Page 128 of Silent Scream

She reached the window and realised she had used the bin to get back over the fence. She travelled back, taking care to avoid the breeze block, then picked up the bin and placed it beneath the broken window.

She shone the torch around the outer edge of the opening to get an idea of where the shards were placed. Kim put the torch in her mouth and used both hands to ease herself through the broken window.

Yes, she was in.

Sixty-Six

IknewI'd been right when I first saw her. Her diligence and tenacity had served her well. Perhaps too well.

Because it had brought her back to me.

I had initially thought that we would not meet but that was no longer the case.

My insurance, my clever misdirection, had not been enough. For some it would have been. But not for her.

Here she was, alone, late at night, gaining entry to an abandoned building, searching for answers. She would not rest until she had uncovered the secrets.

All of them.

It was only a matter of time before her methodical reasoning brought her to me. I couldn't take that chance.

Had she not been so clever I would have allowed her to live. People have to take responsibility for their own actions.

I remember when I was twelve in the lunch hall. Robbie had a chicken salad sandwich. It looked so much tastier than my ham and cheese. I asked him to trade and he laughed in my face.

A broken rib, a black eye and two fractured fingers later, I had the sandwich and it tasted good.

See, it needn't have happened. If he'd just traded, he would have been fine. I tried to explain this to the teachers but they couldn't understand. They all made excuses for my lack of remorse.

I wasn't troubled. I wasn't seeking attention. I was not acting up because my grandma had died.

I just wanted the sandwich.

It was a shame that the detective had to die. The presence of her keen mind and unerring drive would be missed but she had brought it on herself.

It wasn't my fault.

My only fault lay in the mistake I made some years before, but it was one that I hadn't made since.

But then, even the greatest minds occasionally made errors.

And as I watched her climb in through the fence, I realised that the detective had just made her last.

Sixty-Seven

Kim’s feetlanded on the Formica worktop and the glass crunched like gravel beneath her boots. In the dark silence, the sound seemed deafening.

She eased herself down onto the ground and cast the torch around the kitchen. Nothing had changed in the few days since her last trespass and this wasn’t the area that held her interest.

Still, she paused for a moment, visualising the girls sneaking in when no one was around for a packet of crisps or a drink. How many times had Melanie wandered in and out of this room before she was so brutally beheaded?

Kim headed forward through the room and jumped when something settled on her face. She clawed at her cheeks, dislodging the soft fibres and raised the light to a head-shaped hole in a cobweb at the doorway. She shook her head and rubbed at her face and hair. A single thread tickled at her ear.

As she stepped from the hallway to the corridor a gust of wind howled from above, entering the building through the broken windows. A beam creaked above her head.

For a second, Kim questioned the sensibility of her own choice to enter this building alone and at night, but she would not be frightened off by insects and wind.

She moved along the corridor, taking care to mute the torch as she passed open doorways of rooms that were on the front of the property.