‘Sweetheart, you’ve suffered a loss, it’s understandable, especially as you were right there when it happened,’ Devon said, pulling her close. ‘The two of you were good friends. You always reminded me of siblings the way you ribbed each other but you always had each other’s back as well.’
Yes, Stacey remembered when he had sat outside her flat each night after she’d almost lost her life to hateful racists. At first, she hadn’t known he’d been risking his relationship with his partner to make sure she was safe. And when she had found out she had loved him for it. And told him to stop.
‘But I couldn’t protect him, Dee,’ she said, as the tears came thick and fast. ‘I couldn’t stop him from…’
‘Stace, what he did was heroic,’ Devon said, her own voice thickening with emotion. ‘He saved that young boy’s life with little thought for his own. There was no way you could have stopped him, and he wouldn’t have thanked you if you had because he would have relived that child’s death for the rest of his life.’
‘But he would still be here,’ she protested.
‘And that’s about your feelings, not his,’ Devon said, stroking her hair. She let silence fall between them for a moment before continuing. ‘It happened to me, you know,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Came up through training with a Polish girl named Nicola. A true character she was. We clicked. Best friends from the minute we met. Our first assignment in the field, a Korean greengrocer stabbed her because she was guarding the back of the shop. One wound but it was enough. She died at the scene.’
Stacey reached for her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Dee.’
‘It’s okay,’ Devon said, squeezing her hand in response. ‘To start with, I had the immediacy of loss, of grief, but as time went on there was something else. I had thought that we would always roll our eyes across the desk at each other, that she would always open a bag of Haribos and put them on the crack where our desks joined. I had imagined us at each other’s weddings and suddenly I knew I had to navigate my own future without her.’
‘I get it,’ Stacey said.
‘I got there eventually but I closed down for a while. Lots of people tried to help, be my friend, but I didn’t let them in. To be honest I wasn’t all that nice,’ she said, holding Stacey tight. ‘For a while I wasn’t the person I thought I was.’
Stacey allowed the sobbing to subside and just enjoyed the safety of Devon’s embrace.
‘I love you, Dee,’ she said, simply.
‘I know you do, babe, and that’s why I’ll stand and fight.’
Stacey felt another rush of tears as her blessings all came rushing forward. She had a good family, friends, a woman who was in it for the long haul and a job she loved with a passion.
Devon’s words had passed through her mind and left a trail of comfort as though coated in soothing balm. Except for one thing. One point had pierced her brain like an arrow and wouldn’t pass through.
Devon had allowed her grief to alter the person that she thought she was.
Stacey pulled away and met her girlfriend’s gaze.
‘Dee, can you help me? There’s something I need to do.’
Seventy-Five
Bryant was still smirking as they left the hospital.
‘Really, guv?’
‘What?’
‘I can’t believe you got Keats to X-ray your leg. In the morgue.’
Kim shrugged. ‘Woody said an X-ray by the end of the day but he didn’t specify how.’
‘He wasn’t best pleased when you explained why you’d asked him to wait,’ Bryant observed.
‘He’ll get over it. Ultimately he had the equipment and I had the leg. That’s all Woody cares about.’
Bryant shook his head. ‘Only you would think that was a completely normal request.’
‘You’d think he’d be pleased to have a customer without rigor mortis,’ she said.
‘Fair point,’ Bryant agreed. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.
Kim checked her watch. It was almost nine.
Much as she wanted to carry on working the case after what they’d learned about the fibres, they’d been at it for thirteen hours.
‘We’ll call it a night, Bryant. I’ve already sent the k—’ she stopped what she’d been about to say. The two of them had often called Stacey and Dawson ‘the kids’.
‘Stacey and Penn have finished for the night,’ she corrected.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Won’t be the first time my dinner has ended up in the dog.’
Kim smiled and shook her head.
Her day wasn’t yet over.
Not if she wanted to keep her job.
Seventy-Six
‘Go on, go home,’ Stacey said, with her palm on the door handle of the car. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll get a taxi back.’
‘I’ll be here,’ Devon replied.
Stacey turned to look at her. ‘I may be a while.’
‘I’ll wait for as long as it takes,’ Devon said, meaningfully.
Stacey squeezed her partner’s hand one more time before she got out of the car and took a breath.
She heard the car window slide down.
‘Proud of you, babe,’ Devon called.
Stacey felt a frisson of warmth glow in her belly and she didn’t push it away. She embraced it.
She regulated her breathing as she headed up the path.
She knocked lightly, mildly uncomfortable at turning up unannounced at almost 9 p.m. But there were things she needed to say.
The door was opened by Penn.
His face creased into confusion. ‘Stacey, what are you?… I mean…’
‘I owe you an apology,’ she said, simply.
He regarded her for a few seconds before he shook his head. ‘No, you don’t but please come in anyway.’
Stacey stepped into a spacious hallway as an elderly lady appeared from a side room aided by a walking stick. She smiled brightly.
Stacey felt sorry for disturbing them at this hour but she had wanted to talk to him before the courage deserted her.
‘Mum, this is Stacey,’ Penn said.
‘Oh, the nice girl you told me about from work?’ she asked, moving her weight from one leg to the other.
Stacey nodded even though the statement was not strictly accurate.
She was from work but she hadn’t been very nice at all.
‘I’m sorry to call so late but pleased to meet you, Mrs Penn,’ Stacey said.
‘Likewise, Austin never brings his friends round,’ she said as though he was fifteen years old. A wave of sadness passed through her kindly eyes. ‘He works so hard and then when he comes back home—’
‘Go and sit back down, Mum. I’ll make a cuppa once the cakes are in.’
She nodded, smiled and disappeared.
‘I know what it is, it’s the bandana,’ Stacey said, following him through the hallway. ‘That’s why you look different.’ His strawberry blonde curls were hanging free over his forehead. He had changed from shirt and tie to a plain blue tee shirt, jogging bottoms and bare feet.
‘I spend a lot of my day looking down,’ he explained. ‘And hair slides just don’t suit me,’ he joked.
She followed him into a deceptively spacious kitchen filled with glossy white units and a granite breakfast bar that looked as though a cocaine factory had exploded all over it. A baking tray holding twelve dollops of something appeared to have survived the carnage.
Penn folded his arms and smiled.
‘It’s okay, Jasper, you can come out now,’ he said.
Stacey looked around the empty room wondering who he was talking to.
‘Okay, looks like I’m gonna have to come and get—’
‘Thurprise,’ shouted a boy appearing from behind the breakfast bar.
Stacey immediately saw from the boy’s facial features that he had Down’s syndrome. She jumped out of her skin, and Penn pretended to. The boy looked delighted. His face creased and his eyes sparkled. Stacey felt his joy from the other side
of the room.
He smoothed cake-mixture-covered fingers onto his plastic apron that declared, ‘I’m every woman’ in yellow italic writing.
‘Jasper, I’d like you to meet Stacey, my friend from work. Stacey, this is my seventeen-year-old brother, Jasper.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, offering a gunk-covered hand.
‘No, Jasper, you need to wipe…’ Penn protested.
Stacey silenced him by reaching over and shaking the gooey hand.
‘Nice to meet you, Jasper. What you been making here?’
‘Fairy cakes,’ he said, proudly.
Penn went around to the other side of the breakfast bar to join him, and Stacey immediately saw the similarities between the two. The blue eyes that held a gentleness she’d not noticed in Penn before. The same fair hair, but where Penn’s was unruly, and curly Jasper’s hair was neat and straight.
‘Okay, bud, I reckon the oven is hot enough now so grab the oven glove.’
Jasper grabbed the glove, put it on his right hand and then formed a mouth like a sock puppet. Jasper laughed and so did she. Penn rolled his eyes tolerantly, as though he’d seen his brother do the same thing a dozen times before.
‘Just put them in, bud,’ he said.
Jasper copied Penn and rolled his eyes dramatically, which prompted a laugh-out-loud belly chuckle from her.
Jasper laughed at her laughing.
‘Okay, I’m opening the oven door now,’ Penn said, bending down.
Jasper’s face turned serious as he focussed on getting the tray in the oven. Once the door closed he gave a whoop and took off his apron. He lay it over the mess.
‘Ahem,’ Penn said.
‘Ahem,’ Jasper repeated.
Stacey covered the smile on her lips with her hand, suspecting that Penn needed to make his point and her amusement would do nothing to help him. Penn held his brother’s gaze until Jasper picked the apron back up and hung it on a hook on the back of the door.
‘Okay, Jas, go and sit with Mum a bit while I clear up in here,’ Penn said, ruffling his hair.
‘Ooookay,’ he said, bouncing around to her side of the room. He paused as he came alongside her. Very quickly he leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek before bouncing out of the room.
Penn coloured. ‘I’m sorry about…’
‘Don’t be,’ Stacey said.
‘He’s very affectionate even when it’s not appropriate but not everyone…’
‘He’s awesome,’ Stacey said and meant it. She had the sudden feeling that something warm and light had now left the room.
‘Yeah, he really is,’ Penn said proudly, passing her a piece of kitchen roll for her hand. ‘And now you’ve laughed at his oven glove puppet you’ve got a friend for life.’
‘I’ll take it,’ she said, smiling.
He pointed to a small bistro table in the corner of the room. ‘Have a seat while I clean up.’
She did so. ‘Well, that explains the Tupperware box.’
‘It’s his favourite thing to do,’ Penn explained. ‘I tell him the people at work love them. He doesn’t really get the whole transfer thing. He thinks I’ve just moved office.’
‘You transferred because of your mum?’ she asked. ‘I couldn’t help but notice the stick and the discomfort.’
‘Hip operation,’ he explained. ‘Her second. There’s only us two and Jasper, so she needed some help.’
‘Will you move out once she’s?…’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll be staying here now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She has lung cancer. It’s terminal,’ he said, wiping his hands and sitting down.
‘Oh my God, Penn, I’m so sorry.’
He waved away her words. ‘She’s known for a while and we’re hoping she still has a while left so…’
‘You moved back to take care of Jasper?’ she suddenly realised.
He nodded. ‘He’s my brother.’
Her immediate thought sprang to her lips before she could stop it. ‘But, couldn’t you consider placing?—’
‘No. Never,’ he said. ‘He’s my brother.’
‘There’s no one to help? No sisters, aunts, wife, girlfriend?’
He smiled. ‘No, no and no which is shocking, isn’t it?’ he said, looking around. ‘Seeing as I’m quite the catch.’
Stacey laughed but could just as easily have cried.
‘Jesus, Penn, I really…’
‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Stacey. He doesn’t complain, so why should I?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Penn, I’ve been a real cow this week and I am so sorry for not giving you more of a chance.’
She felt that regret down deep in the bottom of her heart. The person she’d been this week was not the person she’d thought she was. And it wasn’t the person that Dawson had known.
‘You’ve not been as bad as you think you have. All I’ve wanted to say is if you don’t like me, that’s fine. Dislike me for me but not because I’m not someone else. You know how I felt about Kevin Dawson and if I could bring him back I’d do it in a heartbeat.’
Silence rested between them for a moment.
‘I’m not proud of myself,’ she admitted.
‘He was lucky to have a friend like you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But this conversation isn’t about Kev. I came here to put something right.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you think I expected this to be easy?’ he asked. ‘I knew what I was walking into. I knew how close you all were but I wanted to work with a good team. And to be honest, Stacey, if I get transferred once this case is over, I’ll be glad to have had the chance to—’
‘You’ve gotta stop doing that,’ she said, hearing something alien for the hundredth time. ‘No one calls me Stacey. It’s Stace. Everyone shortens it.’
He laughed. ‘Okay, and I prefer the shortened version of my name, so if we could stick with ‘Not’ instead of the full…’
‘Oh jeez, I’m sorry about that,’ she said, feeling the heat fill her cheeks for naming him Notkev.
‘Don’t be,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’m just mauling you a bit now, for sport.’
The mischief in his eyes matched that of his brother and the resemblance between them was clear.
‘I think I’ll just stick with Penn,’ she said, rising from the chair.
She held out her hand. ‘Start afresh tomorrow.’
He took it and shook it firmly.
‘Yes, but how about we start afresh right now. I’ve been thinking about Jessie Ryan while I was cooking and I’m bugged.’
‘By what?’ she asked. They’d already decided to spend time the next day investigating the reason for the three-year gap.
‘The severity of her symptoms. Before the healthy spell she was having blood tests, an occasional stay over for observation, the odd X-ray, but after the hiatus she’s having scans, catheters, MRIs, angiograms. It’s like the whole thing escalated exponentially and…’
Something clicked in her brain as her mind’s eye recalled much of the information on the girl’s medical records, and Penn was right. The tests on Jessie had reached a whole new level after her period of good health.
But more than that. Penn’s meanderings had brought her a sudden realisation.
Someone had been telling her lies.
Seventy-Seven
Oh, Nat, just when I thought you could sicken me no more you took it to a whole new level.
You asked me once to spare the life of your mother but you begged shamelessly for your own life. What was left for you to live for anyway? No family, no husband, no children, no married lover. What was so precious about your life that you gave me your mother’s first? What exactly did you want to live for?
You offered no joy to anyone in life, but at least you offered something to me in death.
Every time I felt the blade plunge into your flesh I could hear the tearing sound in my mind, imagining your skin opening up just for me. Small wounds at first.
Short, shallow nicks of the flesh which caused you pain. The tears rolled over your cheeks as you tried to clutch your abdomen. The urine slipped from your bladder as the fear took hold.
The thrusts got harder as I saw that the only thing you cared about was yourself.
No consideration for the fact you’d been fucking a married man for years. His family. His children. You’ve had no children, so would never understand what you did taking a father away from his kids. You could not see past your own wants and needs, and what the fuck did you see in that arrogant bastard anyway?
So the knife thrusts became deeper as I remembered your involvement in shaping the rest of my life. The blade found and twisted your organs as I recalled that false empathetic smile behind which lay a more truthful look of indifference. You didn’t care. You were presenting a choice and you were being objective.
Well, let me be objective now.
You’re dead, bitch. And you suffered.
But you were my favourite, Nat, and I thank you for that. Your selfish nature offered me the freedom of a completely guilt-free kill. My grief, my hatred, my rage went into every single thrust of the knife into your ageing, pointless flesh.
And still there is more to come.
I have one left to make pay for my loss. And this is the sweetest of them all. It’s poetic because I know the choice the last one will make. I know it as well as I know myself. The last one will choose to save the life of the person they love most in the world.
This one will choose to save their child.
And then they will both learn.
That there really is no choice at all.
Seventy-Eight
Stacey knocked on the door that she’d discovered earlier in the week.
After driving her here, Stacey had insisted that Devon go home. Stacey was barely half a mile from her own home, and Devon had a 6 a.m. start.
The drive from Penn’s home had done little to stifle her irritation, which was still evident when the door opened.
‘Mr Dunn, I think we need another chat about your daughter,’ she said, making no effort to conceal her anger.
Fatal Promise: A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller Page 20