Page 4 of Dying Truth

‘Four minutes,’ he said, having timed from call to arrival.

An imposing bell tower stood to the right of the building.

‘Bryant…’ Kim said, as they neared the building.

‘I can’t see anyone up there, either,’ he said, as she brought the car to a screeching halt, just yards away from a crowd of people, all looking down at the ground.

‘Looks like you were right, Bryant,’ she said, approaching the sea of horrified faces.

The girl had made it down after all.

Three

‘Police officer, move aside,’ Kim commanded as she pushed her way through the circle of people formed of both adults and students.

Horrified gasps had been muted into silence, but the open mouths told Kim it hadn’t been long. Damn, if she’d just broken the speed limit she might have been here in time.

‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ said a shaky female voice somewhere behind her.

Kim ignored it. An ambulance was no good to them now.

‘Get everyone away from here,’ she growled to a smartly dressed man leaning down towards the figure on the ground.

He hesitated for a second before springing into action.

She could hear Bryant’s booming voice already moving students away.

Too late, probably, as they would never un-see the sight before them. It would play over and over in their minds and revisit them in their dreams. It never ceased to amaze Kim that people were so eager to give their minds something traumatic to grab and hold for ever.

‘Damn it,’ she said to herself, taking a closer look at the diminutive figure on the ground.

The girl was dressed in the school colours. Her yellow shirt was crumpled and falling out of the brown skirt that had curled over and exposed her bottom. Despite the dark tights covering her skin, Kim leaned down and gently folded it back.

She lay face down, her left cheek against the gravel, a pool of blood staining the white stones from the impact wound of her head hitting the ground. Her right eye stared along the path. Her left arm was flailed out as though reaching while her right lay close to her side. Both legs were straight and pointed to the metal grating that bordered a single row of daffodils close to the building. Her feet were encased in flat, black shoes. A grey smudge was visible on the sole of the right pump.

Kim guessed her to be early teens.

‘What’s her name?’ she asked as the smartly dressed male reappeared beside her.

‘Sadie Winters,’ he replied, quietly. ‘She’s thirteen years old,’ he added.

Jesus Christ, Kim thought.

He offered his hand across the body. ‘Brendan Thorpe, Principal of Heathcrest.’

Kim ignored the hand and simply nodded.

‘You saw her on the roof?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I heard someone shouting in the corridor that a student was on the roof threatening to jump. I immediately called the police but by the time I got out here…’

‘She’d already jumped?’ Kim asked.

He nodded and swallowed.

Kim had to wonder what could have caused a thirteen-year-old to take her own life. How bad could her life have been?

‘Just a child,’ Brendan Thorpe whispered.