Page 91 of Dying Truth

‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘There are some families paying as little as twenty-six grand a year and some as much as thirty-nine, with the majority around thirty-four per year.’

Kim’s only hope was that such vast amounts of money were producing doctors, physicians, physicists, economists and peacemakers. Nobel prize winners. People who would have the opportunity to do some good. Although Dawson’s findings were taking a good swift kick at that ideology.

‘Hang on,’ she said, as her phone began to ring.

‘Keats,’ she answered, seeing his name on the screen.

‘Am I to expect your presence at the post-mortem of Joanna Wade this morning?’ he asked.

‘Not my case,’ she answered, ignoring the fact that she had no wish to see Joanne’s body being violated regardless of Keats’s sensitivity. ‘Traffic are holding it as a hit-and-run.’

Force Traffic were based at Chelmsley Wood and Wednesbury and were responsible for all roads except motorways. Supported by the Collision Investigation Team they took the lead on accidents involving fatalities or life-changing injuries.

‘Oh, so, she’s not a teacher at the school where you’re investigating the deaths of two children?’ he asked, sarcastically.

She rolled her eyes. ‘You know she is but it’s not my case and I’m under strict, very strict instructions, to behave myself on—’

‘Then I suggest you happen along for coffee,’ he snapped, ending the call.

Keats inviting her along for a social call.

What the hell was going on?

Sixty-Three

‘Okay, Keats, where’s the coffee?’ she asked, walking into the morgue.

She looked above the figure in the metal dish that she guessed to be Joanna Wade. The image of the last breath leaving her body was bad enough. She didn’t need to replace it with a picture of her naked flesh cold and scarred.

‘There’s no coffee,’ he answered. ‘But there is this,’ he said, passing her a piece of paper.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, before looking at it.

‘The contents of Joanna Wade’s back jeans pocket.’

Still Kim didn’t open it. ‘But Traffic will want any evidence—’

‘It’s a copy,’ he said. ‘The original has been bagged for their err… eventual arrival.’

Much as she had wanted to unfold the piece of paper immediately she was conscious of contaminating evidence that the Collision Investigation Unit would pass on to the forensic scene investigators.

‘Have you done it yet?’ she asked, nodding towards the tray.

He followed her gaze. ‘That’s not Joanna Wade,’ he answered.

Kim couldn’t explain the wave of relief that went through her.

‘That’s an urgent case from Hollytree. Stabbing, potentially gang-related.’

Kim understood that this case took precedence. Murder over RTA. Had Joanna been her case she would have already called her death murder and she’d be arguing priority with Keats right now.

‘You gonna read it?’ Bryant asked, looking to the sheet of paper in her hand.

She moved to the side of the room beside Keats’s desk and opened it up.

The paper was lined with faint pencil writing. The words appeared tentative; some were crossed out and overwritten on the top half of the page. Kim frowned as she recognised Sadie’s writing. It was the poem that Joanna had mentioned. The one that had bothered her.

She squinted and tried to read.