Page 119 of Silent Scream

Kim glared at him.

‘No, seriously, I mean it. For me, absence has most definitely made my heart grow fonder. I find that my sensitive, delicate nature might actually find your acerbic tongue almost tolerable.’

‘Yes, you’ve had quite an easy week of it, haven’t you?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.

‘I have indeed, Detective.’ He began to count on his fingers. ‘I’ve had a double stabbing in Dudley, an elderly male who collapsed into his dinner at his eighty-fifth birthday party and two medical uncertainties. Oh, and the trail of corpses you’ve left in your wake.’

‘Happy to fill the time for you but did you manage to ascertain anything remotely useful?’

He thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind. I now realise that I haven’t missed you at all.’

‘Keats,’ she growled.

‘I’ve sent the post mortem results to your office this morning. Teresa Wyatt was pushed down under the water, as you already know. There was no major struggle due to the victim already being immersed in water. I detected no other marks on the body and no sign of any sexual assault. She was in reasonably good health for her age.

‘I don’t think the manner of death for Tom Curtis was in any question but what I can tell you is that the bottle of whisky would most probably have killed him. His heart was in such poor condition that it’s unlikely he’d have made it to forty-five. Oh, and his last meal was salad and steak. Topside, I think.’

Kim rolled her eyes.

‘With Mary Andrews you most certainly did not get to the church on time and to make any reasonable deduction about death I usually need a body.

‘Arthur Connop died of massive internal trauma caused by an altercation with a vehicle. His liver was on borrowed time but his other major organs were pretty healthy for a man of his age.’

Keats held up his hands, as if to say,that’s all.

‘No evidence, no trace, nothing?’

‘No, Detective, because you’re not making a TV show. If we had an hour of titillating entertainment to make I may suddenly find that Teresa Wyatt had swallowed a carpet fibre that can be matched to the home of your suspect. I might even find a stray hair on the body of Tom Curtis that miraculously fell from the killer with the root attached. But I am not a mini-series made for television.’

Kim groaned. She’d had a tooth abscess that had been less painful than a lecture from Keats. His frown told her that he hadn’t finished quite yet.

She leaned back against the stainless steel counter and folded her arms.

‘How many women did the Yorkshire Ripper murder?’ Keats asked.

‘Thirteen,’ Dan answered.

‘And how was he caught?’

‘By two police officers who arrested him for driving with false number plates,’ she answered.

‘So, thirteen bodies later and he still hadn’t been caught by stray hairs and carpet fibres. Therefore, I can only pass on what the body tells me. Any kind of forensic evidence will not take the place of good old police work; deduction, gut instinct and intelligent, practical thinking. Which reminds me, where is Bryant?’

Kim offered him a look and he turned back to the workbench. Kim saw the label of the white jacket protruding over the collar. She reached over and popped it back inside with her index finger.

Keats turned. She raised one eyebrow. He smiled and turned back.

Kim turned to Daniel. ‘Doc, is there a denture?’

He met her gaze and Kim was struck by the tiredness in his eyes. She knew he had worked at the site until late to remove the body of the third victim. Just as she would have done.

‘What, no insults, sarcasm or cutting remarks?’

She sensed that he was like her. Once questions were posed he demanded answers and didn’t stop until he got them. On a case like this there was no rota, no clocking on and off time. There was only the need to know. She understood.

She tilted her head and smiled. ‘Nah, Doc. Not today.’

He held her gaze and smiled back.