Ten metres away Inspector Plant stepped towards her. As ever his deep tan against a shock of thick white hair amazed her.
‘Park’s almost clear,’ he said, tapping his radio. ‘Just a couple being escorted from the waterfall around the other side of the house.’
She nodded. ‘You made contact?’ she asked, nodding towards the house.
‘Yes. The management are being as co-operative as they can be at the moment.’
They both knew full well that their concern for the body found would at some stage turn to concern for the running and maintenance of the site.
Inspector Plant and his team would remain at the location for the duration and would liaise with the management, who would keep the owners, Dudley Council, up to date.
She thanked him and continued towards the tent.
‘Sunbed or bottle?’ Bryant asked, as the tanned officer moved away.
‘Holiday home in Spain is what I heard,’ she replied, taking the protective slippers from the techie at the entrance flap of the tent.
Keats stepped out and blocked her path. ‘A word, Inspector.’
Kim moved to the side, leaving Bryant to cover his shoes. Despite their phone conversation she’d expected this.
‘Inspector, I…’
‘Look, Keats. It happens. We made a mistake. We both—’
‘Inspector, I performed the post-mortem on Samantha Brown at five thirty this morning,’ he said, cutting her off.
‘Oh,’ she said.
Any lingering doubt of his own performance appeared to have disappeared during his few short hours of sleep. She was back in the presence of the Keats she knew and tolerated.
‘There was little to note that we didn’t already know. Toxicology samples have been sent off but as you know the results…’
‘Will take a couple of days,’ she said.
‘Just one little thing,’ he said, as she began to move away. ‘Stomach contents. Appeared to be little more than a combination of rice and beans.’
‘Vegan?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Could be but I just thought I’d mention it.’
Kim made a mental note to check with her parents. It certainly wasn’t going to lead them to her killer, but an unlikely meal unless you were anti-animal products entirely.
She followed the pathologist into the tent. Bryant had waited and stepped in behind her.
‘Okay, Keats, what’ve we…’
She stopped speaking as he moved aside.
She took a second to appraise the sight before her.
The body of a young male dressed in jeans and tee shirt had been dragged up onto the side of the lake. One black and white trainer was on his foot and the other was missing.
Kim could see that his clothing was beginning to strain against the formation of adipocere or grave wax as it was commonly known. She already knew that mere moments after death body decomposition kicked in as bacterial enzymes started to break down the body’s soft tissue. She had learned it was a process of putrefaction, bloat, purge, advanced decay but she also knew that submersion in water slowed down the process.
Where the skin was visible she could see evidence of blistering and patches where the top layer of flesh had turned to a greyish-white colour. The smell of ammonia was unmistakeable.
The boy was lying on his side facing away from her. Weeds from the lake were tangled in his clothing and his hair. The bloated face was framed by light brown hair.
Kim guessed him to be late teens or early twenties.
‘He’s just a kid,’ Bryant breathed behind her.
Mitch held up a clear evidence bag.
‘Twenty years old and his name is Tyler Short.’
Kim reached for the bag and took a photo of the address on the driving licence, as a noise sounded overhead.
‘Bryant…’ she said, looking to her colleague who was closest to the door.
He stepped outside and straight back in again.
‘Yeah, it’s a drone.’
Kim groaned. She’d known as soon as she’d received the call from Keats that this wouldn’t avoid press attention for too long. Gone were the days when only the highest budget news outlets could get an overhead view of a crime scene by hiring helicopters and pilots.
Any bloody newspaper could buy a drone and send it overhead.
‘Who found him?’ she asked.
‘One of the guys from the sailing club. Took out one of the boats to check a repair and felt something hit the side. The lace on his trainer got caught up, so the guy thought it’d be a good idea to drag whatever it was to the side. He had no idea.’
Bloody hell, Kim thought, trying to work out how many procedures had not been followed by that one act, and what potential valuable evidence had already been lost. Underwater forensics required special training, and although she didn’t know much about it she knew that some factors remained the same across the board. It was infinitely better if the body remained as close to the resting place as possible.
Given that the only similarity between this body and Samantha Brown was the closeness in age, Kim wondered how the hell she was going to juggle two separate murder enquiries at the same time. The answer was that she couldn’t.
‘I’m wondering how long you think he’s been in there, although I reckon he’s gonna be handed over to another team.’
‘I’m going to say a few weeks at least and I wouldn’t be too sure about it being handed over. A body decomposing in water is slowed to approximately half the time of a body in open air. And grave wax can start forming anywhere from three weeks given the right temperature of the water.’
‘Which is?’
Mitch stepped forward to answer. ‘Below twenty-one degrees Celsius.’
Kim glanced at the body of water. ‘But its early September. The temperature of the lake is surely warmer than…’
‘Aah, the water has three distinct layers,’ Mitch cut in.
‘Mitch, I did not know that,’ she said, raising one eyebrow. The techie loved to impart his knowledge and she had to admit she’d learned plenty from him over the years. ‘Please feel free to educate me.’
He laughed before continuing. ‘The top layer stays warm at around twenty degrees, the middle layer drops dramatically to somewhere between seven and eighteen degrees and the lowest layer is often between four and seven degrees.’
Those were not necessarily numbers she was going to remember but she got the general idea.
‘But if he’s been lying at the bottom of the lake surely that means he drowned?’ She knew that drowning victims sank to the bottom due to the water in the lungs being heavier than oxygen which would cause them to float back up to the surface. ‘This could be an accidental death or suicide. It’s nothing to do with my current case so…’
‘Oh, you’ll want it, Inspector,’ Keats said, knowingly.
She glanced at Bryant before answering.
‘Keats, I know you think I’m superhuman but I think one murder investigation is enough…’
‘Inspector, I barely think you’re human never mind super- but there’s something you haven’t yet seen.’
He nodded to Mitch, who moved to the boy’s feet while Keats put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. Gently they turned him so he was on his back and Kim saw what the body position had been hiding.
The boy’s throat had been cut.
Twenty-One
‘For fuck’s sake, how long has that bloody thing been up there now?’ Kim asked, as they stepped out of the tent.
‘About ten minutes,’ Bryant answered as it hovered right above them.
The total lack of respect for privacy boiled her blood. Few reporters were able to put themselves in the position of family members who didn’t need to be viewing this on bloody YouTube.
She turned and gave it the finger, hoping that shot made the evening news.
It dropped lower. Kim took out her phone, zoomed in and took a photo.
‘Got ya.’
If
she could identify which cheap rag was using it, she’d get Woody to pull some strings at a higher level.
‘How long can a Proflight Orbit fly for?’ Kim asked, reading the name on the side.
She began walking towards the car. Bryant did not.
‘Hey, guv, I can’t walk and type at the same time. I ain’t Stacey, you know.’
She stopped walking, and waited.
‘Okay, that particular model is totally for amateurs. It can stay in the air for twelve minutes tops and has a transmission range of two hundred metres.’
‘You kidding?’
He shook his head.
The cheap bit didn’t surprise her. This was probably the Dudley Star after all not Sky News.
‘You’re saying the operator is no more than two hundred metres away from here?’
‘Looks like it,’ Bryant answered.
She glanced backwards. Frost couldn’t be anywhere on the park. It had been cleared.
‘Come on,’ she said, striding towards the car.
Frost had to be close by, probably sitting in her car somewhere along the road outside the park.
‘Okay, go left,’ she said as Bryant headed them towards the exit. A right turn took them towards traffic lights and a crossroad. Left took them to the small village of Himley. As he drove she looked for the white Audi TT that belonged to the reporter. As she searched she visualised ripping the controller out of her hand.
Bryant continued to drive until he said the words she was thinking.
‘Guv, I’m pretty sure we’re getting out of range.’
‘Turn around and go back, slowly.’
The woman had to be somewhere close by to spy on events at the lake.
‘Where the…’ Kim stopped speaking as a movement on the left caught her eye. They were almost back at the park entrance. ‘Stop the car.’
Bryant pulled in at the kerb.
She unclicked her seatbelt and headed back three houses. The property she wanted had a low privet hedge with a waist-high wooden fence.
The anger began to dissolve as she let herself into the front garden.
‘Hey, buddy, wanna do me a favour and bring your drone back?’
The teenage boy looked terrified despite her gentle request.
She took a seat on the wooden bench beside his wheelchair and showed her ID.
His face reddened. ‘I’m sorry, am I in…’
‘Ricky, what have you done?’ asked a woman from the open doorway.
Kim held up her hands. ‘It’s okay, Mrs…’
‘Wilde,’ she answered, still looking at her son.
‘I’m sure Ricky didn’t know but we’ve got an incident over at the park which needs to be kept private.’
‘I heard sirens. Is everyone okay?’
‘It’s all being dealt with,’ Kim answered as she heard the sound of the drone returning.
‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ he said, as the drone came into view.
‘I know but we just gotta keep stuff private.’
The drone hovered and then landed expertly at his feet.
‘Pretty cool,’ she said, getting to her feet.
‘Not as cool as the Tello Drone Boost. Now that’s a beauty.’
‘You got a licence for that thing?’ Kim asked. The recent law dictated that any user had to sit an online test and pay £9 to join a register if the drone weighed more than 250g, which was pretty much all of them. How it was going to be monitored and policed was another story.
Ricky shook his head as his mum stepped forward, her face reddening. ‘We’ve been meaning to…’
‘Tell you what, we’ll waive that thousand-pound fine if you just delete the footage and keep it grounded until you’re legal, okay?’
The relief that passed over his face was nothing compared to that of his mother.
Kim smiled as he nodded eagerly.
She offered her hand. ‘Thanks for your co-operation, Ricky.’
She turned and left.
Because now she had a second body.
Twenty-Two
Bryant felt the vibration of the phone in his pocket as the two of them entered the station.
‘I’ll get the coffee,’ he said as the guv took the stairs two at a time to brief Woody on the second body.
He didn’t particularly want to check his messages around her. He knew how she felt about his continued involvement in the old case and part of him knew she was right. And maybe the text message was the final part of the journey for him. He knew what it was going to say.
Perhaps if he witnessed the event himself he’d be able to accept that there really was nothing more he could do.
He stood in line and selected an assortment of plastic wrapped sandwiches along with the drinks.
Three people before him were yet to be served.
Finally, he took out his phone and read the message.
Peter Drake was due to be released from prison at 6 p.m. that night.
And he for one would be there.
Twenty-Three
Kim entered the squad room, pleased to see that their second victim had made it on to the board.
‘Thanks, Penn,’ she said, grabbing a triangle of chicken salad from one of the open containers. She nodded her acknowledgment to Bryant as she perched her bottom on the spare desk.
If not for Bryant’s gentle prompts throughout the day she’d forget to eat completely.
‘Okay, guys, update from your field trips this morning?’ she asked, after her first bite.
Penn brushed back an imaginary curl from his forehead. Something he tended to do when he was dissatisfied, she’d noticed.
‘Little from me, I’m afraid. Two neighbours barely knew anyone had moved into Samantha’s flat and thought it was still empty, and the one who did know, saw the family visiting a lot and what he thought was a bailiff, because he was burly and dressed in black, but seeing as this guy sent me outside to bring in shopping from a car he no longer has, I’m not going to stake my house on everything he says.’
Penn opened his hands expressively, saying that’s all folks, and Kim could understand his irritation. Not much for a morning’s work and maybe the neighbour’s observations weren’t completely believable but they still needed to be checked.
‘Penn, make some calls about Samantha’s finances. Check with her landlord about her rent payments. If this guy was a bailiff we need to rule him out.’
‘On it, boss.’
‘Stace?’ Kim asked, hopefully.
‘Not much from Samantha’s friend. A lot of what we already know about her being outgoing and confident. Apparently, that changed when a boyfriend dropped her. But there is one weird thing,’ Stacey offered.
Kim straightened. She liked weird.
‘Sammy’s best friend had no knowledge of her running away. She said Sammy’s withdrawal was more gradual than that. She just stopped going out, returning calls to all the friends that reminded her of Callum; but Carrie seemed to think she’d met some new people and she simply faded away from the circle. She also said she’d seen Sammy’s parents, who when asked, said their daughter was fine.’
Hmm… that wasn’t the only weird thing, Kim thought. If Carrie was one of Sammy’s best friends why was she not the first call from the parents when Sammy disappeared?
‘Any…’
‘No missing person’s report filed any time in the last three years,’ Stacey confirmed.
‘Okay, neither of you have found a smoking gun but, on balance, someone give the plant to Stacey.’
Betty was the communal plant who got to grace the desk of the most productive member of the team.
‘Err… boss, Betty died,’ Stacey said, gravely.
‘What?’
‘Yeah, someone left her too close to the radiator,’ Penn said, resting accusing eyes on Bryant, the one member of the team who had never won her fairly. ‘She dried up and died.’
A smile tugged at Bryant’s lips. ‘I didn’t do it, honest. I would n
ot knowingly harm or injure another living thing. Especially one with a name.’
Kim smiled at his defence as her phone pinged a message.
She read it and turned to Penn.
‘Post-mortem of Tyler Short is at three.’
‘On it, boss.’
She turned to Stacey. ‘Get me everything you can find on Tyler Short. Two young people turning up dead with the same manner of death is a bit too coincidental for my liking. Start with his next of kin.’ She paused. ‘And do a bit of checking on Sophie Brown. Apparently the sisters weren’t close, and the girl is on her way back from Thailand.’
Something about Myles Brown’s dismissal of the sibling relationship between the two had bothered her.
Stacey pushed aside the half-eaten cracker and set to work. Kim noted she hadn’t touched any of the sandwiches that Bryant had bought.
‘You okay, Stace?’
‘Yeah, boss,’ Stacey answered, without looking up.
Kim took her word for it and met Bryant’s questioning glance. The jobs had been apportioned all except for them and Bryant had already guessed what they were going to do.
She nodded in response to his silent question.
Yes, as normal, they were going to the last known address of the victim to tell whichever family member was there that Tyler Short was dead.
Twenty-Four
Bryant pulled the car to a stop in front of a row of houses on Wrights Lane in Old Hill.
Built around Heathfield High School in the early seventies the small council estate had been an aspirational place to live for people needing social housing.
The new properties had included a mixture of two and three bed houses and a few flats. The roads had names like Cherry Orchard and Blossom Grove despite there being no orchard or grove in sight. The houses now appeared tired and unloved.
‘Used to be a park up there,’ Bryant said, nodding up the road. ‘My dad would offer to take me from under mum’s feet for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon before the wrestling started. He’d sit in the Prince of Wales pub opposite and watch me across the road.’
Killing Mind: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Book 12) Page 6