‘Mr Brown, I’m afraid we’re going to need your wife present for this conversation…’
‘But I don’t…’
‘Mr Brown, please go and ask your wife to join us,’ she insisted.
He gave her one last look before leaving the room.
Bryant stood by the window and she turned the captain’s chair, leaving the two-seater sofa free for the married couple to sit together. They would need each other’s support once they heard what she had to say.
Mrs Brown entered the room looking ten years older than the day before. Her face was devoid of make-up revealing red blotchy skin from crying and dark circles beneath her eyes. Her hair was uncombed and unwashed. She clutched a white handkerchief. Kim judged her for nothing. The woman had lost a child. The reality of that had not sunk in, less than 24 hours later, and now she was about to make it worse.
Kim noted Kate Brown’s expression before she began speaking. There was fear but also hope. As though they were here to tell them there’d been some kind of mistake, even though she’d seen her daughter’s dead body.
Kim took a breath. ‘Mrs Brown, Mr Brown, I’m afraid we have new information about the death of Samantha that would reclassify it from suicide to murder.’
Mr Brown’s legs appeared to buckle beneath him as Mrs Brown’s hand shot to her open mouth. Mr Brown almost fell into the seat beside his wife. Their legs touched and Mrs Brown moved her leg away. It was a subtle but definite movement, but Kim could see the change in dynamics between the two of them as clearly as she could see the strip of daylight between their two bodies.
It wasn’t unusual for even the closest of couples to drift apart temporarily as they each came to terms with the loss of a child separately.
‘M… murder?’ Mrs Brown finally spluttered.
Kim nodded. ‘We believe it was someone she knew who did not have to force entry to her home.’
Both of them began to shake their heads in denial.
Kim continued. ‘We need to know if she’d had any recent issues with anyone, any arguments; had she mentioned anything strange?’
‘Nothing,’ Myles said, as Kate looked to the ground. ‘She was a kind, gentle girl. She never upset anyone.’
Kim noted that his wife was now pulling on the white handkerchief.
‘Mrs Brown?’
She shook her head but didn’t look up.
Kim could see from the corner of her eye that Bryant was watching them closely too. Something here was not quite right but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
‘Mr Brown, Samantha attended Dudley College?’
He nodded.
‘Until three years ago when she appeared to drop out of college and away from social media?’
‘Samantha ran away,’ he offered, as his wife’s hands stilled. ‘She had a fall-out with her boyfriend and she just left. She was gone two and a half years.’
‘And you had contact with her while she was gone?’
‘Barely… she’d call and tell us she was safe every few months and then six months ago she came back.’
‘So, you wouldn’t actually know if she had issues with anyone during the time she was away?’
‘Well… no… I suppose not.’
‘Would your other daughter have any knowledge?’
He shook his head. ‘Sammy and Sophie are not close. Sophie won’t be able to help.’
‘Any particular reason?’ she asked, wondering if it had any bearing on the investigation.
‘Just grew apart over the years. Typical siblings, really,’ he said, dismissively.
Many of her previous investigations had shown her there was no such thing as a typical sibling relationship, but right now the older girl was her priority.
‘And whereabouts was Sammy when she ran away?’ Kim asked, thinking they could contact the local force and see if Samantha was known to them.
‘She moved around, Inspector. She never told us exactly where she was.’
Kim was hearing the words but they weren’t erasing the question from her mind. Every single possibility was being closed down.
‘Could she have met someone who followed her back here?’ Kim asked, wanting to believe what she was being told.
‘I don’t think so.’
Kim remembered something from the previous day.
‘So, when your wife said yesterday that you thought Samantha was ready.’
‘We feared she would run away again but we had to trust her some time.’
Neither his words nor his demeanour were radiating truth to her. There was a secret here that Mr Brown was working hard to keep and his wife was going along with it.
‘Mr Brown, maybe your wife could do with a cup of tea?’ Bryant said from behind, reading the signs just as clearly as she was. If he could get the husband out of the room for just a few minutes she could work on the wife. ‘She’s had quite the shock.’
‘Kate doesn’t drink tea,’ he replied with a slight edge to his voice. He knew what they were trying to do and he resented it.
Gently, Woody had said.
‘Mr Brown, if you know anything at all that could help us find the person who did this to Samantha you…’
‘Of course,’ he said, standing, and she knew they were being dismissed.
Short of calling them outright liars she had little else to say, except for one thing.
‘Would you please give us a call once Sophie returns? We still need to make sure she doesn’t have any knowledge of someone who might have wanted to hurt Samantha.’
‘Of course but we’ll have to break the news first once she gets here. She’s travelling back from Thailand, gap year.’
Kim nodded her understanding.
She followed him to the door and offered him the reassurance they would be in touch.
She was prevented from commenting on the door being closed swiftly behind them by the ringing of her phone.
‘Hey, Keats,’ she said, walking back towards the car. Maybe he had found something in Samantha Brown’s post-mortem after all.
‘Himley Park, Inspector, and I suggest you get here now.’
Eighteen
It hadn’t taken a great deal of detecting skills to track down one of Samantha Brown’s closest friends, Stacey thought, as she entered the Next store at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
But what did surprise her was that young women still lived their lives so openly on social media. This particular girl had no privacy settings and documented her every move on Instagram, which is how Stacey knew that she was already at work, what time her shift ended and what she intended to do with the rest of her day.
Perhaps it was the police officer in her that no longer saw young women just living their lives openly and without fear. She saw opportunity for predators looking to see when her home was unoccupied or when she was travelling alone. She feared for these young women who seemed to be oblivious to the dangers that lurked everywhere, even in cyberspace.
‘Where might I find Cassie Young?’ she asked a woman returning clothes to a jumper rack.
The woman quite rightly frowned. Good. She liked to see a bit of suspicion now and again. Stacey showed her ID.
The woman’s suspicion turned to alarm.
‘It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong. I just need a minute of her time.’
‘Homewares,’ she said, pointing to the other side of the store.
Stacey thanked her and headed in that direction.
She almost stumbled over the woman who was filling a lower shelf with candles.
‘Cassie Young?’ she asked, although the hundreds of photos she’d seen online told her that this was the woman she was after.
Cassie stood and nodded.
Stacey showed her ID which was still in her hand.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘You were friends with Samantha Brown?’
Tears filled her eyes as though they’d not been very far away.
She sniffed them back and nodded.
‘Not so much the last few years but we were close once. I can’t believe she killed herself.’
The news of the reclassification hadn’t reached the news yet, and Stacey was happy to leave it that way.
‘Can you spare me a few minutes to talk about her?’
‘Of course, but I’m not sure how much I can tell you. I didn’t even know she was back around.’
Yes, the boss had updated her on the runaway story.
‘What was she like?’ Stacey asked. The girl she’d seen on social media did not match the friendless girl who had died in a cold stark flat.
Cassie smiled. ‘Oh, my goodness, she was hilarious. She was confident and funny. She liked to laugh and enjoy herself, but never too much if you know what I mean.’
Stacey shook her head.
‘She was always considerate of other people. I remember once we went for a night out in town. Got the train back. Full of life we were, shouting and laughing on a half-empty train. Sammy spotted a woman with a young boy who was coughing and sneezing all over the place. She quietened us all down until we got off the train. She was thoughtful and considerate and always happy and positive.’ A slight frown furrowed her well-plucked eyebrows. ‘Well, until…’ Her words trailed off as she glanced over Stacey’s shoulder.
Stacey followed her gaze to the woman standing at the end of the aisle looking concerned. Clearly the news that a police officer wanted to speak to one of her staff members had reached the manager.
Cassie gave her a signal that everything was okay. The woman disappeared around a dinner service display.
‘Until when?’ Stacey prompted.
‘Until she met someone.’
‘Go on.’
‘Callum Towney. They met at college. He thought he was all that and a bag of chips. Not the type she normally went for but there was something about him that she could not leave alone.’
Stacey took out her phone and made a note of the name. Surprisingly, it wasn’t one she recognised from Samantha’s old social media accounts.
‘He treated her like shit at times, but she kept going back for more.’
‘Treated her badly, how?’
‘Picking her up when he had nothing better to do. Dropping her when he felt like it. She was completely besotted and then he finished with her completely for someone else, which pretty much destroyed her.’
Stacey was intrigued. It looked as though her relationship with this boy had changed her life and personality completely.
‘How did she change?’
‘Stopped going out, stopped laughing, withdrew from her old friends; anything I think that reminded her of Callum. I feel awful for this now but I was pleased when Callum finished with her. I thought once she got over it she’d be back to her old self, but she never did.’
‘Did she not mix with any of her old friends, interact on social media?’
Cassie shook her head and bit her lip.
‘What is it?’ Stacey asked. There was something this girl wanted to say.
‘I should have tried harder. I always felt that I wasn’t patient enough with her. But she made it pretty hard.’
‘In what way?’
Cassie hesitated as though choosing her words carefully. ‘She started to say mean things. Stuff that was out of character for her. She criticised us all more than she had before. I got a weekend job to save for the new iPhone and she called me a zombie, a follower, started saying I had no mind of my own. There was like this constant disapproval of anything I did.’
Stacey couldn’t help but wonder why a break-up with a boyfriend had caused her to be more judgemental.
She bit her lip again. ‘I probably should have contacted her more but…’
‘And then she ran away?’ Stacey clarified.
Cassie frowned. ‘Did she?’
‘You didn’t know?’
Cassie shook her head. ‘Her withdrawal wasn’t sudden like that. She made new friends, especially one girl with red hair, I think, but it was all gradual, over time, where contact just got less until there was none at all.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Her parents never mentioned her running away.’
‘You saw them?’ Stacey asked, trying to hide her puzzlement. She would have thought Cassie would have been their first port of call when Samantha disappeared. She’d been easy enough to find.
‘Yeah, I saw them in here about a year ago. I asked how she was and they told me she was fine.’
‘Okay, Cassie, thanks for your help,’ Stacey said, moving away.
She left the shop wondering what the hell the Brown family was trying to hide.
Nineteen
Penn decided to try the flat beneath Samantha’s first. It appeared to mirror the one above with the lounge looking out on to the road.
He rang the doorbell and almost jumped back at the volume level at which it had been set.
He waited a moment, hesitant to ring the bell a second time. Anyone close by with small children wouldn’t thank him.
His finger was poised as the door was opened by a man in his seventies, dressed in dark trousers, a shirt and a light jacket.
‘Good morning, sir, sorry to disturb you…’
‘Come in, come in, lad. I can’t be chatting on the doorstep. My burgers will thaw.’
Penn closed the door behind him and followed the man to the kitchen, where he was in the process of unloading shopping from a bag for life.
‘Don’t want them to go off after I’ve paid good money for them.’ He stopped and turned. ‘I say, before you state your business pop out to the car and see if I’ve left anything in there, will you, lad?’
Penn opened his mouth then closed it again. Maybe he’d missed it but he didn’t remember seeing any car. He put his head out and checked. No car.
He returned to the kitchen. ‘Sir, there’s no car out…’
‘Well, of course there’s no car,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘I packed in driving last year.’
‘Err… sir, my name is…’
‘I’m too old to remember names. You’re under forty years of age, so lad will do and you’re a copper.’
‘How did you…’
‘Cos I was one for thirty-four years.’
Penn was impressed. And here he was thinking this guy had lost his faculties.
‘And I saw you walking around yesterday with that lady who showed her ID a lot.’
Okay, so not quite as impressed.
‘And I’ve gotta say’, he continued, ‘she is one good-looking…’
‘Sir, may I take your name?’ Penn interrupted. He didn’t want to hear any more of that.
‘Gregory Hall, at your service, lad,’ he said, placing three apples in a fruit bowl.
‘And you’ve lived here for?’
‘Five years, since my hip operation.’
‘Did you see much of Samantha Brown upstairs?’
‘Oh, that was her name,’ he said, answering the question, and giving Penn a sinking feeling. He wasn’t going to get much information here, but it had to be worth another couple of questions.
The man shook his head absently as he took one apple from the fruit bowl and put it in the fridge.
‘You’re a bit late coming to see me, lad. In my day, we’d have been questioning the neighbours within the hour.’
Penn was not going to explain the reclassification of the death.
‘Did you see many people coming and going?’ he asked, losing the will to live.
‘You think I’ve got nothing better to do than stare out of my window watching the neighbours, lad?’
‘No, sir, I just…’
‘Her parents came a lot,’ he said, opening the fridge and taking the apple back out. ‘Together and separately when the girl first moved in. In fact, I thought for a while that all of them had moved in. I think mum stayed over most nights at first.’
Penn wondered why a twenty-one-year-old woman had required such close supervision in her new home.
‘I mean, if you want m
y opinion,’ the man offered, finally taking a bite of the apple.
Penn didn’t really but he nodded anyway.
‘I think she wasn’t all there,’ he said, tapping his temple.
Penn said nothing. He’d seen no evidence to suggest that Samantha had any kind of disability.
‘Cos, she didn’t work, had no friends and was watched closely by her parents…’
‘But surely there could be other explanations,’ Penn said, trying to keep his tone even.
‘And she clearly couldn’t keep on top of her bills.’
Penn couldn’t help frowning at the judgemental pensioner.
‘Don’t look like that. I know my stuff. She never answered the door when a man came, so she must have been hiding something.’
‘You’re assuming he was a bailiff?’ Penn asked.
‘Well he was a big burly man all dressed in black that she wouldn’t let in the front door. So, what else would he be?’
Penn wasn’t sure but he knew they needed to find out.
Twenty
Himley Lake was set in the grounds of Himley Park and was added to the grounds in 1779 by Capability Brown. At the time he redesigned the 180 acres adding waterfalls from a higher chain of smaller pools. The Ward family left Himley in the 1830s because it was too close to the Black Country. Instead they lived in great grandeur at Witley Court in Worcestershire.
Kim remembered being one of the site’s 200,000 visitors a year when Keith, her one true foster dad, had brought her on the woodland walks some Sunday mornings while Erica cooked a roast dinner. The trek had always ended with a hot drink at the log cabin café and a stop to watch the sailing club on the great lake. And that was the area she’d been told to head to.
Bryant pulled up on the car park, nestling amongst four squad cars, Keats’s van and two forensic vehicles.
Kim could see that uniformed officers were still shepherding people off the site.
The Hall itself was open to visitors from April to the end of September but the park was open all year round.
As she headed towards the lake Kim could see that the privacy tent had been erected. That would have been Keats’s first priority given the public nature of the location.
Killing Mind: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Book 12) Page 5