‘Gemma, I’m not doubting your story. I know you were sexually assaulted and scarred for life and—’
‘And you’re trying to turn the bastard into some kind of poor, misguided soul. Not off the back of me you’re not. He was brutal, he was sadistic and appeared to enjoy every fucking minute of it. Now get the fuck out of my house.’
Stacey obliged, the nausea at the harm she’d caused swirling around her stomach, aggravating the pit that lived there and growing by the hour.
Twenty-Five
Kim was pleased to see that Stacey was in her seat by the time she returned from briefing Woody. Kim could also see the tension hunching her shoulders and decided to give her a minute to settle down.
‘Okay, Penn?’ Kim asked as Bryant handed out the drinks from the canteen. ‘Learn anything at the post-mortem?’
‘Keats is a knob.’
‘Anything I didn’t already know?’ she asked. This was not news to anyone.
‘But a bloody good pathologist,’ Bryant defended, seeing as he’d been in a bromance with the guy for years.
‘Also, true,’ Kim admitted. The latter being the reason he got away with the former.
‘Nothing we weren’t expecting about the cause or manner of death. But…’
‘Go on,’ Kim urged.
‘There were scratches on her wrist.’
‘Caused during the struggle?’ Kim asked. She could certainly see how that could happen.
Penn shook his head.
‘Inflicted after death. I’ve enlarged the photo and put it up,’ he said, pointing to the wipe board. ‘No evidence of bleeding, so the heart had stopped.’
Kim took a closer look. It wasn’t a symbol or anything legible, just a collection of scratches.
‘Hmm… okay,’ she said, stepping back to the spare desk. She picked up the post as Penn continued.
‘Been through the CCTV and there is nothing out of the ordinary. Katrina changed things up a bit and went to the ball park first, but she went everywhere she told her husband she was going. Boss, I just want to say one thing.’
‘Go on,’ she said, opening the first envelope.
‘I saw absolutely no evidence of Katrina being forgetful, confused or disoriented. She always knew where her child was, so…’
Kim nodded her understanding. She’d thought the same herself. Katrina’s death was not linked in any way to her being a negligent or even forgetful mother.
‘Anything on the statements?’
Penn shook his head, and, knowing now what she did about the alley to the side of the building and how quickly one could be shepherded towards it, she was not surprised.
‘Stace, what you been up to?’ she asked, taking the single sheet of paper from the envelope.
‘Getting different stories from the rape victims, boss. If it’s all right with you, I’d like…’
Kim was no longer listening as she read the first line of the note.
She tried to hold her rage, but the words thundered into the air as she looked around at her team.
‘How fucking long have we had this?’
Twenty-Six
‘Bryant, get me an evidence bag. Stacey, call Mitch and get him over here. Now.’
Both sprang into action as Kim held the single sheet of paper up by the top left-hand corner. She took out her phone with the other hand and snapped a photo of the text.
The sheet itself appeared to be simple copier paper with no watermark or obvious means to discern it from any other plain sheet of paper. The text was handwritten in what looked like blue biro ink. Without moving her thumb or forefinger, she slowly turned the page around for anything on the back that might help. There was nothing obvious to the naked eye, but who knew what forensics might find?
She dropped the letter into the evidence bag being held open by her colleague. She turned and took a photo of the envelope before dropping it into the bag with the letter.
‘Mitch is on his way,’ Stacey said, ending her call.
‘How the hell long was this just sitting there?’ Kim asked, looking around the room.
‘Since about twelvish,’ Stacey said. ‘I was here when the post was—’
‘And I just glanced over it,’ Penn said interrupting.
There was a part of her that wanted to let loose on both of them. A letter that appeared to be a direct communication from their killer had been sitting on the desk for four hours.
She swallowed down her anger. Chewing them out for ignoring the post may make her feel better, but in truth the post rarely held anything interesting.
‘Is it from him?’ Penn asked as she emailed both photos to Stacey.
‘Print them off,’ she said, moving towards the printer. It sparked into life, and Kim took the top sheet.
She leaned back against the table and read the contents.
DI Stone
You have to stop me from hurting anyone else. I don’t want to do these horrible things. I don’t want to kill anyone, but I have no choice. You have to understand that I have no power to stop. I’m sorry that she’s dead, but I couldn’t stop it. But you have to stop me. You’re the only one who can end this. You have to be the one who listens. Help me before I’m forced to do it again. And I will do it again because I have no choice. I’ve never had a choice.
Noah
Kim then read the letter aloud to the rest of her colleagues. She passed the page to Bryant as she took a look at the envelope. ‘Posted somewhere in Dudley, last collection last night.’
‘After he’d killed Katrina Nock,’ Penn observed.
Kim shrugged. ‘Why would the killer try to communicate with us directly?’
‘Correction, guv, he’s trying to communicate with you directly,’ Bryant pointed out, glancing again at the envelope.
Another reason she hated giving press conferences. It caused all the crazies to look in her direction. She’d given a brief statement with no names at teatime after briefing Woody and now she was the focus of attention. She had to consider all options, and the letter could easily be from someone messing about.
‘You think it’s really from him?’ Penn asked, as though reading her thoughts.
‘There are no specifics, so it’s hard to say and I’d bet Bryant’s new car his name isn’t Noah, but…’ she turned towards Stacey.
‘Already started looking, boss,’ she answered.
Kim read the letter again. ‘If it is him, he really wants us to stop him from…’
Kim stopped speaking as her phone rang.
It was Keats.
It appeared they were already too late.
Twenty-Seven
‘You know she’s pissed off with us, don’t you?’ Stacey asked once Mitch had zoomed in and collected the letter. She’d taken time to wave in his direction, even though she was on an urgent call from her mother, who never rang her during the day.
‘What do you mean Aunt Abebi can’t make the cake?’ Stacey had asked in response to her mother’s panic-stricken words.
Aunt Abebi was her father’s sister; she had come to the UK at the same time as her parents thirty-four years ago. She’d forged a place making authentic African cakes for the local Nigerian community. Over time, she had developed new recipes and tried them out on friends and neighbours. Now, few events took place in the Dudley Nigerian community without one of Aunt Abebi’s cakes. There had never been any question that Aunt Abebi would make her wedding cake.
‘She has to leave for Lagos tomorrow. Uncle Egbo is very poorly. She is in tears for letting you down.’
Stacey immediately felt sorry for her selfish response to the news.
‘Mum, please ring her and tell her it’s fine. She can’t leave feeling bad, but what are we going to do?’ she’d asked, hoping her mum would magically have the answer.
‘I could try…’
‘No, Mum, that’s not going to work,’ she cut in quickly. By her own admission, her mother was not a good baker. She was a demon with jollof rice and pounded
yam, but cakes were not her forte.
‘We’ll sort something out, sweetie,’ her mother had soothed before Stacey had ended the call.
And that was exactly what she needed to be thinking about when her priority had to be making up ground with the boss.
Stacey had printed off more copies of the letter and put them on every desk.
‘Yeah, I can see her point. It was just sitting there for hours,’ Penn said.
‘But to be fair to us both,’ Stacey defended, ‘nothing interesting ever comes into the office by post.’
‘Agreed, but in future…’
‘We’ll open the bloody post earlier,’ Stacey finished for him.
She paused and then caught his eye.
‘Does this mean we’re officially on the naughty step?’
Penn laughed out loud and it was a good sound to hear.
‘Yeah, stop pulling my pigtails,’ he said.
‘You think the letter really is from our killer?’ Stacey asked.
‘Hard to say,’ Penn said. ‘But some killers really do want to make contact with the investigators. Worked a case about six or seven years back with Travis at West Mercia when he first became a DI. Lynne had just joined the team as a DC, and she started getting these weird emails. They were sexual in nature, but there was something else about them that bothered her. The first murder was a brutal stabbing of a thirty-three-year-old exotic dancer but with additional wounds to the thighs. The emailer made references to Lynne’s thighs, but Travis wrote off the messages as being from an attention seeker.’
‘And?’ Stacey asked, noting that he’d said ‘first murder’.
‘Lynne went behind his back and had tech try and trace the sender. There was no rerouting of email addresses or attempts to hide his identity. His name was Nicholas Brewin, from Droitwich Spa.’
‘Stop making me beg here, Penn. What the hell happened?’
‘Travis hesitated in taking Lynne’s concerns seriously and it cost another girl her life. Brewin was brought in for questioning no more than an hour after killing his second victim.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yeah, Lynne struggled with it for a while, felt she should have pushed harder, made Travis listen sooner, but the guy was just begging to be found.’ He shrugged. ‘Might be the same with this guy.’
‘You think his real name is Noah?’ she asked doubtfully.
Penn shook his head. ‘No, but we need to check it out.’
‘Found four on the system so far and none were arrested for violent crimes,’ Stacey offered.
‘So we know Noah was famous for arks and animals. That’s a start. We should have his identity locked down by teatime.’
‘Yeah, piece of cake,’ Stacey agreed, turning back to her computer. Immediately she turned back again and had to voice the words that were running through her mind.
‘Penn, the boss has been summoned by Keats. Got to be a second body.’ She glanced at the A4 sheets she’d put on everyone’s desk. ‘You don’t think it’s something we could have stopped if we’d just opened the…’
‘I hope not,’ Penn said, reaching for his headphones.
Damn it. That wasn’t the answer she’d wanted to hear.
Twenty-Eight
‘You know they did nothing wrong, right?’ Bryant asked as they headed out of the car park. ‘If this is his second victim, then it wouldn’t have mattered what time they’d opened the post.’
Kim knew he was right, but she had a vision of that letter on the desk, crying out for help, and the two of them sitting there with their fingers in their ears.
‘You think it’s even from him?’ Bryant asked. ‘I mean, you do attract the crazies. Especially when you’re on the six o’clock news and there are even more of them watching.’
‘I’m not sure, Bryant, but we’ve got to treat it like it is.’
‘Why use the name Noah and why can’t he stop himself?’
‘Ask me one on sport, Bryant,’ she said. She’d had the letter ten minutes and those same questions were running around her own mind.
‘Who won the gold medal for the one hundred metres in the 1994 Olympics?’
‘Linford Christie,’ she snapped back.
He glanced her way. ‘You knew that?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Only you would ask me a question to which you don’t know the answer. I could have said anything,’ she replied as Bryant turned off the Thorns Road on to Stevens Park; the place Keats had instructed them to attend.
The park itself was approximately seven hectares and boasted areas that were open flat grass and those that were in shade. In recent years, a skate park had been added to the two tennis courts, outdoor gym and children’s play area. For as long as Kim could remember, the park had had a football pitch where many local schools came to play.
Bryant pulled up beside a squad car just as Mitch pulled up behind them in his white van.
‘You got the letter?’ she asked as they all got out of their vehicles together.
He nodded back towards the van. ‘It’s in there. I was just leaving the station when I got the call. Tried to get here quickly but got stuck behind a slow-assed driver in an Astra Estate who was heading for a picnic instead of a crime scene.’
Both she and Mitch looked towards the offending driver of the Astra Estate.
‘Keeping it legal, folks,’ he said without remorse.
Kim headed towards the activity at the far end of the playing fields as Mitch began to get suited up.
As she walked the width of the park, she couldn’t help but think how big the space had seemed when she was a child. Keith and Erica, her foster parents from the age of ten to thirteen, had brought her to both a bonfire and the travelling fairground before both events had been stopped. Back then it had felt as though the glowing fire had been miles away from the refreshment kiosks and side stalls. Now, with her long stride she could traverse the whole area in minutes.
As she neared the far edge of the park, she saw the park ranger sitting on the grass. A constable was by his side.
‘On it, guv,’ Bryant said, following her gaze.
She continued towards Keats and the figure she could see on the ground.
She nodded in Keats’s direction, took a closer look and immediately saw from the angle of her head, like an owl caught mid-turn, that she’d been killed in the same way as Katrina.
She guessed the woman to be late twenties, early thirties. She wore bootleg jeans, black boots and a thick cardigan buttoned up to the breastbone. Her dark hair was held up in a single ponytail and she wore little make-up. Her dark brown eyes stared unseeing up to the sky. A white gold wedding ring was the only jewellery she could see. Another wife. Possibly another family robbed of a young, vital woman.
‘Same as yesterday?’ she asked, completing her journey around the body. Again, there seemed to be no signs of sexual interference.
Mitch appeared just in time to hear the answer.
‘Definitely looks that way,’ Keats said as Mitch nodded to his colleague to begin taking photos. More vehicles had arrived on the car park and additional forensic techies were headed their way.
‘Clearly the neck has been broken and I can see no other injuries.’
Exactly like Katrina Nock, then, she thought, remembering the letter that had been on the spare desk. This was a murder he hadn’t wanted to commit but had done so anyway. And so soon after the first.
‘No more than an hour,’ Keats said, nodding towards the man beside Bryant. ‘Park ranger doing his final check of the park before closing it.’
The body was about as far away from the entrance as it could be.
Kim walked a few paces to the edge of the park. The area was bordered by trees that had been allowed to grow together and form a dense hedge, but recent pruning had left gaps between brittle bare branches. Kim could easily see through to the housing estate on the other side.
‘Mitch, I think he went this way,’ she said, stepping away to ensur
e she destroyed no potential evidence.
There would be far less risk in parking outside the grounds and would explain the location of the body so close to the perimeter edge for a fast getaway after the deed was done.
‘Anything obvious missing?’ Kim asked, nodding towards the handbag on the ground to her left.
Keats shook his head. ‘Phone, purse, a few receipts and a half-empty juice bottle.’
Nothing taken. Same as Katrina. Robbery was not the motive; but the phone puzzled her, unless the killer knew there was no link at all back to them through her call logs or contacts. Maybe this murder was not about the victim at all.
‘Ranger found her after the game finished. Always does a full perimeter once the kids are gone,’ Bryant said, coming to stand beside her.
‘Game?’
‘After school football, guv. Two local kiddy teams.’
‘Ah, anything else?’
‘Nothing, except he’s been looking after this park for thirteen years but he ain’t coming back tomorrow.’
‘Mitch,’ she said, nodding towards the handbag.
He knelt on the floor with the evidence bags to his right.
He opened the purse and took out the driving licence as Bryant took out his notebook.
‘Louise Webb-Harvey, 44 Charleston Way, Wollescote.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, turning to Keats who answered before she opened her mouth.
‘In the morning. Nine sharp. Will I be seeing you or the strange fellow?’
‘Aww, Keats, are you missing me?’ she asked, glancing sideways.
‘Emphatically, no. Please, send Penn; I like him much more than I like you.’
‘Keats, you like everyone more than you like me,’ she said, turning away.
‘Well, maybe you should take yourself into a corner for a good, hard look at yourself.’
‘If only I cared,’ she threw back over her shoulder.
Bryant walked beside her and, as ever, he seemed to know when she needed silence and, right now, she wanted a minute or two with her own thoughts.
Deadly Cry: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with suspense (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thiller Book 13) Page 8