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‘It’s fair to say that the things we uncovered pretty much ruined her life,’ Bryant said. ‘It’s also accurate to say she hated the guv with a passion.’

  ‘Put her on the list,’ Alison said.

  Kim found it doubtful that Nina Croft would have held on to her hatred for such a long time. It had been over three years but Bryant was right that there had been a deep hatred from the woman and Nina had held her personally responsible.

  ‘Symes,’ Bryant said, writing down the name.

  Alison nodded her agreement. It was the kidnapping case they had worked together and she had worked with them and knew these perpetrators well.

  ‘Symes is a possibility. He hates you enough.’

  ‘But he’s in prison,’ she said, shuddering, as she recalled that the only thing that mattered to the man was causing pain, and the younger his victim the better.

  ‘Some people are angry enough and powerful enough to exact revenge from behind bars,’ Alison said. ‘Put him on the list.’

  Oh yes, she’d had experience of people tampering with her life from behind bars.

  Bryant appeared to be following her thought process.

  ‘You don’t think Alex?…’

  ‘No,’ Kim said. ‘She had her shot and failed. She doesn’t repeat herself.’

  ‘Care to explain?’ Alison asked.

  Kim opened her mouth but Bryant cut in.

  ‘Doctor Alexandra Thorne is a sociopathic psychiatrist who used and abused her patients for her own sick experiment; a game resulting in countless deaths.

  ‘During the investigation, she got particularly fascinated with the guv and tried to tear her apart. She failed but tried again from behind bars to bring her to her knees, psychologically, by toying with her weakest points and had someone ready and waiting to kill her if that didn’t work.’

  ‘Put her on the list,’ Alison said.

  ‘Take her off,’ Kim replied.

  ‘Inspector, I know sociopaths,’ Alison shot.

  ‘And I know Alex. It isn’t her, now take her off the list.’

  Bryant looked between the two of them and scrubbed out her name.

  Alison did not.

  ‘Okay, what was your next major investigation?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Female victims at a body farm,’ Kim said.

  ‘Anything there?’

  ‘Don’t hate me enough,’ Kim said.

  Bryant nodded his agreement.

  Alison’s pen hovered above her pad. ‘Next.’

  ‘Next of kin murders,’ Kim said, remembering finding Woody almost unconscious on the floor of his holiday home in Wales.

  ‘Not powerful enough.’

  Again, Bryant agreed with her.

  ‘Next,’ she asked.

  ‘Hate crimes case,’ Bryant said. ‘Our DC, Stacey, almost lost her life.’

  ‘Anyone?’

  Kim began to shake her head and then stopped.

  ‘Powerful enough?’ Alison asked.

  Kim nodded.

  ‘Hates you enough?’

  ‘Very probably,’ Kim answered, as Bryant added the name Dale Preece to his list. Because of her the man had lost everything. Now that one she agreed with.

  ‘Next?’

  ‘Prostitution Murders,’ Kim said. ‘And no, that person doesn’t hate me enough even though they think they probably do.’

  ‘Next?’ Alison said.

  Kim swallowed. ‘The Heathcrest Investigation.’

  She would never be able to say those words without thinking of Detective Sergeant Kevin Dawson.

  ‘Anyone?’ Alison asked, quietly.

  ‘During the investigation we uncovered a secret society with members in high and powerful places. They don’t like me very much but they’ve had a few months now to come get me and they haven’t, and the family most affected by that investigation hate each other more than they hate me.’

  ‘You must get great comfort from that,’ Alison said, drily.

  ‘And our last major investigation centred on one of the doctors linked to Heathcrest who I had tried to charge with carrying out illegal abortions.’

  ‘Family?’ Alison asked.

  Kim shook her head after giving it some thought. ‘Luke was pretty hostile at the beginning but he’d warmed slightly by the time the case was over.’

  ‘How hostile?’ Alison asked.

  Kim remembered him stepping towards her with both his face and fists filled with rage.

  ‘Substantially,’ Bryant said, obviously recalling the same memory.

  ‘On the list,’ all three of them said, together.

  ‘Anything current?’ Alison asked.

  Kim shook her head.

  ‘So, we have Nina Croft, Symes, Alexandra Thorne, my list not yours, Dale Preece and Luke Cordell.’

  ‘Yep,’ Kim said.

  ‘And that covers the last three years only,’ Bryant said. ‘We’ve barely scratched the surface yet.’

  Alison looked at the list. ‘I think we’ve found a pretty good place to start.’

  Thirty-Three

  Penn wondered if his colleague realised she was holding a permanent scowl on her face as she tapped away on her computer.

  He had mixed feelings about her concerns regarding the boss’s secrecy.

  He had come from a team where the head of the department had often shared stuff on a need-to-know basis so this wasn’t new for him, but his colleague was taking it seriously and definitely personally. If there was stuff that wasn’t for sharing he would respect that.

  ‘Got anything?’ the boss asked as she entered the squad room ahead of Bryant and Alison Lowe.

  He removed his headphones. ‘Got all the footage from Asda. They were in there for almost an hour and for folks with no money that’s quite a long time, so I’m trying to trace their steps from when they entered to when they left.’

  The boss nodded in his direction, which he had come to understand meant carry on.

  ‘Stace?’

  ‘Nothing on Harry Jenks yet, not a sniff of scandal and perfectly qualified for his job.’

  Penn detected a note in Stacey’s voice indicating that she felt she wasn’t only barking up the wrong tree but that she was in a completely different forest.

  If the boss noticed she didn’t show it.

  Penn turned back to his screen.

  ‘Bryant and I will be out following fresh leads and—’

  ‘What fresh leads?’ Stacey asked, raising her head.

  ‘We’ll let you know if anything comes up, Stace.’

  ‘And I’m going to make a few calls to Drake Hall,’ Alison said.

  ‘In there,’ the boss said, nodding towards The Bowl.

  Alison gathered up her belongings and moved to the office.

  He saw Stacey watching proceedings with interest while saying nothing, but something on the screen had caught his attention. He went back and played it again.

  ‘One sec,’ he said, raising his hand.

  ‘Penn, you really don’t have to raise your hand.’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ he said, bringing his hand back to his keyboard. It was force of habit. On a bigger team, it had been necessary so the guv could see who was speaking straight away.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Watch this,’ he said, pressing the play icon.

  They both watched as Amy Wilde stopped walking around the vegetable section and reached into her back pocket.

  Despite the poor image quality, it was clear she was putting her hand to her ear. Mark, who had continued walking, stepped back and stood beside her.

  ‘She had a phone,’ the boss said. ‘But not on her at the crime scene.’

  ‘Someone stole her phone?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Either it was stolen between this Asda visit and the murder or the killer took it.’

  ‘And the killer would only do that if there was something on the phone to incriminate him,’ Penn observed.

  ‘Which means?’ the boss asked.

  ‘Howev
er loosely, Amy Wilde knew her killer,’ Bryant said.

  Penn felt a tap on the shoulder.

  ‘Good work, Penn, but now I want more. I want to know their every movement around that shop from the minute they entered to the minute they left.’

  Penn knew there was no point approaching the mobile networks. Without a current address or number they wouldn’t have a chance and it was unlikely the phone was contract, anyway.

  ‘Got it, boss,’ he said, assessing the job before him. With the volume of footage sent to him by the supermarket that was gonna be most of his day, but he got it. This was the only CCTV they had of the couple in the hours leading up to their deaths. If there were no further clues here, they were stuffed.

  So, he thought, glancing across the desk at his colleague, Alison had moved office to work on something secret, the boss and Bryant had left the office to work on something else and he wondered if Stacey realised she’d been scowling the whole time.

  Thirty-Four

  ‘You do know she knows you’re not being truthful?’ Bryant said once they were in the car.

  Kim ignored him.

  ‘And you do know she’s pissed off?’

  ‘Really?’ she answered, sarcastically. ‘And here was me having worked with Stacey for three years and being totally clueless in reading her. So grateful to have you—’

  ‘Point taken, guv, but there are other considerations.’

  ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  ‘Division of labour, using appropriate resources for the—’

  ‘Hang on, you’re getting narked because you had to do a bit of data mining?’

  It hadn’t been that difficult for him to find out what Nina Croft was up to these days.

  ‘You know me and the computer are not besties but my point is that things like that take either of them about a third of the time it takes me, or you for that matter. It’s not efficient.’

  ‘Neither is having this conversation time and time again. I’m not budging.’

  She firmly believed they could solve this double murder without her having to give a personal history lesson.

  ‘So, what do we know about Nina Croft?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ he said, honestly. ‘In the time given I managed to establish she runs her own practice from an office in Cradley Heath High Street.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  She probably could have found out that much herself. Like her, Bryant’s IT skills stretched to typing a name into Google and then scrolling to the most promising-looking hit. Given the same amount of time Stacey would probably have found the school her kids attended and if Nina had any contact with her husband in prison. She’d probably have been able to tell them what the woman had eaten for breakfast, but that was neither here nor there.

  ‘Wonder if she’s happier now?’ Kim said, as Bryant headed towards Colley Gate.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure she is. Probably gonna give you a big bunch of flowers, invite you over for—’

  ‘Okay, enough,’ she said, as he headed across Lyde Green and into Cradley Heath. ‘Might not even remember me; I’m not even sure she should be on the list,’ she said as the car came to a stop outside a carpet shop that Kim remembered from her childhood.

  ‘What are we doing… ooh,’ she said when she saw the nameplate to the right of the carpet store entrance.

  She got out of the car and followed Bryant up the narrow stairway to a closed, single door at the top.

  ‘You know, she might even thank me for uncovering exactly what her husband had been up to,’ she said as the door began to open.

  The almost-smile dropped as the dark eyes filled with hate.

  She looked Kim up and down with disbelief. When she spoke, venom dripped from every word.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  Thirty-Five

  Alison knocked on the door and waited to be called in.

  ‘Take a seat,’ DCI Woodward said, pointing to the chair she had occupied for less than five minutes the day before.

  ‘Sorry we didn’t have chance for a proper discussion yesterday but thank you for assisting on short notice,’ he said.

  She acknowledged his words choosing not to point out she was hardly rushed off her feet right now.

  ‘And how have the team reacted to your presence?’

  ‘Don’t you mean how did your DI react?’ she asked. ‘And I would think you had a better idea of that than me given that she’s already been banging your door down,’ she said.

  ‘Well, initially, I’d like to know about the whole team. They’ve been through a lot in the last few months.’

  Yes, she had read about Dawson’s death in the newspaper and been saddened but not wholly surprised. When she’d worked with the team on the kidnapping case she had watched him closely, fascinated by his impetuous energy and the efforts he employed to stifle it.

  ‘The team is doing okay,’ she answered. ‘Penn is a pretty open book. Stacey is wary and suspicious and Bryant is fiercely protective.’

  ‘And Stone?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve not seen that much of her,’ Alison admitted. ‘But seems to be handling it at the minute.’

  Alison didn’t mention that she was still getting familiar with the DI’s body language and making notes. She’d been difficult to read three years ago and hadn’t improved since. Alison also chose not to reveal that she was looking forward to the challenge, but some people were much easier to read than others.

  She remembered when she was nine years old and at gymnastics practice after school. As ever she had found herself people watching and looking round at the other girls. Naomi, a superb athlete a year younger than herself had been told she was focussing on the beam. She had nodded enthusiastically but Alison had noticed her toes curl underneath. She worked on the beam and fell off, constantly. A few weeks later the exact same thing happened. Toes curled, she fell off.

  A month after that while competing in regional championships the beam star, Kaisha, had been taken ill with tummy cramps and the gym coach had chosen Naomi to take her place. Alison had seen the toes curl and had fearfully told the gym teacher that Naomi was going to fall. She hadn’t listened and said Naomi was perfectly capable.

  Naomi had taken to the beam and during the routine had fallen and sprained her wrist. Alison had later come to understand that although capable of mastering the beam she had developed a mental block that had made her fearful of the apparatus and that fear had manifested itself as a toe curl of which the girl herself had been unaware. From that moment Alison had been fascinated with understanding people’s behaviour. What they were aware of and what they weren’t.

  ‘I’d also like to talk to you about the other business.’

  She nodded and forced herself not to swallow, revealing her own concession to nerves.

  She had already realised that the ‘other business’ would somehow be invisibly attached to her CV for the rest of her career, that the ‘other business’ would overshadow any of her previous triumphs and anything she might achieve in the future. She would never outrun or escape the ‘other business’ and the proof of it was lying silently in a hospital bed.

  ‘It has no bearing on what you’ve been brought here to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said revealing nothing.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, meeting her gaze.

  She returned his stare unflinchingly while appreciating the kindly way he’d addressed the mistake she made.

  Except one small problem remained. She wasn’t totally convinced it had been a mistake at all.

  Thirty-Six

  The room was poky, dark and filled with folders. Kim was reminded of TV private eye offices.

  ‘I wouldn’t invite you to sit even if I had more chairs,’ Nina said, standing beside the desk.

  Kim was relieved to see that the woman still dressed well in a fitted, straight navy dress that ended just below the knees. The designer wasn’t obvious to her but she looked smart and functional. The dark brown h
air was an inch longer than she remembered. Possibly the result of fewer salon visits, Kim wondered.

  ‘So, how’ve you been?’ she asked, taking the single seat.

  Colour flooded into Nina’s face. ‘Are you serious?’ she exploded. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Kim shrugged, ‘Just passing.’

  ‘Liar,’ she spat. ‘Now unless this is an official call about one of my clients you can—’

  ‘Who are?’ Kim asked. ‘I mean, who are your clients these days?’

  The hatred bubbled behind her eyes. ‘None of your fucking business. Nothing here concerns you. You’re not welcome either here or at my—’

  ‘Where is that, now?’ Kim asked, unable to resist needling her. This was guiltless, calorie-free fun, especially when she remembered the dog that had died a painful death after she’d fed it antifreeze to warn her off the investigation into the Crestwood children’s home. ‘You still living in that nice big house in…’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. You know full well I had no chance of keeping my home, or my children in private education, you fucking bitch. I live in a terraced house in Old Hill and my boys attend the local comprehensive because of you and—’

  ‘Oh, Nina, please,’ Kim said, losing patience with the holier-than-thou attitude. ‘Your husband deserved everything he got and I’m sorry you lost everything you had. I’m sorry you lost your high-paying job in Birmingham, I’m sorry you missed out on your imminent promotion to partner. I’m sorry you lost your home and that your boys have had to be uprooted to new schools. And all because of what your husband did.’

  Kim could see the clenched fists were trembling by her sides.

  ‘Except I’m not sorry at all, Nina, because you knew everything he’d done and you never told anyone. You speaking out could have saved lives, so I couldn’t really give a shit about—’

  ‘Leave,’ she barked, pointing at the door. ‘The very sight of you is offensive to me and I don’t have to tolerate—’

  ‘Not to mention what you did to that dog,’ Kim said, shaking her head. ‘I mean, that was low.’