Detective Edwin Hargreave hadn't slept in two days.
He looked like it. Shirt wrinkled, eyes bloodshot, tie half-knotted like a man who started the job and forgot why.
The department said Hyde Park was a random act. A maniac, probably. A drunk.
But Hargreave?
He knew better.
This wasn't noise.
It was rhythm.
He kept crime scene clippings in his coat—not for evidence. Not for court.
He kept them the way musicians keep sheet music. The way poets keep scars.
He wasn't chasing motive. He didn't believe in motive.
That was for men who believed in good and evil.
Hargreave didn't.
He believed in patterns.
In lines that loop back around.
In things that repeat until they snap.
His colleagues said he was mad.
They weren't exactly wrong.
His wife was gone.
His son hadn't written in years.
His hands shook when he reached for the bottle, but not when he picked up a pen.
And his mind?
Still sharp.
Still dangerous.
And it had just found something worth bleeding for.
Three things. Always.
Every scene.
No sign of a break-in.
Surgical-level precision.
And something so wrong it was almost… beautiful.
Not passion. Not chaos.
Deliberate.
Like someone was painting with blood and calling it art.
That night, he took the photos—seven victims, three months—and pinned them to his wall.
He didn't bother with fancy software. Just red thread, tape, and instinct.
Red for time.
Blue for wounds.
Black for something else entirely—something he didn't have a word for.
When he stepped back, he didn't see a web.
He saw a spiral.
He sat down hard.
Lit a cigarette with shaky hands.
And whispered into the empty room:
"Who the hell are you?"
---
A few streets away, Vivienne woke up choking on blood.
She sat up fast, breath ragged.
Julian was gone.
Carmen was standing at the window, cigarette burning low, eyes lost somewhere far past the rooftops.
Vivienne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Something's coming," she said.
Carmen didn't even turn around.
"I know."