Page 57 of Killing Mind

He sat back down.

She continued. ‘A few weeks after the CCTV footage, I went round to the house. I’m not sure why but it was a particularly bad day. I think some part of me hoped that miraculously she’d be there, cooking lunch or tending her plants. Another part of me just wanted the familiarity of the home. Picture both my mum and dad there as they’d always been.’

‘And?’

‘My key no longer fit the door. I looked inside. Thank God there was no one home. The house and contents had already been sold.’

Penn sat back, surprised.

‘So, whoever she’s with, officer, has taken her for all that she’s worth.’

Now that hadn’t been on the report.

Forty-Six

Kim approached the lake at Himley Park already feeling the change in energy from the day before.

The tent had been removed from the spot where Tyler’s body had been found but it remained cordoned off. There were still approximately ten white suits around the perimeter of the lake and a collection of five more where the shoe had been.

To the right was the diving crew which consisted of a team of nine.

‘You feel it?’ Bryant asked, as they approached the team.

There was an energy, an air of expectation, as though the arrival of the diving crew had galvanised everyone.

‘That was a quick turnaround,’ Mitch said, approaching from the left. ‘Last I heard your boss refused the request to drag the lake.’

‘I’ve got a creative team,’ she responded.

If it hadn’t been for Penn they wouldn’t be here at all. Clearly the techies had found nothing so far that would have strengthened their case.

Mitch nodded towards the divers. ‘Head guy, named Guy, says they should be ready to go in about ten minutes.’

‘Cheers, Mitch,’ she said as he went back to his business.

She watched the new arrivals for a moment as they prepared for the task at hand away from everyone else like a well-oiled machine. These guys relied on each other to stay alive.

She knew from experience that underwater teams were normally called in for recovery of bodies, vehicles or evidence. It was an unenviable task not to mention physically demanding and mentally taxing. It could get disgusting down there.

Scuba divers scoured the bottom of a body of water by hand, moving back and forth in straight lines, like mowing a lawn. Working in pairs they held onto a rope while sifting through silt, mud, rubbish and foliage.

Had the divers been called in the previous day, before the sailing guy tugged Tyler Short back to the bank, the body would have been placed into a body bag underwater to preserve any evidence but also to avoid family members or press seeing the body being removed from the water.

Kim approached the diver who had been pointed out to her. He was already fully kitted out in his dry suit; unlike wet suits, they were designed to prevent water reaching the skin to guard against polluted water.

Three other divers were busy hoisting oxygen tanks onto their backs. Five divers were not suited at all. For safety more divers stayed out of the water in case of problems.

‘Thanks for getting here so quickly,’ Kim offered.

He smiled. ‘Hey, it’s a day search. We’re good with that,’ he said, attaching a yellow safety line to one of the divers.

Kim knew these guys undertook an intensive eight-week training course followed by regular refreshers for the privilege of being submerged in near freezing conditions with zero visibility and for the pleasure of being on the police dive team. Not a job for the claustrophobic or faint-hearted.

‘We’re gonna do a quick whizz round on the boat with the sonar first and then send the guys in.’

Kim knew that the sonar equipment used sound propagation to detect objects underwater, which would then be explored more thoroughly by the divers.

‘You really think there’s a body down there?’ he asked, as one of the divers called him towards the shored dinghy.