Page 24 of Killing Mind

Kim groaned. She’d known as soon as she’d received the call from Keats that this wouldn’t avoid press attention for too long. Gone were the days when only the highest budget news outlets could get an overhead view of a crime scene by hiring helicopters and pilots.

Any bloody newspaper could buy a drone and send it overhead.

‘Who found him?’ she asked.

‘One of the guys from the sailing club. Took out one of the boats to check a repair and felt something hit the side. The lace on his trainer got caught up, so the guy thought it’d be a good idea to drag whatever it was to the side. He had no idea.’

Bloody hell, Kim thought, trying to work out how many procedures had not been followed by that one act, and what potential valuable evidence had already been lost. Underwater forensics required special training, and although she didn’t know much about it she knew that some factors remained the same across the board. It was infinitely better if the body remained as close to the resting place as possible.

Given that the only similarity between this body and Samantha Brown was the closeness in age, Kim wondered how the hell she was going to juggle two separate murder enquiries at the same time. The answer was that she couldn’t.

‘I’m wondering how long you think he’s been in there, although I reckon he’s gonna be handed over to another team.’

‘I’m going to say a few weeks at least and I wouldn’t be too sure about it being handed over. A body decomposing in water is slowed to approximately half the time of a body in open air. And grave wax can start forming anywhere from three weeks given the right temperature of the water.’

‘Which is?’

Mitch stepped forward to answer. ‘Below twenty-one degrees Celsius.’

Kim glanced at the body of water. ‘But its early September. The temperature of the lake is surely warmer than…’

‘Aah, the water has three distinct layers,’ Mitch cut in.

‘Mitch, I did not know that,’ she said, raising one eyebrow. The techie loved to impart his knowledge and she had to admit she’d learned plenty from him over the years. ‘Please feel free to educate me.’

He laughed before continuing. ‘The top layer stays warm at around twenty degrees, the middle layer drops dramatically to somewhere between seven and eighteen degrees and the lowest layer is often between four and seven degrees.’

Those were not necessarily numbers she was going to remember but she got the general idea.

‘But if he’s been lying at the bottom of the lake surely that means he drowned?’ She knew that drowning victims sank to the bottom due to the water in the lungs being heavier than oxygen which would cause them to float back up to the surface. ‘This could be an accidental death or suicide. It’s nothing to do with my current case so…’

‘Oh, you’ll want it, Inspector,’ Keats said, knowingly.

She glanced at Bryant before answering.

‘Keats, I know you think I’m superhuman but I think one murder investigation is enough…’

‘Inspector, I barely think you’re human never mind super- but there’s something you haven’t yet seen.’

He nodded to Mitch, who moved to the boy’s feet while Keats put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. Gently they turned him so he was on his back and Kim saw what the body position had been hiding.

The boy’s throat had been cut.

Twenty-One

‘For fuck’s sake, how long has that bloody thing been up there now?’ Kim asked, as they stepped out of the tent.

‘About ten minutes,’ Bryant answered as it hovered right above them.

The total lack of respect for privacy boiled her blood. Few reporters were able to put themselves in the position of family members who didn’t need to be viewing this on bloody YouTube.

She turned and gave it the finger, hoping that shot made the evening news.

It dropped lower. Kim took out her phone, zoomed in and took a photo.

‘Got ya.’

If she could identify which cheap rag was using it, she’d get Woody to pull some strings at a higher level.