Page 6 of Killing Mind

Stacey and Penn were finishing up the paperwork for a serious assault they had wound up yesterday for CPS, and she really should be looking at the three new cases that had landed on her desk today. And yet she couldn’t get the image of Samantha Brown’s face out of her mind.

Everything about the scene had been right. Keats had had no doubt and neither had she.

She pulled one of the three new files forward. That was the trouble when you worked murder cases most of the time. You saw foul play everywhere. Occupational hazard, she thought, opening the file.

And yet, Kate Brown had said something about Samantha being ready for something. That hadn’t piqued her interest but Myles Brown cutting off his wife’s words had.

She closed the file in front of her, a question already forming in her brain.

She’d looked closely at the scene this morning. But had she looked closely enough?

Five

Bryant couldn’t shake the feeling that had plagued him from the moment he’d woken up. He knew he’d been short with the guv but his mind had already been on the proceedings due to take place in about one hour’s time.

He’d followed this process many times already over the years, but there was a knot in his stomach that today was going to be different.

It was the murder of Wendy Harrison and the case that had changed his life.

As a twenty-six-year old police constable he had been the first officer to arrive at the scene of the brutal rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old girl who had been missing for forty-eight hours. The horror of the scene had shaken him like no other case either before or since he’d watched over Wendy Harrison’s body.

Forty-five minutes he’d waited for CID to attend and in that time he had promised the young girl that he would find and arrest the bastard responsible if it was the last thing he did.

The attending DI had dismissed him as he’d walked around the body, sending Bryant back to the station to complete his statement.

As Bryant walked away he’d felt he was abandoning her, breaking his promise, even though there’d been nothing further he could do. That knowledge hadn’t stopped her face haunting his dreams for weeks afterwards.

It was that feeling of uselessness that had propelled him to join CID. He wanted to be the person making the arrests, tracking down the criminals and not the person watching over the body before being dismissed from the scene.

He had closely followed the case, and CID had caught the murderer, but it should have been before he’d had the chance to strike again. Peter Drake had claimed another victim before they’d finally caught him.

So, after letting Wendy Harrison down once, he’d vowed that it wouldn’t happen again.

At regular intervals over the years he’d been called upon to do his bit, as he was doing today, to make sure Peter Drake never again saw the light of day.

Six

‘You sure this has passed its MOT?’ Kim asked as Penn crunched his rust-bucket into third gear.

‘Due next month, boss, but she’ll do me proud.’

‘I’ve seen better looking crime scenes,’ she observed as the glove box fell open onto her knee.

‘Yeah but the old girl won’t let me down. We’ve been through a lot together,’ he said, tapping the steering wheel.

Kim suspected this girl was not long for the knacker’s yard in the sky, but she wasn’t going to be the one to break the news.

‘Next left,’ she said, as they neared Dudley town centre. ‘And sharp right,’ she added as something on the near side left of the car squealed in protest.

Penn pulled up behind the one remaining service vehicle. Keats’s van was gone, the ambulance was gone, the cordon tape had been removed and the onlookers had returned to their lives, the earlier excitement of the day already forgotten. Such a devastating life-changing event for Samantha’s parents, but nothing more than a passing subject of gossip for her neighbours.

The single squad car was parked beside the Ford Escort van of the landlord. She was hoping he’d still be around.

The constable on the door offered her a questioning glance as she approached.

‘Marm?’

‘Just want another look,’ she explained as he stepped aside. He would have been told to let no one in but the cleaning crew.