Page 63 of Silent Scream

It bothered Kim that the heading was still ‘victim one’. The bones had once formed a person. There had been muscles and skin, perhaps a birthmark. There had been a face with expressions. It was not just bones. This girl had spent enough of her life anonymous and it angered Kim that she still had no name.

Kim recalled clearly her own realisation of just how invisible care kids were. When she was eight years old she had ventured into the linen room for a fresh pillowcase. Her gaze had caught a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. The front page and the sheets behind were diagrams of each of the seven bedrooms. Each bed was drawn on and numbered; bed one, bed two, bed three with tick boxes below. She had wondered why her name was not listed instead of Bed 19.

Kim quickly realised that it was too much bother to label them according to the girl's name. The occupant changed, but the location of the bed did not.

Kim had perched herself on a wooden stool and leaned on the ironing board to write in every girls’ name next to the bed they occupied.

Two days later a cursory check in the linen room had revealed fresh, clean pages; bed one, bed two, bed three.

Her space, her identity, her one little area of safety so easily erased. It was a lesson that she'd never forgotten.

She refocused her attention on Dawson as he pointed at the board. ‘This is where the second mass has been detected; approximately fifty feet from the first.’

He drew a line to the edge of the map but marked it only with an asterisk. Her whole body reacted to his use of the wordmassbut she fought it down. As yet, there was no body.

‘Thanks, Kev. Today the archaeological team will conduct a full survey of the site to make sure there are no more.’

‘Do you expect more bodies, Guv?’

Kim shrugged. She really had no idea.

‘Stace, did you manage to look at the tape?’

Stacey rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, it mighta been used for the original recording ofBenHur. It’s been taped over hundreds of times. I’ve gor a friend who might be able to clean it up a bit but he's not on our register of approved ...’

‘Send it anyway. From an evidentiary point of view it’s worse than useless, because we can never prove foul play in the death of Mary Andrews, but it might just give us something.’

Stacey nodded and made a note. ‘Nothin’ more on Teresa Wyatt. I’ve gor her phone records and there's no calls in or out that can't be accounted for. Forensically they found nothing at the scene except for a couple of shoe prints, double trodden.’

Their killer had taken the time to retread his initial footsteps to further confuse any identification. As if the damage done by the fire service wasn't bad enough.

‘Both clever and impatient,’ Kim observed.

‘Why impatient?’ Bryant asked.

‘The discovery of Teresa Wyatt’s body was expedited by arson so that she was found within an hour of her death. Tom Curtis would have most likely died had he continued to drink the whisky but that wasn’t good enough for our guy.’

‘He wants us to know he’s angry,’ Bryant mused.

‘He certainly has something to say.’

‘Well, let’s stop him before he says it to anyone else,’ Stacey added, hitting a few keys on the computer. ‘Okay, following on from Kev’s work I can confirm Richard Croft from Crestwood is most definitely the Conservative MP for Bromsgrove.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Kim said. Woody was going to love this.

‘And I've gor an address for both him and the second night watchman.’

The printer kicked into life and Bryant grabbed the single sheet.

‘I also have the most up-to-date record of the girls at Crestwood from a local GP but to be honest I’m getting better info from Facebook of who was there at the end.’

‘Keep on that, Stace, it may prove useful in helping us identify our first victim. Someone may recognise the beads. For us today the focus is on the staff members. There’s nothing to suggest that the ex-occupants are in any danger.

‘Bryant and I have already spoken to William Payne. He has a severely disabled daughter. Loved his job but didn’t see the other staff members all that often. He's recently been the victim of an attempted break-in which, based on the level of security at his home, makes no sense. Kev, pay him an advisory visit when you get back to site.’

Dawson nodded his understanding.

Kim stood. ‘So, we all know what we’re doing. Yeah?’