Shades of Black Read Free

Carmelo Massimo Tidona

    Shades of Black
    Series “ Nocturnal ”
episode #4

    Translation from Italian to English by Carmelo Massimo Tidona for Zed Lab http://www.quellidized.it/zedlab

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    Shades of Black
    Copyright © 2013 Zerounoundici Edizioni Copyright © 2013 Carmelo Massimo Tidona ISBN: 978-88-6578-265-1 Cover:
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    Work autonomously proposed by the author, not submitted to selection from the publisher

S hades of Black

    When Sylke reached the police cordon, asked where the corpses were, and heard someone answer “Everywhere”, he looked askance at the agent, with an expression that left no doubt about its meaning. But he found himself looking at the face of someone who didn’t seem at all in a mood for joking.
    Shrugging, he moved forward in the narrow alley. If police had asked for his intervention, making fun of him should have been the last thing they had in mind, after all. Usually, he was considered the last hope, the one to call when everything else had failed or couldn’t be tried at all, if nothing else because tribunals didn’t really appreciate investigations based on the work of consultants like him.
    Around him a lot of people was busy . Almost all of them looked like cops, none looked like a dead person, at least not the kind who rests in peace under three good feet of soil.
    He was already about to protest, sure that he had gone there for nothing, and that the bodies had already been moved before his arrival, which had already happened in the past, when he realized the meaning of what he had been told .
    He hurriedly closed his mouth, trying not loo look like a complete idiot, and finally focused on what was around him .
    The alley was pretty dark, although the day was at its fullest. Dense shadows populated its corners and clefts, and conspired with his mind to hide from him the details of what he was seeing . But by now the hints were too many to be ignored, and awareness hit him like a fist in the stomach.
    Scattered among the graffiti that adorned the walls, among the trash and the dirt of the macadam, there were stains of blood and indistinct fragments that once must have been part of the body of a living being. Maybe even more than one.
    Even though his line of work often brought him in close contact with the results of the most bloody crimes, he didn’t think he had ever seen anything remotely like that in his whole career – big word – of expert, so to speak. Not only someone, or something, had shredded his victims in pieces so small that they could hardly be seen clearly, but he had gone as far as to scatter them around the whole alley, as if to challenge the police to find them all and put that macabre jigsaw together.
    « What happened here?» he asked, trying to sound less bewildered than he felt. «An explosion?»
    « No one heard anything», a familiar voice answered. «And if we knew what happened, we wouldn’t have called you».
    The argument was watertight .
    Sylke turned toward the source of the voice, meeting the eyes of Lars Seymourn, the detective head of the local Magic Control Department. He wasn’t surprised to see him there; he didn’t know many other cops who were able to admit a defeat and call an expert when needed. Actually, he only knew another one.
    « I might not be very useful this time», he answered. Reliving the last moments of the life of a deceased was his specialty – or, better, his disgrace, for sure he hadn’t chosen willingly to learn how to do that – but there had to be a body, at least. What he had available hardly qualified as a large deal of lab samples.
    « You try. If you fail, I won’t blame you».
    Seymourn sounded like someone who had run out of hopes and was ready to cling to any help, as unlikely as it was, in order to get some answers. It was never a good thing.
    « I hope you’ll remember that», he simply replied,