Dead Memories (D.I. Kim Stone #10)(104)

One Hundred Thirty-Eight





Kim parked the car opposite the entrance to the crematorium giving herself a good view of the entrance.

She watched silently as the two hearses made their slow approach along the main roadway towards the group of friends and neighbours who had congregated outside the door.

Kim tried to ignore the irony that the Phelpses had both wished to be cremated. The furnace would have less work to do than normal.

The cars pulled to a stop and the black-clad team focussed respectfully on the first coffin, removing it and wheeling it into the building seamlessly, practised hundreds of times, before moving the first car forward to remove the second coffin.

She couldn’t help but wonder if this was how Keith and Erica’s funeral had been. The one she hadn’t been allowed to attend, cut off by Erica’s sister because she wasn’t ‘real’ family. She was a foster kid, a social conscience act. But not to Kim and not to them. They had loved her and she had been their daughter. She wasn’t sure just how much ‘real’ family meant anyway. Despite her daughter’s excitement, Gemma’s mother had once again managed to get in trouble just hours before her impending release from prison and another bunch of flowers had landed in the bin. Kim took no pleasure in having called it correctly at the beginning of the week.

A week that had brought many emotions, all to be buried. Too many memories to be avoided and ignored and in some cases simply denied. Mallory Preece had violated her entire life and chosen the most traumatic events, picked at the closed boxes in her mind to destroy her. And it could have had she not chosen to push the emotions down and bury them all over again.

In truth she had wanted to curl up in a ball beneath heavy blankets when she’d first seen Mark and Amy chained together in the flat. Her arms had felt the familiar sensation of Mikey’s body within her embrace. She had remembered his smile, his laugh, his pain, his death.

When she’d seen the burnt-out car outside the old speedway site she’d been rushed by memories of the three years she’d spent with the loving couple and the safety she’d felt in their home. But also the terror when they had both lost their lives.

There were no words to describe the emotions that had coursed through her when she’d seen the brutalised figure of Billie Styles in the woods.

She understood Bryant’s concern about her refusal to deal with issues from her past and maybe she had swallowed a ticking time bomb that would explode at some time in the future, but it wasn’t now and no more people would die because of someone’s twisted jealousy towards her.

But throughout it all the one thing, the one emotion, that had refused to be silenced was regret. Regret that she hadn’t fought her corner or asked someone to fight it for her. She should have been allowed to say goodbye to the only parents she’d ever known.

She had visited the graveyard afterwards to say her own goodbye but their ashes had been scattered at the rose garden and the small plaque bearing their names had not yet been made. It hadn’t been a suitable farewell and that final missing piece had haunted her always.

She watched as the final mourner entered the building and reached into the glovebox for the last remaining copy of The Lost Child, the book about her life. Something to read while she waited.

She turned in her seat to Joel Greene, suited, grateful and without handcuffs.

‘Go on, Joel,’ she whispered, emotionally. ‘Go in and say goodbye to your parents.’