Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(46)

Seemed to her like an awful lot of competition for kids in just two short days but the photos showed a lot of fun too.

Finding the attendance of Barry Nixon was easy enough. Each year had a list of event staff like a cast list and Barry was listed as event counsellor from 2003 through to last year, missing only one event a few years earlier which she suspected was when his wife died.

Stacey wrote all the years down on her notepad and then paused as an unwelcome sound punctured the silence.

‘Are you whistling?’ she asked Tiffany across the room.

The girl smiled. ‘Yeah, show tunes. Learned when I was a kid. Fills the silence. I don’t even know I’m doing it most times.’

Stacey offered her a tight smile. Just go with it, Stace, she told herself. The boss would sort it. She just had to tune herself out and she’d be fine.

Marrying up those dates with Belinda Evans was not going to be easy, and she briefly wondered if the boss had got it wrong. Belinda Evans had never been on the staff list and appeared to have attended the event in no official capacity whatsoever.

She put Belinda’s full name into the website search engine and thanked God for photo tagging.

She matched up the data she could find from photos, blog posts and mentions and when she looked down at her notepad realised that the two of them had attended the event together at least ten times.





Forty-Eight





Bryant managed to park between the skip and the cleaning company van. Kim spied Veronica’s car parked on the drive of Belinda’s second home next door.

‘Well, she didn’t waste much time,’ Bryant observed.

‘She didn’t waste any bloody time. Property was only handed back a couple of hours ago. She must have had all these folks on standby at the top of the road.’

Mitch had texted her to say they were complete at 6 a.m. having found no evidence to link the property to the actual crime scene miles away.

Kim walked up the path sideways as two cleaning operatives passed her carrying boxes to the skip.

‘No, no, clear one room at a time,’ Kim heard as they entered the property.

Veronica was standing in the middle of the living room in a square of clear carpet a metre wide.

She wore light jeans and a green tee shirt. Working clothes that she didn’t expect to get dirty.

She looked their way and scowled.

‘Been busy here, Miss Evans,’ Kim said, careful not to slip on shiny magazine covers as she moved to the middle of the room.

Kim had no clue how much she was paying these people but she could already see some wall space appearing from behind the piles.

‘I really think you’d have a better chance of finding my sister’s killer if you weren’t so fascinated with me.’

‘And perhaps if you’d been a bit more truthful…’

‘What the devil?…’ Veronica said, looking around them.

‘Birdcage,’ said the woman who had just pulled forward a pile of old bedding sheets.

‘Get rid of it, but not that box to the right. Put that on the “to be checked” pile.’

Clearly Veronica wanted the focus on one room at a time so it could be closely monitored.

Perhaps Kim had got the woman wrong and she wanted to make sure that she kept hold of Belinda’s personal items or keepsakes.

‘A small box of jewellery over here,’ said the smaller operative handing it to Veronica.

She opened it. ‘Belinda’s costume jewellery from the Eighties. She loved this rubbish.’

She closed the box and threw it into the nearest black bin bag.

Or maybe not, Kim thought, as her hackles began to rise.

She watched for a moment as the woman continued to direct and manage the workforce.

Despite her own shortcomings in the emotional connection department, Kim often felt a vague stirring of empathy for family members, the ones left behind, the people who now had victim-shaped holes in their lives. She felt for the people who had to rearrange their entire existence around an empty space. She empathised because she understood loss.

Yet this woman elicited no emotion from her at all. She had wondered if Veronica was burying her feelings so deeply to avoid facing them. After the involvement in each other’s lives Veronica’s days had to be emptier than most.

But this need to eradicate her sister’s existence so soon after her death left Kim standing cold. Belinda deserved better than that. Of the hundreds of cases she’d worked she’d never seen a relative act so coldly.

‘Not that one,’ Veronica cried out, suddenly, causing Kim to look closely.

It was a box of old papers, textbooks and exercise books.

Veronica grabbed it and pulled it closer to her.

‘Miss Evans, we know you’re busy but…’

‘You can talk while I watch, Inspector. I’m paying these people by the hour.’

The word unrelenting came to mind. This woman didn’t give an inch to anyone on anything.

‘Miss Evans, we would appreciate your full attention for just a minute or two, and if you’d prefer we could do this down the station.’

‘We absolutely could,’ she said without batting an eyelid. ‘I’ll see you some time at the end of the week. If you want my attention any sooner, I’d suggest you ask your questions, Inspector. I’m perfectly able to multitask.’