Page 3 of Killing Mind

She took a breath.

‘Yes, Keats, I’m ready to call it. Suicide it is.’

Two

The crowds had thinned by the time Kim stepped out of the building into the warm early September sunshine.

She guessed with only a couple of days until school term started spectators had been called back to their normal daily lives of going to work or buying new school uniform.

She groaned as the dispersing masses revealed someone who had no such commitments.

‘Hey, Inspector, you got…’

‘I saw you, Frost, which is why I was walking the other way.’

As the local reporter for theDudley Star, Tracy Frost and Kim had had their moments of understanding over the years but, for Kim, the woman would always be one thing, a journalist after a juicy story.

‘So, is it true that…’

‘Frost,’ Kim said, startling the woman by coming to a standstill. ‘How many times have you harassed me as I’ve left a location?’

‘A few,’ she admitted.

‘And exactly how many times have I offered you any information that even you could stretch into a news headline?’

‘None,’ she admitted. ‘But I just…’

‘And that’s not gonna change today,’ Kim said, resuming her journey. ‘But feel free to ask Bryant,’ she tossed back over her shoulder. ‘Because he is in just the right kind of mood to talk to you.’

‘Detective Sergeant Bryant, can you tell me…’

‘I’m assuming you’re impervious to sarcasm, Frost,’ Bryant said in a low voice, as he reached the driver’s door of the Astra Estate.

Tracy Frost tossed her blonde hair before flouncing away on four inch heels.

Kim couldn’t help recall the picture of a similar mane of blonde hair she’d just seen, matted with blood. She shook the image away. There was nothing she could do to help Samantha Brown now.

Bryant’s phone buzzed as she felt hers vibrate in her pocket.

‘Samantha’s next of kin,’ Bryant observed as Kim scrolled to the message from Stacey.

‘I expect the sarge there will pass it…’

‘We’ll go,’ Kim said, noting the address of the girl’s parents was less than two miles away.

Bryant turned his wrist and checked his watch. It was almost eleven and he was due to finish his half shift at one.

The motion irritated her.

‘Bryant, I know you’re taking some “me” time today, but you’re still at work now and we’ve got a couple of parents whose lives are about to be shattered following the suicide of their twenty-one-year-old daughter. News that I really thinkweshould be delivering but only if you’re sure you can spare the time.’

He didn’t look her way, or apologise for his lack of sensitivity. Instead, he offered her the same tone he’d offered Tracy Frost.

‘Yes, guv, of course I can spare the time.’

Three

Kim understood the irony of her strong intolerance for people who were in a mood. Her own disposition hovered somewhere between aggressive and hostile and that was on a permanent basis. It was her natural state and anything warmer took a great deal of planning, effort and caffeine.