Page 11 of Killing Mind

‘Stace, keep digging and Penn, get me a red pen and a ruler. Now.’

Eleven

Britney reached into her backpack and took out the last few flyers. Once she’d handed these out she could go home.

She smiled to herself as she remembered when she’d first started doing this job. On her third day she’d left the college early when the storm clouds that had threatened all day had unleashed thunder, lightning and torrential rain. With a backpack half full of flyers she had returned home, her clothes soaked to the skin like melted plastic and rain dripping from her hair. It had been explained to her that people couldn’t just abandon their jobs due to a spot of bad weather. She had considered mentioning that the storm had lasted for almost three hours, but really, she could understand the point being made. Her work was too important to just abandon it at the first hurdle. Her family depended on her and she swore she would not let them down again.

The following day her backpack had contained the usual three hundred leaflets as well as the ones from the day before. She had never gone home early since.

As ever she was dismayed to see so many of the leaflets littering the ground; screwed up, walked over, having been thrown away once out of her sight.

She wasn’t angry, just sad that the recipients hadn’t bothered to read all the important information that could change their lives the way it had changed hers.

Britney remembered the day she’d been given the leaflet, almost five years ago and two days after she’d turned nineteen, just another birthday she hadn’t bothered to celebrate.

Birthdays didn’t mean a lot when you were in and out of the care system. They weren’t remembered by the father who had walked out. They weren’t celebrated by the mother who had abandoned you because you interfered with her social life, and the short stay foster homes didn’t take too much notice either.

Britney shook away the negative thoughts; they were poisonous to her soul. She didn’t need them any more. She didn’t need any link to her past. It had given her nothing, unlike her present which gave her everything she could ever want. For the first time in her life she belonged. She mattered and she knew it was always meant to be.

She looked around her and smiled. Never mind about the leaflets on the ground. Every single person who walked past her was a potential survivor, someone whose life she could change. Every person was an opportunity. And so what of the leaflets discarded. Maybe someone who needed it would tread on one and read it at a time in their life when they needed something more.

She looked around her, seeing everything with wide fresh eyes. It was her job, her duty to try and help some of these people understand that there really was another way.

Her eyes rested on a single female sitting on the wall alone. Her legs dangled and she idly kicked her heels. She looked at something on her phone and then put it away. As she raised her head Britney saw two things: the acne-covered skin and a quiet loneliness in her eyes.

Britney knew immediately that this girl needed her help.

Twelve

‘Okay, Penn, lie on the floor,’ Kim instructed.

‘Excuse me, boss,’ he said, holding up his right hand which was now covered with small red marks.

She thought for a second. ‘Yeah, scrub that.’

He looked relieved. ‘Thank goodness for…’

‘Lie across the desks instead.’

He tried to read her face for humour. There was none.

‘Lie with your head on Bryant’s desk and your bottom half on the spare desk.’ She pointed to where she wanted him positioned. ‘I need to be on your right.’

He did as she asked while Stacey sat back in her chair for a better view, chewing on the end of a red pen. She had painstakingly copied every blood spatter mark from the photo onto Penn’s hand.

‘Stace, pass me that ruler.’

The constable slapped the twelve inches of plastic into her palm like a nurse assisting a surgeon.

‘Hang on, boss,’ she said. ‘If we’re trying to get this as close as possible, that knife in the photos is only about six inches long.’

‘Good point,’ Kim said, hanging the ruler over the side of the desk. She brought down her hand forcefully and snapped the ruler in half.

‘Bloody hell,’ Penn said, jolting away from her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, not realising how close she’d been to his ear.

‘Okay, lift up your right hand, Penn.’