Dead Memories (D.I. Kim Stone #10)(13)

‘And did something happen that night?’ Kim asked, knowing there was something this woman wanted to say.

‘Yes, Inspector, it was the night Mark Johnson punched Harry Jenks in the mouth.’





Seventeen





Penn had seen aerial shots of the scrapyard but he’d never set foot in it.

From above he could picture the strip of land a quarter mile long containing row upon row of cars, some stacked three vehicles high.

He parked behind two squad cars and headed towards the building he knew lay at the centre of the property.

As he approached there was no sign of staff or police officers. Walking around reminded him of the public library when he’d been at school. The shelves of books had towered above him just as the broken cars did right now. Had they been in tidy rows he may have been able to see to the end of the site.

He suddenly remembered going to the Great Worcester Maze at Broadfields when he was a kid. His father had been working and his mother was heavily pregnant with Jasper.

She hadn’t been up to doing the maze with him but she’d given him instructions on what to do if he couldn’t find his way back.

He smiled and hoped someone else had been lucky enough to have such a pragmatic mother and he followed her instructions now just as he had back then.

He put two fingers into his mouth, curled his tongue and blew.

Three seconds later came a response and a direction of travel.

He travelled to the eastern edge, close to the canal bridge that led over to the Waterfront Office and Leisure Complex.

Finally, he heard voices and turned out of a car alley into an open space that held the crane and the vehicle crusher.

He appraised the scene quickly and ignored the ‘new boy’ glances that passed amongst a couple of the constables.

The crane operator was smoking a cigarette and shaking his head; a woman he assumed to be the hysterical caller was sitting away from everyone still sobbing. An overweight man with a tee shirt that stopped shy of his waistband attempted to comfort her with a hand on her shoulder.

‘You the owner?’ Penn asked the big guy, wondering if there’d been some kind of accident. There were no ambulances present.

‘Warren Dobbie, third generation,’ he said.

‘And this is?…’

‘My wife, Debbie,’ he said.

Penn tried in earnest not to put the two names together in his mind.

‘And you called the police?’ he asked the trembling woman.

She nodded and sobbed again.

He turned back to third generation Dobbie. ‘Is someone hurt?’ he asked, still unsure of the reason for his presence.

‘Well, no, not so much hurt…’ he said. ‘Just… well… here, tek a look for yerself.’

Penn followed him through the milling police officers to the object of their attention.

A cube.

Penn knew that the compactors used at junkyards flattened the metal using hydraulically powered plates and a baling press that compressed from several directions until it resembled a large cube. And on first inspection there was nothing spectacular about the perfect cube of metal around which they all stood. He looked around at the police officers and then looked again with fresh eyes.

And that’s when he saw the human hand.





Eighteen





Kim arrived at Dobbie’s at the same time as Mitch and his team.

The revelation from Mrs Tallon had been on her mind the whole time she’d been driving.

She had wondered if the woman was telling them the whole truth when she’d said she didn’t know the reason for the violent outburst from Mark Johnson. But Harry Jenks had chosen not to report the assault to the police and she couldn’t help but question why not. But they now knew that Mark Johnson had a temper. Who else had he upset? Although she was struggling to convict him in her mind for smacking Jenks in the face. Unfair or not there was something about him that made her want to smack him too.

And then the call had come from Penn to get to Dobbie’s straight away.

‘Hey, Mitch, I hear you’ve got your work cut out with this one,’ Kim said, as she and Bryant joined him at the cordoned entrance.

‘Did I hear right that there’s a body part in the metal?’ he asked, as they passed Keats’s van.

‘Apparently,’ Kim said, as they followed the line of officers to the location Penn had explained to her.

She knew it well. She’d spent many Saturday mornings trawling the place looking for bike parts that were thrown haphazardly into piles at the end of car rows like the special offer displays at the aisle end in a supermarket.

She spied Penn up ahead who came walking towards her.

‘Pathologist is here, boss,’ he said. ‘But seems at a bit of a loss.’

She nodded and followed him to the crusher.

‘So, what happened?’ she asked as she walked.

‘Guy operating the crane removed the cube from the press and saw the hand as he lowered it to the ground. Got out and touched it and hasn’t stopped shaking since.’

Yes, it was a discovery that would stay with him for some time.

‘Hey, Keats,’ she said to the pathologist who stood on the other side of the cube.

‘Well, this is a puzzle, isn’t it?’ he asked, stroking his bearded chin.