Page 7 of Killing Mind

‘It’s fine,’ she assured him. ‘And if you see the landlord, tell him I’d like a word.’

The officer nodded as his hand moved towards the radio mounted on his vest.

She took the stairs two at a time with Penn following closely behind.

‘It’s okay,’ Kim said to the second officer guarding the door to the flat. ‘Your buddy downstairs is already calling me in.’

He stood aside for her to enter.

Amongst all the bodies crammed into the space earlier she hadn’t noted just how small the flat was.

The windowless hallway had three doors. She already knew that the door on the left led to the bedroom. The one on the right was the kitchen and the door dead ahead was to the lounge.

She turned and closed the front door behind her. The door had two separate locks. A latch lock at her eye level that automatically locked when the door was closed and a turn-key lock at waist level. She inspected both closely and found no damage to either. Just as Bryant had said.

‘Boss, is there anything you want me to do?’ Penn asked.

‘Just observe,’ she said, walking into the kitchen.

The area was furnished with cheap plain white cupboards and a stainless steel sink. A newish boiler was fixed to the wall next to the window.

The kitchen appeared functional but sparse without any personal touches, no nick-nacks littering the surfaces or wall plaques to stamp the place as her own. A plain white mug and matching side plate sat near the sink; two pieces of crust left over from a sandwich.

‘Doesn’t look like my kitchen,’ Penn remarked from the doorway. ‘Spare counter space is a bloody premium.’ He looked around. ‘And it’s a bigger space than this.’

Kim wasn’t much of a kitchen dweller but her own space was littered with bits that she just hadn’t bothered to put away, stuff that accumulated over time: a couple of spare batteries; a cookbook that hated her; scouring pads she’d used to clean up bike parts; just stuff that didn’t belong anywhere but that her eyes passed over a few times a day. In this kitchen there was a distinct absence of ‘stuff’.

She moved along to the lounge. Again, the space was small, dominated by a two-seater sofa and a single chair. A small television sat on a glass unit in the corner. Kim searched for signs of an identity – any mark that Samantha Brown had put on the place – but she found nothing.

‘It’s like she didn’t see this as her home,’ Penn said, walking around the small lounge.

Exactly what Kim had been thinking. Had Samantha been displaced somehow? Had she been lonely? Had that driven her to take her own life?

She headed back to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. Whether it was the memory from this morning or the person-shaped patch of clean linen, revealed by the removal of the body, Kim wasn’t sure but she could still see Samantha Brown lying there.

Kim tried to pinpoint exactly what had brought her back, just as footsteps sounded in the hallway.

A short, stocky man wearing overalls held out a hand towards her. She looked away as his hand fell to his side.

‘Raymond Crewett, landlord.’

‘You let the police into the flat?’ she asked, heading back into the hallway.

‘I did.’

‘And did you have to unlock both locks?’ she asked.

He began to nod. ’Yes, yes, I…’

He stopped speaking as his eyebrows drew together. He took out his set of master keys, appearing to replay the actions in his head.

‘Hang on, no I don’t think I did. I opened the top latch lock and then tried the door and it opened. But most folks don’t…’

‘Thanks, Raymond. If I need anything else, I’ll give you a shout.’

‘Any idea when…’

‘No,’ she said, shortly. She did not know when he was getting his flat back.