First Blood: A completely gripping mystery thriller (A Detective Kim Stone Novel) Read online

  ‘Liver probe tells me it was 11.45 and twenty seconds,’ he answered, with the hint of a smile.

  She didn’t smile back. She simply waited.

  Dawson continued to walk around the body with his hands in his pockets. Tracing the exact route she had.

  When he reached the area of the dismemberment he crouched down and took a closer look.

  ‘I’d place his death between 11 p.m. last night and 1 a.m. this morning, and if you want any closer than that I suggest you ask the murderer when you catch him.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ Kim said, as Bryant returned from speaking to the person who had found the body.

  ‘Jerry Walker, guv,’ he said. ‘Twenty-nine years old. Runs this way every morning come rain or shine. Still in shock but got his details for follow-up.’

  ‘Anything off?’ she asked.

  Bryant shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Seemed legit to me. His address and the route make sense but…’

  Yeah, they’d check him out anyway.

  Dawson’s circuit had ended and he had come to rest behind them.

  Keats looked up at the four of them standing together.

  ‘I say, how many detectives does it take to screw in a light bulb?’

  As already noted in her own mind, gallows humour was supposed to be funny.

  ‘Post-mortem time?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Tell me something, Inspector,’ he said, fixing her with a stare. ‘Are you a prime example of what I’ve got to look forward to working with here at West Midlands Police?’

  ‘Not at all. You’ll find some of them are dead miserable so enjoy me while…’

  To her surprise he threw back his head and laughed out loud.

  She hadn’t even been joking.

  He checked his watch. ‘I have something to finish up so make it 2 p.m. on the dot.’

  She nodded her thanks as she headed back to the car. Once there she stopped and turned to her team.

  ‘Okay, we have a male victim, nailed to the ground, naked and no possessions. What’s the very first thing we need to do?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘Jeez, guys, there’s no penalties or punishments for wrong answers.’

  Again, she asked the question and Dawson was the first to speak.

  ‘We need to give our guy a name.’

  ‘And that’s the answer I wanted.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Okay,’ Kim said, heading back into the squad room. ‘DCI Woodward has been briefed so let’s get cracking on trying to identify our guy.’

  In every case it was her top priority. As a product of the care system she had been called ‘child’ or ‘hey’ or ‘girl’ or something that took no effort from her carers to know her name and it had always stayed with her. Being nameless made you irrelevant and their victim was certainly not that.

  The trip out to the crime scene had eaten away at a chunk of the morning but she’d learned a great deal about the small team she was managing.

  ‘And thank you to whoever got the coffee,’ she said, seeing the collection of canteen disposable cups.

  Bryant raised his hand in acknowledgment.

  ‘Right, Stacey, it’s a long shot but I want you to start looking at any potential CCTV leads in the area. We have a rough time of death so work your way back from that. And don’t forget that there are a couple of different routes to that location, so we want to cover private residences, petrol stations, industrial buildings.’

  Stacey nodded and turned towards her screen.

  ‘Dawson, I want you to get on to missing persons and see if anyone matching his description has been…’

  ‘Bit early for that, isn’t it, boss?’ he questioned.

  She had thought the same thing herself. He was an adult male who had been killed less than twelve hours ago but you never knew what might come up.

  ‘Yeah, but do it anyway.’

  He hesitated then nodded.

  ‘Bryant, start checking into our witness and see if there are any nasty skeletons in his closet.’

  ‘On it, guv,’ he said.

  She took her coffee into the bowl and fired up her own computer but she had the feeling that wasn’t where the information she sought was stored. She’d seen that tattoo before; it may be a coincidence, or it may have a connection to the crime. Some tattoos were more common than others.

  She’d seen plenty on folks she’d put away time and time again. The numbers 1488 were common on white supremacist prisoners, representing fourteen words of a quote by Nazi leader David Lane and the ‘88’ standing for the eighth letter of the alphabet repeated: HH for Heil Hitler.

  The cobweb she knew typically represented a lengthy term in prison and the teardrop often signified that the wearer had committed murder, or attempted murder if it was simply an outline.

  She understood that rappers and other celebrities had recently popularised the teardrop and hoped none of them ended up in prison, because newbies with teardrops made a lot of enemies.

  Although she’d never been tempted to get one herself she understood that for some they were a personal expression; some were sentimental, some were statements but many were about a sense of belonging to some kind of group or gang both in and out of prison.

  Every gang she’d heard of had some kind of mark. The Crips had many; some linked to disrespecting rival gang The Bloods. Even Hells Angels had a marker – AFFA, standing for Angel Forever, Forever Angel.

  Gangs, the swallow.

  ‘Aha, got it,’ she said, tapping her nails on the desk.

  She grabbed the jacket that had been off her back for less than fifteen minutes and headed back into the general office.

  ‘Forget Jerry Walker for now, Bryant. I need you to come with me.’

  She knew where she’d seen this particular tattoo before.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a thin line that separated the D for Dudley postcode from the B postcode for Sandwell and mattered very little for most people but a hell of a lot for two groups of people.

  The Deltas was a gang that had grown out of the Hollytree estate back in the Eighties when the place had turned into the council’s dumping ground for evictees from other estates.

  Over the years the gang had spread out from the estate, and despite the occasional turf war with the B Boys, both gangs had maintained an uneasy peace since a revenge war between two particular families on different sides of the dividing line had ended in a nine-year-old boy being stabbed to death during a fight. The whole of the force knew it was a tentative cease-fire and could be sparked back into all-out bloody war at any time.

  Kim dragged her thoughts back into the car and tried not to show her frustration at the leisurely pace at which her new colleague drove the Astra Estate. After her Kawasaki Ninja it felt like a whole lot of metal.

  ‘You wanna check the cost of putting me on your insurance, Bryant. I’ll pay.’

  He laughed politely.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not kidding,’ she said, as he neared the location to which she’d directed him.

  Twice already she’d felt like a speeding car in her mind with the brakes suddenly slammed on. She expected her mode of transport to keep pace with the thoughts and developments in her head.

  ‘Okay, stop here,’ she said, as they reached the Holy Trinity Church in Old Hill.

  ‘Don’t they congregate down by what used to be the Blue Oyster chippy?’ Bryant asked, of the local faction of the B Boys.

  ‘I don’t want all of them,’ she answered. ‘Just one of them.’

  And she knew exactly where he’d be.

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, as Bryant unclicked his seat belt.

  She got out of the car and headed to a small underpass that led onto the Riddins Mound estate.

  Built near the Halesowen Road overbridge in the 1960s, Riddins Mound consisted of 547 homes across three tower blocks, seven three-storey blocks of flats, nine maisonette blocks and four bungalows. Due to the estate falling into decline by the earl
y 1990s one of the tower blocks was demolished while the rest of the estate was refurbished and community facilities improved.

  As she’d suspected she saw a man sitting huddled on the ground. His jacket although dirty was of good quality and his shoes had better soles than hers. His hair was as long and straggly as she remembered it.

  He held out a metal can, shook it and a couple of coins rattled.

  ‘Cut it out, Dundee,’ she said, coming to stand before him.

  ‘Aw, shit, what you want?’

  This was a man she knew well and who also knew her. She’d arrested him for low-level drug pushing more times than she’d had hot dinners. If he emptied his pockets she’d be able to stay high for a month.

  When Dundee’s shop was open he tied a bandana to the balustrade at the top of the underpass, and right about now folks would be looking out of their windows to see if Dundee’s weed store was open.

  He’d been inside countless times and every time he was released he just came right back to this very spot and carried on as though nothing had happened. But as far as she knew the man didn’t sell to kids.

  And he was also a member of the B Boys gang.

  He turned his face fully upwards, towards her, his skin bathed in a jaundiced glow from the yellow light above.

  She looked around at the dark, gloomy, depressing area.

  ‘You really choose this as your office?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s warm.’

  ‘I need something, Dundee. Information.’

  He shook his head, looking to both ends of the underpass. His customers would start to arrive soon and it wouldn’t look good if he was talking to a known police officer.

  ‘You got the wrong guy. I ain’t no snitch.’

  ‘I don’t want that kind of information. I want an identity,’ she said, taking her phone from her pocket.

  She scrolled down to the photo of the tattoo. ‘One of yours?’

  Traditionally a swallow was linked to sailors: they would get a set of the birds inked on their chest. The story went that if he or she drowns the swallows will come down and lift the soul to the heavens.

  In England, the swallow tattoo was often the symbol of working-class pride, fast fist, meaning these fists fly. The swallow tattoo used by the B Boys had a feather missing from its right wing.

  Dundee shrugged.

  ‘Look closer,’ she said, thrusting the phone into his face.

  ‘Could be.’

  She waited.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But do you know how many of these have been inked over the years?’ He took another look. ‘But he’s a fucking pansy whoever he is.’

  ‘Why so?’ she asked.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Cos the more prominent place you get inked denotes your gang loyalty,’ he said, pointing to his own, smack bang in the middle of his forehead. ‘Shows you’re never gonna try and leave.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘Nah, way too many…’

  ‘How about now?’ she asked, showing him a photo of the dead man’s face. She’d hoped to avoid it, but she wasn’t going to get his identity any quicker and their victim needed a name.

  ‘He dead?’ Dundee asked, looking closer, but a hint of recognition passed over his features.

  ‘You know him, don’t you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Dundee, you’re lying. Give me a name or I’ll have the squad car that brought me parked up for the next hour for your peak trading time.’

  His eyes challenged her but she’d arrested him enough times for him to know she was good for it.

  ‘Luke Fenton and that’s all you’re getting; but I can tell you that swallow has got no place on that fucker’s neck. Shoulda been burned off with a red-hot poker.’

  ‘You mean he should have been thrown out of the gang?’ she asked, surprised. The B Boys weren’t normally so choosy. A soldier was a soldier.

  ‘He was thrown out of the gang,’ he said, spitting to his left.

  ‘For what?’ she asked, moving closer. She’d never heard of any other gang member being thrown out of the B Boys.

  He shook his head resolutely. ‘Never gonna happen.’

  Damn that sense of gang loyalty that prevailed over all else. Regardless of what he’d done to get himself excommunicated from a criminal gang, and to earn the disgust of a low-level drug dealer, Dundee still wouldn’t tell her the whole story.

  ‘Dundee, I can have that squad car here in seconds…’

  ‘You can bring the whole bloody fleet for all I care but I’m not telling you one more thing.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I’ve gor a name,’ Stacey said, putting down the phone to the boss.

  ‘Good for you. Mine’s Kev,’ her colleague offered, glancing again at his phone.

  ‘For our victim,’ she clarified.

  ‘No shit,’ he said, dismissively, without looking at her. ‘But it kinda gets me off the hook with trawling through mispers,’ he said.

  ‘You wanna start looking?…’

  ‘Nah, you’re okay. I need to pop out. Be back in a bit,’ he said, grabbing his overcoat.

  Stacey watched him go and tried not to let her mouth fall open. He was senior in rank to her so she couldn’t really question him about anything, but she was unsure just how much trawling, as he put it, of missing persons he’d actually done. Unless there was some kind of app on his phone for it, she didn’t think he’d done a lot.

  And what should she tell the boss if she asked? Was she supposed to be honest or cover his arse? She didn’t yet understand the politics of CID after half a day, but he was still pissing her off, causing her to wonder if she had the word ‘mug’ tattooed on her forehead.

  A tiny voice whispered that he might have some kind of personal problem and needed support. A bit of leeway. Everyone needed that sometimes, didn’t they? she asked herself, aware that she was trying to excuse both his behaviour and his attitude.

  People pleaser and now people excuser.

  More importantly would she land herself in trouble for not saying anything to the boss?

  From what she’d seen of the boss so far, she was direct and forthright. There was nothing warm and fluffy there. Nurturing was not a word that sprang to mind but Stacey found herself not minding that. One of the worst things for a people pleaser was not knowing where you stood, wondering if you were doing okay or totally messing things up. She had the feeling that with DI Stone she wouldn’t have to wonder for long, and Stacey was grateful that the boss had given her a reason to step away from the crime scene. But that had just made her want to return with Dawson. Just to show that she could.

  So, on her first morning as a detective constable she had met a new team, visited a crime scene, watched a pathologist at work, got CCTV to check and a name to research.

  And that was before she tried to analyse the seed of discomfort that had settled in her stomach when she’d looked down at the body.

  There was something in the back of her mind but for the life of her she couldn’t tempt it to the front.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Fuck,’ Dawson said to himself as he walked out into the freezing cold. He took a few steps away from the entrance to avoid nosey parkers.

  He was pissed off on so many levels.

  He didn’t appreciate being humiliated by his boss in being sent home to change. Although she’d done it privately, the others knew exactly what had happened and now he’d lost face with a trudging DS of equal rank to himself who, despite being in his late forties, hadn’t made it past sergeant. Not to mention being humiliated in front of a detective constable on her first day, for God’s sake.

  Thank God Ally had been at work and he’d been able to sneak into the house, shower, change and grab a few items of clothing to keep him going.

  He’d felt a bit of a pang as he’d entered the home they’d started renting seven months earlier. They’d had some great times in the house already and in some ways, he missed her. He was pr
etty sure he loved her even though he said it rarely. He’d never felt this way about a woman before and eventually she had managed to turn him monogamous, for a while. But then he’d remembered the last time they’d been together and the angry, bitter words they’d exchanged. His blood had run cold and he’d hot-footed it out of the house as though the devil was nipping at his ass.

  And as if that wasn’t bad enough he’d returned to work, and not only had the boss not even acknowledged his efforts she had proceeded to give him the grunt work of trawling through missing persons. He sneered to himself, glad he hadn’t even bothered with that fool’s errand.

  But right now, he had a more pressing problem like where the hell was he going to spend the night.

  He’d sent text messages to all of his friends. Some hadn’t even bothered to reply and the ones that had replied hadn’t bothered to cushion their refusals with excuses. Just two-letter responses, but Jesus he couldn’t turn up for work again tomorrow looking like shit and his overdraft was at its limit.

  He scrolled back through the list of contacts on his phone, half wishing he’d been nicer to his new colleague. Maybe she had a spare room going.

  A smile began to tug at his lips as he had an idea.

  His relationship with Ally had turned him almost monogamous. But not quite.

  He scrolled down to a certain number and pressed.

  The call was answered on the second ring, which offered him a ray of hope. A part of him expected her not to answer his call at all.

  ‘Hey Lou, how are you doing?’

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, coldly, but the emotion in her voice gave her away.

  He silently fist pumped the air. He knew just how to play this one.

  He hesitated for just a few seconds before lowering his voice.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot. There’s something… I dunno what it is but there’s unfinished business. I don’t know if I made a mistake when I broke it off with—’