Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(32)

‘Yeah, Penn did mention that,’ she remembered.

‘And turned up dead on the railway tracks this morning.’

‘Suicide?’

Travis shook his head. ‘Not unless he managed to tie both wrists down with garden wire.’

‘Shit, Travis,’ Kim said, sitting back. ‘I’m assuming you need help getting out of the country.’

He smiled briefly. ‘Not quite.’

‘A new identity?’ Bryant asked.

‘Thanks, guys, I appreciate your vote of confidence.’

Kim waited, already knowing she wasn’t going to like it.

‘The trial has been halted and we need to go back to the beginning. We need to re-cross every T and dot every I. We’ve got to be sure we’ve got our man.’

‘And are you?’ Kim asked.

‘Not as sure as I was yesterday,’ he said, honestly.

‘Jeez, Tom.’

They’d had their differences and issues in the past but regardless of any disparity in work practices, Travis was as straight as they came and wouldn’t want an innocent man to go to prison.

‘I need to keep Penn. At least for a couple of days until we get this thing straightened out.’

‘Bloody hell, Tom, I’ve got a body of my own right now.’

‘I know, I heard about it and I’m sorry but you can draft in help. Penn was SIO on this. No one can pick it apart like him. I swear I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate, but you know what could happen.’

Oh yeah, she knew what could happen and it was what the Commissioner was going to warn him of at two o’clock. If this case was going to fold, it wouldn’t matter which officer had fucked up; ultimately Travis was in charge of the team and would pay the highest price.

And they both knew his personal circumstances couldn’t wear that.

When they’d worked the hate crimes case she’d found out that the reason he’d acted so drastically out of character that time was because his wife had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. The woman had been in her mid-forties and it had destroyed him. With just a few years between him and retirement he could not afford to leave the force any other way than financially secure.

‘A few days, Tom, and that’s it. If you’re not sorted by the weekend, you’ll have to learn to see in the dark, okay?’

Their eyes met and she saw the gratitude there.

‘Thank you,’ he said, reaching into his pocket.

‘Keep it,’ she insisted of the money to pay for lunch. ‘Suddenly I don’t have much of an appetite,’ she said as her phone began to ring.





Thirty-Two





Kim entered the Timbertree housing estate and pulled up onto the kerb in front of a row of small bungalows.

Keats had disturbed them at the garden centre to tell them where but not why.

The lay-by in front of the few shops servicing the housing estate was already full of squad cars.

Vehicles were being turned and diverted and a cordon had been erected across to the other side of the road.

Most windows above the shops were wide open as the occupants shouted down to people milling outside the cordon. Everyone wanted to know what was going on. As did Kim herself.

‘Oi, hope that roadblock gets shifted soon. I need to get to work,’ shouted a woman from one of the windows.

If that was any time in the next few hours it was highly unlikely, Kim thought.

Keats had only told her to get to the Timbertree pub urgently. What she hadn’t realised was that the Timbertree pub had gone and boarding had been erected around the site.

‘Another good watering hole gone,’ Bryant observed. ‘Used to drink there in my twenties.’

‘Been there recently?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

‘Well, stop moaning, then,’ she snapped.

It reminded her of the outcry from the public when car makers Rover were shedding thousands of jobs, all from folks driving foreign cars. Successful companies rarely went out of business.

She approached the gap in the seven feet high white boards designed to keep vandals out. She paused for a minute and looked around.

‘Get uniforms to check for CCTV, anyone looking out of the window and anyone who could have been waiting at this bus stop right here.’

‘Bloody wish Penn was on our team right now,’ Bryant said, heading towards a police sergeant at the edge of the hoarding.

Yes, it was exactly what he would have been tasked to do.

‘Long time no see,’ she called to Keats who was amongst a clutch of white techie suits.

‘And I wasn’t missing you a bit, Inspector,’ he replied without turning. ‘And thank you for your prompt attendance. I assume you were driving.’ He looked around her. ‘Did you kill him en route?’

‘He’ll live,’ she said.

Keats stepped aside. ‘Preliminary examination completed but we chose not to move him until you got here.’

Kim stepped around a rolled-up newspaper that had already been marked with an evidence number.

She approached the male victim lying face down on the ground, his head turned so that his right cheek lay against the gravel. A pool of blood had collected beneath him, and Kim could see the tear in the man’s light sports jacket. Their victim had been stabbed from behind.