Fic: You've Dug Your Own Grave, Now Lie In It - Chapter One
Title: You've Dug Your Own Grave, Now Lie In It (1/?)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU/AR (was never able to tell what exactly the difference between the two is)
A/N: I promise this doesn't mean I've abandoned Airmail, it's still very much on my radar. Good new about this one: the next two chapters are almost complete.
It felt indecent to see her like this.
Sprawled on her bed, silken sheets dishevelled, golden hair tousled, red tinted lips parted for yet another kiss; she lay waiting to be discovered.
The world around her had never been this quiet.
Without making any noise, he slipped out of the door. Unnoticed, but not entirely unimportant.
*
"Is that who I think it is," Noboru blurted with disbelief in his voice as he stepped into the lavishly decorated bedroom. A myriad of candles cast a soft glow on the furniture, illuminating the four poster as if a professional had worked hours on creating the right sort of lighting. Only the wax spilling over and dripping on the carpet ruined the scene, turning it from romance to thriller. Something was wrong, and this is why they were here. The two men stepped closer, and one of their colleagues began to take pictures. All of them were painstakingly careful not to touch anything.
Taking a deep breath, Mamoru nodded. In front of them, in all her naked glory, lay the woman whose face was on posters and billboards all over the city. Minako Aino, the country's most hyped pop sensation. Not so famous for her voice as for her charming personality and her long legs, she had been the talk of the town for almost two years. Even now, she was incredibly beautiful.
The first rays of sunshine began to filter through the large windows, and caught in her golden hair, making it gleam in a way that it wasn't supposed to, at least not any more. Would she have minded to be photographed by a stranger? Mamoru wasn't so sure, and he half expected the girl to stretch her limps and rise again, were it not for the gaping hole in her chest. She was dead. Dead. Just. Like. Usagi. It took him a moment to regain his footing and he wished for something to occupy his trembling hands with. The similarity between his late wife and the murdered singer was as obvious as it was tormenting. Feeling a large hand squeeze his shoulder, he turned to find Noboru right behind him, reassuring him through his mere presence. It's what he had always done, and every since Usagi was dead and gone, Mamoru had come to rely on his partner in a way he hadn't thought possible before. Were he more emotional, he would have called him his saviour. Suppressing a shudder, he remembered the night on the bridge, the moments in which he had been so absolutely convinced that the one and only solution to all of his problems was to follow his beloved into death.
"Inspector Chiba, Inspector Sanjoin, the press has gotten wind of the murder."
Noboru's hand slid off Mamoru's shoulder as he let out a colourful curse that made the unfortunate bearer of the news blush. "We have only been here for fucking ten minutes, the girl looks as if she was alive bloody ten minutes ago, doing some wonderfully wicked things to some lucky chap and the press already knows? How?" The Constable looked apologetic, intimidated and wildly out of his comfort zone. Noboru ran his hand through his messy brown curls and continued while waving the younger man away with an air of impatience: "We will have to release a statement - not that we have much to say other than that she is dead - but we need to talk to her relatives first. Boy, do I want a drink." His brown eyes sought his partner's, fully expecting him to reprimand Noboru's early morning drinking habits, but Mamoru had left his side to inch closer to the body. Bending down, he examined her with squinted eyes. The sheets looked absolutely pristine, as if they nothing would have happened on them. Were it not for the dead girl wrapped up in them, this would not have astounded him at all. Rich people tended to have housekeepers and housekeepers were generally in the habit of keeping things clean. Still, something was amiss. It took a moment to register.
"Why isn't there any blood?"
"Huh?" Noboru had begun to blow out the candles, lest they should burn the whole place down and destroy the evidence he desperately hoped was there.
"She has a huge hole in her body, it looks as if the murderer put his fist through her chest. This bed should be drenched in blood, but it's not. Why?" Mamoru straightened his back, his mind beginning to work overtime.
The two Inspectors looked at Minako Aino, confusion etched into their features, the press momentarily forgotten.
On the small nightstand next to the bed stood two glasses of champagne, only one still bubbling.
*
"Female, aged 25, large wound in her chest. One hand-shaped bruise on her left thigh. No other marks and no signs that she fought back."
The coroner's deep voice was monotone as he spoke into his small dictaphone, and his eyes looked down at the body uncaringly. He had seen many on this table, gathered the stories of their demise from the traces left on their bodies and he had never lost his cool demeanour. He was famous for his precise and analytic mind, but it didn't make him popular with the Inspectors. Noboru didn't like the coroner, which was why he had opted to notify the victim's family instead and let Mamoru go and see this robotic man do his work. Both of them believed that it was important to see the coroner's first impression of the victim, for the information thus gained often proved valuable. He might be an unfeeling bastard, as Noboru put it, but Katsurou Hanzo could do this job like no other.
"She looks familiar."
"Popstar, very famous," Mamoru offered.
"That must be it," Katsurou answered neutrally. He was dressed in green scrubs, his chin-length silver hair tied back into a tiny ponytail.
"There was next to no blood on the bed."
"With a wound such as this one, there should be."
"There wasn't." After a customary pause, Katsurou moved away from the table and closer to Mamoru, who had to fight the urge to step away. More often than not, he felt like a child in Hanzo's presence and it wasn't a feeling he relished. Also, to use Noboru's words again, Hanzo was a bit creepy. The odd hair didn't exactly help.
"Then she might not have been killed on her bed." The coroner stood very still, his green eyes fixed on the naked girl. It was impossibly to tell what he thought right now. The silence was beginning to feel awkward, so Mamoru spoke up again. What was it that always made him feel like a boy in Hanzo's presence?
"The doorman said that she entered the penthouse early in the evening, and hasn't left it since. There is no backdoor."
"I will check whether there is any blood missing from her body."
"How do you do that?"
"Do you really want to know?" A hint of amusement was evident in the coroner's voice as he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves.
Thinking better of it, Mamoru shook his head. Under the harsh light of the halogen lamps, the dead girl looked incredibly pale. While she had still seemed so wrongfully alive in her apartment, here she was a corpse, turned into an object under the observant eyes of Hanzo. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Mamoru wondered if he should have followed his heart's desire to become a doctor and help the living as opposed to avenging the dead. Casting these useless thoughts aside, he looked at Minako Aino one last time.
"No, I don't suppose so. When can we expect the report?" It was time to leave. He had worked in this profession for almost ten years, but he would never get used to the sound of a ribcage being cracked open.. Seeing how Hanzo's practised hands now gripped the scalpel, the rip retractor already in reach, Mamoru knew that this most horrible of all sounds would soon resonate through the already eery room.
"Tomorrow evening, but the autopsy of the brain and the tox screen will take a little longer." With a nod, Mamoru slipped out of the doors and into the cold, fresh morning.
*
"Couldn't someone with as much money as her hire a cleaning lady", Noboru grumbled while filching through the drawers of the victim's desk. The spacious penthouse was cluttered; full of awards, photos, records, DVDs and posters. Her success was on every wall, as if she wanted to remind herself of it as often and as frequently as possible. Noboru thought it was untidy, but Mamoru didn't share this assessment. There was a pattern in the way the magazines were stacked on the floor (most of them with her face on the cover), something deliberate about the clothes draped over the white leather couch (short dresses that would cleverly expose both legs and cleavage). The only room without any pictures of herself was the bedroom, it had been a refuge from her own image. There wasn't even a mirror in there. Noboru would have expected a large mirror on the ceiling over her bed, but there was none.
"There is not a single picture of her family, and after meeting her mother, I can't say that I blame her. The woman is a dragon."
"So she wasn't sad about her only child dying?"
"She said Minako had always been headstrong."
"Harsh."
"Yep, especially coming from her mother. She didn't even cry. It's the first time I told a mother that her daughter had been murdered without the mother shedding a tear. Nothing, mate, nothing."
"Have you found pictures of friends?"
Opening another drawer and emptying its contents on the desk's surface, Noboru snorted.
"No. Only pictures of herself. Tons of them, actually. Maybe she was too conceited to have friends."
"Everybody has someone."
"Not true."
"Who do you know who is completely alone in this world?"
"How about our very own McCreepy?"
"I'm sure he has... people. He said we get the report tomorrow. He's very fast."
"Yeah, because he doesn't have a private life."
"Noboru..."
"What? It's true. Oh whoa," Noboru groaned, "look at this."
He motioned to Mamoru to look at the latest stack of photos he had recovered from a large manila envelope. Mamoru took them.
They were clearly paparazzi shots, showing the singer with a tall man in a darkened alley. He had his face hidden from the camera, nuzzling her neck. One hand was under the hem of her very short skirt. Aino, however, was looking straight into the lens, an indecipherable look on her pretty face.
"She knew that the pap was there," Mamoru said blankly, looking through the stack. The last one showed the man with his back to the paparazzi and Aino kneeling before him. His head was covered in wild golden curls.
"What a naughty girl."
"That gives us a motive."
"I'm not following."
"Her record company would not have been happy about this."
"So you think they killed her because of how she spent her nights? Not likely. It would have caused a huge scandal, but scandals are publicity and publicity sells records. And if you kill someone because of a business thing, you don't go and rip a hole into her body. No way, this is personal." Noboru took the pictures from his partner's hands and put them back into the envelope. "Maybe the guy found out that a paparazzi took pictures of them and killed her because she violated his trust?"
"Or the photographer was a stalker, jealous of her lover and killed her because he couldn't have her."
"Either way, we have to find our golden-curled Adonis here," Noboru stated. He was like a dog with a bone, and Mamoru knew without a doubt that his partner would find Aino's lover. How he did it, he had no idea, but there had never been a single person that had escaped Noboru's mysterious talent.
What did escape both of them was the small secret drawer in Minako Aino's desk and the pictures within it.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU/AR (was never able to tell what exactly the difference between the two is)
A/N: I promise this doesn't mean I've abandoned Airmail, it's still very much on my radar. Good new about this one: the next two chapters are almost complete.
It felt indecent to see her like this.
Sprawled on her bed, silken sheets dishevelled, golden hair tousled, red tinted lips parted for yet another kiss; she lay waiting to be discovered.
The world around her had never been this quiet.
Without making any noise, he slipped out of the door. Unnoticed, but not entirely unimportant.
*
"Is that who I think it is," Noboru blurted with disbelief in his voice as he stepped into the lavishly decorated bedroom. A myriad of candles cast a soft glow on the furniture, illuminating the four poster as if a professional had worked hours on creating the right sort of lighting. Only the wax spilling over and dripping on the carpet ruined the scene, turning it from romance to thriller. Something was wrong, and this is why they were here. The two men stepped closer, and one of their colleagues began to take pictures. All of them were painstakingly careful not to touch anything.
Taking a deep breath, Mamoru nodded. In front of them, in all her naked glory, lay the woman whose face was on posters and billboards all over the city. Minako Aino, the country's most hyped pop sensation. Not so famous for her voice as for her charming personality and her long legs, she had been the talk of the town for almost two years. Even now, she was incredibly beautiful.
The first rays of sunshine began to filter through the large windows, and caught in her golden hair, making it gleam in a way that it wasn't supposed to, at least not any more. Would she have minded to be photographed by a stranger? Mamoru wasn't so sure, and he half expected the girl to stretch her limps and rise again, were it not for the gaping hole in her chest. She was dead. Dead. Just. Like. Usagi. It took him a moment to regain his footing and he wished for something to occupy his trembling hands with. The similarity between his late wife and the murdered singer was as obvious as it was tormenting. Feeling a large hand squeeze his shoulder, he turned to find Noboru right behind him, reassuring him through his mere presence. It's what he had always done, and every since Usagi was dead and gone, Mamoru had come to rely on his partner in a way he hadn't thought possible before. Were he more emotional, he would have called him his saviour. Suppressing a shudder, he remembered the night on the bridge, the moments in which he had been so absolutely convinced that the one and only solution to all of his problems was to follow his beloved into death.
"Inspector Chiba, Inspector Sanjoin, the press has gotten wind of the murder."
Noboru's hand slid off Mamoru's shoulder as he let out a colourful curse that made the unfortunate bearer of the news blush. "We have only been here for fucking ten minutes, the girl looks as if she was alive bloody ten minutes ago, doing some wonderfully wicked things to some lucky chap and the press already knows? How?" The Constable looked apologetic, intimidated and wildly out of his comfort zone. Noboru ran his hand through his messy brown curls and continued while waving the younger man away with an air of impatience: "We will have to release a statement - not that we have much to say other than that she is dead - but we need to talk to her relatives first. Boy, do I want a drink." His brown eyes sought his partner's, fully expecting him to reprimand Noboru's early morning drinking habits, but Mamoru had left his side to inch closer to the body. Bending down, he examined her with squinted eyes. The sheets looked absolutely pristine, as if they nothing would have happened on them. Were it not for the dead girl wrapped up in them, this would not have astounded him at all. Rich people tended to have housekeepers and housekeepers were generally in the habit of keeping things clean. Still, something was amiss. It took a moment to register.
"Why isn't there any blood?"
"Huh?" Noboru had begun to blow out the candles, lest they should burn the whole place down and destroy the evidence he desperately hoped was there.
"She has a huge hole in her body, it looks as if the murderer put his fist through her chest. This bed should be drenched in blood, but it's not. Why?" Mamoru straightened his back, his mind beginning to work overtime.
The two Inspectors looked at Minako Aino, confusion etched into their features, the press momentarily forgotten.
On the small nightstand next to the bed stood two glasses of champagne, only one still bubbling.
*
"Female, aged 25, large wound in her chest. One hand-shaped bruise on her left thigh. No other marks and no signs that she fought back."
The coroner's deep voice was monotone as he spoke into his small dictaphone, and his eyes looked down at the body uncaringly. He had seen many on this table, gathered the stories of their demise from the traces left on their bodies and he had never lost his cool demeanour. He was famous for his precise and analytic mind, but it didn't make him popular with the Inspectors. Noboru didn't like the coroner, which was why he had opted to notify the victim's family instead and let Mamoru go and see this robotic man do his work. Both of them believed that it was important to see the coroner's first impression of the victim, for the information thus gained often proved valuable. He might be an unfeeling bastard, as Noboru put it, but Katsurou Hanzo could do this job like no other.
"She looks familiar."
"Popstar, very famous," Mamoru offered.
"That must be it," Katsurou answered neutrally. He was dressed in green scrubs, his chin-length silver hair tied back into a tiny ponytail.
"There was next to no blood on the bed."
"With a wound such as this one, there should be."
"There wasn't." After a customary pause, Katsurou moved away from the table and closer to Mamoru, who had to fight the urge to step away. More often than not, he felt like a child in Hanzo's presence and it wasn't a feeling he relished. Also, to use Noboru's words again, Hanzo was a bit creepy. The odd hair didn't exactly help.
"Then she might not have been killed on her bed." The coroner stood very still, his green eyes fixed on the naked girl. It was impossibly to tell what he thought right now. The silence was beginning to feel awkward, so Mamoru spoke up again. What was it that always made him feel like a boy in Hanzo's presence?
"The doorman said that she entered the penthouse early in the evening, and hasn't left it since. There is no backdoor."
"I will check whether there is any blood missing from her body."
"How do you do that?"
"Do you really want to know?" A hint of amusement was evident in the coroner's voice as he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves.
Thinking better of it, Mamoru shook his head. Under the harsh light of the halogen lamps, the dead girl looked incredibly pale. While she had still seemed so wrongfully alive in her apartment, here she was a corpse, turned into an object under the observant eyes of Hanzo. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Mamoru wondered if he should have followed his heart's desire to become a doctor and help the living as opposed to avenging the dead. Casting these useless thoughts aside, he looked at Minako Aino one last time.
"No, I don't suppose so. When can we expect the report?" It was time to leave. He had worked in this profession for almost ten years, but he would never get used to the sound of a ribcage being cracked open.. Seeing how Hanzo's practised hands now gripped the scalpel, the rip retractor already in reach, Mamoru knew that this most horrible of all sounds would soon resonate through the already eery room.
"Tomorrow evening, but the autopsy of the brain and the tox screen will take a little longer." With a nod, Mamoru slipped out of the doors and into the cold, fresh morning.
*
"Couldn't someone with as much money as her hire a cleaning lady", Noboru grumbled while filching through the drawers of the victim's desk. The spacious penthouse was cluttered; full of awards, photos, records, DVDs and posters. Her success was on every wall, as if she wanted to remind herself of it as often and as frequently as possible. Noboru thought it was untidy, but Mamoru didn't share this assessment. There was a pattern in the way the magazines were stacked on the floor (most of them with her face on the cover), something deliberate about the clothes draped over the white leather couch (short dresses that would cleverly expose both legs and cleavage). The only room without any pictures of herself was the bedroom, it had been a refuge from her own image. There wasn't even a mirror in there. Noboru would have expected a large mirror on the ceiling over her bed, but there was none.
"There is not a single picture of her family, and after meeting her mother, I can't say that I blame her. The woman is a dragon."
"So she wasn't sad about her only child dying?"
"She said Minako had always been headstrong."
"Harsh."
"Yep, especially coming from her mother. She didn't even cry. It's the first time I told a mother that her daughter had been murdered without the mother shedding a tear. Nothing, mate, nothing."
"Have you found pictures of friends?"
Opening another drawer and emptying its contents on the desk's surface, Noboru snorted.
"No. Only pictures of herself. Tons of them, actually. Maybe she was too conceited to have friends."
"Everybody has someone."
"Not true."
"Who do you know who is completely alone in this world?"
"How about our very own McCreepy?"
"I'm sure he has... people. He said we get the report tomorrow. He's very fast."
"Yeah, because he doesn't have a private life."
"Noboru..."
"What? It's true. Oh whoa," Noboru groaned, "look at this."
He motioned to Mamoru to look at the latest stack of photos he had recovered from a large manila envelope. Mamoru took them.
They were clearly paparazzi shots, showing the singer with a tall man in a darkened alley. He had his face hidden from the camera, nuzzling her neck. One hand was under the hem of her very short skirt. Aino, however, was looking straight into the lens, an indecipherable look on her pretty face.
"She knew that the pap was there," Mamoru said blankly, looking through the stack. The last one showed the man with his back to the paparazzi and Aino kneeling before him. His head was covered in wild golden curls.
"What a naughty girl."
"That gives us a motive."
"I'm not following."
"Her record company would not have been happy about this."
"So you think they killed her because of how she spent her nights? Not likely. It would have caused a huge scandal, but scandals are publicity and publicity sells records. And if you kill someone because of a business thing, you don't go and rip a hole into her body. No way, this is personal." Noboru took the pictures from his partner's hands and put them back into the envelope. "Maybe the guy found out that a paparazzi took pictures of them and killed her because she violated his trust?"
"Or the photographer was a stalker, jealous of her lover and killed her because he couldn't have her."
"Either way, we have to find our golden-curled Adonis here," Noboru stated. He was like a dog with a bone, and Mamoru knew without a doubt that his partner would find Aino's lover. How he did it, he had no idea, but there had never been a single person that had escaped Noboru's mysterious talent.
What did escape both of them was the small secret drawer in Minako Aino's desk and the pictures within it.