Page 97 of Silent Scream

Victor turned and walked back towards them. ‘Do you know where he found her?’

Kim felt her jaw begin to tighten.

‘They had stripped her naked and forced her small body into the rubbish bin. She didn’t have the muscle strength to get out.’ He swallowed. ‘She was stuck in there for over an hour, covered in rubbish and food and her own dirty nappies. The poor little girl was only three years old.’

Kim felt the nausea rise within her. However far they tried to stretch the fabric of this case it sprang right back to the doorstep of William and Lucy Payne.

It was time for another chat.

Forty-Eight

‘What the hellis going on here?’ Kim cried as the car pulled up outside the Payne house. Both a responder and an ambulance were parked outside. The rear doors to the ambulance were wide open.

As she ran around the vehicles two paramedics exited the property with a stretcher.

The small, fragile figure of Lucy hardly filled the narrow makeshift bed. They carried her as though she were a baby. The atrophy of her limbs was clearer out of the chair. An oxygen mask covered her small face but Kim could see her eyes and the fear that radiated out.

Kim touched her arm lightly but the paramedics were moving with a sense of urgency to place her in the back of the ambulance.

William Payne rushed out of the house. His face had been stripped of colour. His eyes were wide and frightened.

‘What happened?’ Kim asked.

‘She was breathless in the night but she seemed better this morning. I was upstairs changing the beds and she must have had difficulty again but she couldn’t make a sound. She couldn’t alert me.’

They both stood at the rear of the ambulance as the paramedics fixed the stretcher into position.

William’s eyes reddened as he fought back the tears. ‘She managed to press the button on the pendant and I heard the sirens in the distance. When I came back down she was turning blue.’ He shook his head as the tears began to fall. His voice was hoarse and terrified. ‘She might die because I couldn’t hear her cry for help.’

Kim opened her mouth to offer him reassurance but one of the paramedics jumped out of the vehicle.

‘Sir, we need to ...’

‘I have to go. Please excuse ...’

Kim nudged him towards the back of the waiting ambulance.

The doors closed behind him and the ambulance sped away with sirens and lights.

Kim felt an ache in her throat as she watched the vehicle disappear from view.

‘Didn’t look good, eh, Guv?’

Kim shook her head and crossed the road to the dig site.

She entered the tent of victim number two. Cerys was on her knees in the pit. She turned and smiled.

Kim offered her hand. Cerys removed a latex glove and held onto Kim as she stepped out of the pit.

The hand was warm and soft and coated with the talcum powder from inside the glove.

Cerys stepped to the head of the pit. ‘I heard sirens. Everything okay?’

Kim shrugged. There was little point explaining about Lucy. Cerys had no part in that area of the investigation and her own emotional reaction to the young girl did not make sense to Kim herself, never mind trying to explain it to someone else.

‘Site one's done, then?’ Kim asked. The first grave had been refilled and pieces of grass placed on top. It looked like a bad hair transplant. That tent had been removed but another had been erected.

‘Anything up there?’