Dead Memories: An addictive and gripping crime thriller Read online

‘Get out,’ Nina cried.

  ‘And obstructing the course of the investigation to protect your own—’

  ‘Inspector, I’m warning you. Get out.’

  ‘Where were you Sunday night, Nina?’ Kim asked, calmly, wrong-footing her.

  ‘At home with my boys,’ she shot back without thinking. Too caught up in the rage to consider not answering.

  ‘Thanks for your time,’ Kim said, jumping up from the seat. ‘Been lovely to catch up,’ she said, following Bryant out of the office.

  She wasn’t surprised to hear something crash against the wooden door as it closed.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked Bryant as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Not sure,’ he answered. ‘But I can tell you that if she wasn’t angry enough to hurt you before, she sure is now.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Penn glanced down at the timeline he was painstakingly building for the boss detailing the journey of Amy and Mark around the supermarket on Sunday afternoon.

  3.09 p.m. – A+M enter Asda

  3.14 p.m. – Look at Sandwich fridge

  3.18 p.m. – Peruse fruit and veg

  3.20 p.m. – Pick up apple and put back

  3.26 p.m. – Wander up and down chilled meats aisle

  3.30 p.m. – Take telephone call (3 mins)

  3.33 p.m. – Chat beside fresh bread aisle

  3.34 p.m. – Look at wrist

  3.37 p.m. – Peruse toiletries aisle

  3.40 p.m. – Slip something into pocket

  3.42 p.m. – Go into toilets

  And that was where he was right now waiting for either or both of them to come out of the toilets. He’d seen a cleaner come and go, countless shoppers rush in and rush out, but the two of them had been in around seven minutes.

  ‘Coffee?’ he heard through his headphones.

  He paused and glanced at his colleague. She never touched the stuff and rarely made it. He normally had one or two in the morning and then laid off. Much more and he was like a freed bumblebee on a summer day.

  He shook his head but watched from the corner of his eye as she glanced a few times towards Alison, making calls in The Bowl.

  He resumed the recording and saw both Amy and Mark exit the toilets at 3.52 p.m., just eight minutes before the store closed.

  He switched to the camera covering the entrance and exit doors and waited: 3.53; 3.54; 3.55, nothing.

  Where had they gone? It took less than ten seconds to get from the toilets to the door.

  He backtracked to the camera covering the cigarette kiosk, the only thing between the toilets and the doors.

  He caught them, deep in conversation behind the newspaper stand. Amy walked away first and Mark followed, but he knew they hadn’t reached the doors.

  He sat up in his chair tapping away furiously, switching from one camera to another to pick them back up.

  Finally, he found them again and watched as they perused, chose and finally made a purchase.

  He noted the entry on the timeline but, by goodness, he hadn’t expected that.

  Thirty-Eight

  Kim couldn’t recall the last time she’d visited Winson Green prison but it hadn’t been long enough.

  Now referred to as HMP Birmingham it would always be Winson Green to her. She remembered the occasional trips with Erica and Keith into Birmingham on the train. Each time Keith would warn her that a view of the imposing building was coming up and each time she had been compelled to look. And then regret it. The sight of the Victorian exterior had both frightened and fascinated her. She had feared its stark, harsh, unforgiving shell but also wondered about the bad men that it contained.

  Well, right now 1,450 bad men were held within its Category B walls: a mixture of adult and remand prisoners, and she’d been instrumental in putting a fair few of them in there.

  They approached the iconic police blue columns and entered. Bryant had called ahead and their first visitation was being set up in a private room with a heavy security presence. Not at Kim’s request but Bryant and the director had been in agreement. This visit would not take place over the road at the visitor’s centre.

  A man in his thirties with black hair and a tidy moustache moved forward to greet them.

  ‘Team Leader Gennard. I’ll be supervising your visit here today,’ he said, showing her his customer service training.

  A part of her objected to the emblem on his shirt of the private security company. The privatisation of prisons which began in 1992 did not sit well with her. Her mind could not reconcile the idea of the protection of the public from dangerous criminals as a profit-making business. The potential consequences of cost-cutting and penny-pinching could be disastrous.

  But that wasn’t this man’s fault, she thought, as Bryant shook his hand and thanked him.

  ‘ID please,’ he said, pleasantly, with an expression that said: No one bypasses that rule.

  They both held up their identification. He produced a basket and nodded towards it. ‘Everything in here,’ he said. ‘It’ll all be returned.’

  ‘Everything?’ Kim questioned.

  ‘The improvised weapons would make your toes curl,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen knives made from toothbrushes, razor whips. We even have to monitor water usage,’ he said, pleasantly as though still trying to make their visit a positive experience.

  ‘Water’s pretty harmless, isn’t it?’ Bryant asked and even she was wondering what the most ingenious minds could make of that.

  ‘Ha, don’t be fooled into thinking anything is harmless around a devious criminal mind. Water seems safe enough until you fill a plastic bag with it and drop it from a great height on someone’s head. Then it’s a water bomb with the ability to kill.’

  She was sure of it.

  ‘Okay, all set?’ he asked, as though they were taking some kind of day trip.

  ‘Almost,’ she said, turning to her colleague. ‘Bryant, stay here.’

  His expression said, not bloody likely, but it was important for what she was about to do.

  ‘Guv, I don’t think…’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, decisively before turning away.

  ‘Harris, Iqbal, with me,’ Gennard called to a group of white-shirted officers.

  The two biggest stepped forward and followed them through the key-coded door and remained silent until Gennard stopped short at a heavy metal door.

  He key-coded his number and opened it.

  Iqbal stepped in before them and took a place in the left-hand corner. Harris moved in behind.

  Kim appraised the muscly, shaven-headed man with a scar where his left eye should have been. Kim felt no remorse that she’d been responsible. She was looking at the most evil, twisted man she had ever met whose thirst for inflicting physical pain knew no bounds. The hatred in his eyes travelled the space between them.

  She smiled right through it as she said, ‘Hey, Symes, are you pleased to see me?’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘Settle down, settle down,’ Gennard said, as Symes tried to wrench his handcuffs from the security bar that confined him to the table.

  There were no chairs on this side of the table. Evidently, his feelings for her had not softened since they’d last seen each other and she had embedded glass in his eye. She was exceptionally proud of the scarring she’d given this man as a permanent reminder that he’d failed in his efforts.

  ‘So, how’ve you been, Symes?’ she asked as Gennard came to stand beside her.

  ‘What the fuck you want, bitch?’ he asked, as his nostrils flared.

  ‘Just a welfare check. See if you’re behaving yourself.’

  ‘I swear if I could—’

  ‘Symes,’ Gennard warned.

  ‘You been making friends and playing nice in here?’ she asked.

  ‘The fuck it’s your business,’ he spat.

  ‘Ahhh, nobody wants to play, eh? Good to see the guys in here have standards.’

  Kim could feel Gennard stiffening
beside her at the lazy, taunting tone but it was necessary, calculated and intentional. And that’s why she had wanted Bryant out of the room. He would have tried to stop her.

  ‘I mean, even these guys can’t stand cowards that hurt children,’ she said, staring into his one good eye.

  ‘Just one hand around your fucking throat and—’

  ‘And they don’t much care for failures, do they? I suppose they know you were stopped by a woman, which must do your credibility zero good,’ she said, making the figure o with her thumb and finger.

  ‘Gennard, you wanna get this?…’

  ‘And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that those little girls are happy, fit and healthy and they give you no thought at all,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘I’ll wring your—’

  ‘So, come on, who you been taking needlework classes with, anyone interesting?’ she asked, noting how the rage was travelling all the way to his white clenched knuckles but for once he remained silent.

  ‘So, you been thinking about me much?’ she asked.

  Symes suddenly sat back and regarded her coolly.

  ‘Somebody got it in for you, bitch?’ he asked.

  Kim realised that throughout their exchange he had not looked at anyone else in the room once and neither had she.

  ‘Answer the question, Symes,’ she said.

  ‘You really think I’m after you?’ he asked.

  ‘Answer the question,’ she said again.

  ‘You know, Stone, your face keeps me awake every fucking night. I picture you underneath me struggling and screaming while I rape the fuck out of—’

  ‘Symes,’ Gennard warned.

  Kim held up her hand. ‘Let him speak freely,’ she said. She was here to learn the depth of his hatred for her and whether he could be responsible, remotely, for the murder of Amy and Mark. She had goaded him into brutal honesty and now she had to listen.

  ‘I picture you screaming for mercy as I fucking break you in half with my cock. And when my dick is done I lamp the living daylights out of you. One broken bone after another until I’m kicking around a bag of skin with every internal organ smashed.’

  Kim could see the veil of ecstasy dropping into his eyes as he spoke. This man had only ever lived for violence but now he only lived for violence inflicted on her.

  She had no doubt what would happen if this man ever got free.

  She hid the sensation of the cold finger travelling up her spine.

  ‘Yeah, whatever, now are you gonna answer the question?’ she pushed.

  ‘If somebody’s rattling your cage then they have my fucking vote, but one thing you should already know about me, you fucking bitch, slut, whore.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If it was me that was after you, you’d already be dead.’

  Forty

  Symes closed his palm around his flaccid dick and started to pump.

  Yesterday, after a visit from Deana – the dirty slag – he’d had the pleasure of whacking off in the visitor’s toilets after telling Gennard he couldn’t hold himself back to the wing.

  There was something satisfying about having a wank in the visitor’s toilets. The clean floors with well-stocked bog roll and a smell that wasn’t four-day-old piss and shit.

  But not today. Today he hadn’t even been taken to the visitor’s room. Not safe for the visitor, they’d said and they’d been fucking right to chain him to the damn table because if his hands had been free…

  His hand moved back and forth trying to expel the poison the bitch had put right into his balls. The rage that, always present, had been fanned and needed to fire out of him in order for him to think straight.

  He thought back to Deana’s visit the previous day, her big tits straining against the cheap tee shirt two sizes too small. Her wobbling flesh had done nothing for him but the slut knew what he liked. Her right hand had hovered over the milky white skin before pinching her own flesh, gently at first, teasing him and then harder until red patches had started to appear. His arousal had begun as the marks had deepened, when the discomfort had showed on her face. She’d grabbed the flesh harder, twisting it roughly, digging in her talon-like nails until she’d cried out with the pain.

  He’d thought he was gonna come there and then.

  He pumped harder trying to hold on to the image of her discomfort, her bruises, her pain.

  But his dick hung loosely in his hand.

  He returned his mind to the one memory that always got his juices flowing, used sparingly in case he ever wore it out.

  He pictured Kim fucking Stone on the floor of the basement, placing herself between him and the nine-year-old girl whose life he’d been promised.

  He remembered the feeling of kicking her hard in the knee to bring her to the ground. The groan of pain that had escaped from her mouth.

  There it is, he thought to himself, as his dick began to wake up.

  He pictured himself on top of her, his fist smashing into the side of her face.

  Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, he thought, as his hand worked harder.

  Her face flinching against the pain he was inflicting.

  This was more like it, he thought, as the heat surged through his hand.

  ‘Come on, Symes, we ain’t got all day,’ Gennard called from outside.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he shouted back at the intrusion.

  But it was too late. Gennard’s voice prompted the reminder of why the guard was with him anyway. Because of that bitch’s visit.

  And the new vision now came to haunt him, replacing the old, treasured memory kept safe for his own pleasure.

  The bitch, fit and healthy, pain-free and without injury. Her smug, victorious face mocking him from the other side of the room.

  His dick turned limp in his hands and he knew that he would never get that precious memory back.

  And now he hated the bitch even more.

  Forty-One

  Alison watched as Stacey approached and knocked before entering The Bowl.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  Alison shook her head.

  ‘Tea, water?’

  Alison held up a silver flask containing a smoothie prepared at home. ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ she asked, pleasantly. ‘Data mining isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and—’

  ‘Stacey, it doesn’t matter if you creep around the subject all day or ask me outright, it’ll be the same answer, which is, I can’t tell you what I’m working on.’

  ‘But she’s hiding stuff from us, isn’t she? You can at least tell me that.’

  Alison hesitated for just a second before nodding.

  ‘I’m sorry to say, Stacey, that she’s definitely doing that.’

  Alison watched as the constable retook her seat in the general office. Regardless of whether or not she agreed with Stone’s secrecy she had to respect it.

  Despite the DI’s insistence on Alexandra Thorne she had placed a call to the warden of Drake Hall to ring her back to establish any changes in the woman’s pattern of behaviour. Any new visitors on the scene? Any new alliances in the prison? If the psychiatrist truly was a sociopath she was a contender whether or not she was in prison. Bryant’s comments led her to believe that Thorne’s efforts had already taken place from behind bars, which only increased Alison’s suspicions. And unlike Stone, her own experience of sociopaths was that they rarely gave up after one attempt.

  But after her meeting with DCI Woodward her mind was still on Beverly Wright, lying in a hospital bed and the mistake she’d made which had put her there.

  She wondered whether it was her own arrogance that refused to accept the outcome of the West Mercia Police investigation. She knew that was a possibility. No one ever wanted to admit they were wrong, especially when the error had led to an innocent female being brutally beaten and raped.

  Alison was unable to stop herself opening the folder on her laptop, asking herself for the hundredth time why she hadn’t archiv
ed it or let it go.

  And it was because she couldn’t understand her mistake. She needed to know where she’d gone wrong. How could she do her job here with this team or any team in the future if she didn’t understand where she’d messed up?

  It was almost four months ago that she’d been called in to assist on the brutal rape and murder of a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Malvern due to a lack of physical clues left at the scene.

  She had known immediately that the task was challenging, given that a fundamental aspect of profiling was that multiple crimes could be linked to a specific offender, and that the profile could be used to predict the offender’s future actions.

  With only one crime she’d had no choice but to work on the premise that behaviour reflects personality.

  With multiple crimes she would have been able to use linkage analysis to find similar cases with little evidence and link them through similarities, but the brutal rape and murder of Jennifer Townes was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  She’d studied every piece of information, reading it over and over again, extracting typologies – categorising the crime scene and by extension the offender’s personality.

  And eventually she had given them a profile of the offender, by which time the team had decided on a prime suspect, but she had insisted they were wrong.

  They had fancied an ex-boyfriend of Jennifer, a wannabe musician who toured the pubs and clubs of Worcester gigging and sniffing after his big break. Alison had insisted they were wrong. Curtis Swayne was a creative, unstable drifter who lived in someone’s spare room. Their interest was all because he’d demonstrated violent tendencies after a pub fight at a bar where Jennifer had worked part-time.

  They had listened initially and had focussed the investigation on people they’d interviewed that did match the profile. Two suspects in particular.

  Gerard Batham, a twenty-eight-year-old junior partner at the law firm where Jennifer worked during the day. His ambition, ruthlessness, drive and organisation along with his good looks had made him a possible suspect.