Page 127 of Killing Mind

The warehouse looked to be the size of a football pitch and had a large roller shutter door on the front and a single glass entrance door. Any stickers and signs had been peeled off leaving patches of old glue all around the glass. There was no clue as to what the place had previously been used for, but right now it looked derelict.

‘Now what?’ Stacey asked.

Penn looked at the lock on the roller shutter door and then hurried around the side.

Stacey moved from one foot to the other.

‘I reckon I can get in,’ he said, rubbing his hands.

‘What, around the side?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Nah, that one’s double locked. I’ve got a better chance with the roller shutter. Saw a colleague do it once.’

‘Penn, that’s in full view,’ she hissed.

‘Stand in front of me and stop looking so guilty.’

‘We’re breaking in,’ she said as he lowered himself to the ground.

‘We’re the police,’ he reminded her.

‘Without a bloody warrant,’ she snapped back.

‘You think any Magistrate would issue one given what we have?’

Stacey shook her head. Magistrates issued them providing reasonable grounds had been established to suspect an offence had been committed. They had nothing.

‘So, just stand still and keep the blood off your hands.’

Stacey rolled her eyes at the analogy. They might be feet away from another dead body.

She shielded him as best she could while she heard an array of frustrated oofs and aahars coming from his lips.

But the longer she stood there the more she came around to the boss’s thinking. They were actively breaking into a building and not one person was taking a bit of notice, so they’d hardly notice the comings and goings of a vehicle.

‘Got it,’ Penn said, as she heard a metallic snap.

Within seconds the roller shutter was sliding up and still no attention came their way.

When it was about waist high they both ducked underneath it and pulled it back down plunging them into total darkness.

‘Well, that…’ her words trailed away as a single beam of light shone up illuminating the immediate area.

‘Boy scout,’ Penn explained, holding the torch beneath his chin lighting up his face like a Halloween pumpkin.

‘Boo.’

‘Stop it, Penn, that’s creepy,’ she hissed.

‘Okay, try and stay close, we don’t know what’s in here.’

Stacey was about to remind him she wasn’t Jasper when she remembered there was only one torch. She took out her phone and aimed the light at his feet and followed.

Penn shone the light around the vast space which appeared to be empty and hazard free. Breeze block walls were painted white and there was a vague smell of cleaning detergent. She heard a slow rhythmic dripping sound somewhere in the distance.

Penn waved the torch around until the beam found the very end of the space at the furthest point away.

‘What’s that over there?’ Stacey asked, when the torch rested on something solid in the distance.