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

‘Okay, let’s do it,’ she said.

  The officer nodded and headed for the squad car.

  Anyone not yet looking probably would be shortly, she thought, as the PC returned with the big red key. Forensics had not informed them of any possessions found at the scene leaving them little choice but to force entry. His house keys had gone along with the rest of his stuff.

  The PC offered her one final glance before getting the tool into position.

  She nodded her instruction to proceed.

  ‘No car, guv?’ Bryant asked.

  Strange, she agreed. No vehicles had been found at the scene either.

  The door gave way on the first hit and bounced back off the internal wall with the force of the blow from The Enforcer which applied more than three tonnes of impact in its 16kg weight.

  Kim pushed the door open and stepped into the narrowest of hallways, made more hazardous by a bicycle leaning up against a small radiator.

  Kim carried on through past the stairs on her left. She’d entered many properties that were deceptively spacious on the inside despite the external appearance, but she quickly realised this one really was a poky little house just as it said on the tin.

  The downstairs area consisted of two rooms. A kitchen that looked out to the front and a lounge that looked out onto a fenced area approximately twenty-five feet long.

  She headed into the kitchen first. Three basic wooden chairs and a round table sat immediately to her left. A car magazine with the pages open caught her attention. Two of the cars listed were circled.

  ‘Must be getting a bit chilly on that bike,’ Bryant said, also glancing at the magazine and seeing the markings.

  She took photos of the contact details of both cars to see if their victim had ever made a call.

  She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. The units and appliances were cheap and functional. A few tea stains marked the work surface on their journey from cup to the spoon rest which was half full of used tea bags.

  Immediately she suspected that no woman lived here. But it didn’t hurt to check.

  ‘Bryant, ring Stacey and see if anyone else is listed on the electoral roll.’

  He nodded and stepped back into the hallway.

  She wasn’t exactly house-proud herself but those tea stains would have driven her mad.

  Also, she detected a thin film of dust on pretty much everything other than the kettle and the percolator.

  Dried spill marks littered the floor and followed a trail from the work surface to the nearest chair.

  ‘No, guv,’ Bryant said, putting away his phone. ‘Stacey says he’s the only one listed on the electoral roll for the last three years. The whole time he’s lived here.’

  She nodded her acknowledgment and moved into the lounge. Another small space darkened further by an oversized three-piece suite and heavy velour curtains that dropped and then spread out on the floor. A small television and a games system occupied the far corner. A football mug and snack plate had been left on a small glass coffee table to the right of the single chair.

  Lying on the far cushion of the three-seater sofa was a closed laptop.

  Kim wondered if they’d find out more about the man from that than they would from his home.

  Footsteps sounded behind her.

  ‘Hey, Roy,’ she said to the heavily bearded man.

  ‘Got a call from your constable to meet you here.’ He took a look around the empty room. ‘Left the crime scene at Clent for this?’

  Kim had worked with Roy a few times before. His analytical and enquiring mind made him the perfect forensic technician, and she had learned to ignore his moans. She’d swear that a Euro millions lottery win wouldn’t put a smile on that face.

  ‘Can we get that bagged?’ she asked, pointing at the computer.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked, clearly miffed that he’d been called away.

  ‘Who knows? We haven’t checked upstairs yet,’ she said, hoping that there wasn’t actually another body.

  He took a suit from his bag and started to climb into it.

  ‘No forced entry,’ she elaborated. ‘Well, until we got here so I’m not thinking anything took place here, but we are looking for clues.’

  He offered a grunt of acknowledgment, and she headed upstairs.

  Bryant followed. ‘Happy chappie.’

  ‘He’s okay. Just likes to be where the action is. I’ll take him over the pathologist any day.’

  ‘Hmm… not so much,’ he replied.

  The hallway was small with three closed doors.

  The first she opened led into a bathroom with a shower above the tub. A quick look around confirmed he didn’t bother to clean the area often. Toothpaste specks mottled the glass of the bathroom cabinet. Black tidemarks circled the bath like the age rings in a tree trunk.

  ‘My missus would throw a hissy fit,’ Bryant remarked from the doorway.

  Kim stepped out of the room and back on to the landing as she heard Roy below ending a call.

  ‘Hey, Inspector,’ he called up. ‘You give your boy the instruction to be a pain up our arse?’

  Kim looked at Bryant who shrugged.

  ‘Didn’t hear you, Roy,’ she said, playing for time.

  ‘Your sergeant, Dawson. You tell him to turn up at the lab hassling for the chemical compound of those nails?’

  Kim didn’t hesitate. ‘Yeah, I know he’s keen but we need the info. He ain’t leaving until he’s got it.’

  ‘Yep, that’s what he said too.’

  Kim turned away, hiding her brief smile.

  The fact that she hadn’t instructed him to do so would be dealt with at another time, but if his presence at the lab got the results any quicker she was happy to leave him to it.

  She opened the second door and almost walked into the end of a king-size bed that was too big for the modest bedroom space leaving room for only one bedside table and lamp.

  ‘I’ll check the other room,’ Bryant offered.

  Kim suspected he would find it empty.

  She inched crab-like past a heavy oak wardrobe, her leg tripping on the overhanging quilt cover from the unmade bed.

  She opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet to find underwear, some stray screws and a pair of glasses. The second drawer of the unit was empty.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, wondering if anyone had known this man.

  She was about to turn away when something caught her eye from beneath the stack of pillows.

  She pinched her nails together and tugged at it gently. It was the ribbing of a sleeve cuff, pink. She frowned and continued to pull. An arm, a front, back and hood. She slowly and deliberately exposed the whole garment.

  A small pink hoody with the word ‘Princess’ sequinned on the back.

  ‘Hey, guv,’ Bryant called from across the hall.

  She lifted her head and could see straight into the smaller bedroom and to what Bryant was pointing at.

  It was unmistakeably a child’s bed.

  She looked again at the small pink hoody that their victim had kept close to him at night.

  Now she had even more questions about Luke Fenton, but the one that was flashing brightest in her mind was where the hell was the kid?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stacey replaced the receiver after her call from the boss. She’d been nervous that the boss would ask after her colleague and she would be placed in a difficult position.

  Her relief turned to puzzlement. Why hadn’t she asked? Did the boss know something she didn’t or had she given up on him already?

  Maybe he’d been transferred off the team and they were to get a replacement tomorrow.

  She could hope.

  But in the meantime, the boss had found an old telephone bill and she now had a direct route back to the service provider. She fired off an email.

  The boss had told her to leave the CCTV for now and concentrate on the background of their victim.

  She’d heard the pause at the end of
their conversation. A pause that should have been filled with Stacey’s update on the murder of the homeless man in Wolverhampton, except that she had nothing to offer. She’d left a message for Robyn, the one female police officer who had still been semi-friendly towards her after she’d passed the National Investigators Exam and Advanced Detective Training course.

  Gradually, during her two years as a trainee detective constable, people she’d classed as friends had spoken to her less and less, but Robyn had still occasionally struck up a conversation in the canteen. Now and again their eyes had met and Stacey had fleetingly wondered if there was an attraction between them. The very thought had frightened her to death. She’d never once acted on her attractions to other women.

  She took out her phone and dialled the woman’s number again. She was mildly surprised when the call was answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hey Robyn, I left yer a…’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I just got it.’

  Stacey raised an eyebrow trying to analyse the tone in so few words. Forced politeness. She couldn’t help the emotion that gathered in her throat. At the very least she’d hoped they were still friends, but it appeared that Robyn now also viewed her promotion as some kind of betrayal against all female uniformed officers.

  Stacey swallowed before speaking and put effort into keeping her voice light.

  ‘I wondered if you’d heard anything about the murder of that homeless guy in the—’

  ‘Tommy Deeley?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one,’ Stacey said, although she hadn’t previously had a name. ‘Anything weird with his injuries?’

  ‘Single stab wound to the chest is what killed him,’ she said quickly, and Stacey knew there was something else.

  ‘Any genital mutilation?’

  Stacey heard the sharp intake of breath and knew she had it right.

  She pushed forward knowing the two of them were not going to speak again. In for a penny in for a pound.

  ‘Anything else withheld?’ Stacey asked.

  Silence.

  ‘Look, we’re still on the same side, finding the bad guys and I promise not to bother yer again if you just tell me, okay?’

  ‘A small bell, like from a bird’s toy, was found in his pocket. No idea what that’s all about but…’

  Her words trailed away and Stacey could tell she was eager to be off the phone. There was nothing more for either of them to say.

  Maybe there had been something there once but it was now gone.

  ‘Thanks, Robyn. Tek care,’ Stacey said putting the woman out of her misery.

  She made a few notes from the brief conversation. At least now she had something to tell the boss later.

  She returned to the job she’d been tasked earlier. Finding out more about Luke Fenton.

  She’d already found that he had no prior convictions and was not known to the police. Any Google searches of his name brought up nothing but a couple of social media accounts.

  She logged into Facebook and found his profile.

  The man had a total of twenty-three friends and had last posted three days earlier. His information told her that he worked as a storeman at a furniture warehouse on Brindley trading estate.

  She scrolled down his timeline looking for anything of interest but his posts were mainly shares of other people’s posts or Unilad videos. Each post had one or two likes but no interaction. His friends appeared to be a mixture of other workers from the warehouse and a few people of similar age that she guessed to be old school friends. She continued scrolling through his timeline, thinking how strange the profile was. He’d liked no pages, had no games, had joined no groups and so far, had posted nothing to give her any indication of the man he was.

  Finally, a month earlier, she found a post from the man himself.

  Stacey frowned at the one-word post, placed on the Facebook wall of a woman by the name of Lisa Bywater.

  The post simply said ‘Gotcha’ followed by a big yellow smiley face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kim’s brain was working overtime as they pulled away from Luke Fenton’s address. There was something about the man that was not sitting comfortably in her stomach. They had found no further evidence of a child in the property: not a toy, no clothing, no bedding. Just the bed and the hoody. All they had gathered from the home was that he rode a push bike and was looking for a car. She hoped Stacey was having better luck back at the station.

  ‘Stop the car,’ she called out, suddenly.

  Bryant halted the car in the middle of the road, much to the annoyance of the driver behind.

  ‘What, where?…’

  ‘Jeez, I meant pull over, man,’ she said.

  ‘Bloody hell, guv, I thought I was about to hit a small child. What got your attention?’ he said, pulling in.

  ‘That place there,’ she said, pointing to a brightly lit window.

  He followed the direction of her finger. ‘You want Chinese food?’

  ‘Not right now,’ she said, as he turned off the engine. ‘And you’d best stay in the car cos you just pulled on to double yellows.’

  She got out of the car and headed into the restaurant-cum-takeaway that occupied two shop frontages.

  The combined smell of ginger and garlic hit her as she opened the door reminding her that she’d barely eaten a thing all day.

  She accepted that her relationship with food was estranged. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat or that she didn’t enjoy certain foods, it was just that she tended to forget that it was a necessary part of her day.

  She approached the counter of the empty takeaway and glanced into the restaurant. One couple sat in the furthest corner but she was guessing that fiveish wasn’t their busiest time. Probably around seven for teatime meals and then half ten after the pubs shut.

  A slim Chinese woman appeared from the space next door.

  She smiled. ‘Eat in or?…’

  ‘Neither, thank you. I need to ask if you know a man called Luke Fenton.’

  She shrugged, looking puzzled. But the common sense in her said that Luke would favour a Chinese restaurant close to home, being without a car, and this was the first one they’d passed. His last known meal had been Chinese food.

  ‘About my height, slim, blonde hair, late twenties, here last night?’

  She shrugged, ‘Sunday, busy night.’

  Kim took out her phone. She scrolled through the pictures searching for one where the man looked less dead.

  She turned the phone. ‘This man.’

  The woman appeared to recognise him immediately, so Kim turned the phone away to prevent her from looking too hard.

  ‘Oh, him, he not nice man. He stiffened us once and now we make him pay before he eat here.’

  ‘And did he eat here last night?’ Kim asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yes, always alone. Unless he order for takeaway and then he order more.’

  Kim filed that away for later.

  ‘Any idea when he left?’

  ‘Nine thirty,’ she said, definitely.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘He not nice man. Glad to see him go.’

  ‘Okay, anything strange about his behaviour, different in any way?’

  ‘Yes, he rush out and he only eat half his meal.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Really gonna need that phone stuff, Stacey,’ Kim said, as they entered the squad room. ‘Pretty sure our victim got disturbed from his supper by some text or call or message from someone, cos he left in quite a rush. Also need to check for CCTV in the area. I’m guessing he was picked up. He had to get from the takeaway to Clent somehow, and if he’d booked a taxi he wouldn’t have needed to leave half his meal.’

  ‘Sent a follow-up email ten minutes ago, boss, but I’m not hopeful for a response before…’

  ‘Damn,’ Kim said, cursing much of the working world for finishing around 5 p.m. Her gaze swept across the wipe boards on the
wall noting information that hadn’t been there earlier.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘All I could get about the homeless man. His name, the fact he’d been genitally mutilated and that there was something about a bell found on his person.’

  ‘Bloody good work, Stacey,’ Kim said, surprised. ‘I’ll speak to Woody tomorrow and get the case from Wolverhampton. Given the similarities there’s no way it won’t get handed over to us.’

  The first thing she’d do is get Keats to go over the post-mortem report to confirm they were the same killer, and then she’d start looking into Tommy Deeley’s background searching for links to Luke Fenton. Her mind was whirring with ideas but she could do nothing about it tonight.

  ‘Okay, in the meantime we’ve brought a present back from the victim’s home,’ she said, placing the computer on the spare desk. ‘Time to try and break the password and see what he’s all about.’

  ‘May I?’ Stacey asked, almost salivating at the laptop.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Kim said, stepping aside. She only knew a few password cracking basics that she’d been told about dates and names.

  Stacey sat down and started typing.

  Kim had collected laptops and phones that had taken hours if not days to crack. Such was the information guarded within. She was hoping this one was going to be like a window to the man himself.

  ‘I’m in,’ Stacey said, dejectedly. The laptop had presented no challenge at all.

  ‘Already?’ Kim asked.

  ‘More him than me,’ she said honestly. ‘His password is his first name and his date of birth.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kim said, feeling the constable’s disappointment. Something so easy to access was unlikely to hold anything valuable.

  ‘Can I just have a nosey around for a few minutes, boss?’

  ‘Of course, fill your boots,’ Kim said, grabbing the marker pen and updating the wipe boards with everything they’d learned that day.

  ‘Guv, shall I go get?…’

  ‘That would be great, Bryant, but from tomorrow we share.’

  Much as she appreciated the stream of caffeine he was not going to become tea boy.