First Blood: A completely gripping mystery thriller (A Detective Kim Stone Novel) Page 8

  ‘Sir, they’re all good, now when can I collect the case file for Tommy Deeley?’

  ‘We won’t be taking the case from Wolverhampton.’

  ‘Wh-what?’ she spluttered. Nowhere in her proposed chain of events was that even an option. Now this was a battle worth fighting.

  ‘May I ask if you’ve requested it?’

  No matter how she phrased the question in her head it sounded rude on her lips.

  ‘I spoke to DCI Redford late last night.’

  So, he had read her briefing document, seen the similarities and made the call last night. So, why were the case files not already on her desk?

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with our case.’

  ‘Sir, how can you even think that given the similarities to—’

  ‘Because they already have their killer. A man confessed to the murder last night.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bryant remained silent as they headed down the stairs, which was good because after the ridiculous conversation with Woody, she was in no mood for idle chatter. She stepped out into the freezing cold morning and right into a woman with long blonde hair wearing a trouser suit and impossibly high heels.

  The notebook told her everything she needed to know.

  ‘Are you the detective working on the naked man case?’ she asked, blocking Kim’s path.

  Not a move that impressed her. Her personal space was guarded with alarms, barbed wire and motion sensors.

  ‘Get out of my—’

  ‘Is it true that the body had been mutilated?’

  Kim ignored her and attempted to walk around her.

  ‘Is it true that?—’

  ‘Contact press liaison,’ she said, attempting to dodge the woman again.

  ‘You wanna give me a name?’

  ‘Rumpelstiltskin and this here is…’

  ‘Of the victim,’ the woman clarified.

  ‘No shit,’ Kim said, shaking her head and weaving around her once more. ‘Because my refusal to answer your first two questions would lead you to believe I’d give you that.’

  ‘Ah, I’m guessing you’re DI Stone,’ the woman said, offering her hand. ‘Tracy Frost from the Dudley Star.’

  Kim glanced at the outstretched hand. ‘The pleasure is all yours.’

  ‘Look, Detective, we…’

  ‘Inspector,’ she corrected.

  ‘Okay, Inspector. You should know I can be a great help to you. Write your side of the story.’

  ‘Oh, get out my way,’ she said, aiming for Bryant’s Astra Estate. There was no side of any story. There was just the truth.

  The woman continued to walk by her side.

  A snippet of a memory came back to her.

  She slowed. ‘Hang on. I remember you. Didn’t you report on the suicide of that fourteen-year-old girl from Tipton?’

  The reporter’s face appeared to lose colour.

  Kim continued. ‘The girl who was being bullied online about her weight. You attended the inquest and then wrote an in-depth piece about her including all the gory details about how she did it, totally disregarding the Samaritan guidelines.’

  Kim knew research had shown links between media coverage of suicides and an increase in suicidal behaviour. This had prompted a whole set of what to do and what not to do for reporters. These included; avoiding detail, steering away from melodramatic depictions of suicide or its aftermath and to aim for sensitive, non-sensationalising coverage. None of which had been adhered to by this woman.

  ‘And what happened?’ Kim continued. ‘If I remember, the day your piece came out a fifteen-year-old tried to copy and do the exact same thing. Lucky for everyone she didn’t succeed.’

  ‘That piece was about bullying and the effect—’

  ‘It was written to sell newspapers, Frost, and don’t pretend otherwise. But what I can tell you, even though you’ve not yet posed it as a question to me, is that no one in the West Mids Police force likes you very much.’

  Tracy Frost’s face hardened and Kim knew the battle lines between them had been drawn.

  ‘Well, from what I can gather the same goes for your popularity too.’

  Kim offered her first genuine smile as her palm rested on the door handle. ‘Thing is, I couldn’t give a shit.’

  She opened the door and got in as the woman hobbled away in shoes that were clearly too high for her.

  ‘Well, that exchange woke me up,’ Kim said, waiting for Bryant to start the car.

  He stared forward.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked, watching the reporter get into a white Audi; a car she would now remember.

  ‘You know, guv, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.’

  Ah, he was pissed off about what she’d quoted at Dawson.

  ‘I wasn’t fighting anyone’s battle. It was information that I didn’t think you had right at your fingertips.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘Strangely, yes,’ she said, buckling up even though the man’s driving didn’t require it.

  She had taken the time to research them all the night before. She’d also found out that Bryant had been put forward for the promotion by two separate inspectors who thought he was good for it. And he had failed the exam both times.

  Dawson had been right, statistically speaking. Bryant was unlikely to make it but she hadn’t appreciated the younger officer trying to rub the man’s face in it.

  ‘Well, whatever it was, please don’t do it again. I can handle Dawson.’

  ‘Noted,’ she said. ‘Now will you please start the bloody car?’

  Kim glanced out of the window as the Audi pulled off the car park.

  Well, so far today she’d pissed off two thirds of her team and the local journalist, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.

  That might be some kind of record.

  Even for her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ Dawson snapped at her as she glanced at him over the top of her screen.

  ‘An arsehole,’ she said, before she could stop herself.

  She instantly looked down, regretting what she’d said, but the words had popped out as though firing directly from her brain.

  ‘I wasn’t lying,’ he said, defensively. ‘The old man has tried for promotion twice and failed twice. Loser.’

  Stacey noted how he had conveniently forgotten the figures quoted to him by the boss. And DS Bryant didn’t seem like a loser to her. From what she’d seen he was steady, attentive and friendly.

  But calling her colleagues names like that was not going to help her to fit in.

  ‘Look, I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Forget it. Your opinion doesn’t matter to me anyway,’ he said, grabbing his jacket and leaving without another word.

  Stacey shook her head. That guy had some serious issues.

  She turned her attention back to work. The boss had told her to get cracking on phone records and CCTV.

  A terse return email from the mobile phone provider had confirmed they were working on her requests, and she guessed that hassling them every few minutes was not going to get the results any quicker.

  She pulled up the crime scene photos and grabbed a notepad.

  As a constable, she’d always been encouraged to see the bigger picture, explore all the information available, dig as deep as you could. It was that need to go further that had driven her to want to be a detective, to find clues, to look at things from every angle, hold things up to the light and think outside the box.

  The photos no longer filled her with the horror they had the previous day. This morning she wasn’t looking at a man, a human who had been brutally murdered. She wasn’t feeling the pain or fear of the victim as the knife had sliced across the flesh.

  She was looking at the artistry of the kill. The skill, the cunning, the planning.

  The killer had taken their victim to a secluded area in the Clent Hills, late at
night, a spot where he’d known he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  He’d taken something heavy to render the victim unconscious. He’d taken nails to secure the victim to the ground. He had cut the man’s throat and then taken the time to mutilate the genitals and totally sever the head.

  Stacey remembered a time when she was thirteen and a group of girls had dared her to pinch some pick ’n’ mix from WHSmith in Dudley town. They’d said she could go to the cinema with them if she did it and so she had.

  But she remembered the feeling of fear. She’d walked in, her heart thumping, the blood pounding in her ears. She had grabbed a handful and walked quickly back out of the shop.

  She hadn’t hung around, after the deed was done.

  She looked again at both the killer’s planning and execution. He’d been in no rush to leave the scene once Luke Fenton was dead.

  She prepared to start looking at the CCTV in the area of Clent, but she really hoped they were going to get the details from Wolverhampton soon, because everything she’d ever learned about the anatomy of a murder told her that this wasn’t their murderer’s first kill.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dawson sat in his car for just a moment before starting the engine.

  Despite the cold sunshine there was a fucking rain cloud that had been following him from the moment he’d woken up.

  His plan had gone swimmingly. He’d made it to the restaurant with just minutes to spare.

  Filled with the triumph of having got one over on the boss he’d eaten a good meal, had a few drinks and enjoyed himself in the company of a gorgeous woman.

  Two hours later he’d been in Lou’s flat and in her bed. And all it had taken was a few false promises.

  He’d fallen asleep content.

  And yet when he’d woken up, turned and seen Lou sleeping peacefully beside him, that contentment had gone and left behind nothing more than a sour taste in his mouth. He had showered quickly and left before she’d even woken up.

  He couldn’t put a name to this shadow that was following him, but he did know that he was now thinking of Ally more than ever.

  He had tried to cheer himself up by having a little fun at Bryant’s expense. Just banter. But the boss had stopped him dead. Banter was not allowed. Noted.

  And then his other colleague had called him an arsehole. Timid, smiley little Stacey had called him an arsehole.

  Fuck ’em, he thought, starting the engine. He didn’t give a shit what any of them thought of him.

  He could out-police them all without even breaking a sweat and that’s what he fully intended to do.

  Chapter Thirty

  By the time Bryant pulled up in front of a high-rise tower in Bilston the air appeared to have cleared between them.

  Thankfully the man was not a sulker.

  ‘Eleventh floor,’ he said, looking up as they got out of the car.

  The area of Bilston was first referred to as Bilsatena in AD 985 and in the Domesday Book as a village called Billestune. Two miles southeast of Wolverhampton the area was extensively developed for coal mining and terraced houses built in the nineteenth century to accommodate the labour force. These dwellings had since been replaced with modern houses and flats on developments like Stowlawn, the Lunt and the estate they were now called Bunker’s Hill.

  This was one of the nicer tower blocks she’d visited in her time. And although there was an intercom system someone had wedged open the outer door for the benefit of a furniture delivery team.

  ‘Ooh, lift works,’ Bryant said, as a young couple with a pushchair got out.

  They hopped in and Bryant pressed the button to take them up to the eleventh floor.

  He sniffed the air. ‘Ah, I know what’s missing. It’s the smell of piss.’

  Kim smiled her agreement. Yes, she’d been preparing herself but the only smell was the lingering perfume of the woman who had just got out.

  The lift landed and they followed the signage to apartment 11c, where a second intercom greeted them.

  Bryant pressed and a crackly voice answered. Kim detected wariness in that one single word.

  Bryant introduced them and asked if they could have a quick word.

  ‘How did you get into the building?’ she asked, still not opening the door.

  Kim spoke into the intercom, explaining the delivery van, to signal to the occupant that there was a female presence.

  Eventually the door was opened by a woman Kim guessed to be in her early to mid-twenties. Her brown hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail and she wore little make-up.

  She pointed to her clothing which was the green uniform of the local superstore.

  ‘What’s this about? I have to get to work.’

  ‘May we come in?’

  The woman looked behind her as though checking for something. She stepped back and pointed to a door on the left.

  Kim stepped into a light and spacious lounge with three-quarter-length windows that had dark, heavy curtains tied back. The room was sparsely furnished with mismatched items that all seemed to bear battle scars. A stain here, a small rip there.

  ‘I’m sorry to rush you but…’ she said, pointedly tapping her watch.

  Kim took a seat on the single chair that had no relationship with the three-seater sofa.

  ‘Miss Bywater, do?…’

  ‘Mrs,’ she corrected.

  Kim acknowledged the incorrect assumption with a nod and continued.

  ‘Mrs Bywater, do you know someone by the name of Luke Fenton?’

  The colour dropped from her face as she took a seat.

  ‘How did?… Where?… I mean…’

  Kim remained silent, not wishing to divulge that the only contact they could find for their victim was on Facebook.

  ‘Are you related?’ Kim asked.

  The woman’s hands had found each other in her lap. They were flexing and releasing as some kind of tension entered her body. ‘Please tell me what this is about.’

  ‘I have to know if you’re related,’ Kim said, not unkindly. This could be the mother of his child. Whoever she was she was about to get one hell of a shock. Damn it, she hated this part of the job.

  Lisa Bywater nodded. ‘Luke is my brother.’

  Oh shit, now she really hated this part of the job. And this sibling knowledge would have been useful to them ahead of time.

  ‘Parents?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Dead,’ she answered, shaking her head.

  Liking the job less and less.

  ‘Mrs Bywater, I’m sorry to inform you that we believe your brother is dead.’

  Not one solitary muscle moved on her face as the words appeared to bypass her ears completely. Her expression said she was still waiting for the actual reason for their visit.

  ‘Mrs Bywater, your brother has been killed, I’m sad to say, murdered.’

  The woman began to shake her head. ‘No… no… you’re wrong… he can’t be…’

  ‘I’m afraid he is,’ Bryant said, firmly. ‘We’re in no doubt.’

  She blinked a few times in quick succession as though the action was helping to get the information into her brain.

  Her head dropped into her hands. Her elbows resting on her knees. Her body began to shake with emotion.

  Bryant reached across and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Is there someone we can call?’

  She shook her head.

  Bryant removed his hand but continued speaking. ‘We’re so sorry for your loss, Mrs Bywater but—’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ she said, raising a dry-eyed, colour-infused face. Her eyes were alight and animated. ‘It’s the best bloody news I’ve had in months.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ Bryant asked as they watched Lisa Bywater drive away.

  There was no grieving time for this lady, no call to the workplace to explain her loss and forthcoming absence. Brother or not, his death was not going to make her any later for her
shift than she already was.

  ‘And her refusal to answer any further questions about… well anything,’ she noted.

  The woman had pretty much ordered them out of the flat and would speak no further.

  ‘Shocked you got her to agree to the body identification, guv, to be honest.’

  Yes, Kim was surprised at that herself. She had asked as the young woman was pushing them out of the door. At first she had started to shake her head and then changed her mind and said she’d love to.

  ‘On a scale of one to ten of weirdest notifications of a death, I’d rank that an eleven,’ Bryant offered.

  Kim could feel her own frown. ‘Yeah, I get that they might not have been close but to get actual joy from his…’ She stopped speaking as she had a sudden thought. ‘Bryant, how far away are we from Wolverhampton?’

  ‘Just a couple of…’

  ‘It was rhetorical and not even a question, more like an instruction for you to start heading towards.’

  ‘But you said they had their man.’

  ‘Well, let’s just swing by and see if he’s our man too.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It had been two years since Kim had set foot in Wolverhampton Police Station and she hadn’t missed it one little bit.

  Most CID teams were territorial over their cases, and she’d been called in to assist in a double murder that was two weeks old and growing colder by the hour. Her presence had been met with suspicion, hostility and downright bad manners. In fact, the man she was hoping to see had asked her to fetch him coffee in front of eleven members of staff at the first briefing she’d attended. She had simply smiled and folded her arms in response and remained standing exactly where she was. The three female officers in the room had all lowered their heads but not before she’d seen the smiles they were trying to hide.

  ‘Inspector Lennox, please,’ she said to the desk sergeant, showing her identification. He took a good look at her name and reached for the phone.

  She moved away from the desk and Bryant followed.