Desecration Read Online Free

entered the Hunterian Museum, a place she’d never visited but vaguely knew of. It was one of those hidden treasures of London that few came to see but which changed those who did. She was partially glad of her ignorance, because she wanted to see it with untainted eyes before she polluted her instinctive impressions with fact.  
    Near the door, a uniformed officer sat with an elderly man, the Curator. He was agitated, wringing his hands and then rubbing his neck, repeatedly loosening his tie. Jamie recognized the body language of self-comforting and wondered if perhaps he had found the body. She would circle back to him in a bit. The officer looked up and Jamie nodded her head in a professional greeting, avoiding a smile.  
    She looked around, taking in the activity before her. Scene Of Crime Officers (SOCOs) were processing the area, and Jamie’s eyes were drawn to a central space surrounded by walls of glass shelving that contained thousands of body parts in preservation jars. Jamie had seen many bodies in various states, but usually they were recognizably human. This was a collection of the macabre, and a strangely appropriate place for another dead body.  
    Jamie felt a familiar surge of excitement at a new case, a new puzzle to solve and a way to distract her from thoughts of the hospice. She registered the usual guilt as well, because for her to feel this way, a human being had to die. But Jamie was a realist and there would always be murder, violence and death. It was endemic to the human condition. She had a short window of opportunity in her life to make a difference and potentially lower the body count and it made her remarkable for just an instant. This job was not some office function where busy work whiled away the hours, counting for nothing. This work could save lives, bring justice and occasionally equilibrium to the small corner of the world that was Jamie’s London. It was a chance to be extraordinary, the reason she had escaped her parents’ home on the Milton Keynes housing estate as soon as she could. She had known growing up there that she had to get out of that rut or risk being trapped forever in mediocrity.
    Jamie walked into the central area where a female body was laid out on the floor wearing a scarlet evening dress that had been slashed open. Her beautiful face was calm but there was a deep wound in her lower abdomen, looking more like a surgical operation than the butchery it must have been. The woman’s blonde hair looked like an unnatural wig, the tresses freshly brushed and seemingly too alive to be attached to a dead body. Flashes of light from the crime scene photographer illuminated the corpse, her skin pale and posed like a model exhibit. Jamie stood still as she took in the scene. This was the moment when she knew nothing and her mind was filled with questions. Who was this woman and why did she die here last night. She noticed the red lipstick on the woman’s mouth and imagined her speaking. What would she say?
    “Jamie, good to see you.”  
    Jamie turned to see Detective Sergeant Leander Marcus, his slight paunch extending the dark weave of his suit trousers, visible through the thin protective coveralls.  
    “Hey Lee, were you first on scene?”  
    Leander nodded, his face crumpled with lack of sleep.  
    “Keen to get off it ASAP. I’ve been up all night and this only came in a few hours ago. Cameron get you called in?”  
    Leander arched an eyebrow and Jamie gave a complicit half-smile. Detective Superintendent Dale Cameron was respected for his accomplishments but he also seemed to have Teflon shoulders, deflecting any scandal onto other ranking officers, so his cases came with a health warning. With his salt and pepper hair and a body kept trim from marathon running, Cameron had the looks of a Fortune 500 CEO and his star was on the rise within the Metropolitan Police.  
    He had been appointed Senior Investigating Officer for the crime, assigning Jamie to the