Page 94 of First Blood

Suddenly a female voice answered.

Stacey was unsure why she was relieved. Maybe sisterhood and all that.

She took a quick second to introduce herself and then went straight in for the kill.

‘We’re working a couple of murders that we think are linked to your current investigation of Lester Jackson at Redland Hall and—’

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, quickly. ‘But you know that I can’t—’

‘I completely understand,’ Stacey said, unwilling to lose her so soon. ‘And I’m not looking for any detail in your case whatsoever. But is there any way I could ask you a question and just get a yes or a no? I think it could help you in the long run too.’

Silence.

Stacey didn’t hear a no so she ploughed on.

‘I’ve gor a telephone number here and I’d just like to know if it’s come up anywhere in your investigation.’

Silence again, which Stacey took as agreement.

She read off the phone number.

Silence except for the tapping of keys and then just one quiet word.

‘Yes.’

Stacey thanked her and put down the phone.

Now she knew for a fact that she was looking at the phone number of the killer.

Chapter Eighty-Six

By the time Bryant pulled up at the address they’d been given by Keats, two things had happened.

The small, narrow street had been cordoned off and she was now hopping mad.

She all but rammed her ID in the face of a PC as she ducked under the cordon tape. She grabbed the protective slippers from another without speaking.

She could hear Bryant mumbling apologies behind her. He really was going to have to stop doing that. She wasn’t sorry at all but getting pretty pissed off with being summoned left and right across the Black Country.

She headed into the house at speed and reached the living room area at the back.

‘Keats, you are gonna have to start offering some explanation for—’

‘Is this explanation enough, Inspector?’ he asked, standing aside.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said as both the sight and smell hit her immediately.

In all her years she had never come across a stench like that of a rotting corpse. Some described it as decaying meat with a hint of sickly sweetness but she had never heard a description that represented the foulness completely. And this particular corpse had released its bowels. She covered her nose with her hand and tried to take a deep breath using her fingers as a filter mask.

The sight that met her gaze was of a grey sweatshirt, bloodstained from a single stab wound to the chest. A line of blood had seeped from his upper torso to join up with the carnage that appeared to have been wrought on his genitals.

Keats obliged by lifting the lower roll of flesh so she could take a better look.

She heard Bryant’s sharp intake of breath.

The penis and testicles had been stabbed multiple times. The shaft of the penis had been chopped and the testicles held on by a thread.

Her gaze returned to his face where a tie had been doubled and used as a gag. To prevent alerting the neighbours to the noise, she suspected.