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the alleyway was awash with blood, there was not one drop inside the most crucial piece of evidence available to them - the victim himself.

As the Coroner finally made his way through the cordon and into the alleyway, he instantly began examining the lifeless man’s body on the ground and as he did so, immediately noticed how unusually pale and thin the corpse looked for someone who had supposedly died only a few hours ago.
     
    This was no normal corpse lying on the ground before him - this was something that he had never encountered before and with all the medical knowledge that existed within his mind, the Coroner was unable to explain the present condition of the dead man.
     
    But there was one thing that was blatantly clear to all who had seen the dead man’s face - and that was an expression that showed how much terror he had experienced moments before his death - which was totally understandable as pieces of skin and bone were being spotted and bagged up by the forensic team around the alleyway.
    What was the last thing he saw?
     
    Who or what had attacked him?
     
    Why was he attacked in the first place?
     
    So many questions were shooting around the Coroner’s head right now and the only chance of them ever being answered had left the scene earlier in the back seat of a police car.
 
    The Coroner paused for a moment to let the crime scene
    photographer take some pictures of the dead body, taking the opportunity to begin filling in the paperwork officially confirming the man’s death, but unlike any other murder cases he had been involved with in the past, the time of death remained a mystery.
     
    One thing was sure – this was going to be a murder case that he was never going to forget for as long as he lived.
     
    And as the photographer took his last picture, the Coroner proceeded to make a few basic checks on the body before he gave his permission for it to be moved.
     
    The face had clearly taken a battering with lacerations and bruises visible all over it, the left cheek caved in due to the upper and lower jaws being broken after hitting something extremely hard – such as the ground or a wall.
     
    The neck showed no signs whatsoever of strangulation, but as the Coroner turned the corpse’s head to look at the right side of the neck, he was shocked to find a large number of puncture wounds visible.
     
    Unbeknown to him, the crime scene photographer had noticed the Coroner’s shocked expression and at the same time, immediately caught a glimpse of the unusual neck wounds on the corpse too and instinctively caught it on camera.
     
    First impressions of the murder scene pointed towards a human attack, but the marks that existed on the victim’s neck turned that theory on its head and instead pointed more towards an attack from some kind of animal.
             
    The photographer looked at the image that he had just caught on the screen of his digital camera, immediately sending a shiver down his spine as it suddenly dawned on him that whatever had caused such a horrific scene was still on the loose somewhere - maybe miles away, maybe even close by hiding away in some dark corner, waiting for the right moment to leap out and kill another unsuspecting victim – but whatever it was, it needed to be caught before it struck again.
 
    But it was clear to see that the corpse lying on the ground contained very little, if any, blood within it – and the Coroner knew that surely such a large amount could not have come from the puncture wounds - even the amount of blood that was scattered around the alleyway was nowhere near the ten pints that exists within the average male.
     
    Blood, just like any other liquid, when spilt does have a habit of looking a lot more than what it actually is.
     
    This case was beginning to grow stranger with every second and the Coroner was the one who had the unenviable task of producing some kind of plausible report on what he had discovered so far – a