‘Happy to help,’ he said, stepping back towards where Bryant was messing with his phone.
‘So if we could just finalise the timings of—’
‘Oh, sorry, excuse me,’ Kim said as her phone began to ring.
She turned away and answered it as Bryant’s phone disappeared back into his pocket.
‘Sir, yes, just at the walk through now. Shouldn’t be too much longer… what, right now?… okay, sir, I’m on my way,’ she said, ending her conversation with the inside of Bryant’s trouser pocket.
‘Sorry, gotta dash. Boss’s orders.’
‘Happens a lot, doesn’t it?’ Lena challenged.
‘Yeah, murder victims got no respect for EPT meetings,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘But great to have met you, Superintendent Wiley,’ she offered, before she turned and walked away.
‘I said five minutes, Bryant, not an hour and a half.’
‘It was five minutes, guv,’ he answered with a smile.
‘Well, it seemed longer,’ she said, heading back to the car and her real job.
She’d done what she’d been asked or instructed to do. She’d attended, she’d played nice and she’d produce a briefing sheet for Woody to disseminate to whomever it would concern.
And finally, that was the end of that.
Forty-Seven
‘Bloody hell, Stace,’ Kim said once the constable had finished speaking. Part of her had wished that Stacey was overreacting to whatever she’d found out, that her emotions had overtaken her and she’d got caught up in one man’s emotional protestations of innocence.
But her presentation of the facts, following interviews with all three people concerned, had been objective and without emotion.
‘I mean, bloody hell,’ she repeated.
God only knew how she was going to break this to Woody. His scheme had worked quite well up until now, and each station had put aside their collective pride if another team managed to progress or solve an open case. To her knowledge, no team had reopened a closed one; but Kim had to agree that her colleague was on to something. She didn’t know if Sean Fellows was guilty or not, but she did know he should never have been convicted.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Stacey said.
‘Don’t be sorry for doing your job, Stace.’ She stopped herself from saying however unpopular it makes you, and it would once the team at Brierley Hill got wind. Someone would be in the cross hairs.
‘But we need to park it for now. I need you on this. We’ve got two victims and a missing child. Mr Fellows is just gonna have to give us a minute.’
‘Got it, boss,’ Stacey said, opening the door of the Bowl and heading back into the squad room.
And I need to consider how best to proceed, Kim thought to herself, following Stacey out.
‘Good job, Bryant,’ she said, glancing at the fresh pot of coffee that had miraculously appeared during her meeting with Stacey.
‘Anything to make your life easier, guv,’ he quipped.
‘Your resignation,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘You wish,’ he said as she perched beside the printer at the top of the office.
‘Anything new from the search site?’ she asked Penn.
‘Most of the volunteers were gone due to the rain, but nothing found by the time I left.’
Damn it, they were almost twenty-four hours into Archie’s disappearance. The houses closest to the edge of the park had been visited, but as yet no one had seen a thing. By the end of the day they would all be visited again to double-check on family members not present during the first visit.
‘Stace, I know you’ve been busy but anything yet on Ella Nock?’
‘Nothing so far that would cause concern. She has no police record, not even a parking fine or speeding ticket. Like her brother, she works in sales, but she makes around double his salary selling luxury items like Jacuzzis and hot tubs. Andrew sells inkjet printers to trade clients. He does okay, works a lot more hours but makes nothing like his sister. Two speeding tickets for Andrew but no criminal record. From what I can see both went to university and excelled. At school, both were keen on sports and performed at national level. She at long jump and he at triathlon.’
‘Parents?’ Kim asked, feeling the disappointment land in the pit of her stomach.
‘Both doctors and both dead. Mother was a gynaecologist who died seven years ago of an aneurysm, and the father a heart surgeon who, ironically, died of a massive heart attack four years later.’
Which explained the closeness, Kim thought. Their similarities so far may be a little strange, but there was certainly nothing there to indicate the capability or motivation for murder. And yet there was something gnawing in her gut. Something was missing.
‘Keep looking, Stace.’
‘Okay, boss, but…’
Stacey stopped speaking as a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.
‘Damn it, I hate it when you get it right,’ Bryant said under his breath.
She’d been sure enough to leave a temporary ID at the front desk, which was now hanging around Alison Lowe’s neck.
‘No, you don’t,’ Kim said as she waved their visitor through the door. ‘In you come, Alison. You know where to sit.’
‘You were so sure?’ she asked, sliding into the seat at the spare desk, and tapping the lanyard around her neck.
‘Yep,’ Kim said, marvelling at the difference in the appearance of the woman now from when they’d first met during the kidnap case of two little girls. That day, she’d appeared in four-inch heels, stick thin and wearing a business suit that had sucked out any trace of personality, and the tightest ponytail Kim had ever seen. That day, she had looked almost ten years older than her thirty-one years.
Cut to the current picture of a woman wearing faded jeans, a college hoody with her blonde hair flowing down her back. The few pounds she’d gained suited her, and she looked exactly her own age.
‘But thanks for helping us out.’
‘Is that an admission that you finally trust us profiley, behaviourist folk?’ Alison asked with a half-smile.
‘Absolutely not,’ Kim shot back. ‘But let’s just say I distrust you less than the rest.’
Alison laughed out loud, breaking the tension in the room, although Kim noted she hadn’t looked at Stacey once.
‘She didn’t want to do it, Alison. She fought hard.’
Alison simply nodded.
Well, that was Kim’s one and only attempt at salvaging their friendship. Having Alison’s input on the letters was a higher priority than the BFF status of her colleagues.
Stacey printed off the two letters and placed them on Alison’s desk.
She glanced at them.
‘The killer is communicating with you directly?’ she asked.
‘Two murders, two letters,’ Kim said as Alison began to read.
‘So what do you think?’ Kim asked when Alison appeared to have read them both.
‘You want the quick answer?’ Alison asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Bryant wrote them,’ she said, nodding towards the sergeant.
Kim turned to her colleague. ‘Bryant, did you write them?’
He shrugged and took a sip of his coffee.
Alison held up the printed sheets. ‘You know I need more than this. Where are the incident reports, the witness statements, victim backgrounds? This is like giving me a plate with no meal on it.’
Kim wasn’t surprised at her food analogy. During their last case together, they’d established Alison could out-eat a group of long-haul truckers.
‘So how long until you can give us something?’
Alison smiled and shook her head. ‘You never change, do you?’
Kim wasn’t insulted. ‘I try to be consistent.’
‘The answer is that I don’t know.’
‘And you haven’t changed either. Still refusing to—’
Kim’s ringing phone cut her off.
Her heart leapt. No ca
ller caused the same emotional response in her as Keats.
‘Keats, you have to be joking,’ Kim said as the whole room fell into silence around her.
‘Come to Uffmoor Wood right now, and it’s not so we can go for a walk.’
Forty-Eight
‘You reckon we’ve got another one?’ Penn asked, breaking the heavy silence in the squad room.
‘Well, I don’t think Keats has invited the boss out for afternoon tea,’ Stacey answered distractedly. Alison had not met her gaze once yet. ‘Hey, Penn, you wanna go get fresh coffee?’ she continued.
‘You don’t drink coffee,’ he said without looking up.
‘Well, fetch me a Diet Coke then.’
‘Bloody hell, Stace, since when did I turn into drinks-boy?’
‘Penn, she wants you to leave the room so she can apologise to me,’ Alison said.
Finally, Penn looked up and glanced from her to the profiler. ‘Oh, okay,’ he said, getting up. ‘Toilet break.’
Stacey took a breath, ‘Look, Alison, I’m really—’
‘You really are a pain in my arse, but there’s nothing to apologise for. I know how persuasive your boss is, and as long as you keep me well fed and away from tall buildings we’re all good.’
‘Like I’d try and keep food away from you,’ Stacey said.
‘But just so you know, Stace, I’m not gonna be your bridesmaid any more.’
Stacey laughed out loud. ‘You never were. I’m not having any.’
‘Well, that’s settled then. We agree.’
Stacey tipped her head. ‘Can you bake me a cake instead?’
‘Hahahahahaha, oh you are so funny. That would be a big fat no.’
Stacey recalled something Alison had told her. ‘Hang on, you said that when you arranged your ex-fiancés birthday party, you baked him a three-tier red velvet cake, his favourite.’
‘You must have misheard me, Stace. I told his mother that I baked it. I wanted her to like me. It didn’t work: she still hated me, but the most I had to do with that cake was collect it from the bakery. Why, what’s up?’
Stacey opened her mouth to explain that all the local bakeries and cake shops had laughed in her face at the short notice request, but then she closed it. Talking about it depressed her even more. At this rate, she’d be heading to the supermarket to pick up a kids’ birthday party cake with Thomas the Tank Engine on the front.
‘Never mind. But you’re sure we’re okay, yeah?’
Alison blew her a raspberry in response.
They were good.
She was sure of it.
Forty-Nine
Uffmoor Wood was a Woodland Trust site spanning over two hundred acres, just one mile south of Halesowen and sitting at the foot of the Clent Hills. Accessed from the A456 along Uffmoor Lane, a car park gave way through a squeeze post and two kissing gates to five miles of paths.
Kim had brought Barney on the occasional early morning walk during the summer months, when the Clent Hills got overcrowded as people amassed for the striking views.
Despite being an area of natural beauty, the site had no public rights of way and had been closed temporarily in 2017 due to ongoing issues with sheep worrying, dirt bike racing, drug dealing and dogging. Unsurprisingly, it had been named as Britain’s Baddest Woodlands.
Kim followed Bryant past the vehicles she knew well and through the kissing gate.
‘Follow the trail for about a quarter of a mile, Keats said,’ Kim repeated as she hopped over one of the many streams that ran through the site.
‘So who put Bella in the wych-elm?’ Bryant asked.
‘Bryant, have you finally lost your mind?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Do you even live around here?’ He paused. ‘Okay, seeing as you didn’t ask I’ll tell you anyway.’
She groaned as she pushed a brittle branch away from her face.
‘In the forties I think it was, just over the way there in Hagley Wood, four boys were bird nesting and found a skull in the hollow trunk of a wych-elm. An almost complete skeleton with a shoe, gold wedding ring and some fragments of clothing were removed. The pathologist determined that she’d been placed in the tree while still warm, as it would have been impossible to get her in there with rigor mortis. He also discovered a remnant of taffeta in her mouth, suggesting she’d been suffocated. Graffiti messages have turned up since 1944, asking who put Bella in the wych-elm, but despite an extensive investigation, she’s never been identified.’
‘Bryant, do you go to special classes for this stuff?’ she asked, taking a left when the trail forked.
‘Nah, I just read local books.’
‘I suppose you’re gonna tell me the woods are haunted next.’
‘Well, as it happens…’
‘Enough,’ she said, spotting activity about forty feet away from the main path. A young male she recognised was sitting on a bench beside a standing constable.
She headed there first.
‘Hey, Plinky,’ she said, using the force’s nickname for a low-level drug dealer who got banged up a couple of times a year for drug offences and still went back to his same stomping ground every time. Brains were not his strong point.
‘You out for your afternoon stroll?’
‘’S right, yeah,’ he said, looking up at her with a glazed expression. She was unsure if he was still in shock or had been smoking too much of his own product.
‘You weren’t here doing a deal or anything like that?’
‘Nah, nah, not me.’
‘You see anyone?’ she asked, unsure whether he was going to claim to have seen unicorns and fairies, looking at the state of him.
‘Nah, just called you lot.’
A drug dealer and yet stays with the body. Suitably called Plinky, as he didn’t have the brains to lie.
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘Fuck off, I ain’t into bestiality.’
‘Wrong sport, but I appreciate the sentiment and I didn’t mean sexually. You didn’t think about taking anything like money or phone?’
He shook his head, wearing an expression that said he’d never given it a thought but maybe had missed an opportunity.
‘Plinky, you must be the most honest drug dealer we know.’
He smiled weakly at the compliment.
‘Okay, we’ll need to talk to you again. Now show this nice police officer what you’ve got in your pockets.’
He bristled. ‘I ain’t got nuffin. I ain’t done nuffin wrong, so what you gotta treat me like—’
‘Bloody hell, Plinky, I’m trying to get you off home, but I’ve got to make sure you’ve not got more on you than you arrived with.’
Jesus, you couldn’t do a local weed dealer a favour without suspicion these days. ‘But fine, you want to hang around for hours until—’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said.
He was doing as she asked as she began to walk away. Seeing as he could have discarded or at least hidden his stash before the police arrived told Kim the kid could do with some lessons in self-preservation.
She headed west to Keats and the rest of the team.
‘What we got, Keats?’ she asked as a couple of techies stepped aside.
‘Female, late thirties, haven’t opened her bag to identify her yet but—’
‘Bloody hell,’ Bryant said as his gaze rested on her face.
‘You know who she is?’ Kim asked.
‘Oh yeah, I know exactly who she is.’
Fifty
Alison read both letters a few times. She wanted to get a feel for his mind-set before Stacey presented her with all the case details.
She also stared at the page to give her a few minutes to get her bearings on where she was and what she was doing.
It had been almost twelve months since she’d been seconded to assist the team in trying to catch a killer who had been recreating traumatic events in the DI’s life, before trying to take the life of the DI herself.
She had been tasked to iden
tify past associates of the detective to help find the person with enough hatred and motivation to carry out such horrific crimes. But she hadn’t found the person. Instead, the murderer had found her and involved her in the sick, torturous game in which she had very nearly lost her life. Only the physical strength and determination of DI Stone had saved her.
She shivered, as she always did, and forced the memory from her mind.
Every day, it played over in her head, and even if she felt that she’d defeated it in her conscious mind, her subconscious mind was not yet prepared to give her a break and tortured her with nightmares, prompting her to wake drenched with sweat, fighting heart palpitations.
She knew that seasoned police officers often faced near-death experiences and got over them much quicker than she had. Trouble was, she wasn’t a police officer and had never wanted to be one. She was a consultant, a pen pusher, a desk jockey who cheered from the sidelines. She studied people and patterns, behaviour and habits, traits and motivations. It was what fuelled her, what she was passionate about, and she had missed it even more than she realised.
Directly after the incident, she had been unable to face the thought of returning to her consultation role. The idea of writing a book had initially appealed to her, and she had thrown herself into the research with gusto. She’d taken a break from active – and what she now considered dangerous – duty but had still felt as though she’d been doing something productive. Something worthwhile.
Research done, she had reached the point months ago where she actually needed to write the words ‘Chapter One’, but she had been unable to do it. Reading about old profiling cases, the techniques, had been interesting enough, but it was stuff that she now knew. There was no new information being presented for her to dissect. There was no challenge in reciting facts and exploring theories.
She blinked away the tears as she realised that this was what she needed to do. Right now, this was where she needed to be. She coughed away the emotion as Stacey smacked three thick files of paper down on the desk before her.
Deadly Cry: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with suspense (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thiller Book 13) Page 14