Page 58 of First Blood

‘What, spit it out.’

‘She researched us all.’

Jenny put down her knife and fork, folded her arms and waited.

‘And?’

‘Seems a bit sneaky to me,’ he said, choosing not to reveal that she had fought his battles for him.

‘What? Trying to get some background on the people who form her brand-new team. I suppose she could always have taken you away on a weekend team-building course if that pesky dead body hadn’t got in the way.’

Bryant chuckled as he cleared his plate. That was one of the things he loved about his wife: if she didn’t agree with him she didn’t sugar-coat it.

‘And you know something else,’ she continued, ‘it’s not even that that’s bothering you. It’s all this promotion stuff going around in your head. You should talk to her about it.’

He shook his head. ‘No point. Team might be disbanded at the end of this case.’

Jenny shrugged as she collected up the plates. ‘Well, if you’re not going to help yourself…’ her words trailed away. She stopped at the doorway. ‘But bear in mind, that knowing more about the people you work with is never a bad thing and it can work both ways.’

He looked after her for just a second.

There was something in him that didn’t want to learn anything about his boss that she wasn’t willing to share herself. And yet, a more realistic part of him already knew she wasn’t the sharing type.

He grabbed the laptop and fired it up at the dining table.

He was no data miner. He knew that. His idea of police work was following clues and reading people. He’d been brought through the force the old-fashioned way. His best learning had come from walking the beat and getting to know people; how they walked, talked, acted out their guilt or innocence without really knowing it.

He’d been in his mid-twenties when he’d decided he wanted to join CID, and their meeting with Sergeant Greene earlier had resonated with him, and reminded him of a fifteen-year-old girl raped and murdered in Pelsall. His own daughter no more than two years old then.

He had been first on the scene following an anonymous phone call and had been rendered speechless, numbed by the sight before him. Out of that numbness had grown an anger, a rage unlike anything he’d known before. He wanted to find the bastard who had done this, who had brutally raped, murdered and discarded this young girl in a state of undress.

He had worked through every emotion that her parents would feel upon hearing the news, of both her murder and the manner of her death. Their lives would be destroyed for ever because of one man. And he’d wanted to be the officer to cuff and caution that bastard.

Forty minutes later CID arrived and dismissed him from the scene pending his statement. After watching over her body and silently assuring her that her murderer would be found, he’d been told to walk away. As he’d trudged back to the squad car he had felt as though he was abandoning her; already breaking the promise he’d made. That he was somehow letting her down.

The following day he’d begun the process to become a detective. The face of Wendy Harrison had driven him all the way.

He shook away the memory and wondered if his boss had any such defining cases, victims who had never left her.

He typed her title into the search bar and got results. He scrolled down to see a collection of news videos and quotes for press statements. There were not as many as he’d thought he’d find. He could have guessed that she was not the type of DI to court either the press or the limelight. He saw a couple of commendations and yet no photos of her receiving them. He smiled. She probably never bothered to turn up to the events.

Two pages of Google results were pretty much the same and told him what he already knew.

He was about to log off, satisfied he could tell Jenny that DI Stone was exactly the kind of officer he’d thought she was.

Then he saw a note at the top of the screen which asked him a question.

Did you mean Kimberly Stone?

He paused. He wasn’t sure. Did he?

His hand hovered over the mouse button. To his knowledge the guv had only researched his work achievements and not his personal history or private life. He should offer her the same respect.

He pressed on the link and was immediately presented with a photo of a dozen police officers surrounding a stretcher being carried to an ambulance.

The headline screamed:

Surviving twin critically ill