made meaningful.
Kenny stared at the photo attached to the report. Luke beneath the tree, limbs arranged like an offering. Left out for Saint Nicholas himself. And that smile, the one on his face faint enough to haunt, wasn’t his.
He exhaled, resting his fingers on the page.
He hadn’t died violently.
He’d died quietly.
And whoever had done it… had taken their time.
“Whoever dressed him did it with care.” Parry watched him read. “No tearing. No button strain. Arms placed across the chest. Eyes closed. Mouth arranged.”
Kenny ran his fingers across the photograph beneath the pathology text: Luke under the council tree, staged like a nativity scene gone wrong.
“What do you see?” She cocked her head like Chaos sometimes did when Aaron made a sound he didn’t recognise.
Kenny looked up. “I see control. Not of the scene, but of the body, the narrative. They made him symbolic.”
Parry gave a slow nod. “It’s not our usual thing here.”
“It’s not usual for most places.” He flipped further. Crime scene photos. Vicinity sketches. Forensic diagrams with blood trace patterns. Minimal, consistent with post-mortem dressing. There was also a rough victimology table, early days yet, with speculative notes.
Parry tapped the second page. “Two other suspicious deaths have been linked through ViSOR and flagged by Serious Crime.”
“Linked how?”
“Same peppermint sweet found in the hand. First case was a young male in Portsmouth, ruled as an overdose, but now they’re revisiting it.”
Kenny frowned. “A reward. Or a signature.”
Parry nodded. “Second was a twenty-year-old female in Southampton. History in care. Found in a field. Exposure. Ruled accidental… until the peppermint sweet got flagged. Found in her pocket.”
Kenny tapped the bottom of the report. “What do you need from me?”
“Profile them. Build us a framework. Help us anticipate what they’ll do next, who they’ll choose, what they want. The motive’s not financial. Not sexual. So we’re left with what? Moral messaging? Compulsion? God complex?”
“All the above.” Kenny ruffled his hair back, tied it up. “But the language isn’t clear yet.”
“What would you need?”
“Full files on all three deaths. Scene photos, autopsy reports, personal histories. Anything you’ve got on them. School records, caseworker notes, even social media if available.”
Parry reached under the table and pulled out a memory stick. “Digital copies. Redacted for confidentiality. I’ll need you to sign for it.”
Kenny accepted it.
“I’d like to take them home.” He slipped the stick into his inside pocket. “I need to immerse myself. Voice, pattern, tempo. If they’ve done this before, I’ll see echoes.”
Parry leaned back. “We’ll give you full access. But if this escalates, and we think it will, we may need you more involved. Officially. We’ve got units actively pursuing every lead we have. So far, everyone with known contact from the shelter and his old home has accounted for their whereabouts.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re cleared.”
“Agreed.”
Kenny said nothing for a beat.
Outside, a police car reversed across the lot, sleet streaking the windscreen. The world smelled of gingerbread lattes and wet tinsel. Somewhere, a hallway tree blinked half-lit and listing, its paper angel crooked on top.
He glanced down at Luke’s file.