Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(88)
She tried to calm her breathing as she approached the entrance to the park. She covered her mouth with her hand and listened keenly.
In the distance, she could hear a rhythmic sound.
Squeak
Four seconds.
Squeak
Four seconds.
And then a laugh of pure delight that chilled the blood in her veins.
She knew she had to get closer but she had to do it quietly. Who knew what was going on.
A pair of bolt cutters had been placed against the gate to close it. The heavy chain lay on the ground.
She reached over the waist-high fencing and picked them up as quietly as she could. She laid them down on the grass and pushed open the gate, her whole body tense as though that would prevent any rattle or sound alerting her arrival.
Squeak
Four seconds.
Squeak
Kim was relieved to hear the sound. The play came before death. If he was still playing there was hope for Ellie Lewis.
But who the hell was she dealing with?
She moved slowly, stepping around a spillage of crisps that had not yet been cleared.
The movement jolted a memory into her brain. It travelled along the events of the week and finally hooked up to a random finding like a magnet.
The trace of NaCl.
Sodium Chloride.
And finally, she knew who it was.
One Hundred Three
Bryant headed out of the leisure complex and took out his phone.
He’d been careful to check every inch of the place to make sure Jared Welmsley hadn’t done the deed and then jumped into the steam room to clean himself off.
‘Hey, Stace, I’ve—’
‘Bryant, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘I’m in the leisure complex. No signal. Area checked and it ain’t Welmsley.’
‘I told you that makes no sense but can you pass me to the boss?’
‘Not with her, Stace. She’s at the other dead spot.’
Silence for a second.
‘So, you both go to communication dead spots, alone, without telling me?’
Bryant could hear the scold in her voice.
‘Stace, what have you got?’
‘The traumatic event, Bryant. The one that drove Beth Nixon into the mental health facility. It was her grandmother, her legal guardian. She was murdered eight years ago.’
‘Jeez, Stace, that’s bad but what does that have to do with us?’
‘It’s the way she was killed: on a roundabout at a park up in Burnley, a spider’s web. Tied to it with barbed wire, turned and turned until her brain smashed all over the ground.’
Bryant didn’t even speak as he ended the call and started moving quickly.
He had to find the boss and he had to do it quick.
One Hundred Four
Kim took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the castle.
‘Hello, Eric, nice to see you again,’ she said to the man she’d interviewed at the very first crime scene. The man who had thrown up and whose vomit had contained high traces of sodium chloride – salt – found on the boots of one of the attending police officers. Because he’d made himself sick from the bottled water for effect.
‘Inspector, lovely to see you, too,’ he said, calmly, as he glanced towards his companion.
Kim tried to appraise the scene before her without allowing the horror to show on her face.
Eric sat astride one side of the see-saw still wearing the clown costume he’d used to infiltrate the event. The yellow half and the red half were separated by two blue pompoms on his stomach and chest. The multicoloured wig had been removed, but the white face and grotesquely painted red lips remained.
At the other end of the see-saw was Ellie. Her hands were tied around the handle and a scarf gagged her mouth. Terror shone from her eyes.
Kim briefly wondered how he’d managed to get her so trussed up, but given Ellie’s earlier encounter with a knife, she would have been petrified and would have done whatever she was told.
Ellie made a sound as her half of the see-saw came down, and Kim suddenly saw why.
The knife had been rigged to stand in an upright position so that every time her side of the see-saw came down the knife sliced into the flesh on the back of her leg between her ankle and her calf. If she didn’t push back up, the point of the blade would bury itself firmly in her flesh. Her feet were bound, so Ellie couldn’t control the angle at which her legs were going to fall.
Eric was forcing Ellie to play with him, and the pool of glistening blood beneath her seat told Kim they’d been playing now for quite a while. Eric was having the time of his life while Ellie was getting weaker.
Kim knew she had only one option and that was to get him off the see-saw.
She took a second to do the maths. Ellie had been tutoring privately for fourteen years. Fourteen years ago Beth Nixon had attended the Brainbox event. Ellie must have ignored this kid too.
Kim moved forward.
‘Take one more step and I do this,’ he said, speeding up the see-saw.
He pushed harder and quicker so that Ellie had no choice but to match his pace to avoid the blade burying into her flesh but that meant even more slices to the back of her leg. This was lose or lose more.
The woman cried into the gag as blood began to drip from the extra wounds.