Her right hand was covered in white plaster holding down the intravenous cannula. Blood had seeped through the tape, indicting they’d had trouble accessing the vein.
Kim’s eyes travelled to the woman’s left wrist and the circle mark she knew so well. She wondered if Jane would still rub it for years after the mark had disappeared. Would she now and again just feel, for a split second, like it was still there? The mind could be cruel that way.
Kim’s hand fell and touched the red band. This woman had moved her wrist considerably to try to free herself. There were the telltale marks between her wrist and her knuckles where she had tried to force her hand through. Just like Jemima. And Kim herself, many years ago.
The memory of her own six-year-old hand scraped raw by her numerous attempts to free herself was sudden and painful. Kim pushed it away and rubbed gently at the skin of the girl nicknamed Jane as though trying to erase it from her flesh.
Her thumb passed over an area of raised skin. She rubbed her thumb back and forth a couple of times, frowning.
She turned the wrist over gently and saw what she would not have been able to see last night. Four very definite lines of scar tissue ran across the wrist. This girl had attempted suicide, and she hadn’t been messing about.
‘Officer…?’
Kim turned to an attractive dark-skinned man she presumed to be Doctor Singh. His white coat was unbuttoned and revealed plain black trousers and a white shirt. There was a kindly smile in his eyes.
Kim briefly wondered how long it would take the NHS to knock that out of him.
He stood at the end of the bed and picked up Jane’s chart.
‘Our patient here suffered a depressed cranial fracture and was in surgery until six this morning.’
Kim heard a slight trace of his Indian accent but only on certain words. His voice was caring and warm, and she liked him instantly.
Kim knew that depressed meant that the injury had caused the skull to indent or extend into the brain cavity.
‘There are many types of fracture but only one cause,’ he explained.
Kim knew the only cause was a blow to the head strong enough to break the bone.
‘The surgeon has released the pressure on the brain, but she has scored six on the Glasgow Coma Scale.’
Kim frowned. It wasn’t something she’d heard before.
‘It is a scale used to assess head injuries from a score of three to fifteen. A score of three is the most severe, but any score between three and eight reflects that the patient is in a comatose state.’
‘What’s that?’ Kim said, pointing to a wire leading from the back of Jane’s head.
‘Intracranial pressure monitor. It is monitoring the space between the skull and the brain. It will alert us to any changes in the pressure inside the skull.’
‘Will she survive?’ Kim asked, adjusting her voice to match the doctor’s soft, gentle tone.
He took a few steps away. ‘We don’t know. Really she should not have survived the injury, but somehow she managed to hold on. We must hope she continues to be strong.’
‘Can she hear?’ Kim asked, realising he had stepped away to speak.
He shrugged. ‘I like to be sure, especially when discussing chances of survival.’
Kim understood. ‘Do you have any idea how long…?’
The doctor was already shaking his head. ‘I can’t answer that. The brain is more complex than any of us can comprehend. People we expect to survive often don’t and then others…’
His words trailed away and Kim got his point.
‘And if she does wake?’
‘Inspector, you are asking me every question that I cannot answer.’
His voice was still kind but with a hint of amusement.
Kim smiled at his easy manner. It was a bit like her conversations with Keats, the pathologist – only this doctor was pleasant.
‘Well, thank you for your help… oh, actually there is one more thing,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘There is something I need to check on her body but I wouldn’t…’
He nodded his understanding. She would never handle Jane’s body without seeking permission.
He stepped back towards the bed and drew the curtain around him. ‘Where?’
‘The back of her legs.’
He lifted the sheet and gently moved the woman slightly onto her side.
‘May I?’ Kim asked.
He nodded.
Kim gently lifted the bottom of the hospital-issue nightgown.
The marks were there.
Two one-inch red lines stretched across the back of her lower thighs.
Kim took out her phone and clicked a couple of photos.
‘I need to check her stomach.’
Doctor Singh placed Jane onto her back and lifted the sheet up to her midriff before raising her nightgown.
The line stretched just above her belly button. Kim snapped a couple more photos.
She reached for the sheet to cover Jane back up and then paused. A tiny red cut to the skin of the lower leg caught her attention. She moved around the bed, taking photos of the woman’s legs from the knee down.
‘Significant?’ Doctor Singh asked.
Kim smiled. ‘Now it’s my turn to say I don’t know.’
He acknowledged her answer. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘May I just have a minute more?’
‘Of course,’ he answered before turning away.
He drew back the curtain and stepped towards the patient opposite.
Kim put the phone back into her pocket and placed her hand back onto Jane’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, but I want to catch the person who did this to you.’
Once more Kim felt the scar tissue beneath her touch.
This woman had suffered in the past, and now she was suffering again.
‘I promise you will not be a Jane for long.’
Twenty-Six
Jane could feel a soft pressure on her hand. She wasn’t sure if she was in some kind of dream.
Sometimes there were voices and sometimes not. Sometimes there was a soft bleeping sound that was swallowed only when the darkness came again.
In her stomach there was fear. It began in her belly button and worked its way out.
The blackness around her kept moving, rearranging itself then snatching and stealing her thoughts.
There was pain echoing around her body. She didn’t know from where but the blackness took it away. The darkness consumed it along with her and then spat her back out.
At times she was at one with the darkness
She wondered if this was death and if so how she had got here. Was it possible to feel pain in death? And if she was dead was this her eternal state?
Any further thought or realisation was taken away by the dark.
She wanted to open her eyes but the blackness took her before she could.
If she was alive she knew she was in hospital. She knew that someone was holding her hand.
She tried to open her eyes.
She knew she had something to say.
The panic rose up to her throat before the blackness took her again.
Twenty-Seven
Instead of heading back out to Bryant’s car, Kim went straight to the morgue.
Keats was sitting at his desk, head bent in studious concentration.
‘Ahem…’ she said.
‘I know you’re there, Inspector. It’s a stomp I would recognise anywhere, but I’m hoping if I ignore you, you’ll go away,’ he droned without raising his head.
‘Yeah, you and most people I’ve ever met, but I need your help.’
He looked up and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you mauling me, Inspector?’
She stifled the smile that played at her lips. He knew her too well.
Blowing smoke up the behind of the pathologist was not worth her time. She knew from other people’s experience that it didn’t work. He would eith
er help her or not.
‘Three years ago a male was found at Fens Pools,’ she said.
‘You’ll need to be a bit more specific than that.’
‘His fingers had been cut off.’
‘Aaah, yes, I remember it. I didn’t do the post-mortem, but I recall the case. Still unidentified?’
Kim nodded and sat down. ‘I have the reports, but I could do with a bit of expert translation.’
He tipped his head. ‘Only if you stop being so damned pleasant to me. It’s a little bit frightening without Bryant to protect me.’
This time the smile escaped. ‘Okay.’
He looked above her head and then began tapping away at his keyboard. ‘I have five minutes until my next customer arrives, so make it quick.’
Kim recalled the post-mortem report she had pored over at home and recalled the one thing that had struck her as curious.
‘The only wound visible was a knife mark above the left chest, two – maybe two and a half – inches long, possibly a stab wound?’
He glanced back at the screen. ‘Well if it was a stab wound, it wasn’t deep. The cause of death was definitely drowning.’
‘The fingers were removed after death, is that right?’ she asked.
Keats nodded and continued to read.
There had been no pain or torture inflicted by the killer to prolong the agony. The removal of the digits had been purely functional.
‘What can you tell me about him, Keats?’ she asked.
‘Shush,’ he said and continued to read for a couple of minutes. ‘In layman’s terms, his age was estimated at mid to late fifties. He wasn’t a heavy drinker but was definitely a heavy smoker. He ate too many fatty foods and didn’t take enough exercise. No obvious broken bones, tattoos or other distinguishing characteristics.’
Pretty average then, Kim thought. Except that every finger had been severed from his hand. Yeah, there was no escaping that particular fact.
Kim sighed. She had not learned much at all.
She stood. ‘Thanks, anyway, Keats. I’ll—’
‘Not so fast, Inspector. Just take a quick look at this.’
She stepped around to his side of the desk. The image on the screen had been zoomed, and she wasn’t sure what it was she was looking at.
She tipped her head sideways. ‘Is that the chest wound?’
Keats nodded. ‘And there’s something there that looks a little odd.’
Her ears pricked up. Odd was good.
As she stared she began to see what he meant. She’d attended enough crime scenes to know how knife wounds normally looked on the skin. Regardless of the type of knife used the cut was consistent and clean. Close up, this one appeared lumpy and uneven, as though the knife had been dragged across the skin.
‘It looks more like a cut than a stab,’ Kim observed.
Keats nodded. ‘And I think I know why.’
He zoomed in one more time. ‘I think he was cutting scar tissue.’
‘You think he was opening an old wound?’ Kim asked, as thoughts began to form in her mind.
‘Or taking something out…’
They looked at each other as the realisation hit them both.
‘Pacemaker,’ they said simultaneously.
Twenty-Eight
‘How is she?’ Bryant asked as she reached the car.
‘Unresponsive right now and the doctors aren’t really committing to anything in terms of her recovery.’ Kim paused. ‘Head towards Brierley Hill,’ she said as she processed everything she’d learned in the last hour.
‘She has the same marks on her back and thighs as Jemima,’ she continued.
Bryant shook his head as he drove. ‘Never seen anything like that. It doesn’t make sense.’
Kim agreed. They already knew that the restraint was a handcuff to the wrist, so what could those straight lines mean?
‘There’s something else,’ she said as he crossed a set of traffic lights. ‘Her legs are covered in little nicks and cuts.’
‘Well, that makes sense. She was pulled over a gravel path and up a hill to the dump site.’
‘She would have been pulled around on her back, like Jemima. These marks are on the front of her legs, just like Jemima. It’s like a shaving rash.’
Bryant rubbed at his chin. ‘Yeah, I get it sometimes.’
Kim pondered. ‘Why only sometimes?’
‘If I want a closer shave I’ll go against the grain. Gets a cleaner look but irritates the skin more.’
So now she had both girls scrubbing the polish from their nails and giving their legs a close shave. Who the hell did they think they were meeting?
‘Hang on, turn right here,’ Kim instructed as they passed through Brierley Hill.
She continued to direct him until they arrived at a warden’s office at the junction of Pensnett Road and Bryce Road.
‘Ummm… guv…’ Bryant said.
‘Are you coming?’
He followed her past the warden’s office to Fens Pools.
The area was a nature reserve that had once been part of Pensnett Chase, a medieval hunting ground of the barons of Dudley. Like most of the rest of the Chase, it had been gradually turned to industrial use, including coal mining, clay extraction and a brickworks.
Part of the Earl of Dudley’s private railways ran across the area. The collieries and clay pits closed in the early twentieth century but the brickworks and railway only closed in the 1960s.
Some of the ponds had been formed from old clay pits but the three largest reservoirs, Grove Pool, Middle Pool and Fens Pool in the north-eastern part of the reserve, had been constructed by the Stourbridge Canal Company in 1776 and were the largest areas of open water in Dudley. A fourth pool called Foot’s Hole lay to the south-west and was separated from the others by the Dell Sports Stadium.
Kim knew it was a popular spot for fishing and the ninety-two-acre site had been designated an area of special scientific interest.
She looked beyond the first pool to the grass bank that ran between the water and the canal.
‘That’s where he was found,’ she said, pointing.
There were areas one could sit and feel miles away from the built-up industrial area close by and other places where the sprawling housing estate and trade units were clearly within view.
‘Who?’ Bryant asked.
‘Unidentified male with his fingers cut off, a few years ago.’
‘Didn’t Brierley Hill solve that one?’
Kim shook her head. ‘No, Bob is still a guest of the coroner in a cold, dark drawer.’
‘Bob?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes.
‘Not my term, but it’ll do until we find his real name.’
And Kim wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to do that. Her only potential clues had been removed. All that was left was his clothing, the change in his pockets and an old raffle ticket. Dental records were a good form of identification, but you had to know where to start.
There were no family members harassing the police force for progress reports on the murder of their father, brother, uncle. The missing-persons reports would have been searched when the body was first found so no one cared enough about Bob even to file a report.
He appeared to have been missed by no one – and that in itself was enough to burrow under her skin.
‘Ah, bittern,’ Bryant said.
‘By what?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Bittern the bird. Over there by the tall grass.’
‘Didn’t have you down as a twitcher,’ she said, turning away.
He sighed heavily. ‘Ummm… remind me again why we’re looking at this?’
Kim was about to say, ‘Because no one else was,’ but the thought was cut off by the ringing of her mobile phone.
The number was withheld.
‘Stone,’ she answered.
‘Inspector, it’s Jo. You were here just a little—’
‘Is Jane okay?’ she asked urgently. She had left a
card with the ward sister and asked to be informed of any type of development.
‘Yes, she’s fine. No change. Except her name’s not Jane. It’s Isobel.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That’s what her boyfriend told us. He called and is on his way here.’
Twenty-Nine
Stacey stared hard at the computer. Something about the entry of the records for Catherine Evans was not quite adding up.
Her birth certificate was there but new documents out of place always left a trail, no matter how skilfully inserted into the records. And this one was highlighted by a software change.
A different file type had been in use up until the late eighties so if Catherine’s birth certificate had been issued back then it would have been the old file type. It was the one that matched the system upgrade in 1999 prior to the widespread panic over the millennium bug. Software companies had injected the fear of God into everyone and especially the government, local councils and health authorities, hinting that older systems would be unable to maintain date and time facilities once the clock tried to click into a new century, never mind a new millennium.
Worldwide, private companies had sought confirmation and guarantees from suppliers that systems would not fail. Contingency arrangements, business continuity plans and disaster-recovery manuals had all been set up to prepare for the second it switched over.
The whole thing had fizzled out like a damp firework as the anticipated chaos failed to materialise.
Catherine’s birth certificate stated 15 June 1983 but had not been entered on to the system until 2001, when Catherine was eighteen years old.
Fifteen minutes later, Stacey had tracked the issue of a medical card registered to Catherine Evans. Also registered as June 1983 but entered in the late nineties.
Stacey sat back in her chair. The palm of her hand rested on the mouse but her fingers tapped absently.
Why the eighteen-year delay in registering the details?
The words ‘new identity’ screamed in her head. Documents being inserted at a later date trying to look like authentic records hinted at an invented identity. This was not a name change by deed poll instigated by the woman herself. This level of expertise pointed only one way. The state.
Play Dead: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller Book 4 Page 11