Page 28 of Killing Mind

Twenty-Four

Bryant pulled the car to a stop in front of a row of houses on Wrights Lane in Old Hill.

Built around Heathfield High School in the early seventies the small council estate had been an aspirational place to live for people needing social housing.

The new properties had included a mixture of two and three bed houses and a few flats. The roads had names like Cherry Orchard and Blossom Grove despite there being no orchard or grove in sight. The houses now appeared tired and unloved.

‘Used to be a park up there,’ Bryant said, nodding up the road. ‘My dad would offer to take me from under mum’s feet for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon before the wrestling started. He’d sit in the Prince of Wales pub opposite and watch me across the road.’

Kim marvelled at how parenting had changed in the years since.

She knocked on the door of the last known address for Tyler Short already forming her bad news face. Luckily the expression wasn’t too distant a cousin from the look that shaped her features naturally.

She was surprised when the door was answered by a woman in her mid-twenties with a baby suckling at her breast. Did the lad already have a young family?

Bryant glanced away as the woman hitched the baby back into position. Kim got the impression she didn’t care one bit. She liked that. Baby needed fed, baby got fed.

‘Mrs… Miss… Err… Ms Short?’ Kim asked.

She shook her head. ‘None of the above.’

Kim checked the number on the plaque to the side of the door. Yep, definitely the address on the driver’s licence.

‘Are you any relation to Tyler Short?’ Kim asked.

She shook her head and winced as the baby obviously got rough.

‘Sorry, little bugger’s got hard gums.’

‘We have this as the last address for a twenty-year-old male who…’

‘Hang on. There was a kid that lived here before us with his nan. She died, which of course we weren’t told before we took the place, but I don’t know what their names were. We’ve been here about two and a half years but it was empty for a while before that.’

‘So, you’d have no idea where he would have gone after that?’

‘None, sorry. I assume the council kicked him out when his nan died cos she was the tenant not him.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Kim said, walking away.

She took out her phone right at the second it started to ring.

‘Stace, tell me you’ve found…’

‘Can’t find any evidence of any friendship between our victims,’ Stacey said, getting straight into it. ‘But Tyler was at Dudley College too. Dropped out almost three years ago.’

‘Around the time his nan died,’ Kim observed.

‘Apparently, cos his last post on social media was a poem to his grandmother.’

‘His last?’

‘Yep,’ Stacey said. ‘Just like Samantha his presence on social media came to an abrupt end on the last day he attended college.’

Two victims, both at the same college, Kim thought.

‘Thanks, Stace, could be a coincidence but see if you can find any other missing persons linked to the college, maybe talk to a couple of tutors and…’

‘Hang on, I’m not done yet, boss. Talking of social media I’m not too sure about what Myles Brown told you about Sophie.’