Page 16 of Killing Mind

‘Yer know, I wish you could have known her before. Training to be a nurse she was when the bastard got her. Didn’t have fancy-pants ambitions, didn’t want to take over the world. Just wanted to take care of folks. She was full of life, hope. Loved laughing, loved dancing. Loved everything till that fucker took it away from her.’ The disgust crept back into his eyes. ‘If you’d known the person she was back then you’d feel even fucking worse than you do already. Now piss off and don’t come back,’ he said, closing the door.

Bryant walked away from the flat haunted by the face of a woman who had not looked his way once.

Sixteen

‘Okay, guys, as you know the death of Samantha Brown has been re-categorised as murder. Keats is performing the post-mortem right now, but I think it’s best to assume we’re not going to get much forensically either from the body or from her home. So, what do we know so far?’

Stacey leaned forward. ‘Samantha was twenty-one years old and appeared perfectly normal until all social media activity stopped three years ago. Wide circle of friends at the time, one sister who is two years younger. She had the odd boyfriend by the looks of it and was attending Dudley College. On the face of it outgoing and social. Not sure about the social media absence but no criminal record and no record of her being admitted to any local mental health facility.’

Stacey ended with a shrug, indicating that was all she had.

‘Penn, your observations?’ Kim asked.

‘The picture Stacey paints bears no resemblance to the current home of Samantha Brown. Although she’s been there a few months there’s no evidence of her outgoing personality or any personality at all…’

‘One candle,’ Kim remarked, more convinced than ever that the candle was how the visitor got themselves into the flat. She’d sent Mitch a message asking him to pay particular attention to that item. His terse response had mentioned something about sucking eggs.

‘Which tells us it was someone she knew…’

‘Or a pissed off neighbour,’ Stacey interrupted.

‘No radio, music centre or speakers in the property,’ Penn noted. ‘So, I don’t think it was due to the noise.’

‘Could she have been off travelling for a few years?’ Bryant asked.

Kim shook her head. ‘Doubtful. People normally return with keepsakes, souvenirs from travels abroad. There was nothing. And that wouldn’t have stopped her posting on social media.’

Although Bryant had been with her on her first visit they had only entered the bedroom, and so he would not have seen just how stark the rest of the property was. Had he been there he would have made some kind of joke about the place still being more homely than her house.

‘Okay, folks, we’re all out of here this morning. Stacey, I want you talking to Samantha’s friends. Find out as much as you can. What contact have they had with her over the last few years and why did she disappear from social media. And, Penn, I want you talking to her neighbours. We need to know more about this girl now. What were her habits? Who did she see? We need to paint a picture of the girl and her life.’

Who was Samantha Brown?

And she was hoping her parents could help her out with that.

Seventeen

‘You’ve been to see her, haven’t you?’ Kim asked, as Bryant drove them towards the home of Myles and Kate Brown.

He hesitated and nodded. ‘First thing before shift.’ He glanced her way. ‘How did you know?’

She shrugged in response. She knew because she knew Bryant. There was a core of decency in him as hard as steel. She would be willing to bet he’d offered himself as the official police scapegoat upon which they could vent their anger. He would never hear the words that it was not his fault, that he was not responsible for the second attack. He had been a constable, not a detective but he had carried the guilt for years.

‘Bryant, you’re not doing yourself—’

‘I think we already had this conversation,’ he said, cutting her off.

Okay, she got it. Because she hadn’t given him the answer he wanted, he’d switched her off altogether. Fine by her. Maybe they could now focus on the case at hand.

‘So, how do you think they’re going to react to the news?’ he asked, as though reading her thoughts.

‘Not sure,’ she said, honestly. She understood in a perverse way that wrapped up inside the horror might be a sense of relief.

Any death scarred a family. The death of a child, a death outside the natural order of things, took an even greater toll, but a suicide left behind trails of guilt, felt by everyone close to the person. What clues did I miss? Should I have done more? Could I have prevented it? How did I not see my child was in pain? Why didn’t she come to me for help? And for the parents those questions would never go away. Friends and acquaintances would eventually move on to other worries and concerns, but not the parents. Murder brought a whole new set of questions but it somehow removed a layer of guilt.

‘But, we’re about to find out,’ she said, as Bryant pulled the car to a stop in front of the house.

The door was opened by Myles, dressed in plain black trousers and an open-neck white shirt.