Page 24 of Deadly Cry

‘Wait a minute. Let’s act it out,’ she said, taking Bryant’s position just outside the door. ‘You be Katrina,’ she instructed. She was the killer and knew what she was going to do. Bryant was the victim and had no idea what was in her mind.

Bryant stepped out of the shop and took a couple of strides towards her, moving his arms around as Katrina had been doing.

The second he was out the door, she grabbed his elbow, guided him forcefully to the alleyway and kicked the gate shut behind her.

‘Guv, what the?… aah,’ he said as he followed her gaze to where Mitch was taking something from his van.

Bryant had not known what she was going to do and had had little time to act in the three strides it had taken her to remove him from view. Despite the physical differences between them, the element of surprise had been on her side.

‘No clue this was here,’ Bryant said as they headed towards Mitch, who appeared surprised at their direction of travel.

‘Neither did he,’ Kim noted as he tapped a techie on the arm and pointed.

The techie grabbed a role of incident tape and nodded as he passed.

‘For all the good it’ll do,’ Mitch said, stroking his freshly trimmed beard.

‘Play with that too much and it’ll drop off,’ Kim said.

‘My mum told me that once when I was a little boy. Actually, now I come to think of it that had nothing to do with my beard.’

Bryant groaned and shook his head.

‘Hope you didn’t make a special journey,’ Mitch continued, pointing to the clear plastic evidence boxes. ‘Empty. Absolutely nothing of interest so far.’

Kim could hear the frustration in his voice. Given that the hint of a partial fingerprint or a rogue fibre had the power to electrify the man, she was not hopeful for anything of forensic value. If he said they had nothing, they had absolutely nothing.

‘Our guy was very careful to leave no clues behind,’ he said miserably.

They all knew about the theory of transference and so knew that his statement wasn’t true. But you had to have a starting point.

Many things helped to find forensic evidence on a body. The duration of time the killer spent with the victim, the amount of physical contact, the passion involved in the crime. All of these things offered a better chance of the killer leaving something of himself at the scene.

Kim looked back to the gate through which they’d come. In her estimation, killer and victim may have been together for less than two minutes. Grab, walk, snap and dead. To Kim, it was like the speed-dating version of murder.

Everything about this case so far was random. A victim chosen God only knew why. The risks involved with choosing a young mother out shopping with her child, yet carefully planned so that the murder was seen by no one.

Parts of this case indicated that Katrina had been chosen as a means to an end, yet Kim knew that statistically that was unlikely.

Studies indicated that approximately eighty per cent of murder victims were killed by someone they knew.

But what had Katrina done?Kim asked herself as her thoughts continued to chase their own tails.

Before she could make a judgement on whether Katrina was the intended victim or not, she needed to know more about the woman herself.

And for an honest opinion, she knew where she wanted to start.

Twenty-Two

Penn had just about managed to grasp Stacey’s hurried instructions before she’d darted out the door, mumbling something about interviewing a second rape victim.

He’d heard the words ‘medical records’ and ‘CCTV’ and ‘chasing the shops’.

He knew that Stacey had already established that Katrina had attended the morning appointment with her GP, as stated by her husband, and that she’d requested Katrina’s medical records. He was guessing she wanted him to do a follow-up, so he quickly tore off an email to the surgery. Both he and Stacey tended to copy each other in on most things in case they needed to jump in and job share.

Next he sent a group email to all the stores on the high street partner scheme, requesting any CCTV footage of Katrina Nock from inside their premises.

Satisfied he’d covered two of Stacey’s three requests, he readied himself for the final instruction. Following Stacey’s email requests and parameters, they’d received relevant footage from both Asda in Brierley Hill and the Ball Factory. The boss had already viewed the footage at Shop N Save, but there was a copy of everything she’d viewed, and he would look at it again, to see if he could spot anyone appearing in more than one place that would indicate that she’d been followed.