Dead Memories: An addictive and gripping crime thriller Read online

  But right now, the Macedonian scientist was kneeling on the floor stroking the single hand.

  ‘Do not worry, my friend, we will have you out of there in a jif, I promise.’

  Nope, Kim thought, heading away from the morgue.

  She hadn’t made a mistake at all.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Okay, Stace, what you got?’ Kim asked, sitting on the spare desk.

  The evening sun had moved around the building and a breeze was winding its way around the coffee pot and cooling the room.

  Content that everything possible was being done with the man in the cube, the priority was the murder of two young people.

  ‘Mark Johnson was twenty-one years old, born to a prostitute who tried for seven months to keep him and then gave him up. No father registered. Over the years he got harder to handle, meaning he spent the majority of his life at a place called Fairview.’

  Kim hid the churning of her stomach in reaction to the mention of the place she’d spent most of her childhood too.

  She simply nodded and fair play to Bryant, he didn’t react at all either.

  ‘Not sure when he first got on to drugs but he completed a thirty-day programme a year ago and didn’t stay clean for very long. I’ve got no registered address for him since then and surprisingly he has no criminal record.’

  Kim had a clear picture in her mind now about Mark Johnson. Never been in serious trouble, had tried to get clean. He’d entered the programme but more importantly had stayed in it. That was someone who wanted to change their life.

  But he had been thrown back into the world drug free, with no home, probably no friends, no job and no way to make the changes stick. He’d fallen back into the same crowd, same surroundings, same life. His return to drugs had been inevitable.

  Kim tried to ignore the pang that shot through her. In many ways, she knew him or at least felt like she did.

  ‘Amy Wilde was an only child who just turned twenty. Normal kid moved around a fair bit as her dad was military until he was killed by an IED five years ago in Afghanistan. No clue how the two of them met but seem to have been together for a couple of years. Her mum lives on the Lakeside estate in Stourbridge.’

  ‘Give—’

  Kim closed her mouth. Stacey was already passing the address to Bryant.

  Her watch told her it was almost six and the day had been full-on.

  ‘Okay, guys, that’s enough. Let’s call it a day.’

  ‘So soon, Inspector, but I only just got here,’ said a voice from the doorway.

  Kim turned, groaned and dropped her head to the desk.

  Twenty-Three

  Kim stayed in that position for a good ten seconds.

  She was sure that if she waited long enough it wouldn’t be Dr Alison Lowe who was standing there.

  ‘May I come in?’ she asked, confirming to Kim that her shrewd denial plan hadn’t worked.

  She lifted her head as Penn turned and shook her hand, introducing himself.

  Kim dragged herself to her feet and nodded towards the spare desk. ‘Nice to see you again,’ she said, moving to the top of the squad room.

  ‘Completely insincere but appreciate the effort,’ Alison said without breaking a smile.

  Kim noted that she hadn’t changed a bit. Still wearing the tight black power suits with the stiletto heels as though she’d travelled back to the Eighties to watch films like Working Girl on a loop.

  Her straw-coloured hair had obeyed her instruction to stay neat and tidy for the whole day.

  ‘Penn, this is Alison Lowe who assisted us on the kidnapping of two little girls a couple of years ago as a profiler and behaviourist. She gave us some great insights into the mind frame of the perpetrators.’

  But she hadn’t identified that the person behind it all had been right under their noses the whole time. The more reasonable part of her added that none of them had worked that out but she chose to ignore that fact.

  Alison placed her briefcase on the desk.

  ‘So, I hear you had a crime scene that bears simi—’

  ‘Time to go, guys,’ Kim cut in, offering Alison a withering glance.

  Penn got to his feet, took off the bandana, grabbed his man-bag, bid them good night and left the office. Stacey appeared to be taking her time.

  ‘Good work today, Stace, on the background of the two kids.’

  ‘Cheers, boss,’ Stacey said but there was no smile in her eyes. Just suspicion.

  She nodded her goodbyes around the room and left.

  Kim waited a good couple of minutes before turning on Alison. ‘Well, that was bloody tactful,’ she snapped.

  Alison appeared unapologetic. ‘You have a problem with someone stating the obvious?’

  ‘In front of my whole team, yes.’

  Alison’s left eyebrow lifted. ‘Wait a minute, you’ve got half of your team blindly working a double murder case that bears some resemblance to a traumatic event in your own childhood which may or may not be linked directly to you.’

  ‘We think not,’ Kim said.

  ‘Your boss is choosing to think not so he can keep you on the case, but you’re keeping your team in the dark and asking them to work this case to the best of their ability with both their hands and feet tied behind their backs?’

  ‘I don’t want them to know,’ she said, stubbornly.

  ‘And I will say, for the first of many times I’m sure, that you are making a terrible mistake.’

  Twenty-Four

  ‘How very fucking dare she?’ Kim blustered as they got into the car.

  She offered a filthy look up to the squad room window for good measure.

  ‘You’re angry with her for telling the truth?’

  ‘Bryant,’ she protested. He was supposed to be on her side.

  ‘Sorry, guv, but I’m not going to pretend to disagree for your sake when she’s right. The guys need to know what they might be dealing with. They’re both bloody good officers who have the ability to think outside the box and to join the dots but they’re pretty stuck if you’re only giving them half the picture. And that’s before we even get to the trust issue. Both of them, but especially Stacey, will be hurt that you’ve not trusted her enough to give her the whole story.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not happening.’

  ‘I know what’s stopping you,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Leave it, Bryant.’

  ‘You can’t stand the thought of being weakened in their eyes. You think they’ll view you differently, lose respect and—’

  ‘Oh, Bryant, you have it so wrong,’ she said, looking out of the window.

  ‘You’re gonna live to regret it,’ he warned.

  And wasn’t that just the story of her life.

  Twenty-Five

  ‘You know when I was a kid anyone who lived on Lakeside was posh,’ Bryant observed as he slowed down to negotiate the speed bumps on the main spine road of the estate.

  The Lakeside housing development of approximately two thousand homes built in the 1980s and 90s and often called Withymoor Village after the opencast colliery upon which it was built.

  Kim’s understanding was that the average property sold for around £350k, so the area wasn’t exactly chopped liver now.

  ‘Ah, down here,’ Bryant said taking a left past three successive driveways containing camper vehicles.

  He pulled alongside the kerb in front of a home without a recreation vehicle but with a four-year-old BMW.

  The small front garden was awash with summer colour. Flowers tumbled out of hanging baskets either side of the door. The ground popped with pinks, purples and vivid yellows, so much that the eyes couldn’t take it all in.

  This household had never heard the phrase less is more.

  The door was opened by a woman Kim guessed to be mid-sixties and instantly reminded her of Judi Dench.

  ‘Mrs Wilde?’ Kim asked, unsure.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m her mother,’ she explained, waiting.

>   Bryant took out his identification, and the woman stood aside.

  Kim stepped into a small hallway that didn’t match the perception of space alluded to from outside.

  The woman pointed to the right, and Kim followed her direction into an airy open-plan kitchen diner with patio doors out onto the small but colourful garden.

  A woman sat at the breakfast bar looking out.

  ‘Mrs Wilde?’ Kim said.

  She turned to reveal reddened eyes and a dumbfounded expression. Kim couldn’t quite relate to the loss of a child but she did understand the realisation that someone you loved was never coming back.

  Bryant offered their condolences and moved forward to offer his hand.

  Mrs Wilde uncurled it from the mug of something and returned it limply.

  ‘Tea?’ asked Mrs Wilde’s mother from behind the breakfast bar.

  Both Kim and Bryant refused as they took a seat.

  ‘Lovely photos,’ Kim said of the collection of formal posed pictures on the fireplace wall.

  ‘Andrew loved getting them done,’ she said, glancing over. ‘And he always looked so handsome in his uniform.’

  He certainly did, Kim agreed, and although she wasn’t a fan of formal photos there was something about this collection that got her attention.

  Despite different poses and different backgrounds, one thing stayed the same. On each photo there was a brightness. The smiles were open and honest, eyes bright with enjoyment. Almost like one of them had said something funny just a nanosecond before the camera took the shot. This had been a happy family.

  ‘Mrs Wilde, I know it’s painful but may we ask you some questions about Amy?’

  Kim couldn’t help glancing at the latest photo on the wall where Amy appeared to be about 15 years old with braces and nicely rounded cheeks. Her long hair had been cut and thinned from previous photos.

  The kid bore no resemblance to the girl Kim had seen fighting for her life the other night.

  ‘Of course, but I haven’t seen her for a while, officer. Five months to be exact. She came to see me in hospital.’

  ‘And, how was she?’ Kim asked, wondering if anything five months earlier offered any significance or insight into her daughter’s death.

  ‘High,’ she answered. ‘I could see it in her eyes and she couldn’t keep still for two minutes. She shouted at the woman in the next bed for snoring after surgery and closed everyone’s curtains laughing her head off. The nurses asked her to leave.’

  Kim couldn’t help glancing at the photo on the wall.

  ‘Did she say anything at all, any trouble she was having with anyone?’

  Mrs Wilde dabbed at her eyes. ‘Told me she was fantastic and hashtag loving life, whatever that means. I hadn’t seen her for about six months prior to that, around the time I refused to give her any more money to put that shit into her arm. I always thought she’d come back in her own time, that something would happen to make her realise what she was doing to herself.’

  And she might have done, Kim thought. But that choice had been taken away from her.

  ‘I’d have been waiting, you know,’ she said, as a sob broke out of her. ‘If she’d have given me any encouragement I would have supported her through getting off it. And now she’ll always be known as the druggie who overdosed while chained to a radiator.’

  Kim could offer no response because it was true.

  ‘Mrs Wilde, may I ask how the two of them met. They don’t seem a likely couple. Mark’s background…’

  ‘Oh, I know all about his background,’ Mrs Wilde said, her face and voice turning hard at the same time. ‘Amy told me all about it while trying to persuade me to let him move in.’ She shook her head. ‘And I probably should have let him, because that’s the day she left.’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t let him live here?’ Bryant asked.

  With a daughter not long out of her teens Kim could hear the outrage in his voice.

  ‘Yes, she’d been seeing him for a few months by then. Fell over his bag of Big Issues as she left Tesco’s in Cradley Heath. Helped him pick them back up and that was that. Next day she went back to talk to him again and the next, and the next until she couldn’t bear to be parted from him for even a minute.’

  Kim heard a sniff from behind her. The grandmother had turned her back.

  Kim saw Mrs Wilde’s wish to comfort her mother but she looked away. Her own pain was just too great to take on anyone else’s.

  Due to the time of estrangement between mother and daughter Kim was not convinced there was any more to be gained.

  The girl could have made countless enemies, been involved in a dozen different situations that her mother would have known nothing about.

  Kim had a sudden thought and wanted to offer the woman some comfort before she left.

  ‘At least she came to see you in hospital.’

  ‘Not so sure about that, officer. Probably came to see if her plan had worked.’

  Kim was genuinely perplexed. ‘Sorry, I’m not sure…’

  ‘I was in hospital, Inspector, because I was mugged and beaten and I’m pretty sure it was Amy and Mark behind it.’

  Twenty-Six

  It was almost seven when Kim handed Bryant the keys back to his own car outside the station.

  ‘Okay, get off home now,’ she said.

  He glanced up at the squad room window. ‘Want me to come up?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nah, we gotta have this conversation before she can start profiling this killer and be some use to us.’

  ‘Okay, but if you want a chat later…’

  ‘I’ll give your missis a call cos I like her more than I like you.’

  He thought for a minute. ‘Yeah, can’t say I blame you,’ he replied, before getting in the car.

  * * *

  She headed inside, nodded at Jack on the desk and took the stairs to the second floor.

  Kim had made no secret of her disdain for profiling, behavioural analysis and other hocus pocus when Alison had joined them on the kidnapping case. Kim firmly believed that people were individuals and couldn’t be generalised by the actions of people in the past and assuming that they could was dangerous.

  Kim liked to profile a murderer based on the clues and events of a crime. If a victim received twenty or so stab wounds it was safe to say the murderer was angry, enraged, but it was less safe to say he was a twenty-seven-year-old male who had been bullied at school and still lived with his domineering mother while working some dead-end job.

  Because everyone had access to anger. Anyone could feel enraged by a person, a situation, a circumstance. And everyone had the ability to just snap.

  And yet Kim had to admit that Alison had offered some valuable insights into the mind of a killer when they had worked together before.

  So, she appreciated the help of the woman but knew they would need a conversation first.

  ‘All caught up?’ Kim asked, entering the squad room.

  Alison nodded and stood, heading over to the percolator.

  Kim was amused to see her walking in her stockinged feet with her high heels discarded beneath the desk.

  ‘Hey, don’t judge me. They’ve been on my feet for almost twelve hours.’

  Kim held up her hands in a non-judgemental way. ‘Hey, I wear biker boots an inch high so, trust me, I’m not judging,’ Kim said as Alison sat back down.

  Kim took Bryant’s chair opposite. ‘So, what do you think we’re looking at?’ she asked trying to bypass the inevitable.

  ‘Easy tiger, cool your heels. First things first. Obviously, DCI Woodward has given me the general outline but I’d like to hear more from you,’ she said, taking out a black spiral notebook. ‘So, tell me the similarities to the events in your childhood. All of them.’

  ‘Boy and a girl,’ she said.

  ‘Hmm, hmm, ‘Alison replied, motioning for her to continue.

  ‘Flat three floors beneath where I lived.’

  ‘Yep.’

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sp; ‘Boy dead, girl not,’ she said.

  Alison looked up. ‘But I just read…’

  ‘Not dead when help arrived. Paramedics worked on her for hours.’

  ‘Got it. Next.’

  ‘Chained to a radiator with handcuffs.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Coke bottle.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Cracker packet lodged in the throat of Mark Johnson.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Alison asked, raising her head.

  ‘Isn’t that a fucking nuff?’ she snapped.

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  Kim said nothing.

  Alison sat back in her chair and shook her head. ‘There’s no pleasing you. You expected an emotional response from me and you got none. You’re annoyed at my coldness and yet that’s exactly what you want. You don’t want understanding, empathy, sympathy otherwise you’d have told your team by now.’

  ‘Oh, please continue,’ Kim growled when Alison paused. After the day she’d had this was exactly what she needed right now.

  ‘I intend to. Do I think your past is horrific? Absolutely. Do you gain anything by me telling you so? Not at all because you were there and, quite frankly, I’ve interviewed people so twisted and broken by past events that make yours look like a trip to the bouncy castle followed by ice cream.’

  ‘I’m not in any fucking competition for shittest childhood of the century.’

  ‘You’d lose by a mile, so please tell me if there has been anything else,’ Alison said, meeting her gaze, calmly.

  ‘Fairview. Mark Johnson spent much of his childhood there, just like me but I think that’s just coincidence.’

  ‘And you’re sure that’s it?’

  Kim nodded. ‘So, when can you help out and give us your observations on the killer?’

  Kim read genuine confusion in the eyes of the woman opposite.

  ‘Detective Inspector Stone, there appears to be some kind of miscommunication. My brief and instruction has nothing to do with the killer. I’m here to observe you.’