He didn’t look her way, or apologise for his lack of sensitivity. Instead, he offered her the same tone he’d offered Tracy Frost.
‘Yes, guv, of course I can spare the time.’
Three
Kim understood the irony of her strong intolerance for people who were in a mood. Her own disposition hovered somewhere between aggressive and hostile and that was on a permanent basis. It was her natural state and anything warmer took a great deal of planning, effort and caffeine.
Which was why she’d chosen to keep her mouth shut during the short journey to the home of Samantha Brown’s parents. She couldn’t trust herself to say anything positive, so it was best she didn’t speak at all.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had a cob on. It happened just a couple of times a year and had normally passed by the next day.
He brought the car to a stop outside a detached house in Sedgley.
A half-barrel planter containing trailing fuchsias adorned the area to the right of the front door.
Kim rang the bell and then turned to her colleague.
‘I’ll do the talking.’
He nodded as the door opened to reveal a slim, fair-haired man wearing black trousers and an open-neck shirt. A pair of rimless glasses rested on top of his head.
‘Mr Brown?’ Kim asked, holding up her identification.
He nodded slowly as he brought down the glasses to take a better look.
His face creased in concern. ‘Detective Inspector…’ he said, clearly wondering what they were doing at his door.
‘May we come in?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he continued, pointing to the second door on the left.
Kim entered what was clearly the man’s home office. She noted an A1-sized drawing board in front of a high-backed stool. Two line drawings sat side by side. An antique pine desk held a top spec Apple computer and an open notebook. A captain’s chair had been pushed aside. On the left-hand side was a three seater sofa in front of a wall of bookshelves. She guessed he was an architect who worked from home.
‘Please, take a seat,’ he said, pointing to the sofa.
She had the feeling that the man before her thought he could prevent potential bad news by displaying good manners.
Kim sat and Bryant followed suit as the man lowered himself onto the captain’s chair and turned to face them.
‘Mr Brown, is your wife…?’
‘Myles, please,’ he offered.
Kim wasn’t keen on using first names, but given the circumstances of what she was about to tell him, she’d follow his wish.
‘Okay, Myles, we need to speak to both you and your—’
The door to the study opened, cutting her off.
‘Darling, I can’t get hold of…’
Her words trailed away as her gaze lifted from the phone she was carrying and saw them sitting there.
The woman she assumed was Mrs Brown and the person not answering her phone was her daughter, Samantha.
Kim worked hard to keep down the nausea that threatened her.
‘They’re detectives, Kate,’ Myles said, standing and beckoning his wife over to the seat.
She acquiesced, holding the phone limply in her hand.
‘Is it Sammy?’ the woman asked, tremulously.
Kim realised that these were the last few even remotely normal moments the couple would experience until they constructed a new normal around the loss of their child.
Both faces were filled with a mixture of fear and anticipation and yet, once they knew, once the words were spoken, they would wish for this time back, for the time, any time before she said the words.
‘Mr Brown, Mrs Brown, I’m afraid I have some terrible news about your daughter.’
Myles reached over and clutched his wife’s hand.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Samantha committed suicide last night.’
Neither expression changed as the words she’d spoken hovered in the air above their acceptance.
Kim said nothing. She waited.
Kate Brown slowly began to shake her head. She held out her phone. ‘No, I just left her a message. She’ll call back. You’ve got it wrong. Look, I’ll try her again,’ the woman said desperately as the phone slipped from her trembling hands.
Myles bent to retrieve it and when he rose Kim saw the tears forming in his eyes. He had already accepted the truth.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Brown, but she’s not going to call you back. We’ve just come from her flat.’
Kate Brown pushed herself to a standing position.
‘I don’t believe you. Take me there right now. I’ll show you.’ She turned and faced her husband. ‘Myles, get the car and…’ She stopped speaking when she saw the raw emotion in his eyes. She frowned and again shook her head.
‘You don’t believe them, Myles?’
He nodded as the tears spilled out of his eyes, and he pulled her close.
‘My baby, my baby,’ she began to wail. Myles pulled her closer. She pulled back once more, checking his face for a final time.
He nodded. ‘She’s gone, love.’
‘But you said she was ready to be left…’
‘Shush, love,’ he said, pulling her into his chest.
The tears continued to roll over his cheeks as he rested his jaw against the top of his wife’s head.
His haunted gaze met Kim’s across the room.
‘How… I mean…’
Kim held up her hand. ‘Someone will be along to talk more with you later, but for now just take care of yourself and your wife.’
The details would come soon enough. As would the need to identify the body.
Kim stood and Bryant followed.
‘We’ll let ourselves out, and please accept our deepest condolences for your loss.’
They were standard words but she meant them.
‘Just one thing, officer,’ Myles said, as they reached the door. ‘There’s one thing I have to know. Did… did she suffer?’
Kim thought about those few minutes after she’d made the cut; moments where the life blood was literally draining out of her. Long, fear-filled moments before she lapsed into unconsciousness.
Kim composed her features, before answering.
‘No, Mr Brown, Samantha didn’t suffer at all.’
Four
Kim downed the last of her coffee and drummed her fingers on her desk. Bryant had finally left and the events of the morning were playing over and over in her mind.
Stacey and Penn were finishing up the paperwork for a serious assault they had wound up yesterday for CPS, and she really should be looking at the three new cases that had landed on her desk today. And yet she couldn’t get the image of Samantha Brown’s face out of her mind.
Everything about the scene had been right. Keats had had no doubt and neither had she.
She pulled one of the three new files forward. That was the trouble when you worked murder cases most of the time. You saw foul play everywhere. Occupational hazard, she thought, opening the file.
And yet, Kate Brown had said something about Samantha being ready for something. That hadn’t piqued her interest but Myles Brown cutting off his wife’s words had.
She closed the file in front of her, a question already forming in her brain.
She’d looked closely at the scene this morning. But had she looked closely enough?
Five
Bryant couldn’t shake the feeling that had plagued him from the moment he’d woken up. He knew he’d been short with the guv but his mind had already been on the proceedings due to take place in about one hour’s time.
He’d followed this process many times already over the years, but there was a knot in his stomach that today was going to be different.
It was the murder of Wendy Harrison and the case that had changed his life.
As a twenty-six-year old police constable he had been the first officer to arrive at the scene of the brutal rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old girl w
ho had been missing for forty-eight hours. The horror of the scene had shaken him like no other case either before or since he’d watched over Wendy Harrison’s body.
Forty-five minutes he’d waited for CID to attend and in that time he had promised the young girl that he would find and arrest the bastard responsible if it was the last thing he did.
The attending DI had dismissed him as he’d walked around the body, sending Bryant back to the station to complete his statement.
As Bryant walked away he’d felt he was abandoning her, breaking his promise, even though there’d been nothing further he could do. That knowledge hadn’t stopped her face haunting his dreams for weeks afterwards.
It was that feeling of uselessness that had propelled him to join CID. He wanted to be the person making the arrests, tracking down the criminals and not the person watching over the body before being dismissed from the scene.
He had closely followed the case, and CID had caught the murderer, but it should have been before he’d had the chance to strike again. Peter Drake had claimed another victim before they’d finally caught him.
So, after letting Wendy Harrison down once, he’d vowed that it wouldn’t happen again.
At regular intervals over the years he’d been called upon to do his bit, as he was doing today, to make sure Peter Drake never again saw the light of day.
Six
‘You sure this has passed its MOT?’ Kim asked as Penn crunched his rust-bucket into third gear.
‘Due next month, boss, but she’ll do me proud.’
‘I’ve seen better looking crime scenes,’ she observed as the glove box fell open onto her knee.
‘Yeah but the old girl won’t let me down. We’ve been through a lot together,’ he said, tapping the steering wheel.
Kim suspected this girl was not long for the knacker’s yard in the sky, but she wasn’t going to be the one to break the news.
‘Next left,’ she said, as they neared Dudley town centre. ‘And sharp right,’ she added as something on the near side left of the car squealed in protest.
Penn pulled up behind the one remaining service vehicle. Keats’s van was gone, the ambulance was gone, the cordon tape had been removed and the onlookers had returned to their lives, the earlier excitement of the day already forgotten. Such a devastating life-changing event for Samantha’s parents, but nothing more than a passing subject of gossip for her neighbours.
The single squad car was parked beside the Ford Escort van of the landlord. She was hoping he’d still be around.
The constable on the door offered her a questioning glance as she approached.
‘Marm?’
‘Just want another look,’ she explained as he stepped aside. He would have been told to let no one in but the cleaning crew.
‘It’s fine,’ she assured him. ‘And if you see the landlord, tell him I’d like a word.’
The officer nodded as his hand moved towards the radio mounted on his vest.
She took the stairs two at a time with Penn following closely behind.
‘It’s okay,’ Kim said to the second officer guarding the door to the flat. ‘Your buddy downstairs is already calling me in.’
He stood aside for her to enter.
Amongst all the bodies crammed into the space earlier she hadn’t noted just how small the flat was.
The windowless hallway had three doors. She already knew that the door on the left led to the bedroom. The one on the right was the kitchen and the door dead ahead was to the lounge.
She turned and closed the front door behind her. The door had two separate locks. A latch lock at her eye level that automatically locked when the door was closed and a turn-key lock at waist level. She inspected both closely and found no damage to either. Just as Bryant had said.
‘Boss, is there anything you want me to do?’ Penn asked.
‘Just observe,’ she said, walking into the kitchen.
The area was furnished with cheap plain white cupboards and a stainless steel sink. A newish boiler was fixed to the wall next to the window.
The kitchen appeared functional but sparse without any personal touches, no nick-nacks littering the surfaces or wall plaques to stamp the place as her own. A plain white mug and matching side plate sat near the sink; two pieces of crust left over from a sandwich.
‘Doesn’t look like my kitchen,’ Penn remarked from the doorway. ‘Spare counter space is a bloody premium.’ He looked around. ‘And it’s a bigger space than this.’
Kim wasn’t much of a kitchen dweller but her own space was littered with bits that she just hadn’t bothered to put away, stuff that accumulated over time: a couple of spare batteries; a cookbook that hated her; scouring pads she’d used to clean up bike parts; just stuff that didn’t belong anywhere but that her eyes passed over a few times a day. In this kitchen there was a distinct absence of ‘stuff’.
She moved along to the lounge. Again, the space was small, dominated by a two-seater sofa and a single chair. A small television sat on a glass unit in the corner. Kim searched for signs of an identity – any mark that Samantha Brown had put on the place – but she found nothing.
‘It’s like she didn’t see this as her home,’ Penn said, walking around the small lounge.
Exactly what Kim had been thinking. Had Samantha been displaced somehow? Had she been lonely? Had that driven her to take her own life?
She headed back to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. Whether it was the memory from this morning or the person-shaped patch of clean linen, revealed by the removal of the body, Kim wasn’t sure but she could still see Samantha Brown lying there.
Kim tried to pinpoint exactly what had brought her back, just as footsteps sounded in the hallway.
A short, stocky man wearing overalls held out a hand towards her. She looked away as his hand fell to his side.
‘Raymond Crewett, landlord.’
‘You let the police into the flat?’ she asked, heading back into the hallway.
‘I did.’
‘And did you have to unlock both locks?’ she asked.
He began to nod. ’Yes, yes, I…’
He stopped speaking as his eyebrows drew together. He took out his set of master keys, appearing to replay the actions in his head.
‘Hang on, no I don’t think I did. I opened the top latch lock and then tried the door and it opened. But most folks don’t…’
‘Thanks, Raymond. If I need anything else, I’ll give you a shout.’
‘Any idea when…’
‘No,’ she said, shortly. She did not know when he was getting his flat back.
His admission hadn’t helped the feeling in her stomach. Yes, many people forgot to turn the key in the second lock, but not usually young single women living alone.
Raymond shuffled off muttering something about guttering that needed repair.
‘You thinking someone else was in here?’ Penn asked.
‘I’m thinking it’s not beyond the realms of possibility,’ she said, back in the bedroom doorway.
Penn edged past her and walked into the room.
‘Never seen this before,’ he said, pausing at the window sill. ‘Someone cutting their own throat. Wrists in the bathtub but never this.’
Penn’s reaction to the whole scene was not calming the disquiet in her gut. She’d made the return visit to satisfy herself that she and Keats had been correct. It had had the total opposite effect.
‘Nice candle,’ Penn said. ‘Expensive. Mum loves them. Buys herself one a year.’
‘Penn, shut up,’ she said.
‘Okay, boss,’ he said, continuing to look around.
She made a mental list of the disparities in her mind.
No preparation. No ceremony. No note. Curtains wide open. Surely it would have been a private thing. Location, why not the bathtub? For some reason people taking their own lives did not want to make a mess. The plate and mug in the kitchen. Who felt like a snack knowing they were going to cut their
own throat?
The fact that only one of the locks on the door needed opening. The one that would have clicked itself if someone had left.
The candle in the cellophane had stayed with her. It was the type of thing you bought as a gift. Amongst such a stark flat that held no other personal items, why just one expensive candle?
‘Penn,’ she said, urgently.
‘Yeah, boss.’
‘Get me back to the station, now.’
Seven
‘Absolutely not,’ Woody said, shaking his head.
‘But, sir, we need to begin a full investigation immediately.’
Penn had driven like a demon to get her back as quickly as possible. She had told Woody everything and requested Keats be instructed to carry out an immediate post-mortem on Samantha Brown’s body. He was due to do one anyway, but Samantha Brown would have been classified as a lower priority. The delay might mean a day or two, at the most, but she didn’t have that kind of time to waste.
‘Any valuable evidence was lost the minute you and Keats made the call of suicide. No crime scene photos were taken, no forensic protocols were followed, not to mention that Keats will already have cleaned her up ready for identification and destroyed anything of any value.’
‘But there might be…’
‘Stone, I’m not budging. Anything of evidential worth would have been on the outside of her body. The cause of death is indisputable. Even if you’re right, and I’m not convinced you are, you’ve lost your opportunity to interrogate Samantha Brown’s body at the earliest opportunity.’
She swore under her breath. ‘Sir, we really need to reclassify the manner of death.’
‘And we will once you give me a reason to. We’re not putting her parents through it, Stone.’ He paused and met her gaze. ‘If you really think a mistake has been made, look into it, but go gently.’
Kim nodded her understanding.
Killing Mind: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Book 12) Page 2