Page 6 of Dying Truth

‘Four minutes, guv,’ he said, reminding her of how long it had taken them to get there.

‘But she’s so bloody young,’ Kim said, opening the car door. She was sure that many teenagers had contemplated ending it all but that was a long way from actually doing it. How bad must things have been for her to actually jump to certain death?

She paused and turned, taking a good look at the building.

‘What’s up?’ Bryant asked.

‘Dunno,’ she answered honestly, as her gaze travelled up from the location of the body to the roof.

Her brain was already sorting through the cases on her desk and the explanation to both Woody and the CPS about the collapsed case of Mrs Worley. Her mind had left this place and was already heading back to the office. It was only her gut that remained.

And something didn’t feel right to her.

‘Troubled, I heard the counsellor say to Inspector Plant,’ Bryant prompted.

‘Jeez, weren’t we all at thirteen?’ she said.

At that age she had just lost Keith and Erica, the only two adults that had ever loved her.

‘Guv, you’ve got thatGhostbusterlook on your face.’

‘That what?’ she asked as her eyes reached the top of the building.

‘The expression that says you’re looking for something that’s just not there.’

‘Hmm…’ she said, absently.

Her eyes travelled over the grand three-storey building, taking in the high windows, the rounded arcade at the centre, the flat roof with stone balustrade that linked the two arched roofs that topped the ivy-covered wings standing proud of the recessed centre.

‘Guv, time to go,’ Bryant prompted. ‘We’ve got plenty of our own cases back at the station.’

He was right, as usual. The major cases that landed on her desk did nothing to stem the flow of lesser cases. It wasn’t a card game where a murder cancelled out sexual assault, robbery and gang-related violence. They were still playing catch-up from the incidents that had mounted up during the recent murder of night workers on Tavistock Road.

And yet just because something looked like a duck and sounded like a duck. Didn’t mean it really was a duck.

She slammed the car door shut.

‘Guv…’ her colleague warned.

‘Yeah, in a minute, Bryant,’ she said, walking back towards the building.

Five

‘Is this the only way up to the roof?’ Kim asked, as they mounted stone steps from the third floor via a corridor that ran behind a row of bedrooms.

Brendan Thorpe shook his head. ‘There’s a fire escape in the West wing but that’s been closed off to the roof for more than a year now,’ he said, taking a set of keys from his pocket that hung lower than it would have done if his trouser belt had been working more effectively rather than sitting beneath the middle-aged paunch.

He tried the door first to find it locked.

‘Could Sadie have got a spare key from anywhere?’

Thorpe looked puzzled. ‘I don’t see how,’ he said, frowning.

‘Well, she got up here somehow,’ Kim observed, in case he’d forgotten there was a dead teenager on the ground. The girl’s purloining of the key was about to be the least of his problems.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector, you’ll have to bear with me, I’m still in a little bit of shock,’ he said, trying the wrong key.

‘I understand that, Mr Thorpe, but it would be useful to know how many roof keys are in existence.’