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  Her words trailed away as her mobile began to ring.

  She answered, listened and then ended the call.

  She turned to what was left of her team.

  ‘Well, I hope you both had a good holiday because now we’re back at work.’

  Five

  ‘Look, I just wasn’t ready, okay?’ Kim said as Bryant eased the car out of the station.

  The Halesowen ring road had quietened after rush hour.

  ‘Never said a word, guv.’

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ she said, adjusting her leg to a more comfortable position. ‘I can feel your accusation from here.’

  ‘Guv, you’re projecting. You needed space and I gave it to you. Simple.’

  She glanced to her right and found no pretence in his expression.

  Twice he had called and invited himself around and twice she’d refused. He would have wanted to talk and she would not. Could not.

  ‘Your loss at the end of the day,’ he said, putting her at ease as they left the A458 and turned towards the entrance into Leasowes Park.

  Yep, he was probably right about that.

  ‘Any idea where we’re…’ His words trailed away as he spied three squad cars parked by the warden’s base at the edge of the car park, blocking the entrance.

  Leasowes was a 141-acre site east of Halesowen. Designed by the poet William Shenstone in the mid-1700s, it had surfaced footpaths, woodland, grassland, streams, waterfalls and large ponds. The Grade 1 listed public park was considered to be one of the first natural landscape gardens in England. Not a fact normally respected by the kids that congregated on the benches to smoke and drink cider or the drug pushers making sales in a couple of known locations at the boundary edge.

  Other than the uniforms, Kim realised they were the first to arrive. The drive from the station to the park had taken them less than five minutes.

  ‘Here, guv,’ Bryant said, passing her a pair of blue shoe coverings from the boot of his car. It was good to see he was as prepared as always.

  They approached a collection of yellow jackets at the edge of the western treeline as crime scene tape was being pulled across two trees.

  The officer waited for them to pass.

  ‘Just in there, Marm,’ said a portly constable nodding towards the woods. ‘Not been touched.’

  ‘Not even to check for a pulse?’ she queried.

  He shook his head. ‘No need, Marm.’

  She followed the path through the pause in the treeline. Twenty feet in beside a single bench she saw what she was looking for.

  She approached the body as a raindrop landed on her hand. It was warm and heavy.

  She felt Bryant stiffen beside her and followed his gaze. Immediately she understood his train of thought. The placement of the body before them bore a resemblance to the position in which they had found Kevin Dawson at the bottom of the bell tower. She wondered if they would see their colleague in every crime scene.

  ‘Go find out what they know,’ Kim instructed Bryant, nodding towards the milling constables.

  He took one last look before moving away.

  She took a breath, pushed Dawson from her mind and took a step closer to the body.

  The figure lay face forward with his head turned. His left cheek was resting in a pool of mud from an earlier shower. A patch of dried blood had matted together his dark hair on the back of his head.

  More spots landed on her head telling her another storm was imminent.

  Kim understood the constable’s assessment of the scene. The grass around the body was stained a deep red and the eye she could see was staring, glazed, along the line of the ground.

  Another spot of rain landed on her neck.

  Damn it, the techies weren’t here yet with a tent, and she suspected that as prepared as Bryant was he didn’t have one of those in the boot of his car.

  She already knew that rain was a forensic investigator’s enemy. That and careless officers.

  She had to think quick. Use your resources, she thought looking around.

  In the immediate vicinity were six uniformed police officers. She had a choice to make. Preserve the area around the body or preserve the body itself. Which had the potential to offer them the best chance of evidence?

  ‘Get in here and take your jackets off, guys,’ she called out, as the raindrops fell. ‘Gotta protect the body.’

  She knelt beside the figure on the ground as high-vis jackets rustled all around her.

  She winced as a pain shot from her shin to her groin.

  Already, despite the trench coat, she could see the man was overweight. His jacket was good quality, as were his shoes. His arms lay straight at his sides, landed where they’d fallen with no attempt to stop his body pitching forward. Dead before he hit the ground.

  Kim squinted and then took out her torch as the coats began appearing over her head, blocking out her light but keeping the body dry.

  She heard a car somewhere behind her and hoped it was either Keats, the pathologist, or Mitch, who normally headed up the forensics team.

  She probably just about had time to reach into his front pocket and gently search for a wallet before they arrived and told her she couldn’t.

  The fabric inside his pocket reminded her that the wet ground was seeping through her black canvas trousers and into her knees.

  She briefly wondered what Doctor Shah might think if he could see her now. No driving, light duties and desk confinement, he’d said.

  Hmm… not so much, but one out of three wasn’t bad.

  She flicked open the quality leather wallet and instantly ruled out the most obvious motive. This man hadn’t been killed for his money. At least eighty pounds sat undisturbed in the billfold section.

  The beam of light from her torch landed first on a small photograph of two young boys: dark haired, laughing and unmistakeably brothers.

  She frowned at the photo on the driving licence and pulled it closer. She shone the torch on the name.

  ‘Bryant,’ she called out as she checked again.

  ‘Yeah, guv,’ he said, crawling into the makeshift tent.

  Her eyes hadn’t deceived her at all.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she breathed. ‘We bloody know this guy.’

  Six

  Stacey forced herself to look at the empty desk and the feelings came flooding back as if it had happened yesterday.

  Being away from the office in a place she couldn’t visualise her colleague and friend had at least distracted her through the day. She was pretty sure the psychologists had called it avoidance. Although the reverberations of the nightmares had stayed with her like ripples in a pond.

  The dreams were always the same. She reached him, held his hand, almost pulled him to safety before he smiled and loosed her hand.

  She didn’t know which was crueller, reliving his death over and over like a torturous groundhog day, or almost saving him in her dreams only to wake and face the truth. Again.

  Despite the weeks that had passed Stacey couldn’t prevent the tears blurring her eyes as she realised that he would never sit opposite her again. He would never give her that boyish, mischievous smile when he wanted something from her. He would never roll his eyes at Bryant’s overcautious and fatherly advice or wink at her when he was deliberately winding up the boss, or completely ignore her when something had commanded his attention.

  She tapped her fingers on the desk waiting for her vision to clear.

  The boss and Bryant had headed off at speed following the report of a body found. Normally there were two of them sitting here awaiting further instruction. Now it was just her. She had the strangest feeling of being left behind.

  She pushed the thought away and remembered her own hesitation when the boss had asked if she’d been working on anything in particular.

  She had lied.

  She reached into her satchel and took out the printed photograph of a fifteen-year-old girl named Jessie Ryan.

  Seven

>   Only when Mitch and his colleagues had erected the tent did Kim give the instruction for the coats to be removed.

  ‘Quick thinking,’ Mitch said, coming to stand beside her. ‘Thanks for that.’

  Kim acknowledged his words while trying to keep the agony emanating from her leg showing on her face.

  She always hoped to land Mitch as the crime scene manager. His speed and accuracy in prioritising and coordinating a crime scene in consultation with herself as the investigating officer was something she’d never had to question. And in turn she ensured she followed the ISP rules as soon as she arrived. Identify, Secure and Protect.

  Add in the role of the pathologist, normally Keats, it was up to the three of them to determine the six Ws: Who is the victim? What happened? Where did it happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen, and hoW did it happen?

  ‘Your best mate’s here,’ Mitch said, nodding towards Keats who was passing by the squad cars.

  The pathologist approached looking from her to Bryant. He began singing the song ‘Reunited’.

  ‘Good to see you too, Keats,’ she offered.

  He regarded her for a moment. ‘Is that grimace you’re trying to hide due to my arrival or your recent injury, Inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, both are a bit of a pain in my—’

  ‘Keats, good to see you,’ Bryant said, stepping in and offering his hand.

  ‘Who do we have here?’ Keats asked, taking a step forward, underneath the tent. ‘That was a question to you, Inspector, as I’m reasonably sure you would not have resisted the temptation to have a look in my absence.’

  Yep, he knew her well.

  ‘Doctor Gordon Cordell, gynaecologist to the stars.’

  ‘Really?

  ‘Not so much the stars but definitely the affluent,’ she said.

  ‘The name seems familiar,’ he observed, taking the driving licence from her outstretched hand.

  He glanced at the photo and shook his head. ‘Can’t place him.’

  ‘In the papers, a few weeks ago. In connection with the Heathcrest investigation,’ she offered.

  A wave of sadness washed over his face. ‘Yes, how could any of us forget that one?’ he asked of no one in particular.

  Keats had been the one to attend Heathcrest and pick up the pieces, literally, of a man he had come to know as a colleague. And although she had been forced away from the scene prior to Keats’s arrival, she knew that however deeply affected he’d been by the sight of Dawson lying broken on the ground, he would have swallowed it down and done his job.

  ‘Didn’t you suspect him of carrying out illegal abortions?’ Keats asked, bringing her back to the present.

  Indeed.

  And Kim had been appalled that the team had been unable to bring any charges against him. The scandal that had stained the Winters family was deep enough and neither Saffron nor her father had been prepared to make him pay. But he’d paid for something now.

  ‘Okay, let me at him,’ Keats said, lowering himself to the ground.

  At the first sight of the rectal probe, Kim stepped away.

  Bryant followed.

  ‘You don’t think this is connected to the Heathcrest investigation, do you?’ he asked.

  Kim shrugged as she took out her phone.

  Stacey answered on the second ring.

  ‘Stace, our victim is Doctor Gordon Cordell.’

  ‘From Heathcrest?’ she asked with a brittle edge to her tone, as though even saying the name of the place was like speaking around shards of glass in her mouth.

  ‘The very same,’ Kim answered. ‘Do some digging, Stace. See what he’s been up to since we last saw him.’

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  Kim ended the call, her mind already working overtime. Were the Spades, a secret society at Heathcrest, involved in his demise? Had he operated on the wrong girl? Had he spoken out of turn or did he know something about someone? Jeez, the list was endless.

  ‘We’re ready to turn him, Inspector,’ Keats called to her over his shoulder.

  Due to the victim’s size, Mitch and two of his colleagues had gathered to help.

  Gently they turned him onto his side and then onto his back with a cloth laid to catch any evidence from the wound to the back of his head.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Kim said, her eyes widening at the sight before her.

  ‘Literally,’ Bryant added.

  A line had been sliced across his throat from ear to ear. The bottom skin hung down like an open mouth. The blood had escaped the wound and saturated the loose skin, travelling down his chest and colouring his clothes scarlet.

  Crime scenes very rarely, in her experience, mirrored horror films but this was the exception.

  As Keats had turned him the ground beneath had been revealed. A red river glistened up at them.

  ‘From behind?’ Kim asked the pathologist.

  Keats nodded. ‘I’d guess, at this point, that the victim was kneeling, his head was pulled back to expose the neck and then…’

  Keats made the sign across his neck.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I can deduce cause of death myself,’ Kim admitted. ‘But a time would be—’

  ‘No more than two hours,’ Keats answered.

  Somewhere around six o clock, she noted.

  She narrowed her gaze.

  ‘What is it, guv?’ Bryant asked, reading her expression.

  ‘How did they do it?’ she asked.

  ‘With a pretty sharp knife,’ he answered.

  She ignored him as she looked around.

  ‘I don’t see any cars around, so how did our killer get him to this spot without a fight?’ She pointed to the ground. ‘No drag marks in the grass. He’s a big man, I’d guess around twenty stone. He would have taken some forcing.’

  ‘There’s that wound to the back of the head,’ Bryant observed. ‘He could have been knocked out or even semi-conscious.’

  She shook her head. ‘He’d have been just as difficult to move as a dead weight.’

  ‘More than one killer?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ she answered. But he would have still taken some moving.

  ‘Told to meet someone here. Knew his killer?’

  ‘And just got into the position on his knees and calmly waited to be murdered?’ she asked.

  Bryant shrugged. ‘You think this means something?’

  ‘Dunno, Bryant,’ she admitted and then turned to Keats. ‘Can you look more closely for any defensive wounds when you get him back?’ she asked.

  He raised one eyebrow. ‘Of course I needed you to ask me to do that, Inspector, as I haven’t already been doing this for twenty-three years. One has to wonder how I’ve managed in your absence.’

  Her brief smile accepted his rebuke while she quietly enjoyed his annoying consistency despite recent events.

  ‘I think your time off has addled your brain,’ he observed, turning away.

  She didn’t disagree.

  ‘But I do have something interesting to show you,’ he said, pointing to a spot on Cordell’s jacket.

  ‘Is that a boot mark?’ she asked.

  ‘It is, and we already have a dozen photos of it but look more closely.’

  She did and saw what he was referring to.

  ‘Stab wounds?’

  Keats nodded. ‘And so far, I’ve counted twenty-seven. All inflicted after death.’

  Why so many times once the man was already dead?

  ‘Well, Inspector, I’m guessing your killer knew his victim and really didn’t like him.’

  Kim agreed and knowing what she did about Gordon Cordell, she had the feeling that information was not going to help her narrow it down one little bit.

  Eight

  Kim perched on the edge of the spare desk with a strong black coffee in her hand. Pain and nightmares had kept her awake until well after 2 a.m.

  Her team waited expectantly as they began their first day of a new investigation without Detective Sergeant Kevin Daws
on. She didn’t know if they expected her to say something. To mark the occasion in some way; formally acknowledge his absence. She would not.

  ‘Before we start, new guy will be here shortly. Apparently we need to be at full strength for this investigation.’

  She chose not to inform her team that her immediate response to Woody’s news had been to refuse. But her boss was right. They had a body and their personal feelings were not the priority.

  She waited for a moment for her team to digest that there would be a fourth that wasn’t Dawson.

  Kim glanced at the empty desk.

  ‘Stacey, move,’ she said.

  ‘Boss?’

  She nodded towards the offending desk.

  Stacey followed her gaze and understood.

  ‘Yes, boss,’ she said, gathering her stuff together.

  None of them could tolerate the thought of a stranger sitting in that spot.

  ‘Bryant, get the board,’ she said, as Stacey focussed on moving desks.

  Bryant took four photos from the printer.

  He wrote Cordell’s name on the top and taped up the pictures. The first was a close-up of the neck injury, no less horrific in the cold light of day.

  ‘Ugh,’ Stacey said as she wheeled her ergonomically designed chair into position.

  The second was a long shot of the body before he’d been turned, and the third was a close-up of the shoe print. As yet their only clue. And the fourth was the gash to the back of the head.

  With her belongings moved, Stacey logged on to the computer and rejoined the conversation.

  ‘Okay?’ Kim asked.

  Stacey smiled. ‘Yeah, boss.’

  The change of scenery would also alter the landscape for the constable. She would no longer have to stare at the empty space, picturing him right there.

  ‘Okay, so we know that Cordell had his throat slit from ear to ear, but what these photos don’t show is the numerous stab wounds inflicted to the body after death. Approximately twenty-seven.

  ‘Cordell’s car was not found at the scene, so our attacker either took the man’s vehicle or Cordell made his way to the park by other means. No evidence of a struggle to the kill spot, so there may have been more than one person involved. Cordell appears to have lost a little weight since we last saw him but still a substantial man to push around.’